Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Mike Zimmer gets an interview???? Reaction to Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix's Senior Bowl weeks with our correspondent

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

Matthew Coller and Purple Insider Senior Bowl correspondent Terry Horstman dive into Michael Penix Jr.'s decision to not play in the Senior Bowl and how Bo Nix and Spencer Rattler looked in the game and week of practices. Plus other players at RB and defensive line that stood out and Mike Zimmer is interviewing for the DC job with the Cowboys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider is presented by PrizePix. Go to prizepix.com and use the code PURPLE for a first deposit match up to $100. prizepix.com, code PURPLE. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me following the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, our Senior Bowl correspondent, Terry Horstman. What is going on, Terry? How was your week? Did you have a good time in Mobile? I have had a great time in Mobile. I have now been here for a while.

Same time as, I don't even know what day it is. I know it's Senior Bowl game day. That's how I've been telling time the last, you know, five or six days that I've been down here. I am ready to get back to Minneapolis. I don't care what the weather is, but I do. I have been told it's a pretty, pretty significantly warm February by normal standards up there. So I'm ready to come home. And if you watch the Senior Bowl, anyone listening to this, watch the Senior Bowl knows that I think all the players who are here are also ready to go home.

And a lot of them took the opportunity to leave early, and I'm sure we'll talk about all that. So great week down here. Thank you to everyone involved with putting the Senior Bowl on. I know it's a lot of moving parts. I am ready to be back in Minneapolis right now. Yeah, I played basketball outside the other day, which I don't think I've ever done in February before. It's only like eight degrees warmer in Alabama right now. So I'm not even getting like a good warm weather advantage.

So yeah, ready to be back. Not to spend too much time on the weather, but I'm headed out to Las Vegas for Radio Row and I looked it up and it's like eight degrees, 10 degrees warmer. And I'm like, okay, so Vegasbruary doesn't even get me anything better uh but anyway because of the uh way the game played out we could spend a lot more time talking about the weather because it was maybe the ugliest senior let's start in a different spot the actual highlight was thurman thomas talking about on the broadcast how when in 1988 he won a car and drove the car home for being the Senior Bowl MVP. And that's what you miss by watching the game in person. I did record the broadcast,

and I wasn't going to re-watch the football game I just watched because I didn't think there would be much reason to. But to hear Thurman talk about that in 88, I'm sure will be worth it. So I'll find that snippet of the broadcast for sure. It definitely was. But let's start with a different news item that came out actually midway through the senior bowl and then we will get to all the other storylines including how little bo nicks played and michael pennock's not playing at all uh which again talk about a lack of highlights for the day but we'll talk about their whole week in just a moment but as the senior bowl is going on

adam schefter reports that mike zimmer is talking with the dallas cowboys about their defensive coordinator coordinator opening and my first thought terry on this was that's perfect for them and actually kind of scary for the rest of the nf because I think Mike Zimmer with the personnel that Dallas has could be very very good could be a really good fit to go along with what they have there yeah I agree 100% I mean I you are the one who broke the news to me because I was trying to be on Twitter during the game and the connectivity in the stadium at the Senior Bowl was not great. I think I just came back from the bathroom and I was able to get on email, but not X, formerly known as Twitter.

So I saw your note saying we've got to talk about the Zimmer news. And I was like, what Zimmer news? And someone by me had better connectivity success or whatever. And I said, oh, Zimmer's interviewing for the DC spot with the Cowboys. And honestly, with what the Cowboys have set up, I remember thinking them hiring Mike McCarthy was like, all right, great. Great move to compete 10 years ago. And I think the cynic in me would maybe have the same reaction to this Zimmer news.

But I think it's kind of worth it i was thinking about this on the drive back to my airbnb and then just in the you know few minutes here like it's worth it for them because if it works it works great and it is like you scary is the right word for it um just imagine some of the vikings defenses when zimmer really had them at their peak if you would add in added in someone like micah Parsons, