Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Mike Tanier talks Vikings, analytics, Football Outsiders Almanac and AFC West

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Read Matthew Coller's written work at PurpleInsider.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Folks, do you feel like everything these days is go, go, go? It's non-stop from work to friends to family and a million pressing issues. Sometimes you just need to take a playoff and hit the reset button. That's when you reach for a Coors Light. It's made to chill. Hey, it's that time of year in Minnesota again to get out on the lake, go to the cabin, sit back, watch some baseball. Coors Light is the perfect refreshment to chill during these summer months. There's only one beer out there that's made to chill.

The mountains on the bottles and cans turn blue when your beer is cold, and that way you know it's time to chill. Hit that reset button with some mountain cold refreshment. Coors Light is cold lager, cold filtered, and cold packaged. It's literally made to chill. It's crisp and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. Coors Light is the one you should choose when you need to unwind, when you want to hit the reset button, reach for the beer that is made to chill.

Get Coors Light in the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate. Hey everybody, Matthew Collar here. Golden, Colorado, and great podcast for everyone. The final two episodes are live right now, or you can binge the entire season to learn about your favorite soccer stars. Check out Blue Wire's Golden Goal, available anywhere you listen to podcasts. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Joining me, he has written about the NFL for a very long time.

I'm sorry if that makes you feel old. Mike Tenier, who is coming on to talk a lot about his work in the new Football Outsiders 2020 Almanac. I'm extremely excited about that. What is up, Mike? Not much. You feel old. I think I've been doing this now since like 2004. And this is my second career because I was a teacher before that, so I'm feeling very, very old, but still, you know,

happy to be here, excited, and excited. There's going to be some football, I think, pretty sure, knock on wood, in a few weeks. What is the backstory of you going from a teacher to a writer? I knew that, but I don't think I've ever heard or seen you tweet about how you ended up as a football writer. Well, you know, the early 2000s were like the Wild, Wild West on the Internet, where, you know, you come in and, like, you start blogging and giving an opinion on, like, a message board or, you know, like Florio at Pro Football Talk. He just goes on a blog and he starts kind of yelling his opinion, and the next thing you know he's a rock star. Well, I never became a rock star, but I was doing that, doing that, doing that.

I had the opportunity to hook up with Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders at a time when he was going from, you know, a guy with his computer and his spreadsheets to being the Bill James of football. And he needed some sidekicks, and I was one of those sidekicks. I was one of Michael David Smith and then Doug Farrar and Bill Barnwell and others. And we rose up that way. So it was a weird, long transition, and that world doesn't exist anymore because I don't think you can just go on the Internet with a shingle and, you know, two years later be like, hey, I've got a byline at Fox Sports

or the New York Times. Yeah, and all the guys you just named there were the people that I was reading when I was in, again, sorry for this, but like early college and sort of, you know, starting to learn how to look at things through an analytical perspective, which people who listen to this podcast know that we do a lot here on the show in terms of analyzing the Vikings. And that's where I wanted to start with you in the Football Outsiders Almanac is just the status of analytics in the NFL in 2020. I think that there are some people that think analytics is like, hey, PFF gave this guy a 68 grade. So analytics mean nothing. I'll put maybe Mike Zimmer in that category at times throughout his coaching career. But where are we

at? We've seen different trajectories from different sports. Baseball was far ahead of everybody else. You guys were in on the ground floor of starting to look at just pure yards differently. And I think that most fans now understand a lot of these concepts of like, hey, if Jameis Winston led the league in just yards thrown forward, that doesn't necessarily mean he was the best quarterback in the NFL. So in a broad sense, where do you feel like we stand? It's a complicated question. You're right that we're way behind baseball.

I think we're way behind basketball. At basketball, they really centralize the data. And, of course, there's people like Yankee, and there's like legendary and somewhat notorious characters there. But there's data that everyone has access to in NBA and basketball, and it's used a lot. In football, we're behind that. I think the sport is inherently going to be behind that because there are some

things that are just hard to measure analytically. At the same time, there's where the teams are, and the teams are all over the place, and then there's where that sort of fan conversation is. That fan conversation, that Twitter conversation, it's almost its own little dormitory in the corner of what's really going on, both in terms of the analysis that's getting done and what teams are using.

Most teams use some form of analytics. In many cases, it's in the salary cap department. There are people that are working for whoever really makes the final contract decisions and things like that, who is measuring, you know, value, measuring long range career arcs and things like that, and trying to determine whether a three or four four- or five-year contract is the best deal or a franchise tagging somebody, et cetera. There's that end of things.

There's also the quality control end of things. You know, I always tell people there have been analytics in the NFL for 60 years. They were called the quality control assistants. They were the kids who had to sit there and watch the film and tell the coach, hey, coach, you know you hand off on first and 10 83% of the time. That's why you're always facing a stacked box, coach. So you've got to mix it up.

And the coach says, yeah, good. You're a great young assistant. Pats him on the back and promotes him and ignores him and runs it 83% of the time. But there's that element of things as well. What used to just be, you know, ticking things off on a little checkoff box is now more, you know, more complicatedly computed and better analyzed. So it's all of a place like that. It goes from team to team.

And one final thought on that is a lot of teams will use analytics of depth and then go out and deny it because it's not an old-school football thing. The fans don't want to hear it. You know, the guys on the talk radio don't want to hear it. So it's like, oh, analytics, Dave Gettleman, analytics, with his little pantomime. And then he'll go back and he'll be doing some mathematical analysis in the back room at the same time.

