Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Malik Willis comparison, Pro Bowl fails and how much better the Vikings would have been in 2021 with great coaching

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Matthew Coller and Paul Hodowanic talk about PFF's fascinating comparison for Malik Willis and whether he's the QB we would pick for the Vikings if we had to decide on a quarterback today. Also whether you'd sign Kirk Cousins if he was a free agent from another team and how many games the Vikings would have won if Bill Belichick was their coach in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Folks, before we get into the show, I wanted to tell you that you can save 15% at SodaStick.com by using the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at checkout. That's S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com for your Minnesota sports-inspired hats, hoodies, shirts. Use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at SodaStick.com. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar, Paul Hodowanek here. We have questions for each other because there's no more coach search and there's no more GM search. And I don't think we're going to have a quarterback trade just yet. So Paul, we have questions for each other, but we also have a Superbowl and Superbowl week. Do you enjoy

Superbowl week, the buildup, the articles, the interviews, the goofy stuff that goes on. In 2017, I got to cover it in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and not with the Vikings in it, unfortunately, for their fans. They were not the first to have it at home, but it was pretty weird. One minute, you have some guy asking Tom Brady about like a defensive scheme. And then the next you have someone asking him if he thinks he's the cutest quarterback alive, like that happened. No, who was I standing near? One of the McCourty's I was standing near one of the McCourty's and they, they lined everybody up and you would walk up and there's like four or five

journalists asking questions. And somebody was asking, I think it was Doug Farrar. Who's a really good writer from USA Today, was asking one of the McCourty's about some defensive scheme thing. And he gives this great answer. It's like, wow, cool. And the next person walks up and goes, if you were to rate Tom Brady's hotness one to 10, like what would you give him?

And McCourty, like he's been there before. He just had an answer already. But that's what it's like for Super Bowl week. Do you like the hype and the buildup to the game? Well, Tom Brady's an eight. But I would say, yeah, yeah, solid. Okay. I like it.

To be honest, I love that just random questions that we're throwing at them. They're prepping for like the biggest game of their life. But some reporter from People is doing some weird features. They have to answer a question about it. Just meant if you talk about mental toughness, you got to make it through that. So no, I, I do love Superbowl week. I think it can get played out at times just by the two weeks. I mean, we're just ready to get going, but like today the Pro Bowl is on.

I'm not watching much of it, but I just don't really know what to do with myself today and so the Super Bowl is the last day for it it's hard not to enjoy everything that comes with it so yeah I like the week but it can be overdone at some points and we're right in the middle of it and it really does feel like a lull not only because of the Vikings

and their situation but just that we don't have football going on so it's lengthy but I don't know if there's really a it's lengthy but but i i don't know if there's really a much better way to do it i was thinking about um just how this is so unique in sports of everyone in the world who is a sports fan even casually even the most casually all talking about who's going to win one football game i mean that doesn't happen with anything else like the nba finals go seven games baseball the nhl which of course it would be ludicrous if it to win one football game. I mean, that doesn't happen with anything else. Like the NBA finals

go seven games, baseball, the NHL, which of course it would be ludicrous if it was just one game for those sports because they could be so random, but it's, there's nothing else quite like this. I mean, if it was Serena and Venus, that might be it. I mean, even in golf, when Tiger Woods was at his greatest, there's still a bunch of other dudes so it was great to watch tiger but there's a lot of other people it's not just tiger versus one other person so it's so unique in sports which is why it's so big i'm sure and i enjoy the build-up to it too listening to everybody sort of try to top each other with a hot take or try to break down every single factor and then sometimes you have these massive

breakdowns and the game is over in like the first quarter. And then other times you have all the things that you expect go exactly as you expected them. And a lot of people look really smart and it's very interesting. And then I like that all the best analysts pick the thing apart. So the next week is filled with really great breakdowns of a single football game and how whatever happened ultimately happened so of course i mean what what would we be if we were saying like oh yeah super bowl who needs it like that well i guess maybe that would be a vikings right yeah it'd be a right i'm sure um anyway so uh we've got some some questions to talk about but I was going to ask you first just about who you want to win the game, because I feel like from a Vikings perspective, I don't know. Does it really matter? Like, I'm sure some people want Stafford to win with the Rams so they can pretend it was Kirk cousins and I'm sure other people want burrow to win. So they can pretend it's the guy, the Vikings draft next.

I mean, that's, it's really the only Vikings angle to this. I don't even know if there's any X Vikings on either one of these teams. I'll have to look through their roster. But I don't even know if there's anybody like, Oh, it would be great with the chiefs. It would have been nice for Jarek McKinnon. Everybody likes Jarek McKinnon. He was a great guy in the locker room for the vikings before but there isn't like even that guy like oh it would be nice if so and so one are we like are we passionate about like riley reef on the injured reserve getting

a ring or trey waynes yeah trey waynes even playing like i guess no i don't i don't think we have a connection to care yeah no those guys are both hurt so they're not going to be in the game. Yeah, I want the Bengals to win if I was picking. Just for what that makes Joe Burrow and kind of the trajectory that he then gets put on, the Mahomes trajectory of winning so early in your career and just you get the, all right, well, how many Super Bowls are you going to win? And someone outrageous is going to say, Joe Burrow is going to win six if he wins on Sunday. So I'm ready for those conversations. And I think that adds the best narrative to the league.

