Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Let's play: Do the Vikings regret that? Ft. Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Matthew Coller and Ben Goessling discuss how the Vikings will approach the trade deadline and how decisions could be impacted by Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer's need for the team to bounce back quickly in 2021. They also go through a bunch of decisions the team made and whether they regret them now and Ben guesses the eight Packeres running backs who have run for over 2,500 yards since 1990. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If the foundation isn't right, then the rest of it's going to go wrong from there. And more. Subscribe to Front and Center today. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, and joining me for this show is Ben Gessling of the Star Tribune, a throwback. What is up, Ben? Not much, Matthew. It's just coming off a relaxing bye week, as we do on this beat, and ready to get back into it.

I will say that I did enjoy Sunday being able to watch the games. I know Adam Thielen said that he enjoyed a Sunday on the couch watching the games and I thought you know I think this sport's got a chance this is really fun but especially last night the Sunday night. That was fantastic. That was great. Quarterbacks who can run helpful I don't know if there are some teams that have not figured that out yet, but let's just get right into what is going to happen going forward with this team. I just want your opinion right off the bat to get us rolling here on who gets traded and when,

because I think Ben it's got to happen pretty soon if these teams want to get these players in and through the COVID protocols. So do you think this will be a, well, one guy gets moved and they get a draft pick, several guys get moved, or everybody that is pretty much eligible to get moved is moved out for the Vikings? My sense is that they'll try. I mean, that they'll try to move a number of guys, but I think the question is going to be how many places do they find a taker? I mean, guys to me that make sense are the guys that you probably figure we're going to let go after this year anyway. And in the case of a Riley Reif or a Kyle Rudolph,

you're not getting compensatory picks for those players when you just cut them. And in the case of Anthony Harris, you could get a pick, but that would take a year to hit. So, I mean, those three, to me, make a ton of sense to trade. And I suppose if you have somebody blow you away with an offer for Harrison Smith, I guess you think about it. And that one still feels a little weird to me to envision them getting rid of him. Same thing with Adam Thielen. But I think a lot of these guys, if you're figuring they're not going to be here and we have to save money because we're coming up against this sort of oncoming train in terms of the finances after this year, which they kind of are.

I think if you can get something for a number of these guys now, it makes sense to do it. I mean, they're going to say what they said today about we're trying to win this year. Yeah, I get that. But to what end, really? I mean, you're 1-5, you're three games out of a playoff spot. It doesn't make a ton of sense to sit here and try to say, we're going to try to get back in this thing this year. It's not feasible, and it makes a lot more sense to say,

let's compile the picks and see if we can make this a quick turnaround rather than a long one well and that's the thing for me is if you look at you know how much you could take apart from this roster with Harrison Smith even Adam Thielen and trading those guys and getting decent picks that to me would say in 2021 I'm sorry you will not be good I mean you can do whatever you want and you can sign whoever you want and you can draft whoever you want. But if you couldn't with all the talent now be competitive, what makes you think that next year, just because Justin Jefferson is in his second year or Irv Smith is in his third year, there are going to be so many holes if you trade away everything that you're looking at much more of a two- or three-year type of build as opposed to a one-year. So do they want to kind of go, you know what this actually reminds me of is when Adrian Peterson could have full knee surgery and have a much longer career. Yeah, yeah.

Tie that thing up a little bit and get right back on out there. Now, Adrian, I think, made the right decision in 2016 had the full surgery and has continued playing and he's on those third place lions um but uh you know they could tie this thing up and then try to fill the spots for next year or they could just push all the chips to the middle of the rebuild table but i think that's hard with the people who are in charge i i agree because if you do that, you are expecting that ownership is going to say, okay, if we are doing a full rebuild, why, what I guess the bet is, if you're Rick Spiel and I'm Mike Zimmer, is that ownership says,

yeah, we're going to do a full rebuild and we want you guys to be the ones to oversee it. Whereas they could say, all right, you have been in charge for seven years. We have won two playoff games and we are now at a point where we've spent all this money on an all-in roster and you're telling us we have to reset the whole thing right after we paid you and we paid the quarterback a second time. I think it is a much better play if you're Rick Spielman trying to sell your bosses on this to say, okay, we're going to make a couple of trades now. Let's get some more picks. We've already got a bunch of picks next year anyway.

So let's try to make this the, I guess, to use the economic phrase of before this year, a V-shaped recovery. So that you bounce right back up rather than the u-shaped thing and that is a better pitch if you are trying to turn this thing around and face the facts of where you're at on the roster while also saying it's going to be me that's overseeing the whole thing i i think if you don't pitch it that way you open yourself up to somebody saying, well, yeah, we need to make a recovery and we need to reload the thing. But should we start by asking ourselves whether you're the people that should be overseeing that process? And I think you always have to ask that in the world in general,

not to make a political statement, but do half measures ever really get you there? I mean, this goes for a lot of different things in your life. But, you know, in terms of sports, half measures are pretty difficult to get you where you want to go. Usually it takes the full measure, which would be tear it all down, draft a quarterback with the sixth overall pick or something like that. And then whether you move Kirk Cousins right away or not, whether you wait and go on the Alex Smith plan, doesn't really matter because you're building up the entire roster around your future quarterback.