Yeah, I think my favorite was Bill Belichick claiming that he had no knowledge or understanding of what analytics were. Is that MySpace that you're talking about? I don't know. And then like, yeah, okay, sure, sure. One of the more analytical front offices and coaching staffs that there is, right? And I, if I were coaching a team, I would do that too. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Sometimes, because I wouldn't want to be giving away the state secrets. But I do think that it's fascinating about how there's a bunch of different ways to sort of look at what analytics are for fans to better understand

what's going on with their team. So if you just take, say, a PFF grade, which everybody is sort of using more often now, by itself, you don't get a whole heck of a lot out of that, right? I mean, it's just like this player scored this. Or even, I would even say this for DVOA. If you just say, well, this team was this in offensive DVOA. It's like, what does that really tell us?

And I have always enjoyed the DVOA stat because I think it gives us a much better view of what a team has actually done. So how do you use it with football outsiders to contextualize what a team is done and then project them onto the next year? Well, one thing is in season. When I'm just looking at the team's DVOA or their team offense or their team defense, the big macro DVOA, during the season it should be spitting out, Chiefs are good.

And, you know, your Dolphins are bad or Bengals are bad. And it almost always does. And then when you look at it and you see a team that's 5-1 with a low DVOA or 2-3 with a high one, you're obviously ideally seeing an overvalued, undervalued team, a team that maybe had bad luck or maybe has had a couple of turnovers in key spots or has faced tough opponents. So you use it in that way.

As a real analytical tool, if you go around Football Outsiders, if you subscribe to FO Plus, and there are deals now for the Almanac and FO Plus and the fantasy ratings and things like that, you see things like third down DVOA, first down DVOA, goal line DVOA. This is a treasure trove of value because, you know, I can get goal line statistics. Now, they're not hard to find. Hey, this team ran 37 plays at the goal line and averaged 1.8 yards per play

and had 14 touchdowns. I don't know if that's good, bad, or ugly because I don't study goal line statistics at that level. The DVOA gives you a plus, minus, well above average, well below average, and you can see things like, hey, my particular team was bad on first downs or my team was really bad on third and long. So even from a coaching standpoint, you can look at that and say, oh, we're bad on third and long.

What are we doing wrong? Let's analyze this. Well, here's a little secret, Coach. Quarterback really can't read, like, a complicated defense or the blitz he's facing on third and long. We've got to cope with it. Maybe it's a play-calling issue, though. Maybe it's something like that.

So there's all these, like, breakdowns. And you talk to people in the league, coaches, coordinators, they always think situationally. They put together and install everything. Basically, here's our third down package, our third and long package, our goal line package. That's the way DVOA is designed. So once you get past that macro number, you can really dig in and you can see,

well, this is what's going wrong for this team, this is what's going right for this team, and start making some guesses and plans as to whether those things will continue. Yeah, and I love it as a statistic that can be a starting point for let's go find more answers. And I think that a lot of statistics work that way, that when you get a number, it's tweeted out, and then everyone starts to pick it apart and so forth. But I love to figure out, all right, why would this be? And one of the things that I think is incredibly smart that we overlook, but it's always right in front of our face, is the quality of the competition that you face.

So if you are, like you said, if you're an 8-1 team halfway through the year, but you haven't faced anyone, and we dealt with this a lot with the Vikings last year, it's like, are they really that good? The opponents that they're going up against, the teams that they beat their faces in, but that also would matter too. If it's a bad opponent, if you beat their face in, you might be good. So I guess when you're looking at last year and then to project forward this year, was there something that you found with the strength of schedule? Or maybe you could just kind of explain how we should look at strength of schedule

and how it should impact when we look at expectations for the following season. You touched on a couple of things. One is, I mean, the opponent adjustment and everything in DVOA is opponent adjusted, okay? And it's adjusted for situations. So it's not like you face the 49ers. It's like your run offense face the 49ers run defense. So it's adjusted that way. Not like, oh, good team, bad team. But it's very significant. It's really not looked at. People say, well, who do they play? Who do they play? That's like a little argument point in the NFL. The difference in schedules and opponents is extreme. And we've seen extreme examples of it through years. I mean, honestly, the Patriots,

if you don't think that the Patriots have benefited from an easy schedule over the last several seasons, then you're sitting somewhere in a Southie bar or outside a Southie bar right now with your Mike Grable jersey and you're jumping up and down. One example last year, I did the ASC West, and I was looking at the Raiders. The Raiders had a run. I believe at some point, I don't have it in front of me, they were 7-5 or 6-4. And even I wrote a column about it saying, well, you know,

are they a stealth playoff team? Have they turned the corner? It didn't take long to look at their schedule and see that there was this run of games where it was close victories against mediocre to bad teams. And, you know, DVOA spots this right away. And it's like, well, yeah, their statistics are good, but they're getting dinged down, dinged down, dinged down, because they're facing these weaker opponents.

And sure enough, it wasn't sustained. They went off later in the year. They had to face the Chiefs. They got hammered. They lost to the Jets, which was an indication of, you know, when you're beating bad teams 23-20, you're probably one of the bad teams. You mentioned it earlier, if you're hammering or

kicking the snozz out of a team, that's often a very good sign that you really are great. But when you're like, man, they really got it done and got that big close win against the Dolphins, that usually means you're in the Dolphins category. So, you know, that's how it's done. And, you know, we can do a quick and dirty eyeball on it.