That adds kind of the most fun wrinkle of just a really, really, another dominant AFC quarterback coming in and just what that means for that whole landscape. If the Rams win, it's cool. It's a win for a different type of team building that traditionally hasn't really been tried to the extent that it has been tried. So if they win, that's pretty cool. Matt Stafford's a good guy, so that's good. And then it legitimizes careers for the likes of Aaron Donald, for the likes of Odell Beckham

for Cooper Cup. So there's some cool legacy things for some of the Rams players if they win. But just from what it would mean and what we think and talk about, it would be the coolest for Joe Burrow because it resets your thinking on how quickly you can turn around a team if you get your quarterback. It resets just the hierarchy of quarterback in AFC. He's up there then with Mahomes and Allen, which he was before, but then that really kind of solidifies him up there.

So yeah, I think it's easily to me, the Bengals, there are some cool things on the Ram side, but just the potential that that has with the Bengals in that city and that team to be so bad for so long. And then to win one and then to win one. That's what I'm rooting for. And that's what led me to pick them on our show right after the championship games. But the more breakdowns I read, it feels less and less likely. But that's where I want to go. Yeah, I think the Rams should be considered the extreme favorites here because of the

totality of their roster. And if we think that even Joe Burrow is a little better than Matt Stafford, he's not so massively better than Stafford that it can make up the difference between having Aaron Donald on the other side, who is one of the greatest defensive players to ever step on this earth. So, I mean, and that was the ultimate factor at the end of the game against San Francisco is that Aaron Donald made an unbelievable play and that could be the

difference sometimes. You know, I think everyone gets annoyed with the McVay stuff because it's just like, Oh, McVay tell us again about how everybody loves McVay and all that ever. But I would say that, you know, if he wins a super bowl here,

I mean, you're talking about somebody who is truly revolutionary in the game that he would solidify his legacy as even though he's what is he even 40 years old like he's he's still he's still pretty young um but getting to two super bowls in his first handful of years here and they have had good rosters but one of the super bowls is with jared goff who is a good quarterback but not a great quarterback that so much of it especially with stafford coming from the lions to the rams is on what he's been able to do offensively and the the the cutting edge style of offense um the adjustments he's able to make, the leadership that he has. Like, I mean, his game management could be a little wonky at times, but I mean, we're

talking about somebody who has accomplished more by this age than almost anybody else ever in NFL history as a head coach. And he's deserving because his teams are that good. Even last year, I mean mean their team still wins a playoff game and they were kind of a wreck like their offensive line wasn't that good and golf wasn't playing particularly well and then they reload and go to the super bowl and mcveigh is probably deserving of that as the better coach in this game and then also i mean at least here's the one thing silver lining for vikings fans would be if the guy you just hired shows up for his introductory press conference with a Super Bowl ring like that's that's pretty good on that.

That's something that you want. I think if you're a Vikings fan, even if you don't like the Rams, even if you don't really like McVay, I think that you have to be if you're a fan, saying the guy who's going to be our coach, like let him show up with a ring. Don't let his offense no show in this game. And then everybody goes, oh, that's what's going to happen to us. Yeah, it's just your coach has a picture like holding the Lombardi trophy. That's like better than where Vikings have been for a while. So I think you take that, you feel really good about it.

Hopefully it brings some added swagger with Kevin O'Connell that he's a Superbowl champion. You bring some of that energy in. I, I, I mean, hopefully there's some cool picks of like him really hammered on like the floaty on the, like the, um, just like partying it up, like just looking super cool and just adding to the Vikings vibe. I feel like that's probably best case scenario. I mean, if you're a player on the Vikings, if you're just a Jefferson or Christian Derrissaw or Brian O'Neill or something, and you're watching the Superbowl and you're just feeling a lot of sadness because your team didn't even get to play in the playoffs.

And if you're Jefferson, they've never played in the playoffs since you've been here. And so you're watching and you're seeing your next coach like your next leader raise the trophy and he's on the sideline talking to his quarterback and they're throwing to their number one receiver all the time i saw at the pro bowl and the practices justin jefferson was asked about it and he said like yeah i could take i could take one of them coaches that throws to their top receiver all the time like Like I would say that it's off on the right foot. That doesn't mean they're going to go and win the Superbowl next year, because I don't think that's their trajectory at all. But in terms of the cache that you walk in the building with already being in this game is helpful for Kevin O'Connell, but winning the Superbowl with 14

catches to Cooper cup would not be a bad start to earn the respect of Justin Jefferson. So let's get to some of our questions here, though. So I was watching the Senior Bowl, and I mentioned it a little bit on the previous show about some of my observations. Shocking that people now all of a sudden like the quarterbacks that they saw them at the Senior Bowl. I can't believe it. I'm sorry.

I know that I'm going to get so obnoxious with this. It's a really long time until the draft. And I'm just going to continue through the combine being like, oh, I thought that nobody could play. So I'll try to ease it back a little. I promise. But if you had to draft one of these quarterbacks right now, no other information except for how they did senior bowl week and what they did last

off season or last season. If you had to draft one of these quarterbacks right now, and by the way, I noticed that Mike Renner from PFF, which we'll get him on the show to explain this, does not have Malik Wilson as top five, which I was really surprised by. He's got Carson Strong. I just, uh, uh, I think that's a, that's a Carson weak take to have Carson strong in there. I was not impressed by Carson strong at all. I think like I'm out on that. I am out on the immobile quarterback who supposedly has the big arm, but, um, who, who would you take if you had to do it today? Yeah, I was doing some research for this question and mike was really putting me in a tough spot

because he in his the pff draft guide says he has shades of cordell stewart malik willis does and i was like man am i just about to go on this podcast and say i would pick malik willis but he has shades of cordell stewart like that's who i'm going to be going to bat for but it is that is going to be my pick uh based on senior bowl it's hard coming out of the senior bowl in who you trying to figure out who had really good weeks who didn't um i've probably looked at 10 different uh senior bowl recaps and they all have different iterations like one guy said desmond ritter was horrible another thought he rose the most so like it's really hard it's based on guys who are there who are watching some. They don't get a chance to look at everything. They're talking