And then you have the quarterback on the rookie contract. You can spend the money that you want to spend and so forth. You're looked at as a team on the rise. But then you're still talking about several years out. And I have a tough time thinking that ownership would say to Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman, hey, this year things went wrong, and that's okay, and we're not going to hold that against you, because the right direction is this, and we trust you for that direction. Like, that just doesn't seem to really gel

as being a reasonable thing that ownership would buy into. They want the quick bounce back. This is not an ownership that is okay with being patient. And we saw that, especially the shining example is signing Kirk cousins when they did, it was, we're not going to be patient and find a new quarterback and take a sort of a methodical approach to the quarterback position.

We're just going to throw cash at the shiniest thing out there. And, you know, it hasn't really worked, but that is how they have handled everything post-2017. It is. And we should think back to that combine, as I think we've all thought back on a number of times where Mike Zimmer was saying, hey, we've won games a certain way around here. And you can quibble with whether that's the right way to do it over the long term.

But his point was we have done it by building a really good supporting cast and not paying a ton of money for a quarterback. I mean, some of that was by necessity. You would have been paying a ton of money for a quarterback if Teddy Bridgewater had not blown his knee out and eventually he was due for that second contract, you would have gotten to that point. So that's a little bit of a straw man, I think, in some ways.

But his point was, I don't know if throwing a bunch of money at a quarterback is the right way to do this, probably unless you feel like that quarterback is the guy that is so good that you don't need a defense. You don't need a great offensive line. You can kind of get by with all these other bits and pieces of things in other places. And that quarterback is good enough to make up for it.

Kirk Cousins is not that guy. Kirk Cousins has said he's not that guy. And I think he's been fairly honest about that, but he's getting paid like he's that guy. I think he's been fairly honest about that, but he's getting paid like he's that guy. So that makes it awfully tough to have the rest of the roster in the spot where you want it to be. And I think that's kind of what Zimmer was saying. But if you are going to do the full rebuild, the other problem you have, if you're Zimmer and Spielman, is there's ownership sit there and say, well, Rick, your track record on quarterbacks is this.

You go back Christian Ponder and Bridgewater, probably. I mean, it's really not their fault that he gets hurt, but then you have cousins is going to be the one that you probably get judged on the most. And then you have Zimmer where it's okay. We are going to draft quarterback, which a lot of times means we have to bring in his system and we have to build our team around what that guy wants to do. Is this going to be the coach to do that? I don't know that the let's take the quarterback approach is

going to be one that leaves anybody sitting there feeling great about Mike Zimmer, Rick Spielman as the tandem to do it, unless they say, we're going to make a fairly large shift here, and we're going to go in with this, and we're going to bring in the offensive coordinator, run things the way this quarterback wants it done. I think if you're them, the let's stick with Kirk, let's try to make this a quick bounce back is a lot better pitch for their own futures. And I think that's the exact last thing that Vikings fans listening to this podcast want to hear, but I tend to agree with you that if they're as high up at the draft as they could be,

let's say they only win five games and they end up with the sixth, seventh, eighth pick, I don't see them as a team that tries to trade up to get Trey Lance or Justin Fields or whoever it might be. I see them much more as the team that drafts another wide receiver or drafts an offensive lineman, but more likely even drafts on the defensive side where they're going to look at and say, well, that's where our struggles really were. And this is where I think you can feel two ways. I think you can feel like Mike Zimmer is really good at his job and really knows what he's doing when it comes to defense, that there are few human beings on this earth who are

better at scheming up on third down or in the red zone than Mike Zimmer. But when you have this tug of war that has been going on since Kirk Cousins got here, and this is where I actually, I don't feel bad for Kirk because he's being well compensated like in life in general, but in just in sports terms, like this is where you sort of feel like he's the kid in the middle between the parents, you know, and they're fighting over like, well, I want to give him a guard, but no, no, no, we need corners. We need, you know, to pay all these defensive players. And even through 2018 and 2019, they threw cash at everybody to keep them on defense and just kind of left him a quarterback who needs everything right around him

and who isn't going to change just because you pay him more. Just because you put a new jersey on somebody doesn't mean they become a different quarterback. And I think that they kind of expected that. Like, well, we paid you all that money, so that's your job to go offense. And Laquan Treadwell will be a fine number three receiver I I think signing Kirk you could make this case signing Kirk in 2018 is not the mistake the mistake is Tom Compton's playing guard and Laquan Treadwell's at number three wide receiver and you didn't invest in those positions that you desperately needed to maximize this guy's skill. Yeah, I mean, the problem you run into is you're paying Kirk like a top flight quarterback, but you have to have all these other things to have a chance to