But, you know, in Football Outsiders and DVOA and their statistics, it's all been done internally on a spreadsheet. All the calculations are done. Nobody's sitting there saying, hey, you know, I thought that the Bills were pretty good and flicking a switch. Those statistics are hammered into it. And that gives you the best analysis of whether a team is really doing what you think they're doing or whether it's the result of the strength or weakness of the opponent.

And having worked in Buffalo previously myself, I can tell you Tom Brady and the Patriots indeed did get some help from the AFC East and the Buffalo Bills over a lot of years of 6-10 and 7-9 type of teams if they were having a good year. Now, I am interested in the AFC West, especially when it comes to Kansas City and what you think made them a Super Bowl champion outside of their quarterback, but I wanted to ask you one more question. Somebody in my Friday mailbag asked about Rich Gannon

and why it was that Rich Gannon was a mediocre quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings early in his career and then became a superstar MVP quarterback taking his team to the Super Bowl later in his career, which of course is like very Minnesota to have that happen. Um, but, uh, I started digging into it a little and my theory that I came up with was kind of that, you know, first of all, experience was a big deal, but also the league started to change around that time when it came to more efficient passing games. He comes into the league in 92, a lot of throws down the field were expected. And then by 2003, it's a lot of shorter throws and things like that. I wonder what you've seen from the time that you first started working in Football Outsiders to now is the biggest change in how those numbers kind of play out because, you know, we talk about the rules are different

and everything's pushed a little more toward the past, but is there something in the numbers that you find now that you say, man, this would never have happened back when? It's amazing how over 15 years because when we were doing this in 2004, 2005, it's like, well, it's a past happy NFL. And now we say, you know, we would say in today's past happy NFL, blah, blah, blah. Now we say in today's past happy NFL, blah, blah, blah. It's gotten more past happy over those 15 years.

There's noticeable increases in completion rate, noticeable decreases in interception rate. I think that the run-pass ratio hasn't changed that much, but there have been more plays. I think there's more plays per game, and that increases. So you're seeing that when you break the data down now,

what we think of as a shotgun offense, for example. Shotgun offenses back then was still, I would say, maybe it was a 50-50 proposition. Teams would be in the shotgun 50% of the time. Now you've got teams that are in the shotgun, I don't know, 75%, 80%, 90% of the time, where that is their base package. Where back then, a lot of teams that were in the Gary Kubiak school

or in that, who was it? I mean, the early Shanahan school. They would not use the shotgun a lot. Now there's no team that doesn't have a shotgun package, I don't think, that doesn't have something that's pretty robust. So you can see over the course of the last decade or so, increase in spread formations, increase in wide receiver screens, and plays of that sort.

And just there's a diversity of things like that. And on defense, the rise of nickel and dime packages as base deep packages, which was starting to happen 10 years ago. But now if you run the data, it's like nickel or dime packages are, I don't know, 70%, 75% of the time, even more if you get out of the goal line situation.

So this is a constant evolution. Now I've been looking the last couple years and saying, has it reached an evolutionary point where it backtracks a little bit? Oh, well, the 49ers were a run-based team. And the Ravens, well, they were an option-based team, but they were a run-based team.

I don't think it's a pendulum swinging back. I think that our definition of offense is changing. And what you're seeing is teams that took... Well, we've been taking these spread concepts for the last 15, 20 years. What about the run element of those spread concepts? And they're finding more ways of doing that, as well as the fact that there's like now, I would say that the 49ers and the Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan,

second-generation Mike Shanahan coaches, because that's who they are, have gone anti-spread as almost like a reaction, not like they're going back to 1990, but here's our anti-spread where we constrict the formations and have two tight ends and we use our speed to get out laterally. So we see a lot of those things and they're very visible in the statistics and it's fascinating because it's still an ongoing evolution. It's not like 1999 is when it changed or 1984 was when it changed, it's still changing. And I think that no matter what era you go back to, you're always looking at if

you are different on offense or defense, you've got an advantage, but especially on offense. And now being different is actually being Gary Kubiak and putting out two tight ends all the time. I was looking at this, most teams are using 11 personnel with three wide receivers, 50% more of the time, or something in that ballpark. They're using it a lot. And here's Gary Kubiak, the Ravens, and the 49ers, who are using fullbacks and tight ends all the time. And I just think about game planning, how little time you have to game plan for teams

in a week with certain rules that are laid out by the CBA, even for practices and training camp. And so if you have the Vikings on a Thursday night at week seven, how much time do you really have to prepare for something that is completely different? And I think that that's become a huge advantage and maybe one of the reasons why Kubiak's offense has kind of persisted all the way through here. Yeah, and you know what, when he's calling it or when he's looking over the shoulder of the person calling it, which I think is how it was going in Minnesota,

it's very well put together, very clean game plans. You know what's coming. You don't know what order is coming, what slight variations he's put in, and that's generally been effective. That was effective various times for the Broncos and in Houston for several years when people don't remember that success. I think it was successful for the Vikings last year. The question and the concern is, okay, we're going to be different

because we're going to have a tight end and a fullback on the field. You're different in a way – you have to be careful. It's like you're different in a way that, like, is built for four yards and cloud of dust. And it's like, well, that's great, but everybody else is built for seven and a half, eight yards, and a cloud of, like, chaos around them. So it's like it's not enough to be the best four yards in a cloud of dust team you can be. And I think that's the mistake sometimes.