to some scouts, not all scouts. So it's really hard to analyze, um, super, super in depth. But for me, it's Malik Willis, um, based off what we saw at the senior bowl, at least it seemed like consensus. He was having the best of weeks um compared to everyone else at least in what he was showing on the field uh pff called him one of the stars of the week uh on this in the senior bowl game he had like a really nice escape where he gets out of the pocket um runs around shows his athletic ability uh so that's where i go at least in terms of the senior bowl week and then he had a couple statistics that i really liked um just third and big time throw percentage of all ncaa quarterbacks last year so if you're trying to figure out your mold and likely as we saw with

the coach gm teams like to go with the opposite of what they had so they're going maybe something that's not kirk uh third and big time throw percentage is probably where you go. And it's also maybe negatively 108th ranked in turnover worthy play percentage. So he throws some turnovers. So he's going to cause some interceptions. There's going to be some fumbles. Like that's going to be what's going to be in there. But he had 28th best average depth of target.

Let's see, fifth average time to throw so just a lot of these statistics that we like to see right now malik willis checks some of those boxes as we've seen from every quarterback they all have different um cons that people are talking up and malik willis sure has some i mean he played at liberty so you don't see him playing against those top teams. He didn't do well against the competition when he played power five teams. Uh, but I think also he didn't play with good player, as many good players at Liberty. So you can kind of take that one both ways,

depending on how you want to spin your argument. But for me, it's Malik Willis, just what he brings with his feet, the athletic traits that he has. Uh, we've just seen coming out. Quarterbacks that have those are just better set up.

And so for me, it was Malik Willis over small hands, Kenny and all the other guys at the senior moment. Do you know what Cordell Stewart's record was as a starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers? He started 80 games. Well well let's see his record does weirdly not quite add up to 80 um i don't know why that would be but uh do you know what his or at least that's what it says maybe he got a win in relief maybe i don't know pro football reference anyway uh what uh what do you think his record is 80 80 games. Well, it adds up not to 80 for some reason.

We're going to go like winning percentage of like, am I taking crazy pills here? Hold on. It adds up to 75, but says he started 80 games. So go with 75. Oh God. Okay.

Now we're doing more complex math than I wanted. Um, like 30 and 45. I don't know. Was it horrible? I don't remember much of the Cordell Stewart era. I know. This is why I asked. 46 and 29. Cordell Stewart led an 11-5 season as his first season as a starter for Pittsburgh, and then a 13-3 Pro Bowl season by 2001, which was his one, two,

three, four, fifth season as a starter. Cordell Stewart, if he plays today, I think is a really effective NFL quarterback. Cordell Stewart also averaged four to 500 yards rushing per season. His best season, 537 yards rushing. He had over his Pittsburgh career, 35 rushing touchdowns. The Cordell Stewart was, I mean, I honestly think it's a great comparison by Michael. I really do. After watching Malik Willis a little bit, like the throws are all blazers. They're just like, I'm going to whip it as hard as you can.

Cordell Stewart had no touch whatsoever. He just threw the ball super hard at people. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But he didn't get sacked and he ran insanely well like i think i mean we're talking about pittsburgh back of the day hand off to jerome bettis hand off to bam morris like that was their offense uh play defense three four all that stuff you know classic pittsburgh steal stuff. But if they built an offense that was in 2022 for Cordell Stewart, I think you win a lot of football games. And I think the same thing,

if Malik Willis were to become that, that it's, there are times where it's going to drive you crazy and you'd be like, what just happened on some of these throws? Which, I mean, there were even some, some plays with him in the senior bowl where you're like, oh, okay, well, he looks like he kind of, if at the first reads not there, he just takes off. But when he takes off, the guy runs insanely fast, like as fast as anybody. And so I don't want to compare him to Lamar Jackson. I think Lamar Jackson was a better passer than Malik doesn't have as strong of an arm, but I just think it's the world that we live in that if you can make big time throws like you're talking about and you can run as a quarterback like cam newton and i again i don't want to make malik will sound like he's cam newton because cam was a number one

overall pick cam is not the most accurate passer in the league he often completed 55 60 percent of his passes and some years even he was inaccurate it wasn't as good but when it was good they went 15 to 1 he won mvp went to the super bowl and so if someone's ceiling is cordell stewart who can go 13 and 3 or if it's um cam newton who who can do that they're comparing him to josh allen i don't quite want to go there but i mean i could see where that comes from because allen had the same stuff he played much smaller than Allen. Yeah. That's a part of it. Yeah. He's Allen is six, five or six, six. So there's a little difference there, but the arm strength, the mobility, uh, Willis is faster than Josh Allen. So maybe there is a comparison there.

I don't know. If you draft him, you have to be really patient. You just have to be that year one. He's not going to come in and win you the super bowl but year three then it might start to all come together um so if you want to draft somebody who's a little more ready right now which i don't i don't need to um it would be probably kenny pickett or would you go sam how like what's your order right now and this will change all the time in terms of if you want to win right away in terms of just like, so Willis is your first pick, but let's say Willis now after this is taken really high. So like who's after that? I kind of like Matt Corral from Ole Miss, uh, just another guy with the same profile. I think

you see my bias in terms of what I'm looking for in terms of a quarterback, a guy who's athletic, who's mobile. He wasn't in, he wasn't at the senior bowl. So I didn't really think of him in this conversation just because he wasn't there. Uh, but I, I would maybe go him just for the traits that we're continuing to talk about. Like I know drafting for traits can get dangerous, uh, because for every Josh Allen, there's 10 Paxton lynches or random guys that aren't very

