Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Mike Zimmer does not hold back in Star Tribune interview

Episode Date: September 1, 2024

Matthew Coller talks with Vikings fans about a wild interview that Mike Zimmer did with the Star Tribune Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple insider matthew collar here and i guess we need a new whiteboard that says days without somebody saying something crazy or controversial about the vikings zero we went through it with uh tua talking about brian flores the other day and well mike zimmer sat down for a one-on-one at a Cowboys camp. Mark Craig of the star Tribune went out there, talked with Mike Zimmer and boy, did Mike Zimmer talk a lot in this interview. So that's where I want to begin the show, but of course that's not the entire show. I want all of you who are tuning in live here to jump in the comment section. We got football next week and I can't wait. And I'm sure you guys are very excited as well. After many, many, many months

of off season, we are finally here. So I wonder what's on your minds, put it in the comment section and I'm happy to have any discussions you'd like to have. But I pulled from Mark Craig's article six comments from Mike Zimmer that I wanted to talk about before I get into your questions and reactions to the Mike Zimmer interview with the Star Tribune. The first one is that Mike Zimmer did not address the team after he was getting or after he got fired and said he has not watched one Minnesota game since. And when he commented on that, he also added that why should he address

the team when they're the ones that got him fired? And I actually thought that both of these comments were pretty telling about just Mike Zimmer in general. And before we get deep into this, I've said this many times before that my experience covering Mike Zimmer was much more good than it was bad. I learned a ton of football from him. And as far as defensive football minds and guys who know how to coach their scheme and know how to call plays and all that stuff, Mike Zimmer is one of the best and he has long been one of the best at his craft. But the end of Zimmer's tenure and really from 2014 through 2019, he had one of the better runs in Vikings history outside of, of course, Bud Grant, but one of the better runs in Vikings history as a head coach, probably behind Denny Green, maybe behind Jerry Burns,

but that might be even with Mike. And we remember so much more of what we saw last than we do what we saw at the beginning, which was him taking a completely downtrodden team and making it into a contender in year two of his tenure, going to the NFC championship in 2017, winning a playoff game in 2019. And a lot of that was the way that he had built the defense, how he called the defense.

And it's funny because the, his relationship with offensive coordinators was not always good and yet getting the most out of case Keenum and Kirk Cousins to date best season. Statistically, 2019, his highest quarterback rating of his career also came under Mike Zimmer. So I tend to have a balanced approach to the Mike Zimmer conversation. But I think that his comment to Mark Craig about not watching a game after the players are the ones that got him fired. It starts us tumbling in this interview down a lot of, it wasn't my fault from Mike Zimmer. And I think actually that's ironic because one of his biggest faults was never being able to admit that he was responsible for something. And it was always kind of pushed on to the general manager, pushed on to the quarterback, pushed on to whatever player they drafted that didn't work out.

And there wasn't enough looking in the mirror for Mike Zimmer during his time. And even with the environment that he created, the idea to him, it seemed in this interview that it was a toxic environment, which it absolutely was. And every player would attest to the fact that it was, including some of them on the record. Even then, he seems to reject that idea that the environment he created was a miserable one for everybody in that building by the end of his tenure there.

And then I haven't watched one game since. Not exactly the head coach looking back fondly on his time and saying, well, I tried my best to win one there and I'm sorry it didn't work out, but instead it's, I'm not watching their games anymore. And the pettiness of Zimmer at times, it got him. I think whether it was press conferences, whether some of you have brought up beefs with reporters or with different players or comments that he had made, or even just the fact that he could never bring himself to accept Kirk Cousins and wrap his arms around to use a Kevin O'Connell and Kwesi Adafo Mensah words to wrap his arm around Kirk Cousins.

It always seemed like he was pushing back against him rather than trying to support him, which I understand that he got paid, but there's nothing you can do about that. You have to go try to win with him. Right. And it always seemed like he was, uh, you know, leaning toward that. Well, it's not my fault that we didn't win the super bowl. It's because we paid Kirk too much, which, uh which we will get into here fairly soon. But staying in that grumpy old man part of the story, and we're breaking down, if you're just joining the show, breaking down Mark Craig's interview in the Star Tribune, a must read, go check that out. Very good work by Mark, section by section with different things,

talking with Mike Zimmer. But a lot of the subject was about his end in Minnesota, much more than his new start in Dallas. And on, he talked about both he and Eric Hendricks, who is there now in Dallas, talked about his fear-based comments. And essentially what Eric Hendricks said was that it was a very difficult time for everybody there. And he said more or less, they've just had to put it in the past and move on. But Kendrick saying that was one of the definitive moments of Mike Zimmer's tenure. If we were talking about all the things that pointed toward who Mike was as the head coach of the Vikings, and some of them are very good.

Number one defense in running third down, passing, all that stuff in 2017. But also some of them are not good, like the culture he created there. And when Eric Hendricks said it was a fear-based culture, that was somebody who never said anything negative about anybody. And for him to come out and say that really solidified, all right, you can't keep going with this coach. And it was the right thing to move on. Also, our friend Tyler Dunn, who comes on the show sometimes, Go Long, formerly of Bleacher Report, also had covered the Packers and Bills as a beat reporter.

He did a story on Mike Zimmer a couple of years ago, and he talked to Terrence Newman and Newman further discussed the environment that was inside of Zimmer's building. And Zimmer said that he is done with Terrence Newman because of the comments that he made, which I think further points to not looking yourself in the mirror and saying, Hey, you know, Terrence Newman's not a crazy person. Nobody was more loyal to Mike Zimmer than Terrence Newman. He came with him from Cincinnati. He was with him, I think early in his career in Dallas. He was like the Mike Zimmer guy. And I can understand why Zimmer was hurt by the comments, but also truth is truth. And I found that to be a notable nugget that he couldn't handle one of his former players that he really liked saying, Mike, there's some things wrong with how it was run there. And instead of talking to him and saying, Hey man, I, yeah, that's, that wasn't how it was supposed to go. He's done with him. Terrence Newman, his guy Newman played till he was what? 47 years old for him. It's it's it just all kind of comes back to the same theme throughout, but some juicy

things as well. Zimmer said that Rick Spielman tried to trade for Justin Fields, which I believe it was our friend Courtney Cronin who reported that right after it happened. So confirming what we knew that they did try to trade up. And I also believe it showed up somewhere in a Carolina Panthers draft day video that the offer wasn't good enough or something like that. And Zimmer said that when they picked Kellen Mond, he walked out of the room and left the building. I mean, I guess he wasn't a fan from the start and this is this is what where you have to there's no way to not compare Kevin O'Connell and Mike Zimmer in some ways Kevin O'Connell tried his best with

Kellen Mann now Mike was right and so often we have to come back and say this Mike was right he was right about Kirk getting paid too much he He was right. The Kellen Mon wasn't a great prospect, but to walk out of the building and to admit that you walked out of the building in rage over a third round quarterback, when they had a bunch of third round picks. And he said that he felt that Rick Spielman had drafted a bunch of backup players when they needed key pieces with all of those third round picks. Now you could make an argument. And I think we probably did that draft night that they should have traded up because it was a thin draft and maybe there's a truth to that. I think I remember talking about how it was interesting that they did not try to trade back up. I remember going through that second round and sort of waiting.

Are they going to do it? They got a bunch of third round picks. Are they going to do it? And they never did. And well, Mike was right again. They got mostly backups. But if you look through that third round, I don't know that there's a lot of great players that year. It was kind of a top heavy draft and they ended up getting Christian Derrissaw.

So he did get a key starter, just not on his side of the ball. It does make you think about what would have happened had they traded for Justin Fields. Would it have been different? Could it have kept them around a little bit longer? I don't know. I think Justin Fields has a fatal flaw to his game. And even if Mike had gotten fired in 2021 and Kevin O'Connell had come in and taken over that we're probably in the same place because I think that Justin Fields is the opposite of the type of quarterback that Kevin O'Connell likes anyway, the rhythm and timing we hear it all the time. But that's one thing that seems to really work with him and JJ McCarthy is that McCarthy is more of a pocket passer who can make plays rather than a playmaker who can occasionally sit in the pocket and make a good

throw. But you do wonder if that might've been different. Had he been here with Justin Jefferson, the running ability that he has, would they still be talking about, Hey, Hey, if he's, if he takes the next step, then we're almost there. I don't know. It doesn't strike me that Fields maybe got even the best coaching when he was in Chicago because Matt Eberflus arrives

and they tear apart the entire team. That would have been different here. Justin Fields would have taken over a team that still had a lot of talent on it and a lot of receiving talent, especially. So that makes you wonder what if they had said yes to that trade and that would have meant that kirk cousins would have been gone after that rather than signing another extension and it would have been what two years