win with him. You have to have the good offensive line, the accomplished receivers, the running game that can be a compliment to him you you probably have to have a defense that can make some stops when there aren't going to be times where you sit there and say okay we're down seven points with three minutes left Kirk's gonna bail us out I that's not been the approach that has worked so it is a tough way to do it. And it's a tough way to sustain it when you have to pay for all this stuff. And they've, they've taken, you know, kind of given it the old college try in terms of trying to do it and pay everybody and see how many more contracts you can stick in the, into the books. And Rob Brzezinski has done a great job of making the math work. But, man, at some point that stuff comes due, and I think we're there, and you just kind of have to sit here and scratch your head about is trying to do the half measure

like we're talking about or trying to just make a couple quick fixes, is that going to work, or is that just going to delay the inevitable hard reset even farther? You know, they've thought of Rob Brzezinski, their cap guy, as maybe the fixer in recent years. He fixes the cap for you and everybody's contract. Maybe he's more of the enabler. Like, he just enables you to have whatever you want, but it's almost like I've been watching a lot of Twilight Zone lately where, you know,

somebody gets wild with power and then they make mistakes and fall out a window or something. It's anybody who's watching knows what I mean. People are always falling out of windows. But, you know, he's saying like, oh, you want to bring back Anthony Barsher? Like I'll just make that work with the contract and that's fine. We could do it. Oh, you want to get some more cap space to sign Michael Pierce? Let's work out a deal with Kirk that does that.

And uh-oh, that deal really locks you into Kirk and makes it extremely difficult to get out of. And that's where I think that maybe Zimmer, in a way, should have in 2018 and 2019 and going into this year leaned a little bit more on finding these under the radar players that they actually did a good job of once upon a time Linval Joseph is an under the radar player so is Captain Munderland so is Terrence Johnson Tom Johnson they found those guys and then Joe Berger right and then they said oh no wait we have to start paying absolutely everybody and I think that's how you got here now where you go is how can you learn from what you did the last time and especially how can you learn from what a quarterback can do in terms of being a difference maker if he is not Patrick Mahomes even but even Russell Wilson loses a game because his defense can't stop anybody

against Arizona like when you pay that guy even great quarterbacks have a tough time overcoming it. Yeah, I mean, you see that with Aaron Rodgers over the years, too, where he's had terrible defenses and he can't get over the top. So you have to have something. And we've seen the Packers invest a lot in terms of Zedaria Smith, Preston Smith, Adrian Amos, draft picks galore to get that defense to the point where it works. But you still have, I think, a feeling there that if we get at least complimentary pieces around him, that he can make a run when we get a chance.

And, you know, I know the great analytics debate, among others, of October 2020, I think the one today that's going on is Aaron Donald, but, uh, the great analytics debate is, is Aaron Rogers washed up and we can, we can have that discussion, but I think at least you feel like you have a chance with him. And you certainly feel like Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, guys like that, that you're going to have a chance. If you're down seven points with three minutes to go, that they're going to pull it out. So this whole thing reminds me a little bit of an underrated line from Jurassic Park when Ian Malcolm is lecturing or having, you know, everything has gone bad. The dinosaurs are out and they're eating people and the lawyer gets eaten off the porta potty and all this stuff. Yeah. Um, he has a conversation,

I think at some point with the, with John Hammond, the guy that runs the park, he says, your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they never stopped to think whether they should. And I mean, I feel like that a little bit with the cash situation where they've been able to do it. They have managed it extremely well. Ownership has committed the cash that you need to make that sort of an approach work.

But I know there have been some people in the building sometimes saying, yeah, we can do this, but is this a great idea? I mean, I know in a couple of those contracts that, that those contracts have gotten done with people kind of saying, okay, yeah, we can do this, but is this going to be the best long-term approach? And, but ultimately it's somebody saying probably, you know, Rick Spielman, obviously it's the final say that, no, we're doing this, get it done. That's what we're going to, that's, what's going to happen. And then at that point you say, okay, my job is to make the numbers work and I'll go do that. Go to sodastick.com to get your original Minnesota sports inspired goods.

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And the other one, though, is I want to play a game called Do They Regret That or Not? Okay, so let's start out with exactly what you said. for you and the other one though is i want to play a game called do they regret that or not okay so uh let's start out with exactly what you said uh delvin cook is under an expensive contract do they regret that now or not i don't think they regret it yet i think they may turn out that they do i mean i I know that was a discussion in parts of that building of saying, do we do this ahead of time with a running back? I mean, knowing the injury history that is there, I mean, I think we need to see where this is going to go with him in terms of how many more games he's going to miss. But

I don't think they regret it yet, just knowing the way that they operate and the way they value running backs. But I think time could certainly prove that they're going to regret that one. Well, I think just being 1-5 on one of his few years that's not a very big cap hit is probably a regret. He's great, and he was great, and he's leading the NFL in rushing at least by a week ago, and it meant not that much. It just doesn't mean

that much to have the best running back on the ground in the NFL. And it's even debatable how much it means to have the best through the air. Because a lot of those are short passes that anybody can catch and run with. So I think that you're right, of course, not right now, but even a little right now, because you wasted the time where you thought he was going to be at his best. And it all sort of ties back into the time where you thought he was going to be at his best, and it all sort of ties back into that you really thought you were going to be good this year. Got to keep Delvin. Can't have him hold out.

Can't trade him. But I think if you go back, maybe you do consider trading him because now he's inching closer and closer to that age 27 where all these guys fall off the edge of the cliff. Do they regret that or not? Saying that Daniil Hunter had a tweak, do they regret that or not? They do not because assuming that Mike Zimmer regrets being less than truthful with an injury, I don't think he does. I mean, yes, they're going to think he does I I mean yes they're gonna

they look silly I mean yes we've all had our fun with it at this point but no I I don't think that Mike Zimmer is sitting there saying boy that that really is making me look bad in the public and everybody's laughing about the fact that I said tweak I know I don't I don't think he regrets doing that at all I don't think he regrets that at all, but do you think, that was more of a joke, but do you think that they regret, in a way, signing Daniil Hunter to such a player, or I'm sorry, a team-friendly deal, because it's going to circle back to be a problem very soon? Yeah, I mean, I think, but, you know, again, it's one of those at the time when that mission was, I mean, that, gosh, that year, so that whole draft in 2018, they were all going to be free agents.

I mean, they got started with that a year ahead of time. That was, we got to pay Everson Griffin. We got to pay Linville Joseph. We got to get these done so that when all these other ones hit, we have to, I mean, it became like this kind of quest to see if can we actually pull this off and fit all these contracts in to the point where when they signed Cousins, I know there were discussions in that building of people saying, we aren't going to be able to pay everybody now. And we accept that. We're going to make a decision between Eric Kendricks and Anthony Barr. From what I was told at the time, they picked Kendricks. Now, Anthony Barr has second thoughts, and then you come back and put that one in there too. So Hunter probably had to be a team-friendly deal to make it all work and try to keep it. I mean, it's this bet of let's push all the chips in and we'll worry about the rest of it later.

But, yes, it is going to come back, I think, to bite them in the sense that he wants to get paid. I mean, obviously his camp is putting that out there now. I don't think the Vikings want to get into a standoff with him. But at some point you're going to have to address that deal because he's one of the best in the league, and I think there's every reason to think he will be again once he's healthy and he's not being paid that way. And I think that the idea, though, that he wants to be the highest paid,

even though I think he flies in a different air than most other people, I also believe that putting it out there now is sort of just, I don't know, like a little bit bogus. Like, I mean, is that really going to be how it goes? I mean, right, yeah. I'm not saying the report is wrong. I'm saying that where it's probably coming from is just trying to puff up your chest a little bit, as opposed to the reality of how these things work out. The Vikings, like we've

said, they get themselves in trouble for paying too many people a lot of money. It's never really been the problem. Now, here's one for you. I know how Vikings fans feel about this, but after talking with Rick Spielman the other other day do they regret that or not the kirk cousins contract extension do they regret that or not i i don't think they do um because i i think you have to look at all of these decisions from the lens of and this is where you get yourself in trouble. If you have people making decisions out of reasons of self-preservation, you have to ask yourself at some point, is this the best thing for us or is this person making the best decision to

save their own skin? And we are sort of hoping that things work out for us along those lines. You had to, in a lot of ways, double down on stability after that playoff run last season. You talked about, okay, we're going to get over the hump. We're going to keep the offense the same. We're going to keep Kirk in here. If Stephon Diggs wanted out, if he felt like, I'm not going to be able to work with this offense, then either you have to change the offense to his whims, which

as good of a receiver as he is, there's danger in doing that and giving somebody that much power and saying, yeah, we're going to grant your wishes here. So once you do that, you have to say, all right, we're going to double down on what we have. And it also is the approach you have committed to and the approach you have tried to sell everybody on as being the right one. So I don't think they regret it.

Should they? I think is, yeah, I think we're getting to a point. If this is what Kirk is going to be this year and we don't see things snap back together here fairly quickly and given his history at Lambeau Field, I don't think it's a great bet that it'll come around that quickly. Yeah, I think they're going to regret that one simply because you're stuck. Man, I don't see a way out of that contract without taking on a lot of water in the next couple of years. He's got a very good agent. They played their hand very well, but it puts you in an awfully tough spot. And when you say, as the general manager,

well, we had to sign him to a contract extension so we could sign Michael Pierce, you just go, you what? I mean, not because, oh, my gosh, he's the most wonderful quarterback we've ever seen and we're going to win a Super Bowl, but we had to sign a nose tackle for way too much money to sign a nose tackle. And you just go, that's not a good reason to extend your quarterback, who's the most important part of your entire franchise. Find somebody else to be fat, okay?