good that you try to draft and work with and it doesn't work. But in this class, which people don't feel like there are those one, two guys that really, really fit the mold that are surefire Joe Burrow types. I'm going to look for those traits first. He has some, Matt Corral does. He was in an RPO-based system a lot, so you're wondering if that can translate. Again, there's cons with all these guys, but I would go him for the athletic profile. And if you checked out Skull Searching, you saw some cool stats about Matt Corral in terms of his scrambling, his sack EPA. He's been really able to avoid a lot of those things,

and quarterbacks that have been able to do that end up playing and doing really, really well most of the time. So he fits some of those kind of advanced stats that I have been liking to look at. And then I think I go, Sam, how can he pick it? Can he pick it? Just seems like a very safe option. It's the type of guy that seems maybe trendy following Mac Jones,

a guy that you feel like can come in run the offense do things well if you have it set up for him that's kind of what kenny pickett assumes or like his best scenario is that when you're kind of in that type of system and that seems very much similar to what the vikings have now and what the vikings have not worked well with with kirk cousins So I've seen some articles about him looking like the Joe Burrow of this class, maybe, but I, I go more for those athletic traits, the big arms, uh, before I go someone like picket. Hey everybody, I've been making my meals from HelloFresh and I have to tell you, I cannot make enough of these things. And if I can make them,

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the same quality and you can save on average over 65 dollars per month when you order hello fresh instead of grocery shopping that's more money to put toward your nfl draft guides how about that we've been cooking hello fresh meals here in the house for the last couple of weeks just made the parmesan chicken the other night and it's a game changer guys. So go to hellofresh.com. That's hellofresh.com slash insider 16 hellofresh.com slash insider 16. Use the code insider 16 for up to 16 meals for free and three free gifts. HelloFresh America's number one meal kit. I also would go corral and of course always the reminder none of us really know but in terms of like trying to project what what kind of traits and everything i agree with you that if you only listen to jeff garcia only yeah only jeff garcia

he's since he played it's funny i talk about that with um sage rosenfels all the time and i'm trying to set something up with sage that's going to be cool, so stay tuned. But about just how hard it is to figure out these guys coming from college, because Sage works with quarterbacks that are coming out. And he was talking to me about how someone he's training right now for this draft, they don't know anything about reading defenses because you just don't have to in

the system that they played in. It's like, how can you project? So you have to focus mostly on traits. So when I see mobility, arm strength, playmaking ability, which I do like about Pickett a little bit that he has a creativity to him. And I don't just mean the one play where he faked the slide, but I mean, rolling out, make it plays a little bit like that. He kind of has a swagger

to him. Sam Howell, I think has a great arm and he can clearly run. My question always is with the, with that though, is like, unless you're Malik Willis, are you a difference maker running the ball just because you could run in college? I don't think Sam Howell is when I was watching him in the senior bowl, he ran a couple of times successfully but it was it was not fast it was like not NFL fast it was college fast but Malik Willis is NFL Lamar Jackson Cordell Stewart type of elite fast I think they said he hit like 20.5 miles an hour or something running in practice and that's nuts that's not Sam Howell but I think he does have a big arm uh which can be good for you i don't know i mean the rest of the guys are kind of and and ritter uh moved around

pretty well i forgot about him throws a nice ball for sure uh they ran some boots you may add a couple of nice throws it's sort of like willis to me and then corral and then i'm not sure and we'll have to see how some of these things play out after that. So what is the first question on your list, Paul? Let's see. Let's dive in to, because we were talking about the Super Bowl a little bit, I've seen you combat some people in the mentions recently, and just on Twitter, the Matt Stafford argument of,

could they do this with Kirk Cousins? Could a Kirk Cousins quarterback do this and so and and it a lot of it was putting it on Mike a lot of what I was seeing was putting it on Zimmer if they had better coaching they could have made it to the Super Bowl and sure they could have had better coaching but I want to know from you if we're going into imaginary imagination land is that what you like to call it yes um. Yeah. We're in Imaginationland. And we put the best coach in the NFL with the Vikings, with this roster, with everything that happened this season, we give them Bill Belichick. Where is this team right now? What was their record? Are they in the Superbowl? And then I want to know if they had Urban Meyer, what happens

to this team? So I want both ends of the spectrum, good and bad. Where does this team out? Where did this team end up this year with those two guys? So real quick on the Stafford Kirk point, could Kirk cousins have gone to the Rams and ended up in the super bowl? Um, maybe, I mean, I would not say no automatically. Like I think that it's clear Stafford is a more talented NFL player. He was drafted number one overall. Let's not also forget that he was doing things early in his career that few quarterbacks had ever done and was competitive for years, nine and seven type of seasons before at the end with Matt Patricia, it got really ugly with Stafford still at the helm there. But a more talented quarterback overall, just a little more reckless. Still though, if you told me that the Vikings had Aaron Donald, Jalen Ramsey, Odell Beckham, Cooper Cup, Andrew Whitworth, and the best pass blocking offensive line in the entire NFL,

that you could put all those things together at once, then I would say, yes, keep Kirk Cousins. Like, of course, but how are you doing that? You have Justin Jefferson, and then what? An older Harrison Smith? Eric Hendricks is about to be 30. Adam Thielen is in his 30s now. Delvin Cook is not a factor to me in any analysis. No running back is a factor in any analysis of what

a team is going to be your offensive line needs a lot of work like like where are these players where are these hall of famers coming from they like if you if you told me you could like kirk cousins could be on the actual 2017 team like not what it became in 2018 would they have had a chance to reach the super bowl yes because that team had a bunch of that stuff, but how are you building it now is all is the question like, just because in imagination land, I mean, you could put a lot of quarterbacks in the Rams and imagine that happening, but it's a very rare situation that you could put this much talent together and have it stay healthy. So that's the whole kind of point there is like are the odds good that you get aaron donald like no i mean i don't know like you usually you're not going to get that so um the question was belichick if he's coaching last year and urban meyer so i would say nine and eight

if you have belichick and i will say if you had Urban Meyer, six and 11. I think that there is a massive overvaluing of the difference between Zimmer and the next coach. Like, look, I mean, Zimmer in his first four years was 39 and 25. I don't look at Zimmer at all as having been, I mean, any of the coach rankings would never look at Mike Zimmer as a bottom tier coach. They would always have them in the middle.

And that was kind of the problem is that like he was in the middle and Kirk was in the middle and the roster was in the middle. And then like, where did you end up in the middle? But Mike Zimmer was not a bottom tier football coach. He allowed things to become very ugly at the end inside the building. And that came out at the end of the season when certain people talked, he ran too much on second down at 10. There is no question about that. The running obsession was pretty ridiculous, but overall I, I don't think that Mike Zimmer wanting them to run the ball more cost them five games or something.

I think it probably was a one-game difference. Bill Belichick is not particularly special anymore at deciding when to go for it on fourth down or clock management or anything like that. Zimmer had problems with that, but I think Belichick would have too. Maybe the defensive scheme is a little better because I think that Zimmer asked a little too much from players who weren't capable to be what they were in 2017. Like, oh, I have veterans. So let's just run the same defense that I did before. Well, it's different players. That happened to Rex Ryan when he went from the Jets to Buffalo where the players just weren't the same. They weren't developed over a number of years. I don't think Zimmer is built for that. So maybe Belichick is a little better adjustment-wise.

Maybe he's a little better in giving his offensive coordinator some freedom. That's probably worth a game. I'm not sure you're in the playoffs. I just think the roster wasn't that good. And Urban Meyer, I mean, the Jacksonville roster was horrendous and rookie quarterback is tough. Rookie quarterbacks never

win almost um unless they're dropped into a really good situation so i you know i think that he was a horrendous horrendous coach and a complete laughingstock but you know they had enough talent where they probably were going to win six games anyway do you agree with that i on the urban meyer point I would not underestimate the ability of Urban Meyer to just f up an entire situation so uh he might even be able to bring Kirk's uh the buoy of Kirk's seven and nine seven and ten seasons down further I think maybe they win five four games with Urban Meyer and then with Belichick I think maybe he wins one more game I think maybe maybe you win that second Lions game uh if you have Bill Belichick as your coach. Maybe you get one of the first two that you missed.

So I see them maybe squeaking into the playoffs with Bill Belichick with this team and then probably losing to the Rams in the first round because they can't stop Aaron Donald and Von Miller and Cooper Cup, regardless of who the coach is like, that's not a, it's not really a coaching error. That is a just pure talent, uh, best on best. You're going to lose those more often than you're going to win those. So, yeah, I think, I think, I don't, I don't think putting even one of the best coaches of all time changes what you saw with this team. And I think that's the point that you're trying to get across with this, even with the Stafford cousins argument, it's a little different, but it's just, there were more holes than just a coach,

a really good coach or more holes than just two more cornerbacks or another better offensive lineman. Like there, there were more things separating these, these two teams that are in the super bowl and the Vikings. And we've been over it. So I won't belabor the point point but like there's just mythology about the close games I mean yeah the Rams game was not a close game they finished within one score it's not a close game the 49ers game was not that close the 49ers had that game all set they were about to win by 10 they miss a field goal at the end there was a very easy makeable field goal to give the Vikings one more

shot that was not that close of a game uh, you know, they were better than the Vikings that day. And the Vikings also won some of these games. They won a coin toss in Carolina. Like there's just, well, they had these close games. So if you only had someone else coaching or calling the plays, okay. But they won some of those two and some of those were not actually that close. So I think it was six, six and eight is what they finished in those close games you would have to swing that really far for it to be a big difference maker and even then even if you gave them two extra wins you're still talking about a number seven seed at 10 and seven which i think was what philadelphia was so uh now here's the question this is rhetorical. This is a real question for you. Let's say the Vikings had no quarterback right now,

back to the 2017 scenario, except for the rosters, obviously much different. So you had all the options in the world. I'm changing the question a little bit from what I told you it was going to be, but like would Kirk cousins be on your radar as someone to trade for? Had he done this with the jets or what option would you want to trade for had he done this with the Jets?

Or what option would you want to look for if you were completely free at the quarterback position right now? Yeah, and we're assuming the Vikings were just mediocre the last few years with a quarterback, just whatever, a random average quarterback, and they didn't really make... All right, I wouldn't sign him um if that has become obvious to listeners but I think um I I mean it's hard because in the current market I would rather trade three first round picks for Aaron Rodgers or Russell Wilson than I would just take Kirk at his current salary or a slight diminished.

Like I'd rather trade the picks and get that quarterback than I would just sign Kirk out on the open market, which I think is an indictment of Kirk because that's a lot to give up, but those guys are just better. And even if we're not operating like we have seen the last three, four years with cousins, we've seen cousins like quarterbacks on other teams fail recently. I mean, Baker Mayfield on a much smaller contract, they can't get it done with him. Now you're going to be paying him more than that. Derek Carr, you make it one round into the playoffs with, you know, a solid defense, not great weapons. So maybe Kirk does slightly better. I don't know. I think Derek Carr might be a little bit of a better quarterback, but that's kind of

the ceiling you're looking at here. So if the Vikings aren't a complete laughingstock and are trying to get to that next Super Bowl level consistently, I don't think that's Kirk. If they were a Jaguars type team, just a horrible team that's looking for competency, then I can talk myself into a Kirk Cousins to stabilize the franchise a little bit, not make them a laughingstock, not make them a team that's just turning over coaches, turning over players. He has value there. And for those types of teams, you can reach the playoffs, which for a lot of the NFL is just what a lot of fan bases are hoping for because their teams have been so bad for so long.