Some of Kubiak's disciples, some of the guys who got jobs in Denver, I'm not sold on the guy you guys just sent to Cleveland. We'll see. They're like, we're going to be the best four yards in a cloud of dust team we can be. Well, if so, that's fine. You're going to get left in the dirt by these other teams. That's not what Kyle is doing.

That's not what McVay is doing. That's not what those guys were doing. They're, like, using that framework. We've got tight end. We've got fullback. So, yeah, we've got the strong side linebacker who never plays anymore. He's on the field covering our fullback or our tight end, and we're going to get advantage of that.

You've got to get advantage of that to be a six-, seven-yard chunk play team, not just, oh, we're going to get advantage of that. You've got to get advantage of that to be a six, seven-yard chunk play team, not just, oh, we're going to go back to the 1990s. I was looking at, if you read the Outsiders' almanac, Kubiak's teams in general are very good at getting the chunk plays out of that. And last year they were good at getting the chunk plays, again, working with him and the young man who was the coordinator, Stefanski. When it doesn't work, I think we've seen that in the past with the Vikings,

you get that cloud of dust tactics. You don't get those chunk plays. And if you're not getting the chunk plays, hey, off tackle, gain a four, second and six. That's not really winning football games in 2020. Before we get back to the conversation, I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods.

Baseball is back, and SodaStick just launched its latest partnership with Hormel Foods and the Tommy Watkins Foundation to pay homage to the Hormel Row of Fame. It debuted in the Metrodome in 1992, and though it's been long retired, you have an opportunity to check out the latest T-shirt called the Wiener Winner. Great for lunch, great for dinner. You remember how the song goes.

For every T-shirt sold, Hormel Foods will donate $10, up to $10,000, to Tommy Watkins Foundation's Backpack Program, supporting Twin Cities youth. We're going to hook you up also with free shipping for your Wiener Winner shirt. Use promo code PURPLEINSIDER for free shipping. That's SOTASTICK.COM, S-O-T-A-s-t-i-c-k.com original minnesota sports inspired goods code purple insider for free shipping and and the uh deep crossers and things

like that works so well to what kirk cousins does when he can yes loud and he gets four seconds to throw because the defensive end has gone down the line of scrimmage completely on the other side of the field like that plays perfectly into if he can be comfortable he can make a throw because the defensive end has gone down the line of scrimmage completely on the other side of the field like that plays perfectly into if he can be comfortable he can make a throw down the field the other part of it too is it's always it's always personnel like they draft irv smith who gets 30 something catches last year but i think his presence you see this for the successful teams that play that way is that if you have that move tight end it can really throw everything off because like oh they've got two tight ends on the field so we've got to put an extra linebacker oh but one of them runs a four six and can run down the field and I think

that that's where this year's Vikings offense will kind of continue to carry on it and it's not going to be better without Stefan Diggs you're not betteron Diggs. But if Irv Smith emerges into more of that role where he kind of becomes your George Kittle type, even if he's not that good, I think the offense for the Vikings can sustain because it is different and it has this unique play. Yeah, and the chapter I did not write the Vikings chapter, I was looking through it. It has the same questions I have.

Who's your second receiver? I know you drafted. Who did you draft? Jefferson. Jefferson. Yep, Justin Jefferson not write the book. I was looking through it. It has the same questions I have. Who's your second receiver? I know you drafted. Who did you draft? Jefferson. Yep, Justin Jefferson. It was Jefferson. Okay, so your second receiver is a rookie. You haven't had a true slot receiver in a long time.

Going two tight ends is fine, but generally teams with two tight ends, they've got somebody that they can bring in as a slot. And also, who's your second pass rusher right now with Griffin not available? And those are two big question marks as you try to repeat but beyond that the rest of the infrastructure is very strong for this team but those are two big question marks as you're trying to be at that level and you're trying to you're talking about you had deep crossers and things like that the margin of Diggs versus somebody else is a pretty big deal when you say well we're not a four wide

receiver team those two guys are going to be counted upon for most of the deep success that you're going to have. Your number one tight end is 30-something right now, Rudolph. So those are big question marks that have got to get answered for the Minnesota Vikings. Yep, totally agree. And not everybody can get off the line of scrimmage like Stephon Diggs and break off a route on a deep crosser like he can to lose a cornerback or something like that.

And so I know you wrote the AFC West, and it's interesting because the Vikings played all of these teams. And, you know, Denver is the great example of Stephon Diggs just demolishing. I think it was Chris Harris on a key touchdown in that game. But I wanted to ask you about Kansas City. Now, aside from Patrick Mahomes, which is a big aside, but I think there's a lot of things that went into that team being great that aren't just their quarterback is an absolute freak and is the best player in the NFL. So what did you find when you dove into them for why they became a Super Bowl champion and what it's going to mean here

going forward? Well, the first thing is to dive into the statistics, you have to dive into the two-year statistics. If you look on paper, the statistics of the offensive stats of the Chiefs last year, you've got the Matt Moore games in there, and you've got a couple games of Mahomes with an injury before that, so you don't see these eye-popping stats. So to see it, you have to kind of look at the last two years, and you can even go back before that because so much of it is schematic.

And it comes down to Andy Reid over the last decade taking the concept of there being a spread, quote, unquote, package, the concept of there being a, let's say, a Reid option, quote, unquote, package, and there being a West Coast offense as the shell, utterly rebuilds this and has been rebuilding it since Alex Smith was the quarterback to say everything is fully integrated into these concepts. So while he may be using West Coast terminology, the idea that he's going to have

three receivers bunched split wide to the left, and two of them are tight ends and one of them is Tyreek Hill. And you're going to have somebody off to the right and you're going to have your quarterback in shotgun. And he's going to run something that looks like a Texas Tech type play out of this. It's not a fin, a spoiler, an addition that he threw on the top, like Adam Gase running the wildcat because the quarterbacks are in. Oh, you know what? I pulled this out.

We're going to do this this week. It's been completely integrated into it, which means there's a depth to how much of it there is which means it's been practiced at a certain level which means things like the offensive line concepts are built into it the number of times you'll see some screen concept and you'll see schwartz or fisher running out on the screen and they're and they're effective in that role you know they're running out the block for Mecole or something like that. All of that built together creates a situation where this team was a playoff team with Alex Smith, a quarterback. And then you turn around and you put this great quarterback in there.

And we ought to add, it wasn't just Mahomes' ability. It was a, integrated into this was a plan for developing him. So he didn't come in as a rookie through 35 interceptions. He was behind Alex Smith. He's getting a tutorial from Andy Reid throughout all of this. him so he didn't come in as a rookie through 35 interceptions he was behind Alex Smith he's getting a tutorial from Andy Reid throughout all this so this is built to take the type of quarterback who 10 years ago it would have been like oh this is he's a talented tease and will he come around and everything and get him maximum success from Jump Street when he's ready to play

so that he is getting yak opportunities so he is using his bomb deep he's using his legs to a degree and he's letting Tyreek do things too because he's throwing screens as well. All of that is so beautifully integrated. Very few offense, I don't know any other offense in the NFL has it. Patriots do, but the Patriots have been trying to hide their quarterback hush-hush-hush for the last two years, and now here's a team doing it that is trying to showcase their quarterback.

The interesting part too is that, for me, for how they were built, is that any time they thought they had enough weapons, they were like, I think we should get another one. Even whatever was left of Shady McCoy. Like, let's just see if he can still run super fast with the ball in one hand like he does for some ungodly reason. But, I mean, when he had it in his hands when he was at his best, he could dodge anybody.

You know, Sammy Watkins, everyone made fun of his contract until it was the Super Bowl and they were covering the other two key stars and then all of a sudden you needed Sammy Watkins to step up and he was absolutely terrific. This is one area where I think if you're looking at it from another team perspective, and you look on the board, on the draft board or something, or free agency, well, we've got a couple dollars to spend. What should we spend it on? Should we spend it on a safety or should we get another wide receiver? And this is where the Vikings, they got Justin

Jefferson, but they didn't really sign anybody. Tajay Sharp is kind of an underwhelming signing. They didn't draft a bunch of receivers. They take another one in K.J. Osborne, I think in the fifth round. So, like, this would be one of those areas where I say, if you want to copy the Chiefs, that's something you can do, is that you can never have enough dudes coming who can do great

things with the football. Right, and remember Watkins. Watkins is a little bit of an odd dude. He's a, he had a pass, if you read Ty Dunn's, he's an odd dude. So you have to, so you take risk on a guy like that. The Honey Badger, you're coming in, now he's an outspoken

dude, he's not an odd dude, but it's like, you can imagine some coach who's like, I want to expect, I want everybody to yell, sir, yes, sir, when I tell him to jump, and Tyron Matthews got a question about it. I'm not working with this guy. You can hear Bill O'Brien saying that in your mind. So you bring them in.

And, you know, what do the Patriots do? Let's bring in Cam Newton. He's an odd dude. Let's bring him in. The number of teams that just refuse to do that. Like, oh, our precious culture, our precious, you know, philosophy here cannot handle somebody who believes in ghosts and fairies and whatever Watkins believes in or has political opinions like Matthew or wears ascots and dickies like Cam Newton. We can't have that here. You know, the Bills, you're talking about the Bills, they had that mentality.

They probably still do to a degree, to be frank. You know, for many, many years, you lose, you leave talent on the sidelines and again and i'm frankly tyree kill is part of that and you know there's parts of that story that we might not want to go into right now but it's like they take a risk on a young man like that as well you don't want to do it when it's something that could be dangerous and violent criminal but that's part of it as well you're it's not just taking a chance on the guy, though it's also, when you come in, do you have a plan for this person from a personality standpoint? Reed has been very good

in the past with unusual character individuals of various types. Going into T.O. for a while before that went nuts. So that's part of it as well. The Patriots are excellent at that as well. They're great at bringing in unusual characters. It's not going to work with Antonio Brown,

but they've worked with a lot of kind of flaky guys like Rob Gronkowski or Tom Brady. So I'm going to let that one sit. But it's true, though. It's true, though. I made this point on Twitter the other day about Tom Brady just ignoring the NFLPA telling him to stop his private workouts. Or he was just like, no, I'm going to out-God or football this virus. Like, that doesn't really work that way.

But you're Tom Brady, so I guess you could just say or do whatever you want. Right. My gurus are going to be hanging around the studio all the time. Are you okay with that? Yes, because you're Tom Brady. And we're going to talk about how wonderful you are. And, again, well, he's phenomenal. And so you create leeway for him.

That's fine. You're going to create leeway for Tom Brady. You should create leeway for other people as well if they're a special talent. The Chiefs are one of those teams that tends to do that. Yeah, and it's a good point, too, about Antonio Brown. That blew up in their face, and oh, well. Like, they moved forward, and they won, what, 12 games last year? So everyone survived.

Like, they can get through that. I think that's a great point. If you're only looking for the perfect soldiers you're going to find very few guys who fit in that exact mold um right a couple other things about the afc west here that i find to be interesting the quarterback situations for two of these teams well you know we could really go three but i was thinking denver and los angeles here are very much up in the air i don don't know what to think of Justin Herbert. Not a huge fan of him coming out.

My buddy Sage Rosenfels is on the podcast all the time. We watched a bunch of film of him together, and there was a lot of, yee, what? Why can't he throw seven-yard passes, even though he has this strong arm? And Drew Locke, I'm making this comparison, and if you steal it from me, you're going to have to pay trademark infringement. I think he's like Ryan Fitzpatrick, where he makes these amazing throws, but the consistency is never going to be there, but he's going to be super fun. Like, what do we think of these two teams that are very good for the rest of their rosters and their quarterback situations? Yeah, Herbert's the quarterback you make your franchise quarterback

when you realize you didn't get a franchise quarterback, but you're picking fifth or sixth in the draft. And so, oh, and he was the best guy, and so you get him. I watched those games as well. There was that midseason run for him, and there were games where he had like four touchdown passes, and I watched, broke down the film of them, and I'm like, I don't understand this.

You know, I understand that, you know, a guy gets open deep and you get him the ball so you get your four touchdown passes, but this consistency was bad. I have a hard time figuring out how that's going to go coming forward. That said, there's two or three of those guys every year. I mean, Daniel Jones was that every year. You know, is he similar to Daniel Jones in a lot of ways? Yeah.

Could he go out there and win two or three games like, I have proven everybody wrong? He absolutely could. And you want to take the long-term view. He has the arm. He appears to have a head on his shoulders, although I've heard questions about that. He's got the gumption.

So let's wait and see. Locke, you're right. Locke is like skinny Josh Allen or he's like weak team of Holmes or whatever. And, you know, I watched it and watched it. And if you do Denver radio, it's like, well, we have found our franchise quarterback. It's like, yeah, no, you found somebody who's not Trevor Simien or Paxton Lynch.

He doesn't pee himself in the huddle and he can throw more than 10 yards down the field. And he's not Chad Kelly. He's not in somebody else's yard at two in the morning. He has the young quarterback starter kit. He beat the Texans. He's got to win over a really good team. He's got the wins where it's like he only threw 15 passes and most of them

were screens, but they won the game because of defense. He's got the arm. He's got the mobility. And there's a lot of next, now what there. I'm at the age now where I see that. I looked at him in college. I looked at him in the arm. He's got the mobility. And there's a lot of next, now what there. I'm at the age now where I see that. You know, I looked at him in college. I looked at him in the NFL. He's done that much.

And it's like he passed the Nathan Peterman test now. He has shown that he can go out there and not make a fool of himself, the Paxton Lynch test. Now the real work begins. So, you know, I always say optimistic because a lot of times these guys do that or they max out as cousins or they max out as Andy Dalton. Those are good careers. Or as Joe Flacco, those are good careers for NFL quarterbacks. And, and some of them are going to do that. If they're going to do more than that, then this is the year that especially Drew Locke's got to

show he's going to do more than that. Cause they got weapons now. They got a lot of weapons on that team as well. They, They drafted Judy, right? Yes. Yep. And Sutland's Hamler, too. Hamler, right. From Penn State, who I wasn't as high on, but he's a good slot guy. You know, Phant's a great player. I think they grabbed another tight end if I remember. The kid from Missouri

who, like the DK Metcalf of tight ends who runs fast in the straight line, they got him. And Sutland, I keep saying Sutton. Sutland? Cortland Sutland. Cortland Sutton, right? Cortland Sutton.

There's too many lands and uns in there. It's amazing if you really watch him play. And it would be great to see somebody throw him the ball accurately so he doesn't have to make one-handed catches against two defenders. Hey, before we get back to the conversation, I want to remind you that sports are coming back, and so are your chances to bet on your favorite teams and events. There's no better place to start than our exclusive partners, BetOnline.

Get in on the action for this week's big UFC fight, or check out odds on NASCAR, Formula One, and the Premier League. Can't wait for your favorite team to come back. BetOnline has future odds on win totals, division winners, and even league championships. Or check out our daily simulations of Madden NBA 2K to watch and wager on. Visit BetOnline.ag. Use the promo code BLUEWIRE to receive your new welcome bonus. That's promo code BLUEWIRE.

BetOnline, your online wagering experts. Vikings fans would know all about that because Sutton went off against them, and I believe one of his catches was from a wide receiver, if I'm not mistaken. Sanders threw a bomb. I remember that, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Was it Sanders? Could be.

I think so. Someone. It was definitely a wide receiver. Oakland, I will tell you this, Mike. I'm a John Gruden apologist because I love John Gruden, and I think he's really entertaining and fun. And if you're entertaining and fun, you go a long way with me. Like Rex Ryan, same thing. When he was in Buffalo, I was like, let's give him more chance.

Right? I mean, there's just way too many of these people that are cardboard cutouts. So, like, let's hear them out. In our business, it's like, oh good, a real quote. Oh, he says something interesting. You know, like we can kind of work with that. Not just like, you know, fake Belichick every day. Right. Yeah. The wannabe Belichicks. Those do not a whole lot for me. And like you said about the culture guys. Yeah. Hey, Coach, what'd you think of that defense they played? Well, look, we removed a ping pong table from the locker room,

so we're going to culture our defense. So I like John Gruden for that reason. I also like him because I think that the Khalil Mack trade was actually kind of low-key, kind of clever, actually, with where they were at. But I just don't know how far they could go in this division. I mean, this division is going to be really tough, and even if he has coached them to the point where they look like a team that should be taking the next step, it's not going to be very easy to do. Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned Rich Gannon

and like what happened to Rich Gannon. Gruden happened to Rich Gannon. The young Gruden was an absolute rock star of an offensive coordinator and a game planner and had all the new ideas back then. I believe the early Vikings got in. I was still like the Marsha Brody era coaches, and they were brilliant in their day in the mid-70s. But it's like, hey, we're going to throw into the flat to the fullback. No one's going to expect that. You know, that's what they were doing.

And Gannon was like sharing the job with Kramer and those guys, whoever it was. Sean Salisbury. Who's was. Sean Salisbury. Who's that? Sean Salisbury. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah, he got benched. Dannon got benched once for Sean Salisbury. Right.

They were really doing a heck of a job finding elite talent at that position. But the Raiders look like they're being built for 500, and I don't understand this because you're three years into this. You make the Khalil Mack trade, and, you know, we could go around and around on that. What did you get back for the Khalil Mack trade? It's like you got another edge rusher who's not as good, and you got, like, a running back, and,'s like it doesn't it doesn't add up it's

like you built this team to kind of go out there and be pretty good now i know people who are away from the game make this habit all the time i think for a meal said it when he came back to the to the rams after i guess 18 years away you think everyone is awesome because in the course of 18 years strength and conditioning got better guys got a step step faster, et cetera. And you look around like, I got a playoff team here. Holy cow. And you realize that the rest of the league is like that. And I feel like there's a little bit of that in what Gruden's doing. Like Derek Carr, oh, my goodness.

He's so heady and things like that. Well, he's Derek Carr. And I think he had a very fine season last year. But at some point, he either has to make a quantum leap or get replaced. And it's year three, and you've neither gotten that quantum leap or that replacement out of Derek Carr. So you have your quarterback to go 8-8 with. You've got a pass rush to go 8-8 with because you got rid of Mack.

And, of course, they tried to get Antonio Brown again. That blew up in their face. He blew up in everybody's face. Each stage along the way, I look at it and say, where is the championship caliber part of this team? And none of them are championship caliber. All of them are 500 or developing. Next year they're going to take the lead.

And you lose track of the fact that it's year three of him, it's year two of Mayock. The other two teams in the division are bad. The wild cards are wide open in the AFC. You can build a wild card team, snap of your fingers. When are they doing it? Maybe they did it this year and this is their 9-7 season or whatever. At this rate, I don't know when they're going to get good

because they're squandering all that draft capital that should have been. Here's our elite corner and our elite quarterback and our elite edge rusher, and here we come. Yeah, it's a great point about who you spent the draft picks on matters in the Khalil Mack trade. I think what they got back for him rather than paying him $20 million a year was smart, but if you traded him for a running back and a guy who can't really get after the passer,

then that doesn't really help you. You're just minus Khalil Mack. That's a good point. I think it would actually be better for the Raiders if they did go 7-9 again and were sure that they needed a new quarterback because if they got one and some more weapons to go along with Henry Ruggs, I mean, you might be a team that could draft a quarterback and put them into a situation that's pretty good and be fairly competitive.

But I agree with you that Derek Carr in today's game is the ultimate eight and eight type of quarterback. And, you know, I would have in the past, maybe before this last season compared him to kirk cousins in a way that he's just good enough to get you to to your floor every year but probably won't get you to even your team's ceiling or definitely not anything beyond but i think that car is even one notch below that yeah and but there is a similarity

there and it's like if your plan is, and I could see Gruden, like I won with Brad Johnson, I won with Rick Chagann, and he's now about 30, my slightly older guy who's going to run my system, then you better go out there with two elite edge rushers, two great corners, and try to win with defense. And if that's your plan, or try to get your Tyreek Hill or somebody, and, yeah, they tried to get Antonio Brown, so that you've got this weapon

that you can use, and it's been so slow going for that. Because, again, Cousins, okay, he's better than that middle of the tier, right? But, like, with the help of Daniel Hunter and with the help of Everson Griffin and Barr and Kendricks and, you know, ideally you were – and two great safeties and two very highly paid cornerbacks who are supposed to be great and two great wide receivers. They're not building around him. It's almost like they're building as if they've got the quarterback.

It's like, yeah, let's get a box safety and let's get every guy we can get from Clemson. Look at the number of guys. I joke about this. What's his name? Mayock must be like on the phone with Dabo just like gabbing into the night about these Clemson guys. And that's not how you're going to build a team that Derek Carr is the focal point of.