Like, in all honesty, like, we made fun of the Shamar Stephan is the greatest player of all time. He's been fine. Like, he's got, like, a 65 grade by PFF. He's not the reason their defense is terrible. And, you know, Snacks Harrison is like a practice squad player for Seattle. Like these guys are just around, and that was the reason that you felt you needed to do that.

That's where you go. Maybe you should regret your line of logic when you were thinking about that, as opposed to like quarterback flexibility in the future is one of the best things you can ever have. And you actively took your own away when it came to Cousins when you didn't need to at that moment. That's the thing that I would say is regrettable too, is you had to do it at that moment for cap space, but you shouldn't have done it at that moment for cap space.

You should have let it play out and see where you were, because at this time right now, this would be like a super exciting time in Vikings history at this moment if we were talking about who's going to be the quarterback in the future as opposed to what you just said, which is, oh, man, that contract. You are in tough. Well, and the thing there, too, is that they – I mean, Kirk has played this a certain way. He did not take the seven-year deal with all of the big number

and all of the security and as much cash. He said, I can do a three-year deal because I'm going to be in my early 30s. And I look at the NFL quarterback market. It's not very good. There's going to be a job for me somewhere. So I'm going to bet on myself and say I'm going to take the short deal. I'm going to take the guaranteed money. And when you had to come back to him to get the cap space back, it was, well, okay, but

we're not going to do a home time discount here. There has to be something in it for us. And that contract has to be addressed after this year, because that number that triggers after this year for 2022 is like $45 million. So you basically have to make a decision to move on from him, and then you are eating all that signing bonus money, guys like, even if it's Jared Goff, playing at probably a $25 million a year level on the open market, you're paying like three. I mean, you can go to a Super Bowl because you can take all that money and pay everybody that the Rams paid to get there. Or, you know, we've seen the Chiefs certainly do that. We've seen, what the heck? I mean mean the seahawks to some degree it's a different thing with russell wilson it

was the first pick but but but it was the same thing where he's on the rookie contract and they haven't been back since and even there's a side part of this too which is the ryan tannahill thing um or the jimmy garoppolo thing where you get somebody else's backup and you sign them before they're insanely expensive. And then you end up with a pretty reasonable deal. And then you try to get the most out of them. That's another part of it. It's like the worst place you can be is having a Jared Goff level quarterback at Kirk Cousins level money.

And that's kind of what they have is like, or I should say Aaron Rogers level money and you have a Jared Goff talent. And it's just the difference between good and great is pretty vast in the NFL. And that's why usually you end up with the best quarterbacks in the league, in the Superbowls happening. Most of the time you go back through the history. It's like great quarterbacks. So anyway, well, the other one I was going to mention was the Eagles. I guess that was the other one I was searching for.

I mean, Carson Wentz got hurt, but Carson Wentz got them in position to be the number one seed. And then they happened to have a backup that was able to get the job done. But that was a situation where the window wasn't very big. I mean, that was probably a team that caught lightning in a bottle, very much like the Vikings did that year. But it was the year where there was no Aaron Rogers. The Seahawks were in transition a little bit.

The saints weren't quite back to where they've been. I don't think. And so you, you kind of caught the NFC in this spot where the teams that have dominated it with these quarterbacks were for one reason or another, not in the mix. And even if it was only a one or twoyear window for them, they charged through it, got a Lombardi trophy. And, I mean, yes, now they're a mess, and people are talking about Doug Peterson's job security, but they won a Super Bowl, and they've never done that.

So that thing that they were able to do with Carson Wentz, and then, as Howie Roseman talked about, the Sam Bradford trade, gave them the cap space to sign Alshon Jeffrey and then as Howie Roseman talked about the Sam Bradford trade gave them the cap space to sign Alshon Jeffrey yep and then allow Carson Wentz to play that paid off in a big way for them too so even if now they're regretting things with Wentz and they're stuck they got a Super Bowl out of it and I don't think anybody in Philadelphia is going to trade that for anything and that's a good point about what the NFC has been recently. The NFC is you get your one shot. Matt Ryan got his one shot and blew it to Tom Brady.

And Nick Foles and the Eagles got their one shot, they won. The 49ers, they let it go to Mahomes in the fourth quarter. But that's what the Vikings had in 2017. So now wins your next shot. And how are you going to get there? And is getting there really about taking apart your you know defensive tackle situation drafting someone high there or is it about being able to build around that very cheap quarterback contract because odds are you're not

going to get a Patrick Mahomes just I mean even a couple years ago we thought hey man this Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen draft class is so great. Like a lot of times it doesn't work out. So you have to be able to build around them and give them a good situation. Last one in the game, I just want you to tell me a funny Vikings regret, like a thing that they definitely do. I'll get it started with Corey Vedvik in the fifth round pick. Is the fifth round pick back?

Is that the conditional? Like whatvik in the fifth round pick. Is the fifth round pick back? Is that the conditional? Like what's, what's with the fifth? Like, did they give it to the Baltimore Ravens and then they're giving it back for Yannick Ngakwe or like, is that the same pick? I don't even know,

but that's the one where you instantly regret this, where like, where you talk yourself into something and then like even just buying something at the store, you'd be like, I could really use one of those. And then as soon as you walk out, you're like, why did I get this?

I don't need this. That's Corey. Yeah. The one I would say in terms of regretting it shortly after they did it, gosh, there's a few that come to mind. I mean, Mike Remmers a little bit in terms of having to go guard now yeah yeah that could be one tackle yeah that could be one where you're like why did you do that the guy's never played guard in his life he's a guard now like yeah i mean yeah there's offensive line ones just for for months. Like, you know, TJ Clemmings is fine.

He's just a right tackle. Wade, he's just a left tackle. Andre, right. I mean, Tom Compton is fine at guard. You know, there's a lot of them. Even, like, this year, Dakota Dozier. We love him. He's conscientious.

Yeah. Fantastic. Yes. That's great. You win championships on conscientiousness. I wonder if Mike Hughes is going to be one of those that they come back to regret. I mean, at this point, setting aside the fact that Lamar Jackson was on the board, which I don't think they – I mean, by that point, they had signed Kirk. They had not thought about – seriously thought about drafting a guy.

That was a great case for it, but yes. signed Kirk. They had not thought about, seriously thought about drafting a guy. That was a great case for it, but yes. Yes, it was. I don't know that Lamar Jackson would have come in here and gotten the keys to the kingdom. Now the Ravens like to run the ball, so maybe it would have been enough that somebody would have said, okay, we can build our offense around this and have it work. But even that, Mike Hughes starts to look like, I mean,

that was at the time we need to add another corner and we, he can grow into this, but, uh, I don't think they're going to pick up that fifth year option after this year on him. And the injuries have been a consistent thing. I mean, the next stuff is getting to a point where you wonder if that's going to hamper the rest of his career. I think that one could be one they turn out to regret. Yes. And I don't think Will Hernandez has turned out to be great either. We all loved Will Hernandez, but he's playing for the Giants, so maybe that's the problem. I don't know.

But the Lamar Jackson thing was my argument at the time. You don't have Kirk under contract for that long. If you draft Lamar Jackson, he's one of the youngest players in the time. You don't have Kirk under contract for that long. If you draft Lamar Jackson, he's one of the youngest players in the draft. Quarterbacks play until they're 40. So draft him, see what he's like, and if he's amazing, he's your quarterback in whatever. Even if you really love him, he could be your quarterback this year. You could have just traded Kirk in the final year of his contract.

But that's not what they did. If you want to go old school on this, the one that comes to mind for me is the 2012 draft when their coaching staff coached Russell Wilson at the Senior Bowl and loved him. And it was like, no, we're not doing that, probably partially because they didn't trust that coaching staff's evaluation of quarterbacks, which is probably somewhat fair.

I don't know that that offensive coaching staff was going to hit it all the time. I don't know if Russell Wilson would have turned into what he turned into in Seattle if he'd been in Minnesota. But part of it was also we drafted Christian Ponder a year ago, and we don't want to go spend a third-round pick on a quarterback. So instead instead they took josh robinson russell wilson has beaten the vikings six or seven times and the rest is history but in terms of regrets i mean if if they had made that pick and had the foresight to give him the job when it didn't look like ponder was the guy it's interesting it's an interesting trip down memory lane to think maybe how things would be different at this point.

That is the point about drafting a quarterback this year. That's the point, is that you never really do know, so you should just do it. Every time it's a good idea, just do it. Look how little we know. I watched a bunch of Justin Herbert this last draft season. I was like, I don't see it. I just like that. And he might end up being terrible, but you see him playing right now. He looks like a different player. It's just a different level. And maybe his offense was bad in Oregon. I don't know. But a lot of times you just can't really tell. And with the Wilson thing, short is not a good reason to not draft an amazing quarterback prospect,

who, by the way, is within driving distance to go see him. So, like, that's another reason that, you know, anyway. But a lot of teams have that regret, I'm sure. Yeah, everybody that passed on him probably regrets it on some level at this point. And I was in Buffalo at the time, and Buddy Nix was asked about why they passed on Wilson. He literally said if he was six feet tall, we would have taken him. Like, that's just not a good reason. That's a fast, accurate way of thinking.

I know. In the same town where Doug's losing one. Yeah, I remember having that conversation about short quarterbacks, I think, in 15, when they were talking about taking one of the drafts. Sorry, in 14 when they took Teddy. I remember talking to Ryan Grigson, the old Colts GM of the Combine, about short QBs, and he said, well, you know, you have to figure that these guys, they're not getting to the NFL

for the first time and figuring out, oh, I'm short. I've got to figure out how to make this work. They've been short quarterbacks their whole career, and they've figured out a way to make it work. They've already engineered a workaround. If you're Russell Wilson, Drew Brees, I remember reading, there was an old Sports Illustrated story that kind of did a behind-the-scenes thing with Brees before that draft.

Norm Turner is prominently featured in it. But I remember a quote about, he's a good kid. We all want him to be a six-footer. It's like, well, if you like the quarterback, don't let the quarter inch or whatever it is matter. But the CNN Moneyball, I guess, kind of comes to mind here in terms of the group think that comes into some of this stuff. Even though sports took a break, your business didn't.

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Here's what I want you to tell me. Since the Vikings are playing the Green Bay Packers, there are eight players who have gone over 2,500 yards since 2000 rushing for the Green Bay Packers. And I guess the crappy quarterbacks game probably wouldn't be as good here. They do have backups. I mean, so you could have gone through the Ty Detmers and Kurt Warners and Mark Burnells and so forth. But I figured that they have journeyman running backs that they're always cycling through.

Yes. So eight players have over 2,500 yards since 2004 Green Bay. Can you name them? Okay, so Amon Green. He is number one in Packers history in rushing. I wonder how many people know that. Yeah, it's probably all based on that 2003 season. Eddie Lacy.

Eddie Lacy is correct. He is 10th in their history. Aaron Jones. Aaron Jones is right. He has just gone over that mark this year. Barely, right? Yep, 2,600 yards. I said that and I was like, hmm.

Ryan Grant. Ryan Grant is correct. He is fifth all-time in Packers history. Gosh, fifth all-time. I know. Ryan Grant is fifth all-time in Packers history in rushing is a real thing. I mean, you talk about Taylor and Hornig, but I don't think their number is even that great. Taylor is number two all time in Packers history.

Okay, so I've got, what am I, four or five? Something like that. So you've got Amon Green, Ryan Grant, Aaron Jones, and Eddie Lacy. So that's one. Yep. Yep. James Starks. James Starks. James Starks is right.

Just barely over it with 2,506 and very famous for their Super Bowl run. Yes. Since 2000. Did Sam Congato get there? No. No, he did not. Oh, wait. You know what? I'm sorry sorry i made a mistake saying since 2000

i should have said since 1990 that's my mistake okay because they only had eight since 1990 that was ridiculous i was looking at the year 2000 when i said it but um yes since 1990 it makes this yeah it makes this easier then. Edgar Bennett. Edgar Bennett is right. He is 11th all-time in Packers history. Okay, Dorsey Levins. And Dorsey Levins is right. So now you're up to seven, and you're missing one.

Hmm. There would have been a guy between those two. You're already thinking wrong. It's a trick question. Oh, Aaron Rodgers? Aaron Rodgers is right. Aaron Rodgers has over 3,000

yards rushing. Wow. There you go. Man, that's not a great list. I mean, Levin's had his moments, and I think that Super Bowl they lost was one of those where they wouldn't

give him the ball. But, yeah, not a great list. No. But they've had the quarterbacks. They caught a lot of checkdowns, though. Edgar Bennett and Dorsey Levin. A lot. Yes.

They were, I mean, that was like the old school West Coast offense. So that was like just, I mean, my home run had coached Roger Craig. So that approach with Bennett and Levins was pretty unfiltered when it came to Green Bay, I think. Let's wrap up on one last question pertaining to the Green Bay game. I think we would both pick against the Vikings in this one, but if it's bad, though, like bad, 40 to 23 bad, say. Like Brad Sheldraus in 2010 bad?

Is that what you're getting at? That's what I'm getting at. I mean, do you think i i want to know how you think ownership grades mike zimmer the rest of the way because i wrote a column about this today and i just i don't know i don't know like are you if they go down there and they lose by 30 is that it or is it the whole rest of the season and then in the off season they decide how much progress they made like i i don't know what they do to make that decision. I guess I tend to think that they're not going to fire anybody

in the middle of the season. Well, for a couple of reasons. I think they just did these contracts, and they have kind of after firing Childress in the middle of the season. Now, that was also all the Randy Moss stuff about how he cut Moss without uprising them of the decision. And, and the, the one with Tice was they handed out a press release in the locker room and took a lot of flack for that. So I think those two and then Frazier,