So if I was in that position, I would maybe think about Kirk Cousins and maybe you try to get him a little less expensive, a little bit more of a, at least a deal you can work with in terms of trading one that isn't just an albatross. If you don't sign him to an extension or cut him or trade him, like you, if you can find some sort of middle ground, I go after him. But for the Vikings, no, with this team, no, I think that's not really where I would be going. I would be going with a bridge because you need that rookie quarterback or straight up going with a rookie. Or if you want to go in, truly go all in.

Trade the first round picks for the MVP guy that has won a Superbowl in Aaron Rogers or Russell Wilson. If you want to go in all in, just fully do it. Going halfway in with a halfway decent option that maybe will work that Kirk has been just, it, it's proven not to work really well unless you can get everything else around you to work. And it's just, it hasn't happened. So I would, I would opt for not Kirk. Uh, what would you do? Would you sign them again? I think that, uh, it really, the question really

crystallizes where they are as a franchise that you would not be saying, let's use all of our cap space to bring in this guy with so many positions that are open. I mean, I've run through it on the, on the show, but I was writing about it and I just grabbed a PFF graphic of the Vikings entire defense and what it looks like right now. And there was one player under the age of 25 that I would say you're going forward with. And that's Cam Dantzler who didn't even start this last year. Now I think Mike Zimmer was wrong for doing that. Ultimately that playing Breland over Dantzler, that should have been done in like week three. And maybe Belichick figures that out, and then they win 14 games instead. I doubt it, though. But it's never about what you did last year. And that is a really key point, is that this was an issue with 2019 to 2020. It's not about where you were in 2019. It's about where you're going to be in 2020. Oh,

we want a playoff game. That doesn't matter anymore. Well, we lost close games. That doesn't matter anymore because half the veterans, if not all of them are gone. Anthony Barr played well this year. He's gone. Patrick Peterson was decent. He's gone. You have to replace him. Like you might bring him back as one of the options. But as for right now, that's an opening. You have to replace him. Like you might bring him back as one of the options. But as for right now, that's an opening. You have three cornerback openings. You have to replace them. You don't just get to read. You don't get to copy and paste what happened last year and be like, oh, it's out of guard.

And then it'll all be better. Like, no, these players are free agents. They're leaving. So I would probably look at where they were at as a franchise in the whole and say, drafting a quarterback has to be the answer and the only answer. However, if I, if I was forced to acquire one of them, it would probably be Jimmy Garoppolo only as a bridge quarterback to the guy that I draft. So I can't give up, you know, a first round pick if it's, if it's Wilson, that's harder because he is great. But I also look at his team and go, well, he had elite wide receivers, two of them,

two great wide receivers. But what happened? Big contract. Even Russell Wilson, they couldn't hold it together when they didn't draft well. And that's the needle you have to thread if you sign someone like that is you basically have to have them play great and then hit on all the draft picks. New Orleans did. New Orleans had Breeze play great,

which of course Cousins is not Breeze. But if we're transferring this to the Wilson scenario, but they hit on a ton of draft picks, Marcus Lattimore and Michael Thomas. And I mean, they were able to build this great roster. Alvin Kamara became much more than just a running back for them. And so that's what it took to get them to where they were because even with breeze, when they were in a bad situation, they were still having sort of

500 seasons. So, um, yeah, that, I think that that shows you truly how difficult it is and how much draft luck it basically takes to get there. So yeah, I don't, I don't know. I I'm, there's not one of these quarterbacks Mayfield because it's a short-term contract that I would say, oh yeah, no, that's the guy that I want and you could build around them. So, yeah. And for this question in particular, it's interesting to kind of parallel where that team was after 2017 and just stack up what that roster was looking like moving into 2018 and what this roster is looking like in 2022, because I think it's pretty hard to argue that that that this team

right now is more talented than at least that team was entering the 2018 season with Dalvin on a rookie deal with Diggs Thielen still there in the young parts of their careers with that defensive core a lot still intact so even if you're you are just parent comparing those situations you would have rather added Kirk Cousins when you did than when you did. Oh, yeah. Than you would this time around. So that makes the point even clearer of now, why would you invest in that type of quarterback? Because your team's worse than it was then.

Right. I thought that it would go this way when they signed him in 2018. The receipts are out there on the internet, but it was always justifiable. I never said that it's not justifiable, just that the most likely scenario is kind of what happened. By the way, I ran into something interesting in my Googling over the last couple of days. How about this for a headline? Now, the person who wrote this, Sam Monson for Pro Football Focus, is a great friend of the show so do not anybody take this as i'm dunking on sam monson because you could go back and listen to me talk

about how the rams weren't going to make it okay so this happens probably dunk on sam though physically if you've seen yes yeah he's shorter than me yes but uh but i can't dunk you i'm saying everyone everyone has takes that make sense when you write them and don't turn out to be what they are. It made sense to question the Rams, but they're here. But I ran into this headline. This is from 2017, January 2nd. Bills should build around Tyrod Taylor, not show him the door. And Sam Monson goes into this huge article with all these stats that show that Tyra Taylor is very solidly average and makes the case that it's really hard to get. And he writes, everybody is searching for the