of justin field starting i assume it would have been one year of kirk and then two years of field starting life would have been a bit different there we would have seen a year of Kirk and then two years of field starting. Life would have been a bit different there. We would have seen a lot of Justin Fields and Justin Jefferson might have turned out better with a better offensive line and coaching. I don't know, but unlikely that Fields was ever going to be a great quarterback. I think probably things worked out better with the fact that they ended up with J.J. McCarthy. But Mike Zimmer's treatment of Kellen Mond in this

article continued. He had a couple of strays for people as Mike Zimmer always does. And one of the things he said about Mond was he played three NFL snaps and two were bad. What did this guy do? Kellen Mond wasn't very good. I understand that he was a nice guy. He just didn't have it. And that happens a lot. And third round quarterbacks, especially that happens a lot. It's not like they spent four first round picks for Kellen Mond and he can't let it go that it wasn't a good draft pick. They drafted other defensive players in that draft that didn't work out either, which was a main reason that Mike Zimmer's tenure came to an end. And you certainly have to wonder at some point too,

about whether Mike cared at all about development at that point, and just, Hey, he was trying to save his job. And if that hurts some of the players that they did draft, but I don't even know what Chris Boyd said, Chris Boyd, former special teamer, but this one, one of the things about Mike is that he is actually hilarious. He is a super funny person. And this is really, I laughed super hard at this. Chris Boyd was a pretty good special

teamer for him for a few years in a corner that rarely played. And I don't know what he said about Mike Zimmer. I couldn't dig it up, but Zimmer's response was you had more special teams a few years in a corner that rarely played and i don't know what he said about mike zimmer i couldn't dig it up but zimmer's response was you had more special teams penalties than anyone i can remember which is true because if you recall he had i think three penalties for blocking in the back which is a great memory mike come on man taking shots at a special team or forgetting too many penalties. So I did get a kick out of that one. Uh, next comment from Zimmer. I said, uh, we paid Kirk a lot of money and ended up having to get rid of some guys on defense and weren't able to get the ones that we needed. And that is really what it all comes down to with Mike Zimmer is that there are two different versions of this

head coach. There is the hard nose coach that isn't all that politically correct that had the number one defense and a quarterback that he loved in Teddy Bridgewater and one that he liked in Sam Bradford and one that drove him crazy in Case Keenum. But ultimately their defense drove the bus. They ran the football. They played a tough style of football and they won a lot of games doing it. When you look up Mike Zimmer's career win loss record is win percentage compared to other coaches. It's good. There's not that many coaches that have Mike Zimmer's win percentage because the start of the Mike Zimmer era was good in a lot of ways. 2016, that was not on Zimmer, I did not think.

Going through the Teddy thing, losing the two offensive tackles, losing Adrian Peterson, so much happened in 2016. I don't know how they would have got through that. The Norv thing, I mean, I guess you could look at Zimmer and say that's his fault, but there was a lot happening in that season. 2018, I think, was the reality of teams that win, that the following season is always a lot harder. But that one, we can look at Zimmer and say,

you hired an offensive coordinator that you couldn't get along with and that wanted to do nothing but throw the ball when you don't want to throw the ball. Why did you do that? I mean, right? And yet it always comes back to Kirk making a lot of money, but you know what? They had one of the better defenses in the NFL in 2018 and 2019. There were opportunities there.

It wasn't until 2020 where it all came apart, but they didn't develop players. They didn't draft very well, which you can look at Mike and Rick. I mean, you can't just say it's his fault. He drafted those players. Someone also has to develop them. And when you are working around a quarterback contract, you have to make really savvy decisions in free agency and trades. And they didn't do that either.

So it was a joint effort for them to get to where they were with the bad defense. It wasn't just Kirk Cousins made it happen. It was also not being able to work around that. There are teams that have expensive quarterbacks who make the playoffs sometimes. I mean, it's just, they were able to 2019 win a playoff game, win 10 games in the regular season and sit starters in the final game of the year.

It's not like it was impossible to rebuild some parts of that defense. The other thing too, is that the, the players that left because of money were Everson Griffin, Linval, Joseph, Xavier Rhodes,

Trey Waynes. I don't know that any of those guys after that had very good careers after that. Linval is still around and he's out there with Zim as well, trying to hang on in the NFL at 35 years old. But Linval was not the same player in 2020 that he had been in 2017. And I think he may be also referring to going out and getting top flight free agents. That's true. They did sign Delvin Tomlinson. It's just that, you know, if you develop some players that you have,

you can fill in some of those spots. If you maybe lean into Kirk Cousins passing ability a little bit more rather than just trying to run the ball all the time that worked for the Vikings in 2022 with Kevin O'Connell giving a little more support to Kirk Cousins. It's not that I don't blame the losing the players on Kirk's contract. Of course, it was very difficult to work around. It just sort of shows you that it's always the finger pointing. It's always the, you know, somebody else, you know, Rick drafted the wrong guys and Kirk got paid too much money and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There is no such thing as accountability. There never was when he was here. And I didn't expect there to be in this article

either. And, uh, the last thing that stuck out to me was this quote from Mike Zimmer. I have to do this for me because I don't want people thinking I was a lousy coach. Somebody told me you don't have anything to prove in Minnesota, but I felt like I did. So he is there in Dallas trying to prove that he's not a lousy coach. I don't think anybody ever thought he was a lousy coach. I certainly didn't. I thought he was excellent as a defensive coach when he had the players who could execute his scheme and do what he needed them to do. And I thought that in general, he had an offensive philosophy that worked, which was the, the Kubiak type of system bringing in Kubiak, or Pat Shermer ran a similar type of thing where they worked the pass off the run.

They tried to protect Kirk cousins a little bit from himself and they hit deep shots down the field and they ran effectively with Delvin Cook. The problem was that they leaned so heavily toward, we're afraid that Kirk's going to hurt us and then didn't support Kirk really at all and acted like he was the enemy. I think that would have worked a lot better had it been more of a Kyle Shanahan, Brock Purdy or Jimmy Garoppolo type of thing where the coach and quarterback are more tied together, even if the quarterback has some limitations, but that scheme and that system works. He knew it. He broke it down many times of why it worked when you have a great running back like Delvin cook. It's, it's

just a lot of the things that have nothing to do with X's and O's and scheme that caused Mike Zimmer to be where he is. I respect that he is as hard nose of a dude as you're ever going to find. He wanted to go coach that game after his eye exploded and he was ready to drive to Jacksonville to do it. He's as tough as they come. And he is just always going to be exactly who he is, but I think it worked out better for everybody. They made the right decision probably a couple of years too late. I think after 2019, I remember that I was at Tennessee

fired their coach after they won a playoff game because they just thought we need a change. We need something different. And the Vikings probably should have done the same thing and made a change, drafted a quarterback in 2020 and took the team in a new direction. And it felt like for two seasons, it was a waste of everybody's time and whatever players were still there. And it was briefly reinvigorated by Kevin O'Connell with most of the same players and just a new attitude. And also, you know, things went certainly right in 2022. And overall, the organization lands a coach and a general manager that I think are headed in the right direction for them. There's with both people, with Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer, actually with everybody with Kirk cousins as well. There's a lot of things that you could give them as being very much on

their side and very much positive toward them. There's excuses that you can make for all of them, but yet they're all complicit in the way that things ended up turning out, which was they won one playoff game during the entire time Kirk was there. So a lot of interesting stuff from that article. Also, Mike talking about losing his son, Adam Zimmer, as well, covered a lot of topics and good work by Mark Craig of the Star Tribune to get that. So your reactions and also anything that's on your mind. I'm here to talk with you. I don't have a whole

lot going on the college football slate pretty men for the evening here. So I am interested in whatever you guys would like to discuss. So let's, uh, let's dive into it. Uh, JP says, Mike, Mike may be grumpy, but boy, was he right about that 2021 draft? Rick drafted four backups at best. Now you're right. And that's so often what I've taken away from Mike Zimmer is there's that, that old marriage saying, do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy? And Mike always chose being right.

And he just could never, he could never told that line of handling things that were out of his control. If it was out of his control and it didn't work out right for him, I think it drove him crazy. And also one thing that we always have to say too, is when it comes to like being competitive, sometimes being competitive is not rational. I mean, if somebody in regular life was a salesperson and you got a sale and you flipped your table and screamed and threw Gatorade and champagne everywhere, you'd be like, you're a lunatic, but we do it in sports

all the time because competitors are crazy. And there's some element of that that I give leeway to rationality, not always winning out when you're an incredibly competitive person, which I think goes for Mike Zimmer. And also the other thing is too, that when it comes to his generation, it's just a little different with football coaches. And that's another thing that we've really changed with a lot of the ways coaches act. Kevin O'Connell is one of them, Matt LaFleur, Sean McVay. Those are the types of coaches that exist now. But when Mike was coming up, that's not how it was. And Bill Parcells has always been

his guy. And this is a very Parcellsian type of attitude that he's always had. And it's sort of a take it or leave it with him. And I think that there is a generational gap in how we view these things. And it could even go for this as well. Track Pat says, why would he think this interview would be a good idea? He came across very poorly. Mike never seemed to care about that. Mike never seemed to care about that. He never seemed to care about that when we would ask him about a player and he would say, yeah, well, that guy's got to get out of the tub and start playing and stop being so injured or whatever.

Like, that's not a good thing to say, but he just never really cared how it came across. And as a reporter, it was often useful. I'll tell you, because if you thought somebody looked pretty good to you and you asked Zimmer and he said, no, that guy's not good. You don't know what you're talking about. It was great. I love that because then I thought, okay, all right, well, I'm wrong. That guy's not great. Or I'm right. That guy is great. And there wasn't left much to the imagination. I think that that's another thing about this article is that it really covers a lot of topics, but I don't think it tells us anything we didn't know, which was that this was how things were at the end when Mike Zimmer was there. And this is how he acted. He was not

always going to take the higher road. He was going to take his own road and tell his version of what he thought. And that was going to be about it. Uh, Dave says, Zim don't lie. Uh, his truth might not be the same, but he doesn't lie. And a lot of people around here said a lot of BS about him best to put it to rest. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if as far as BS goes, it seemed to me that he just confirmed everything everybody said about him was true, right? Rather than having it be a lot of BS, he just confirmed that he had a terrible relationship at the end with Rick Spielman, that he hated the fact that they paid Kirk cousins, all that money that he couldn't stand the draft picks that went wrong I mean all these things

are things that we thought about them it's very much a you you take it or leave it with Mike Zimmer and when a guy comes in to an organization that's in a lot of trouble and he brings this attitude it's maybe refreshing all right like he's gonna clean that clean up this building and get everybody whipped into shape but oftentimes we've seen this throughout history that guys who have this approach often burn out fairly quickly and with him he lasted longer than you would have expected evan says do you think zimmer's bringing a new new attitude to Dallas or his animosity is going to be toxic to that team? I don't think that it will be all that bad in Dallas for those players. I mean, he's going to be Zim, which means he's going to yell at people and he's going to coach them

hard. But I also think that he's in his element as a defensive coordinator. It's hard to explain how different it is between being a coordinator and being the head coach. That's the pool that we always choose from, but it's probably not even the best pool to choose from. There's a lot of people who are just better fit as being head coaches because you have to handle so many things. You have to handle the offense. You have to manage all the people in the building. If some guy on your team tweets something stupid, it becomes your problem. You have to manage all the people in the building. If some guy on your team tweets something stupid, it becomes your problem. You have to be made aware of it. If somebody gets arrested, it's your problem. You have to be made aware of it. And there's so many things that go

into it. You're handling, you're managing a lot of people. It's a, it's a high level management position. It's not just a x's and o's teach the technique and whatever happens is somebody else's problem and i think kevin o'connell has realized that as well uh over these last couple years and has been very good at managing all those things and is on top of it but with zimmer i think it was a lot to deal with because he's an X's and O's guy less so than maybe a mid-level manager, which is what a head coach often becomes being. Janet says Zimmer can help make the case for extensions for Kweisi and KOC. Well, I think it does serve as a reminder that where they are right now, as far as how people feel inside the building

about who the managers are, because the main, it's the general manager who manages the whole thing and the head coach, the mid-level manager who manages the players and all that and the coaching staff, they're a lot more suited to work for, I think, than Mike Zimmer. And they're still learning as suited to work for, I think, than Mike Zimmer.

And they're still learning as first-time GM, first-time head coach. And they've had to deal with a lot this offseason with Kyrie Jackson and different things that happened off the field and injuries and everything else like that. Those are the things that Zimmer had to go through as well, whether it was Adrian Peterson and missing that year, or if it was, uh, you know, Teddy Bridgewater getting hurt, he had to navigate through a lot of that stuff. And early on, I thought that his toughness and his resilience was helpful, but it wore and it wore and it wore on. And what you realize is

usually the culture of a building has so much to do with the players. And it was easier to survive all that stuff when you have a bunch of great players on your defense. And once they didn't, it was much harder and there wasn't really a move or a pivot there. But I think it is a, does serve as a reminder of what they've created here for players. And that is helpful for getting free agents it's helpful for keeping assistant coaches you notice that they've been able to keep it and even draw in a josh mccown here with kevin o'connell keep keenan mccardell was a really good move after zimmer had hired him they haven't had all these transient coaches since kevin o'connell has in here. And I think that a lot of people are going to want to be in the environment of the Minnesota Vikings rather than staying away

from it, which I think they were toward the end of Zimmer's tenure. Red star says Zimmer would have traded fields after two weeks or two weeks after a bad game. And he would be a pro bowler now. Maybe that's true. It's just, if it, if they drafted a quarterback that was Zimmer's idea, I think he would have liked the guy to the end of the earth. And if it was Rick's idea, then he wouldn't. I mean, that's kind of how, kind of how it is and how it felt with him. If he didn't like the draft pick, then he, it didn't seem like he had any interest in developing the player or, you know, going forward with somebody. And with Kellen Mond, sometimes guys are just a little bit in over

their head in the NFL and they can't play in this league. And that's Kellen Mond. Kellen Mond could probably be a coach somewhere. He was a great college player. He was a great high school player, but the NFL is just a very different league. And I'm sure Mike Zimmer realized that right away, but instead of looking at it and saying, okay, this guy's in over his head, I'm going to try to kind of protect him a little bit. Instead, he just assaults him repeatedly. And even to this day, because it wasn't his draft pick, like totally unnecessary. It's just unnecessary. And it's still bringing that up. You know, he played three snaps and two were bad. Like, come on, man. You didn't do anything wrong. He didn't do anything wrong. He just wasn't

a great quarterback. That's tough. It is tough. And I think a lot of you are seeing the same thing. I mean, I agree with this, with Todd storming out of the facility after Spielman drafted Kellen Mond. I mean, to call it immature is maybe even it's not enough, not enough, not harsh enough. It's absurd to have a head coach just stomping out of the building after a draft pick. I mean, it's a third round pick. What are we doing here? I think that also speaks to just how everybody, when they're on the hot seat acts differently. And this was Eric Hendricks point in the article is what Eric Hendricks was

saying is in the moment when there's all that tension and there's a lot of emotion, people act in ways that are not rational. And the difference in this article between Eric Hendricks and Mike Zimmer, it's so funny that Eric Hendricks is the one who apologizes for something, even though he was right. And Zimmer apologized for nothing. It's like, come on, man. Eric Hendricks has nothing to apologize for admitting that it was a fear-based culture. But then he says like, hey, it was one of those things where everybody was feeling very emotional and tense. And that's how those words ended up coming out. And the truth really ended up coming out. And with Zimmer, he is unwilling at all to mention that. it's very easy to say if he had just said the

reason that I assaulted Kellen Mond after that Packers game was that it just had gone so badly and I was so upset that we lost that I just couldn't control myself I was just mad I was lashing out everybody it's not Kellen Mond's fault. That's what he could have said. And instead he says, no, Kellen Mond did suck. Dude, just once, just once. Yeah. Kalen says, uh, Spielman was an okay GM Treadwell Hughes were busts busts. He did get hit man. Jefferson don't blame him for being pissed about Mond. He was right about that, but he's kind of petty. Rick Spielman's history as a drafter is a lot like a lot of other GMs who keep their job for a long time. If you go through and look at the star talent that Rick Spielman was able to bring in,

it's really impressive. You could make a Super Bowl team outside of the quarterback position with all the people that Rick Spielman was able to bring in with Harrison Smith, with Justin Jefferson, Daniil Hunters, DeFon Diggs, Eric Hendricks, Anthony Barr was a very good player. I think probably underappreciated because he got paid and then people have unfair expectations. Delvin Cook, Christian Derrissaw on a trade down. Brian O'Neill in the second round win. Even myself, I was like, wait, you're drafting a guy who weighs 270 pounds?

What are you doing? And Brian O'Neill's a great player. There were a lot of very, very good draft picks that Rick Spielman made, including two that are foundational to the future of this team. At the same time, I remember I added this up at the end of last year and it was something like 28 players. I don't know the exact number, but it was 28 players that they had drafted on defense since 2015. And maybe Cam Bynum was the only one who was good. That was before Metellus had developed. That's not going to get it done.

Mike, again, is right when it comes to that, that the draft picks Spielman had on the defensive side were not good. But when you draft enough players, and we've gone over this with Quasey many times with the 2022 draft, you do enough drafts. And at some point you're going to hit a cold streak. And at some point you're going to hit a cold streak. And at some point you're going to get hot streak. They got very lucky to get Jefferson. They got unlucky with Mike Hughes. Mike Hughes is still playing. I think he's a starter somewhere. Mike Hughes is a good player. They evaluated him. Well, he just got hurt and there was nothing that anybody could really do about that. So we could kind of go back and try to point to, was it your fault? Was it his fault? What's going on here? Uh, and, uh, you know, I just, I think that what Zimmer

confirmed was there wasn't anything different than what you thought it was like the way that you probably perceived. And I perceive the end of the Zimmer era and what went wrong. There's no mystery. There's no Zimmer would joke. I'm going to write a book about what happened someday. And you think, oh, well that must have a bunch of stuff behind the scenes that we didn't know about. Doesn't sound like it outside of walking out of the draft, but we knew that he didn't like the draft anyway, because he continually made comments about that, not having enough linebackers, not having enough depth, not, not liking any of the players that they had drafted and, and all that sort of stuff. And I think that had he taken a more even keel, it probably would have kept everybody a little more on track where it felt like there was a panicked feeling at all times. And one thing when you have such a difficult job

as playing in the NFL that takes so much work and is just a tough, long, arduous season. If you add extra tension and drama to that, your team's going to break eventually. And what could we always rely on with the Vikings with Mike Zimmer is that they would always break at the end. There would always be that snapping point, whether it was losing to the Detroit Lions who had no wins. I mean, even 17 with the NFC championship game, although we should give Philadelphia credit for that. But I mean, even then the team seemed emotionally gassed and Zimmer spent half the season talking about how he

didn't believe in case Keenum. So I just, I think that as a coach, you can add to that. If you're always at 10 out of 10 and then everything that goes wrong, it pushes you over the top rather than flying a kind of even. It makes it really difficult on everybody around you. Even if he was a very, very good defensive coach and had the right, some of the right people, it was either really right or really wrong with the offensive coordinators. Pat Shermer was really right. Uh, Gary Kubiak and, uh, Kevin Stefanski were really really right and other ones were not so much uh raymond there was tension from zim from the time they signed cousins that's right and you

know what happened there of course is that the expectations went up at that point even though they had already gone to the nC championship, the expectation was you better get all the way to the Superbowl because we spent all this money. So now this is the Superbowl or bust year. And if you think that people don't feel that or hear that when everyone's talking about it, of course they do. Of course they do. They know what's being said out there.

They, they know what the expectations of the ownership are. When you sign cousins, it is super bowl or bust in 2018. And once we got the sense, I think it was really the Buffalo game that something was not right with that 2018 team. And it was really the jets game that they blew out Sam Darnold and the jets and Zimmer was still upset after the game. That was where I really felt like, okay, this is not how this is supposed to be going. Because at that time, I think they were four and two or something like that.

Like they had a winning record. They had recovered from some bad losses, five, three, and one. They were still perfectly in good shape. And yet he was still going after the offensive coordinator after they won by 25 points. What? He was still going after the offensive coordinator after they won by 25 points. What?

And that's when you knew because Zimmer has no poker face that just something wasn't right there. Sean says, so they should not have hired Zim in the first place. You think the Wilfs are hiring Belichick after KOC is fired? Tell him to be Mr. Happy around here. I'm not really sure I understand your point. Of course, they should have hired Zimmer in the first place. It was a big success to hire Zimmer from 2014 until 2019.

That is a long stretch for a head coach in a league that fires coaches constantly. And through that time, he was well above 500 trip to the NFC championship game. If Blair Walsh just gets it a little bit more to the right, then he's got multiple playoff wins there. Another playoff win in 2019, which was masterful, by the way, their playoff win against the New Orleans saints was nothing short of his masterpiece. It was so brilliant the way that they moved around rushers who they had never moved around before. They wanted to push up the middle on Drew Brees, knowing that he's short and doesn't

have much escapability. He made mistakes in that game that you never see from Drew Brees, including a late fumble there. And they got the Kirk Cousins that they paid for, and he made a great throw in overtime. The defense held at the end of the game. I mean, they just, that was a great job coaching in that game for Zimmer. And so of course, if you're going to get those types of results coming from where they were, if you're going to be in the divisional round, if you're going to be on the doorstep of the

Superbowl, then it was a success to hire Mike Zimmer the first time. And they built up a team that's going to put guys in the ring of honor and all those things. It's just after that, they should have known when it was over. And I think maybe if you've listened to the show long enough that you, I kind of have a saying about if like you're going to, if you're thinking about breaking up with your girlfriend, you should just break up with her because you're already there. And I felt that way after 2019, if you're going to think about firing your coach, you should just fire your coach, not think about it and decide after the game, whether you win or lose. If he,

and he did, uh, by the way, mentioned that something about everybody thought we were going to lose and I was going to get fired. Uh, I'm certain of that, that if they lost Zimmer was going to be let go. And that's no way to live as an organization is right on the edge and negotiating short-term contracts. This is why I have made the case that they should extend Kevin O'Connell right now. Make sure that Kevin O'Connell and Kweisi Adafo-Mensa feel like they have security going forward to build this thing the way they want to build it, because this is what you see when you as an ownership add that tension to the situation by saying more or less, or at least giving the impression,

hey, you could be fired if you lose this game. That's not good for anybody. It's not good for the players. It's not good for the guy who's coaching. That can drive somebody insane. And I think that's kind of what happened that Zimmer and the way that he handled all of this stuff is very much petty. And the way he still talks about it is petty i'll never watch the vikings get what man like he got so much support here there were a lot of great moments with him here it's not every coach gets fired it's not something you should look back at and say bleep minnesota i mean uh minnesota couldn't have been much better for mike zimmer it was his chance of being a head coach when

nobody else would give him a shot, maybe because of some stuff like this. And it was a really good relationship for quite some time until different things happen. And one of them was of course, Teddy Bridgewater getting hurt, but most notably after the defense couldn't be rebuilt around Kirk Cousins contract. Zoomer Kev, you could be hard-nosed in 2024, but Zimmer never took accountability and only cared about himself. Players don't respect that. Yeah. I mean, only cared about himself is maybe going too far. I mean, I think that in his way, he cared about the players, but he just, his way was being extremely hard on everyone and pushing everybody like it was 1993. And the era that he came up with, this was a common way to coach. It's not an excuse. There were old coaches who were really good at this without taking on

the same attitude, but in the early parts, it was a team that needed to be pushed more and needed an edge to them. Uh, but the accountability part is huge. There were many times where it came out and it just, even when they were losing, uh, early in 2021, and he came out to us and started talking about all these stats. Well, we ranked eighth in this and 12th in that and 14th in that as if we were supposed, Oh, okay. You're fine. That changes the win loss record. It was very much like exactly what you're saying, as opposed to responsibility for being where they were, uh, gaslighting you, you guys don't know anything. We're actually a great team. Well, not if you're one in four or whatever they were one in three, then you're not a great team. Come on, man. We all know that. So there were a lot of those things where it seemed

like, well, you know, Kirk didn't lead the game winning drive, even if your defense gave up 28 points or whatever. Uh, and through that time, there were a lot of opportunities for him to just put it back on himself. And it always seemed like it was pushing it off to somebody else. And that's part of the, the way that we got here, I think is they looked for someone who was very different, which is what Wade is talking about. Zim and KOC, completely different ends of the spectrum, old school disciplinarian who loves a run and defense and KOC, the player's coach was allergic to running. We're going to find out, I think this year, if they are actually allergic to running or if it was just the, um, players that they had in the backfield, uh, or if he

really truly just doesn't want to run the football. I kind if he really truly just doesn't want to run the football. I kind of tend to lean toward doesn't want to run the football, but we'll see. They are very much at opposite ends of the spectrum as always tends to happen, where if you have a hard-nosed coach who's on defense, it is inevitable that you will hire somebody who is an offensive coach. And Zimmer alluded to that in the interview, something like, oh, everybody wants these quarterback guys now. Well, that is the most important position in the sport. And I'll raise my hand as someone who thought when they hired Kevin O'Connell, this is probably a good thing to hire someone who's going to be responsible for your future

franchise quarterback, because nobody is more important in the organization than now JJ McCarthy we didn't know who it was at the time and I would be on that side to hire your Lafleur hire your McVay and some of those guys haven't worked out but a lot of them kind of have if they can find the right relationship but they needed to go the opposite direction for what the locker room had at that time if they were going to keep it together but they needed to go the opposite direction for what the locker room had at that time. If they were going to keep it together, then they needed somebody else to be the voice in there. That was going to be a little more like you guys are veterans and know how to play football. And I don't have to yell at you all the time that it, his Kevin O'Connell seems to feel that

pumping people up, showing confidence in them, talking about the good things that they do rather than the bad things that they can't do is a better way to reach people. And I think that there is a balance there. If you blow sunshine up people's shorts all the time, maybe it can lead to people not taking you as seriously. I don't think that's what Kevin O'Connell does, but I think that there is an element of this game that requires an edge and requires toughness and somebody to be the disciplinarian because you are in charge. And with the Jordan Addison situation, I do wonder what Mike Zimmer's reaction would have been. And maybe I would have sided with him on that. But overall, you'd much rather be on the side of someone who can not feel like you're just

whipping around in the wind all the time with Zimmer, with the emotions of the game. And when you are always on 10 out of 10, as far as your tension and your emotions, and you're just always ramped up, then I think it's easier to be thrown off and for your team to be thrown off than it is if you have someone who's much more on the optimistic and positive side. There's all sorts of different styles that have worked. Bill Walsh was the intellectual type of coach. And you had somebody like Bill Parcells, who was the hard nose and difficult coach on his players. Sometimes I think that Zimmer forgot about something that Parcells was really good at, which was connecting on a deeper level with players. And even if he would give them a hard time, and even if he would yell,

he always seemed to find a way to have the players believe in him. And it really is evidenced in Curtis Martin. If you ever watch his A Football Life documentary, it's my favorite one. And he talks about giving his MVP trophy to Bill Parcells because he felt so strongly about how Parcells had coached him.

And that was the missing piece for Mike Zimmer. Since we're all just here talking about this, I can make a deeper connection. And this one, this one's going to go a little bit off the deep end. So just hang with me. If any of you have seen the movie citizen Kane, okay you've all seen citizen kane right well in citizen kane there is he says rosebud and spoilers the movie's from like the 50s or 30s or something so it's it's his childhood uh sled is what rosebud bud is and you get the idea that the reason the guy acted the way he was was because he always had this sentimentality, but he could never reach back into his childhood when he was happy. It's very deep. It's great. It's one of the best movies ever. And when I was reading Roger Ebert's

review of There Will Be Blood, which is a very similar movie, his criticism was that it didn't have the rosebud. It didn't have the sentimentality, the soft spot. And that's kind of how I look at Zimmer. If you were hoping for, and if you've seen there will be blood, the movie ends in very bloody, dark fashion because there was no soft spot. And I think with Zimmer, it can be that way. And I don't mean from his family perspective I don't mean this as a man I mean this as a football coach so just to be clear I'm not attacking him as a as a grandfather or as a father or anything like that I'm not attacking him at all I'm just thinking about it but but I don't think he ever showed that to players that okay I think he likes to

connect with them by busting their balls, but I don't know that he has that ability to really bring them in and say, Hey, I know I'm hard on you, but I actually love you. And I, I care about you and things like that. He would say that sometimes at the podium. I don't know if that is the impression that a lot of the players ever really got from him. And I know from all the reporting that's been done on Bill Parcells that it was the case with him. That might be the missing piece between the two. Or maybe Parcells just had better quarterback

and Lawrence Taylor. That could also be it. Sometimes we have to reverse engineer things, but you guys are right by bringing up Daniel Carlson. I mean, sometimes with these guys, you just go, Mike, why, why Todd, his strong point was developing kickers. Yeah. Why? So anyway, and, and you know what, if you have this opinion, like Doug says, I don't think you're wrong. If you say it was Rick Spielman because the drafting wasn't good. And the Corey Vedvik trade and the Chris

Herndon trade and the contracts and the signings and all of it played into it not working. And I guess we do reach a point. Okay. This, this, you guys are good. You guys are funny. I'll put this on the screen way. This is is funny the last scene is Zimmer taking a bowling pin to Kellen Ma come on Wade that's too that's too good that's too funny does anybody want to talk about other stuff I really want to play a damn football game. Don't you guys? I'm so sick of this. Everybody, this person said this, this person said that Brian floor is a bad guy. Zimmer's a bad guy. Okay. Let's play some football. Maybe we can do that. You guys got some questions. I mean, this Brad, a good question. Why did Zimmer do the interview? I think it's because he was hanging on to some stuff and he couldn't not say it. I, I have said this before. There is a Twitter meme where it's don't say it,

don't say it, don't say it. And then the person says it anyway, that's Mike. Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it. And then he says it. Oh, thank you. A Nino. The Boyd quote was from Pat Peterson's podcast where he said that the coaches uh let's see there was uh so tight and anal that they were surly with mistakes yeah uh well yeah but here's the thing it's a very difficult needle to thread when it comes to players and mistakes because chris boyd did keep blocking people in the back. It was a phenomenon almost. It just kept happening. And if you're the coach, don't you have to say that pretty strongly at some point, but I think Zimmer said everything strongly.

And that's maybe the issue when you talk about coaches being surly. And so I think it was more of, if you are always taking the same approach to every thing, not just big, egregious things, then you do end up wearing on players. That's, that's more of what it is. And there's coaches who are really good and really accomplished who, if you talk to some of their players, they'll say, yeah, at first it was good. And then after a while that act war on everybody, because you hear the same messages over and over. And when you don't win, we just tell a different story when you win. Oh man, that hard nose coach whipped them into shape.

And when you don't win that guy he just turned the organization inside out and was the worst that's just how it's how it works in sports so there you go uh let's see nada says uh you've had a few pundits on lately how does matt not come up with a 17 and 0 regular season yeah it's hard it's uh it's hard Matt not come up with a 17 and O regular season? Yeah, it's hard. It's a, it's hard not to come up with a 17 and O a regular season. And my recent pundits, they have, I think been very much, uh, towing the line with this team, which everyone has to do walk in the fence. What's the cliche I'm missing here? Just sitting on both sides of the fence, whatever it is. Nobody has wanted to come out and say,

they'll be awful. And nobody has wanted to come out and say, you're not going to believe how great they're going to be. It's going to shock you because everyone knows that that rests on the broad shoulders of Sam Darnold. And that's not somebody that any of the pundits want to make their bet on and just come out and say, no, I think they're right up there with the Lions. Can you make an argument across the roster that they are close to the Packers? Of course, the Lions, I don't think so. I just think they're too deep and the offensive

line is too good. You can't argue with that. And it's always been my feeling that if you rank somewhere between 10th and 20th for an offensive line by PFF, okay, you know, you could probably be just fine. If you rank in that top five, it's a massive advantage. And that's what the Lions have over the Vikings, who I think are probably more like the 10th or 12th best offensive line. So they've got them there. But if you look at the Packers roster, their line has questions. They don't have a number one receiver. They, you know, if you, if you look at their defense, they've got some potential holes there on defense, but it just keeps coming back to that same quarterback position. And I've been doing a bunch of statistical research and diving into what Sam

Darnold's teams were like before. Do you know this guy had one season where his offensive line ranked above 20th of his entire career? And guess which season it was 2022 when he played his best football and in 2022 uh actually his whole time in carolina he won eight out of 17 all the other quarterbacks who played there won four out of 16 and his quarterback rating was 10 points higher than theirs so there's a lot of evidence that you can support samarnold with versus the situation he has here and the receivers he has here. But it's so hard for any of us, including myself or anybody I bring on the

show to say, yeah, it's going to be great. It's going to be really great. Or it's going to be terrible because you know that they've got this defense, they've got this coaching staff. And what we think it is, is probably what it's going to be. Uh, nobody has reminded me yet to do the ad reads and I'm disappointed in you guys for that, but, uh, I'm going to do it anyway. U S cellular. That is a sponsor of the show. They noticed that the way we use our phones has gotten ironic. We try to put our phones down for dinner, but the menu's on a QR code. That is ironic. We hit like on social media posts that we don't actually like. That's ironic as well, which is why U.S. Cellular created Us Mode to help us reconnect with each

other and use our phones less ironically. A phone company wanting to use their phones less is ironic. Let's find us again with us mode from us cellular visit us cellular.com slash built for us to get started. By the way, could use a fantasy question for underdog fantasy read. So if you've got one, I will answer it until then. Keep asking your other questions. Let's see. Conrad will Jaron Hall willingly come back to the Vikings and this is written in all caps so do I have to should I yell this will Jaron Hall willingly come back to the Vikings my windows are open upstairs I they're gonna going to call the cops or something. Uh, I don't know. I don't know. I thought he'd be back by today. He's not back by today.

Could be talking to other teams. And I'm going to tell you a secret that if he signs with someone else, that's fine. It's not a big deal. People like to fall in love with the number four quarterback. And that has always been my experience. Jaron Hall seems like a great dude. And if he doesn't sign here, I wish him the best, but Jaron Hall, no impact whatsoever on the future of your franchise. Not this year, not ever. It's really going to come down to JJ McCarthy and Sam Darnold this year. Uh, Doug says the confidence in Madison kill the season. Uh, yeah, I mean, they right. Kind of in both ways, they were confident that he could be the guy. And then when he wasn't, they had no confidence in him and then they kept passing

with Josh Dobbs. So you're right in many many ways, the confidence certainly killed the running game for a season. I think that Kirk Cousins Achilles popping was what really did the trick for the 2023 season, but you are right. And with Alexander Madison, the thing that they missed here was that Alexander Madison was really good running zone stuff, outside zone stuff with a fullback in the backfield with him. That's where he had succeeded before. And he had been a good running back mixing in for Delvin cook, but single back mid zone system with Ezra Cleveland and Ed Ingram at guard. I think this system that they run really requires good guard play and they haven't had it. Maybe it'll be better with Blake Brandel, but I never thought Alexander Madison was

the type of running back that no matter what you throw him into, he's just going to dominate. He needed the right type of blocking and type of system to be an average back. And he was not able to do that. Conrad continues. Am I going to have to yell all the questions conrad uh will they bring back kane wongwu i don't think so the fact that he failed the physical made that make sense more it was surprising when it happened and then suddenly not surprising he had a back injury last year and you always worry about back injuries long term i don't know that that's why he passed the physical for sure but we can maybe guess that that could be it that they would bring him in take a look at where the back is and maybe the

vikings just thought if we try to run him out there for a full season as the kick returner then we're going to be scrambling if he gets hurt again. And that's why they decided to move on. That doesn't come with any sources or anything else. But when someone fails the physical elsewhere after being cut surprisingly, put two and two together and that's what you got.

Wade, here's a football question. Why do all the national predictions seem to inadequately take into account coaching? I don't think KOC and Flores are both, uh, both being top half coordinators is being taken into account. Yeah. Well, I agree with you there that when you take it to that into account, plus the impact

of a player like Justin Jefferson and how much improvement they made on the defensive side, that hasn't been talked about a whole lot. But when Vegas puts you at six and a half, you're just not going to get a lot of discussion from anybody about anything. They're not going to look too deep into your team. You have to earn that for the preseason people on the national side to talk about your team like a real contender. Next year, I think that the takes are

going to be pretty well informed on the Vikings because they'll be discussed as a team that's going to be on the rise with JJ McCarthy coming back. But when you're running out a career quarterback, who's I think 15 games under 500 with a 78 career quarterback rating or whatever it is, who has failed in two different locations. I don't think a lot of those folks are going to go out on a limb and say, yeah, actually, I think that coaching is going to get this team into the playoffs, especially with the way the NFC North looks here. We've seen these gentlemen coach. We've seen the offense with Kirk cousins, especially in how good it could be and

Sam Darnold is clearly better than Josh Dobbs clearly better than Nick Mullins way more talented at least and the defense is improved and we've seen what Flores can do we we know these things because we pay close attention that's why you're here because we pay close attention and not necessarily watching tv where they're trying to cover all 32 teams because we pay close attention and not necessarily watching TV where they're trying to cover all 32 teams. Cause we can dive deep into the nuance. And yet still I have to stop short at saying, Hey, this team could be really good because of who's playing quarterback. That's what, that's what it's all about. I think you're right. I think when you have above average coaching on both sides of the field, that you are going to at least be in the seven, eight, nine range.

And then the football gods will determine what happens from there. That's how I feel about this season is, is that that's probably where they will be. Uh, uh, Conrad says, if you want to yell my question be my guest uh only did it to get your attention oh i i'm always looking right at the uh the comments section uh conrad so don't worry about that but i did feel the need to uh yell your question. All right, hold on. Let me scroll back up. Let's see. Romain, does KOC really want to run the ball this year with Jones?

I think so. I think so. That's why you sign him, is that they, two years ago, their answer was to sign Josh Oliver to a huge contract to be a run blocker and he was an excellent run blocker it just didn't change anything and when you look at their run blocking grades from pff and then you look at alexander madison's grades from pff you can pretty easily

say okay the blocking wasn't perfect and the scheme certainly not i don't think i don't think they had an identity but also the running back shouldn't be graded about as bad as you can grade for a running back and aaron jones is on the other side of that spectrum he's one of the best players in the league if he's uh at a hundred percent i think they would have preferred to have run the ball regularly and built everything off of the run more than they did it's never going to be that it's with kirk it was always going to be a drop back type of system but this year more play actions more rollouts more zone stuff for aaron jones more getting him to the outside all of that has to be part of the plan if they don't and they just say hey sam

darnold go win every game yourself then there's going to be some great and there's going to be some that are really tough uh todd if the uh is the giants a must-win game if they lose they could easily start on four i think it is yeah i was just talking with somebody about that today about the way the schedule plays out because uh there's an episode that i did with tage seth where we went through the first quarter of the season and Tej thinks they could get to two and two. I kind of think so too. Then maybe you got to win a game that you're not supposed to, but it's not like they can't do that.

The giants one though, if you lose that, I can't defend you. I can't, I can't project positively anything else beyond that, because this isn't even Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay did have a pretty nasty defense last year. They got a lot of stars on that side of the field.

They also especially had two good receivers and Baker Mayfield did a great job keeping the ball away from them. And then they shot themselves in the foot. But I think the Bucks team last year is better than what this Giants team is. This is a game that you should absolutely win and you could lose the next three. I still think they'll get one that maybe people don't expect against either San Francisco, Houston, or Green Bay, but that's the point about winning the Giants game. And I always really enjoy thinking about this, how the schedule

kind of crumbles and what happens if you win this game, if you lose that game, then how does it feel? What does the path look like? Because there are so few games and they do have a huge magnitude. If you win the Giants game, then you can go one and two the next couple of weeks and come out 500 after that and then get into the schedule. Yeah, you're going to play the lions, the Rams. You could try to split those games and right. And then, and then you get into the easier part of the schedule going forward from there. But if you start, Oh, and one, and then San Francisco is coming here and then Houston, Oh man, you're going to feel like you're down

big time after just one game. If they don't win the giant, uh, against the giants. Uh, this is funny. Zoomer Kev based on the players, the Cowboys are bringing in. Seems like the Zimmer is living in 2018. Hey, the, uh, Minnesota Vikings have Kamu Grugier Hill, uh, Stefan Gilmore, Andrew Van Ginkle, Bobby McCain. Are we noticing a trend? Every coach does that. They bring in their old guys. Yep. That's what they do. Tim says Zimmer took us to the NFC championship game in three years.

Team thanked him by getting a quarterback he didn't want. Why is him the bad guy for being upset about that? Oh, that's not why. I think, you know, that's not what anyone's saying. Tim, we've said it repeatedly he was right about that I'm this is that was my thing my whole thing was don't sign Kirk Cousins in 2018 I of course I couldn't have agreed more with Mike Zimmer that they shouldn't have signed him and also I think that was the beginning of the end because of how they were asking Kirk Cousins to play, what they wanted him to do, what he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be the guy that took

them to a different level. And he's just not that type of player who's going to make up for those other deficiencies. If you have a great quarterback, they can, they can overcome that. But if you don't, then they won't. And you're going to end up getting fired. And Zimmer knew that he was right. He told us at the combine 18, he told us straight up. If we spend all of our money on one guy, we're going to have some problems going forward. And he was right. He knew that at the same time even if you think and and look quesadilla fomenta accidentally said it in the usa today article when he first got here he said kirk's a good quarterback and the great quarterbacks win the super bowl i'm sure he didn't mean to say that out loud or it wasn't quoted the way that he wanted it out there, but he was right.

He knew what Mike knew and they didn't extend Kirk for the same reasons that Mike didn't want to sign him. But what Kevin O'Connell did was I'm going to just put everything into this guy and try our best. And what Mike said is I'm going to fight back against this guy the whole time. That's really the issue. It's not whether he was right about that. A red star. What type of year do you think Sam Darnold, uh, think has Sam Darnold play well enough to come back next year, but also know he's a backup. So he can't suck, uh, but he can't be good enough to think he can start. Okay. So this is a very, this would have to be a, a very small window of type of performance for Sam Darnold. He would have to, I don't just can't see any situation where Darnold agrees to stay as a

backup after starting the whole year. He would go somewhere else where we'd have a chance. There's another team out there, team X, who's going to draft Shadur Sanders that might want Sam Darnold to be a bridge quarterback. And he's going to go to that team instead. If he plays decently, he might, if he played poorly and they found some ways to win, maybe that's it. And he just really loved it here. And they offer him a decent amount of money and nobody else does. I just don't see that as being really too plausible, but maybe, uh, maybe there is a scenario where he could stay here by playing just good enough. He won seven games. No one else was going to make him a starter.

They said, Hey, well, we love you. We'll pay you $12 million to stay as our backup. Or you could go to Carolina or whatever, be there back at Carolina, whoever Seattle, somebody who's going to draft quarterback. And maybe he just says, no, I'd rather stay here for the same money. Uh, but then why would the Vikings pay 12 million to a backup quarterback? They're going to try to save money with that position next year. Don't see it as being all that possible. Peter, how much time do you think they'll give Sam Darnold for what? Before they bench him? I mean, hard to bench a guy when there's nothing to bench him for. They can't bench him for Brett Rippin and they can't

bench him for Nick Mullins. It would have to be going really badly to bench him for Nick Mullins. And even Jaron Hall is not on the team presently. They'd have to be out of the playoff race completely to play anybody who's on the younger side. How long they're going to give them 17 weeks and strap yourselves in my friends. It's crazy what Sam Darnold's game logs look like. I was for this article I'm working on for Monday. I've been looking through his seasons and how they shake out. And something I discovered that i forgot was after the seeing ghosts game which was in 2019 and he had been playing terribly after that he had a 10 game stretch where he was an above average quarterback by at least the box score statistics and sometimes the stretches with darnold lasted long enough for people to get convinced by him and then it would go off the edge of the earth again.

That's where Kevin O'Connell's biggest challenge is to avoid these catastrophe games that Sam Darnold has, because that's really been what's derailed him throughout his career. I had the crazy stat the other day about how, when he was winning or tied, he was a fine quarterback, but when he was losing, he's the worst quarterback in the league because trying to come back and make crazy plays all the time and stuff like that, they have to keep them contained from having the catastrophe appearances that he's had throughout his career. And there's going to be those, but if you could limit it to four or five, then you've got a chance to make the playoffs. Derek says, for those of us who grew up before power rankings and offseason tears, only the only respect that was earned back in the day was playoff wins and Super Bowls.

Now get off my lawn. This is a product. You're absolutely right about this. It is a product of the 24, seven, 365 nature of football. And if only we could find people that were responsible for talking about football for three 65 and every detail all the time, I'll look for those people, but there is a need for creating content constantly. Now, when you cover a team, they give it to you. They do interviews in the star Tribune that lets you talk for an hour about it, or things

happen and they make cuts. And we have all these things that go on that there's only like a six week period where we don't have something that's happening with the individual team that I cover. That's great on the national side the season they've got all the games and it's drinking out of a fire hose for people who are on espn uh and there's so much to talk about at all times but in the off season they're not going to talk about who's making the v practice squad. So they should, but they're not. So they got to rank stuff and do tiers and have arguments and stuff like that about football to keep the wheels churning of the most popular sport, which does result in exactly what you're

saying, which is everybody makes a million predictions before the season. And by six weeks into the year, it's all completely wrong. And that's life watching sports. And we all have a good time with it. Zoom or Kev says some books do have the Vikings over under seven and a half wins. That was, yeah, that's much more reasonable. And I was going off of circa because they bring me out there and that's where they had it, but they did have it weighted. And I'm sorry, I'm not the the gambling expert so i don't fully understand this

but weighted toward it could be seven and a half if it was juiced toward the something toward the under i think must have been it you could do seven and a half and you're right i've seen some books do have it at seven and a half That makes more sense to me than six and a half. You have to be bad to be at six and a half quite bad. Um, serious question. Does Kwesi have a martyr complex? I don't know what a martyr complex is. You're going to have to in capitals explain to me what that is. I don't think the man has a complex at all i think what quesiodafo menta wants to do when he does press conferences is he wants you the fans because that's who they're talking to to understand his line of thinking and the challenges that face a general manager when he's making

decisions. Sometimes the way that it comes out can end up as a meme. And sometimes it could be a very complicated concept that he's trying to explain in a 45 second answer. And I would just implore everybody to go back and listen to my interview with quay Cid off Almenta in this format where he had 20 minutes just me and him talking about team building and football and the draft process of picking JJ McCarthy and what you heard from him is with more space to explain than a press conference what he was thinking because at a press conference you're trying to get a lot of answers well how's the guard look how are you building your team it's like this a lot it's a lot and some general managers will just say nothing

and what quasi tries to do and again sometimes stumbles while doing this is really lay it out this is how i view this this problem that I'm trying to solve of building a championship level team. Here's what is in front of me and how I've tried to solve it. And I think even some of the metaphors and stuff like that, they just get a little lost in translation, but I don't think it was hard to figure out what he meant when he said he felt like he was down 33, nothing. He meant when you looked at the 2022 team on paper that he was taking over and he's looking at it from a three year window and what do you call it? Time horizon, which of course people made fun of, but it's just three years. Sometimes you could just say three years. You don't have to use some other word, but that's all right. That's okay. So three years. Sometimes you could just say three years. You don't have to use some other

word, but that's all right. That's okay. So three years he was looking at and he's going, how am I going to deal with all these contracts? The ownership wants us to win, but also feeling's old. Hunter wants more money. Cook's old. Kendrick's is old smith is old where am i going to get foundational players and get our cap space prepared without a lot of draft capital and his answer was let me try to get it all back in one draft now one thing i would mention in my research about 2022 i wrote an article about that was go take a look at the players drafted after number 12 and if you don't include kyle hamilton of course that's the guy they should drafted go look at the other players there go go look at them not too many good zion johnson's barely played kenyan green

barely played and played poorly johan dotson's on his second team just saying that was something i stumbled across but that was his point and the way that he framed it was by telling an anecdote about what he had said to kevin o'connell about it but when you try to tell that story in 30 seconds or less you might not get all of it. So you have to fill in the pieces because I'll be honest. It took me listening back to it a couple of times to really understand, uh, what he was talking about. And then when I did, it was like, Oh, okay. I get it. I get what he's saying now. Uh, Derek says, Casey also said he's looking forward to 2025. That's saying the inside thing out loud. Me too. Next year feels like it might be years better than the squad. And this is what

I have had some trouble with trying to preview this season and talk about it because I really like covering football games. I know you guys are shocked by that so when there's a football season ready to happen and there's uncertainty and there's a new quarterback and there's a lot happening here there's a tough schedule to start the season we get to see the 49ers CJ Stroud go to Lambeau field. I'm freaking pumped guys. This is what I do, right? I've waited a long time for this. And then when we talk about the season through that lens, you're not wrong. The organization isn't wrong. 2025 is the year where you're talking about putting a bunch of money into free agency. JJ McCarthy takes the big step forward from where

he was. He showed all the signs. It wasn't that long before Jalen hurts was in the super bowl. Wasn't that long before Purdy was in the super bowl. Wasn't that year two for Purdy. If you build the team and the guy is at a certain level, you've got a chance, right? And that's 2025. That's not today because he got hurt. So how do I weigh these two things? And you know what, how I'm going to do it is a week to week league folks. That's how we're going to do it. And the, the schedule for podcasts is going to be phenomenal. By the way, we got Jeremiah Searles coming back for Tuesday morning, left guard, uh, Brian Murphy, his first Monday morning Murph is this week live chat every Wednesday night, just like this.

We've done a ton of these in the off season emergency podcasts. Of course, Thursday, I think we're still doing round table. Dane Mizutani post game starting with New York. I'm really excited about it. And I also completely feel you when you're looking forward to what's next. But you can't get there before you go through this and this will have implications on that it's not catchy but it's true uh zoomer kev did you play golf yesterday yes i did i shot an 89 at emerald greens in hastings really nice

course enjoyed it played with a couple of friends who are better than me, which always makes you press a little, but maybe play a little better. But my friends played in the low eighties. So they're a little bit, a little bit smoother around the greens than I am. I putted terribly. I think I had five, three putts. You're not, you're not breaking 80 with five, three putts. It wasn't great, but I drove the ball well, and I was very happy with the long irons, and I can live with myself if I can't putt. If you miss three weeks, four weeks, six weeks, how long does camp go on?

Five, six weeks? I haven't played golf at all through camp, and then come back, you're not going to have touch. So I forgave myself. 89, I felt pretty good about. Kevin, if Darnold goes 28, 12, they could easily win 10 games. I assume you mean interception and touchdown ratio. Oh yeah, they could, he would finish maybe in the top seven and touchdowns. If he throws that many,

uh, if he only throws 12 interceptions, we that's, you know, what's a great idea, Kevin. That's a great idea to have markers for, if you get this, this far, if you get to 28 touchdowns, you're winning 10 games. If you throw 12 or less interceptions, you're winning 10 games. This is a good play. Like how many touchdowns, how many picks does he need? I'm going to bring this up throughout the week with some guests. What would the touchdown to interception ratio have to be? And I know they can run the ball in.

Maybe we'll do it with where would they have to rank offensively? Where would they have to rank defensively to get to 10 games? I like this. People remind me of that later in the week. And I think I want to try to, I want to try going live with searles this year sometimes things go wrong with him because he's also an agent and he has to take phone calls in the middle of our recording so i got to check with him first if we can go live and answer questions i'd like to though uh janet i know i've evolved a lot in my job why not sam i mean it's happened before with a lot of quarterbacks there. It's not that hard to get

around to. You could see it. If you're trying to say, is it likely, is it the most likely outcome? I don't know if it is that he wins 10 games and is really good, but it's also not ridiculous. You're not a fool for saying, Hey, isn't he only 27? Couldn't he continue to get better? Which in quarterback years is not that old because these guys play in their prime until 35 plus. And he looked pretty good in training camp. He looked pretty good in the one preseason appearance. It's not crazy. Uh, Zoomer Kev, the over 6.5 wins is around minus one 50 odds. You have to bet one 50 to win a hundred. I gotcha. I gotcha. So that means that is how the juicing works. Thank you. I'm just not, I, I feel as a reporter that I shouldn't bet on games or teams. So I don't, I don't do that.