Yeah. My buddy Sage looks at it the opposite way with Clemson, like, man, that Dabo Sweeney must be a genius with all these first-round draft picks, like that he can win games, right? He must be a schematic genius. Right, right. He'll do that. You know what disappoints me, Mike, is just that the Vikings played the AFC West last year,

and I saw Brandon Allen, I'm not sure he's in the NFL this year, Matt Moore, Phillip Rivers in front of all Vikings fans in Los Angeles, and the very sad version of Oakland at US Bank Stadium. This year, I think this division is way more interesting, and I kind of wish the Vikings were playing them this year. Yeah, well, and the thing is, I look at this a little bit like the old AFC East right now, where you had the Patriots and a bunch of teams that were reacting to the Patriots in some way, whether they were trying to build a great defense or just they were impersonators,

or my favorite thing that would always happen in the AFC East, they all traded each other's coaches and general managers, and said, well, he didn't succeed for the Bills, but maybe he will for the Dolphins. In the AFC West, it looks like everyone's reacting to the Chiefs, and they're not very good right now. So the Chargers, a little bit of a rebuild, but they also have their seven defensive back thing they want to run,

so they're reacting a little bit to the Chiefs. You look at the weaponry that the Broncos put together. That looks like they're trying to wake up and be like the Chiefs instead of trying to win with a 1974 offense. The Raiders have added all that weaponry as well. They bring in rugs. They brought in that young man who was a quarterback who's now a slot receiver, Bowden.

So they're all doing that. But you can see they're all such a notch below that it's interesting and it's fun these new quarterbacks are going to be to watch and all these receivers and things, probably about 6-10, 7-9 by beating each other, and it should be a walk for the Chiefs, at least that's the way it looks like on paper, and in the analytics, Football Outsiders' almanac as well. Yeah, I guess that doesn't surprise me. It's wide open after the Chiefs between those

other three teams, and I would be surprised if any of them are great, and yet they're all kind of intriguing for their supporting cast, so it's a weird, you know, kind of, I don't know, dichotomy with, like, I don't think any of these quarterbacks can do it, but I also think that if you plopped a good quarterback, if you took Deshaun Watson and put him on any of those teams, they're Super Bowl contenders, which is, it's kind of funny how it works like that. Mike, before I let you go, and this has been an awesome conversation, was there anything else that you came across that just sort of surprised you with the projections for this year or anything poking through the other articles written by the group of guys that put together the football

almanac? Is there, is there anything where you went, huh, didn't expect that team to end up here or there? There are some surprises. I think people are going to be surprised that the Jets are looking at a team that could be in that wild card hunt. And we talked about strength of schedule earlier on. It's all about the strength of schedule. I don't have their schedule in front of me.

But the Jets have an incredibly easy schedule. And when you factor that in to, you know, being a team that does have some talent on defense, they could be one of those teams that gets mildly surprising. But I think what the Jets, the Adam Gase comparison is, there was a year, a couple years ago, the Dolphins made the playoffs. And I think it was Matt Moore had to play because Tannehill was hurt. And they had this season where it was like this blip season

where they went like 10-6. And the Jets are kind of in play to be the team that does that. There are some teams that are picked to regress, but if I started naming the teams that are picked to regress and be the same teams, you're probably thinking, oh, yeah, the Tennessee Titans are probably picked to regress. Yeah, that's absolutely right there. A team that's picked to regress, the Tennessee Titans are probably a pick to regress. Yeah, that's absolutely right there. A team that's picked to regress. The 49ers are a team that could take a step back.

The almanac is very sanguine overall about the Vikings. Maybe not so much for this year, but for their long-term projections because of what they accomplished in the draft this year. And the fact that they have pivoted, the Vikings have pivoted from some of those older players and some of those huge salaries in such a way that's going to help them stay competitive in the years to come so you'll enjoy reading that chapter and here's a stat i was you could if you sound like i was damping a little bit i was looking at this stat um 7.3 percent 7.3 percent of the interceptions thrown in the NFL last year were thrown by Jameis Winston. So he's single-handedly –

Oh, that's terrific. Yeah, so he's like a one-man outlier of statistics. The people who still argue for him really blow my mind. It's like, really, guys? I mean, he's throwing interceptions at a rate that in 1991 would not be acceptable for anybody. He would have been benched in 91 for doing this. So, well, Mike Tenier, I've followed you for a long time, and that is a compliment, not a criticism about you. And I've always appreciated your work.

And I would say that reading you is one of the influences of myself and my analytical approach in my work. So I very much appreciate that. And I'm really glad we could catch up. And how about you do the commercial? I know you mixed it in there very cleverly, like a patron of this. You're like, well, you know, if you buy it here and here. But why don't you do the commercial for the Football Almanac before we let you go? Football Outsiders Almanac is on sale now.

What you want to do is just go to your browser and type it in or go to footballoutsiders.com and check it out. I believe it's on Amazon. The print copy is coming soon. You have a couple of different options. What I recommend is you get the Almanac in addition to FO Plus, which gives you all kinds of splits and breakdowns through the season, including fantasy advice, including wagering advice, if it's legal in your state, and also the fantasy projections called the Kubiak Ratings, which gives you pretty much cheat sheets that you can use in your draft. There's going to be football this season, folks. It looks that way, which means there's going to be fantasy drafts,

and it might be your only chance to hang out with your friends, whether it's on Zoom or face-to-face on a porch somewhere. So you want all this. So Football Outsiders Almanac, it's our 16th year, I believe, 17th year, available now wherever good books are sold on the Internet. And come check us out. Definitely only if it's legal in your state. Of course.

Definitely. Mike, thanks so much for joining me, Mike. Absolutely. Take care, folks. If you want to make sure there's football this year, wear your masks. Yes, my gosh.