next Aaron Rodgers, but it's hard to find the next Aaron Rodgers. So you should take a proven commodity and build around them. And the bills went a different direction, drafted Josh Allen, and now one of the premier teams in the NFL. And look, there are other examples of this not working out. I know you don't have to tweet me about the Jets blowing their draft pick twice and maybe three times. I get it. The point just being that there were very real conversations about that in Buffalo. And I ran into this because some people tweeted me like they didn't believe me that they

did not believe me that there was this huge debate over Tyrod Taylor that was exactly what's going on with Kirk and there were legitimate statistical arguments to show the guy is decent it said right here Tyrod Taylor ended the 2016 season as the 10th best overall graded quarterback by PFF higher than Alex Smith Ben rothlisberger jamis winston andy dalton and dac prescott does this not sound familiar to anybody um that's i think that's sort of again like kind of tells you you know how hard it is to build around a quarterback who's just okay and having the 10th best at stuff is just not going to cut it if that person is expensive. So anyway, let's run through a few more of these questions before we wrap it up.

Can we have our Pro Bowl discussion now? Because we were watching it before this. I didn't know, like, are we going to record after the Pro Bowl? Like, do we want to watch this Pro Bowl? And then you're like, break it down. Play by play, Paul. Yeah, let's just do it right in the middle. So I don't know what's going on in the Pro Bowl.

When we started recording, Kirk had just thrown or just fumbled a fumble six or whatever had just happened. So his MVP vote or his chances of being the Pro Bowl MVP are just dropping, which is what I was looking for today out of the Pro Bowl. But, man, it's just really bad. It's really bad. I was having a conversation with my roommate just looking at all the different like all-star games and trying to figure out where the nfl ranks like it's the worst of all of them uh pretty clearly how do we how do we fix this thing what do we what do we do like in a perfect world i know you said

like if injuries didn't exist in this and you had everyone playing in it how would you structure it how how do we fix this because i i don't know because today today is not not a good day no it's not a shameful day for the sport honestly like when you have if i seemed extra grumpy about the vikings it was because i just had to watch that pro bowl and i was you did not have to watch the pro bowl. I was watching the pro bowl. You could rewatch the senior bowl. Um, but, uh, so there's no fixing it. I don't think, um, what they've done with the events and stuff before that, like the dodge ball and those things. That's fun. I think that's a really good idea. I thought, you know, one thing that everybody is doing to try to up the profile of

their sport is if you're formula one you're making a netflix series if you are um yeah what is it lpga is putting together i think it's a youtube series sort of inside the game the lpga version it's a great way to create cool content that brings people inside the game and then draws more interest. You learn the stories and things like that. I would love if they just put together an NFL film special on every player who has voted to the Pro Bowl and call that the Pro Bowl. And everybody can go down there and do their interviews and play all those other games and everything else that they play where they're doing the trick shots and the, you know, everything else. That's totally fine. I don't know if the NFL needs the revenue of putting people in a stadium and what is it in

Orlando? Like, do they, do they need the revenue of that one game to still be there? I don't think so, but it would be like the old Madden team where on the weekend before the Super Bowl, and I believe it was maybe before the Pro Bowl or something. No, the Pro Bowl was after the Super Bowl back in the day. So the week before was the all Madden team. And it was just basically a big high five to all the great players in the league that John Madden loved. And they've never tried to repeat that. And I just wish that they were working on highlight reels interviews conversations because people love 30 for 30s they love sports documentaries like this is a change over the last 10 15 years that we love this style of storytelling and there's so many great players with so many great stories that you can just highlight

and show that on tv and I guarantee people would watch it. Maybe not as much as a game, but it would be way better content, way better. You could do, I mean, you could do conversations with players after that, where you're having sit down interviews and players kind of coming in one after the next. I don't know.

There's so much better football content that you can create than this shameful laughingstock that the NFL put on today. Yeah. I think you just let the skills competition be like the whole thing. You get the players in there to a nice destination. They can put it back in Hawaii. I don't care if that's what the players want to get them down there and do the fun skills stuff, create some fun stuff, market that and put that at your prime Sunday at 2 p.m. slot. People are going to watch it. It's sports.

Unless they're watching the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am right now, they're not watching anything else. People are going to watch it. And if you put that at the time slot, you give all the marketing dollars to all of that, people are going to watch it, and it's going to be fun. That's the most fun people have. People like the MLB All-Star Game mostly because of the home run derby part of it. They like the NBA All-Star Game because of the dunk contest and the three-point contest.

You don't have to tack on this game because unlike those sports who can at least replicate their sport somewhat, you don't replicate your sport at all in this pro bowl. So you're not showcasing the best talent. You're just showcasing which two players want to play harder than all the other guys, which guy is actually going to run his full 40 yard dash speed down the sideline. And the other, and the corner is going to be like, bro, what are you, what are you doing? Like, I thought we were're just out here like those are the people that do well that's what you're showcasing so you might as well just cut that off entirely and just make it a big weekend

do a bunch more content like you were saying and just go all in on that there's no reason to have a game you can't put any importance on the game for any sort of reason. That's just never going to work. No one wants to see anyone get hurt. No one wants to see any of that happen. So just, I, it, it shouldn't be a thing. And I know most people are on this side, but they still keep doing the pro bowl. So someone's, I mean, a lot of it's revenue dollars and whatever, but like, there's just so many more ways that you can still generate revenue. The NFL is going to generate revenue in whatever it wants to do. So let's try to find something that's a little bit more fun. Right. They'll be fine. I think they'll be fine. Give the project over to ESPN and NFL Films, create a documentary to show on all the pro bowl players and go behind the scenes with those guys, spend the whole year kind of working

on it and then go from there. And I think it would be really enjoyable to watch because look, I mean, we only see certain guys a handful of times per year. So there's players on other teams that you don't know a whole lot about. I mean, this is like what you would do with the Madden team where like, I don't know, is a defensive lineman from the Eagles. Like, I don't know a lot about this guy. I get to learn about him. Here's an interview with him. Here's Madden talking about why he loves him so much. Like stuff like that is, I think, I think it's great. Um, it doesn't have to exactly connect to ratings and dollars because I think of it this way is if you only have one restaurant in town and the restaurant is horrible and you go to

it and you eat there and you're like, Oh geez. Yes, you gave them your money and they could be like, well, you ate here. Like, right. But I mean, that doesn't make it good, though. I was just too lazy to cook. Like, you coming here is an indictment of me. Right. Right. That doesn't mean you can't do better just because I came here.