We play the fantasy. We have fun with that. I haven't seen a fantasy question yet. Somebody clock's running here. Um, Oh yes. Manny. Yes. Manny is coming back. Manny Hill, Monday and Thursday. We will absolutely, there will be guard talk. You're right, Daniel. Uh, but that those are live and, uh, that'll be, uh, so I'm planning on being live Monday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night. And then if anything happens, it's crazy Friday. And then of course, after game. So that's a lot of live. That's a lot of live. That means a lot of pressure on you guys to first of all, tell me when the ad reads are supposed to be, but also to show up and have fun because that's very

motivating. Like a big crowd here that wants to talk about Mike Zimmer being petty. What model of Nike hat is this? I have no idea. I bought it at golf galaxy. You like it? I like it. All right. It has taken an hour and 26 minutes to get to the, the, uh, end of the comments almost.

Um, so we'll wrap in a couple of minutes and I've got, there's gotta be some crazy college football to, uh, talk about. Uh, Derek says the win loss tie. We're going to watch the podcast. We are fanatic addicts. Well, I appreciate that. Uh, Derek always appreciate that. You're right about that.

Think about this. This speaks to you guys that purple insider is still waiting on a playoff win. When I was with 1500 ESPN, I covered the Minneapolis miracle and I covered 2019. And actually what happened after 2019 is sort of funny because they beat the saints and when it is that loud the the superdome is a different thing of loud even from us bank stadium because i have a little bit of i'm a little bit back in us bank stadium i'm in the the back row and the noise gets a little bit i can still hear it really well but it gets a little bit, I can still hear it really well, but it gets a little bit eliminated with the sound system and stuff. But in the Superdome, you're just sitting out there.

And I imagine the reporters have to wear ear things. I'm sure they do. It was crazy loud, super exhausting game. And I'm on the phone with Judd Zolget. I do the full 45 minute podcast recap on the phone with Judd Zolget. I do the full 45 minute podcast recap on the phone and, uh, I hang up, put it down and write my article like, man, it was the longest day ever. And I get a phone call from Judd. He's like, yeah, we, uh, weren't recording that whole time. So can you do it again? And I was leaving the building. So I'm walking through the streets of new Orleans on

the phone with Judd. Like, yeah, they won the playoff game. I got no voice left. I have been screaming to Sam extra moves sitting next to me the whole time. Uh, but that was the last playoff win. 2020 is when I started purple insider. All of you came with me. It's phenomenal. And I was down 33-0 to Judd. Yes, that is how it felt. And I got lost because I couldn't look at my GPS. My old phone must not have done that. Look at my GPS while I was on the phone. So I walked down the wrong street at least a couple of times. And it's a little scary there when you don't know where you are and you're walking down the wrong street so that happened to me in 2019 but since then no playoff wins in the purple insider era would uh enjoy covering something like that

some point and we'll see it'll it'll happen uh lee says have you ever heard why houston moved on from jonathan grenard seems strange Houston moved on from Jonathan Grenard? Seems strange to move on from a young, talented edge rusher. The only thing I could guess is that they were targeting Daniel Hunter who, um, 16 and a half sacks last year. Isn't he? Well, maybe he's from, is he from Louisiana? I forget where Hunter is from. Something makes me think Texas, but injury may be part of it that there were some injury concerns. I mean, I, he has not played more than I think 650 snaps and it's something to keep an eye on is that's why I think they've got the rotation going. Um, it's a hard to get good fitted hats. This, this one isn't, this one's got

the latch in the back. I, I, my head is oddly shaped. So I always, I can't get the fitted ones. They always just end up going over my ears. That's where we're at right now. Is it nine o'clock? It's an, Oh, an hour and a half in, this is what always happens. Goes off the rails with you guys. Uh, how about intern Paul, uh, Paulul hodowanek that's for the og listeners to the show paul i will try to i'll try to get him on i'll try to get paul for a live stream this week to get his uh opinion i had him i think once over the off season around draft time and paul is now indeed writing for pga tour.com so he is doing awesome stuff with the pga tour he works for them he plays golf all the time now he's better than me uh will i be able to get courtney on a podcast

oh absolutely yeah 100 especially when they play chicago yep recently it's actually been hard because uh she has been on TV a lot. And normally if she was just covering the bears, we could get together for a few podcasts, but she's flying back and forth from Chicago to New York. And that's been crazy, but she'll, yeah, she'll definitely be on a hundred percent before they played the bears. Definitely. Janet says a newcomer.

Appreciate you. Thank you, Janet. I am glad to have you here it's been i'm glad to get your questions and uh happy that you're a participant in these chats always like new folks that's why that's why i try to tell the story of purple insider sometimes where we've been how we got here old jokes that we have try to give a little background on those because i know new people are showing up all the time and i'm thankful the youtube i was looking back at this for last year i think around this time at the start of the season the youtube had

maybe a thousand subscribers now we're closing in on 10 so tell your friends the growth of this these live chats has been awesome and i just could not do it without all of you guys. Conrad, it would be a terrible live stream if I just answered no questions and just talked at myself. It feels like we're all talking ball together. It's become very fun. I wasn't sure at first whether I would enjoy it or not, but I really do. Tell us more about Kaylin Kaler's new podcast.

Haven't heard her talk before. Yeah. I did a interview with her that you could check out. It's on the channel spiraled. I am a part of it in an episode. That's going to come out soon. She looked into this religious sect is the nicest way I could put it. That has kind of convinced some football players to do some really wild things and leave their families. And it's a pretty crazy story. And one of those players is TJ Clemmings. And she asked me at the combine, I think two years ago about TJ. And so that's, she interviewed me and that's why I was part of it and i listened to the first episode it's crazy it is absolutely crazy so if you like i made the true crime comparison to the 2022 draft if you like that sort of stuff that people joining cults and leaving their families for

youtube things that they got sucked into make sure you check that out this is a great YouTube thing to get sucked into, which is just talking about football with me. Don't get sucked into that other crazy stuff. So it's worth listening. It's called a spiral. Make sure you check that out. Um, Oh, uh, so I'm not sure Ross, am I going to do the podcast with that franchise guy again? Marcus Whitman is who you're talking about. Great guy. He moved this year to the East Coast, and I'm not sure how that's going to work out schedule-wise with us or if he is going to have time to do it. So we'll see.

I really enjoyed it. Marcus is a great guy. We haven't talked about it yet. It was a strain on both of our schedules because Tuesday was the day that we did it. And last year they moved the coordinators to Tuesday. So I was covering coordinators and then trying to do that. We'll see. I hope so. Cause he's a great guy, but I haven't locked that in yet. Where can you read it? Oh, the Kalenlin kaylor thing yeah just uh it's on like itunes spotify it's just called spiraled i was able to find i'll show you what it looks like i was able to find it pretty easily um this is this is what it looks like it's like a picture

of uh kabir bajabia miller but it's got some vikings colors to it for tj clemmings so yep check that out oh yeah yeah. Uh, Drew, Drew McGarry will be back. I was thinking about this. The other thing, this is, this is how he sucks us into the purple insider call. I mean, next thing, you know, you're going to be telling your wife, did you know how many receptions Larry centers had back in the day? And she's going to be like, what are you talking about? And you're like, I don't know. Purple insider told me to become obsessed with fullbacks. I've just become a different man. It happens. It can happen just like that. But yes, Derek, Drew McGarry will certainly be back on the show and give him credit for only cussing one time.

The last time he was on uh anyway so yeah but no seriously it's going to be a very exciting year for us i feel like we've reached this point with purple insider where i have a real team like you guys are mentioning the different people that come on and that are guests and that have been huge for me to have on the show, like Drew, like Courtney, Jeremiah, Manny, all the people that are part of the Purple Insider team. It's been awesome. And the other beat reporters who will be making regular appearances,

Andrew Kramer, Will Raggetts, Alec Lewis, Kevin Seifert. So you're going to hear from everybody on the show. Yes, the Bible, that's definitely sacrilegious. Uh, we shouldn't call it that, but the, I, I didn't say this. Uh, you did the, the Bible is my book. Let's not say that. Let's not say that. I'm always like being wary of what the aggregators will take from the show. Now they're going to take, uh, at Matthew collar says his book is like the Bible only for the cult of fullbacks, which is us and purple things. Okay. Maybe that's it. Wade. The cult analogy is great because it's all the purple Kool-Aid we're drinking. Well, you guys have to,

you do have to, I've thought about this and I like this about what we have here is it does take a certain type of person to be watching a live stream, talking Vikings in the middle of June. And a lot of you were there doing that, asking questions and your obsession is both healthy and great because this is the greatest game to follow. So I'm glad that all of you guys are as insane about football as I am. And I look forward to continuing to lead these conversations that will not destroy your families, but you should just keep listening.

So anyway, before this gets even weirder, we should probably call it a night and I'm watching my friend's dog. So I've got to walk that dog. Thank you so much, everybody, for watching, listening, jumping along. And I don't know if anything happens. It always could in Purple Land.

Then I'll jump on tomorrow. I wasn't planning on it. The next time you'll hear from me is Monday Morning Murph with Brian Murphy. So we will catch you all then. And yes, I do have the Diet Dr. Pepper alongside. So thanks a lot. And next week, guys, football season is here. Can't wait.

Football. See you then.