they did it three times that quickly. I think they've kind of tried to say, no, we're going to take the patient approach and we're not going to go the other way. The wild card, I think, is always how angry did they get by being embarrassed? If they were embarrassed in Green Bay against their rival, and they would have this would be forced right against Matt LaFleur, does that cause somebody to say, I don't care what the long-term plan

is, I'm just tired of watching this. That's kind of the unknowable because I don't think any of us have a good enough window into what ownership is thinking at any given moment to have an accurate temperature of that. But I do think that, I mean, I know with Ziggy Wolf, there are times where, I mean, they're fans and if he's looking at it, it's like, I've had enough. That would be the thing that would put it over the top. I tend not to think they're going to do that during the season. I think the relationship they have with Rick Spielman won't lead to that

because I think he's going to be telling them, let's play this out. This is a young team. We've got to see how this goes. And I just tend to think that their approach is not going to be to make a snap decision in the middle of the year but uh if we if we buy the idea that a bad showing in that playoff game in new orleans would have done it and it would have maybe been kevin stefanski maybe they're sitting here saying, boy, we missed, and we've got to do something else.

Maybe that does it. I tend not to think Zimmer goes in the middle of the season or anybody goes, but the great unknowable is what they're thinking and probably more how they're feeling. Kevin Stefanski one maybe falls under the regret that or nah category, but I think that one might be obvious. Yeah, at this point. They do, right? I mean, they i mean they have yeah i think at this point they have to yeah so uh oh i well i i think that there's a lot of people who do i don't know if everybody does but i think there's a lot of people who wanted that to begin with and are probably looking at it now going

well told you. I think their team is still struggling now, but it would be much more of a, hey, this is a long-term thing. And maybe some fans would say, oh, look, Stefanski's not as good as Zimmer because they're losing this year. But I think the offensive approach would probably be a little more 2020. And, you know, he got certainly the most that anyone ever has out of Kirk Cousins and now is doing the same thing with Baker Mayfield. I think you feel better with someone who you can grow with over the next five years, as opposed to someone who even when

they sign an extension are still very much under pressure. And I think that's, that would be the biggest difference between the two. I think the results are probably not super different considering everything that's gone wrong, but the difference is how it would feel if you were talking about someone to build with as opposed to someone who it's just tense all the time still around him and his job. Yeah. And some of that is probably personality differences as well. But yeah, I think there's certainly something to be said for if they had done it, what the different feeling of the building might be at this point. But at this point, he's in Cleveland. If they were to do it at some point, they'd have to go find their own

new version of Kevin Stefanski. Right here in the old building for a very long time. Yep, I did. This was fun. It was a throwback, as always. It feels like the good old days of tossing things around. We don't have the Winter Park cafeteria anymore to do these in. It's just not quite the same.

I mean, we could still go see if they let us in. I mean, it's a bank, so it should be open, right, I think? Yeah. You know what? I actually – Are you guys allowed back in there after the way that it ended? I don't know that they know about that in terms of the way that it ended. We're talking about the send-off to the Winter Park Media Room?

Yeah, to the microwave in particular. To the microwave, yes. No, I went back in that building a couple of weeks ago, actually, to close on a refinance of our mortgage. Oh. And it brought back some memories. I distinctly remember thinking, the last time I walked in this building building i was carrying a baseball bat under my coat and perhaps walking into a bank building with a baseball bat being discreetly covered up so that you can do property damage to a microwave is uh not wise i'm gonna say statute of limitations uh

it's okay yeah we can probably talk about that now. We're not going to show people the video, but we can talk about that. That microwave was a disaster. That thing never worked. Suffice it to say, there are enough of us in the Vikings B Corps that are fans of the movie Office Space. That there may have been some homages done. I think at some point this video I think it should become public I think at some point

it is so tastefully done that I think at some point it should become public because it was we did quite a nice job with that those who have seen it maybe we make it a maybe it's a Purple Insider subscriber event or something like that.

Yeah, that's right. Subscribers only. If you guys want to see this, you're going to have to put in some cash. Sign up for Purple Insider. You can just almost start to be in subscription while you're in the process, and we'll talk. There you go. Maybe we can figure this out. I really do.

It hit me today because of some of our hijinks that I miss our media rooms. Yes. Our new one, which our stuff is probably still on our desks there for months and months collecting dust. I hope. I hope so, too. There's some trophies there that are just waiting. None for me, though, but maybe at other people's desks. Maybe someday.

Anyway, enough inside jokes for this podcast, which is actually a throwback to the old podcast as well. Thank goodness Chad Graff's alive. That better still be there. That better still be there when we get back. There better be a Roomba there as well. All right. Now we've confused everybody who's still listening to this.

Yes, if you're still there, I'm sorry. And we will do it again, Ben, all right. Now we've confused everybody who's still listening to this. Yes, if you're still there, I'm sorry. And we will do it again, Ben, for sure. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.