So one more real quick. And you made this real lightning quick. But I enjoyed this i saw some folks on twitter trying to be the guy you do you want to be the guy with the take you want to jump in there early and get in there before super bowl week because then they all start getting muddy up you get in there the first week and if you're the guy that says joe burrow is better than patrick mahomes that whoa, you are getting that internet attention. So there's one guy, I don't know his name,

who got a bunch of the internet attention by saying, Burrow, he's smarter than Mahomes, which is a little layered there. I think Mahomes is pretty smart. Anyway, but tell me which one of these AFCs. So watch out for that, folks. Don't be dragged in by that. That's ridiculous. I wake up at 4 a.m. every morning just trying to just Tell me which one of these AFC. So watch out for that, folks. Don't be dragged in by that. That's ridiculous.

I wake up. I wake up at 4 a.m. Every morning. Just trying to just brainstorm and takes to put out. Beat everybody to the take. Right. Yeah. It's my grind every morning. And so I'm mad that I didn't come up with that one.

Because that one's top tier. Top tier stuff. If only you were the first one and last one out with hot takes but uh anyway so that was bound to be out there but who in the nfl right now what quarterback who is in the nfl right now wins the most super bowls over the next 10 years i mean i think a lot of people are gonna try to find another answer that's not Patrick Mahomes uh but to me that that's pretty clearly the the answer I mean they were uh just a play away from being back there again this year and then we're talking about then the conversation switches more to like is Mahomes gonna get close to Brady that becomes what happens with one game or something like that and Mahomes has the leg up

because he's already got one. So it's like, if we're, I mean, if we're starting from ground zero at this point, there's no wind starting from zero. Still my homes. I think he's got a contract that's big right now, but in a few years, it's like 10 years,

I think in a few years, that's not going to look that big. They're going to be able to continue to build around him. I have confidence in him just as the best quarterback out of all of them. The one that consistently peaks at the best times at the most important times, whether there's 13 seconds on the clock or when, whenever you need him, it feels like any other conversation that we're having right now is just to try to have a, like a zig, a zag take from Patrick Mahomes.

If there was someone obvious in the NFC I think then there's a conversation there but unless you're picking like Dak Prescott or Kyler Murray or something like you're it'd be hard-pressed to pick against Mahomes because the only the only you know argument against it is how competitive the AFC is so So yes, he's not going to win seven of them, but I, I expect him and think he will win more of them than the rest of them will. He'll get more shots than the rest of them will. And then he'll have more Superbowls than the rest of them. So if you, I mean, if you moved, if you moved Josh Allen to the NFC, maybe it's different, but right now it's just Mahomes. Yeah. I don't think there's any other answer than Mahomes. The only thing is with Joe Burrow, this is only year two of his rookie contract. So if he wins the Superbowl here,

which kind of loads the question a little bit. So I guess if you weren't counting this year, but maybe he's got several more years if he's already capable of getting a team here, but we've seen how much that took. I mean, even for Joe Burrow, like, look, let's not pretend there wasn't a lot of luck involved. He didn't play very well against Tennessee. Ryan Tannehill threw his team, the ball, barely beat the Raiders.

They barely beat the Raiders and barely beat the chiefs. And Mahomes had to have the most un Mahomes and like half that he's ever had. So, yeah, I think that that's still, that still is the answer. You should have just said Justin Fields just to make everybody angry on a

Monday. And it's like, Oh, it's obviously Justin Aaron Rogers, man. He Justin Fields just to make everybody angry on a Monday. And it's like, Oh, it's obviously Justin Aaron Rogers, man. He's coming back to green Bay and win two more. That shows you that. I am take the,

the answer. The answer is probably nobody wins multiple super bowls, even Patrick Mahomes in the next 10 years, because we've seen how hard it is. My answer is Malik Willis on the Vikings. There you go. That'll make people feel better. Well Malik Willis on the Vikings. There you go. That'll make people feel better. Well, thanks for your time, Paul.

Maybe you were DVRing the Pro Bowl and you want to watch the rest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll get back. I'll get back to the first corner where I was. And real quick, we have launched at purpleinsider.substack.com, which we're working on that purpleinsider.com site.

It's like under construction, but it will be launching soon, which will be cool because everyone can go there eventually and then see everything we're doing, like videos, podcasts, articles, anyway. But you now have a draft column called Skull Searching.

So each week you're putting together five things that stood out to you. This week you talked about hand size, but you also talked about Kenny Pickett and what's being said about him at the Senior Bowl, I think, or maybe I wrote that. Anyway, so it was a really good piece, though, Paul, that you wrote at the website. So people should go check that out. Purpleinsider.substack.com is where that exists now.

It's open for everybody to read if they want to check it out and then become a subscriber to get the rest of them. So great stuff. And we will talk again next week after the Superbowl. I think you do anything you busy. Uh, I am never too busy for this podcast, so I will be right. Exactly. That's the right answer. Thanks, Paul.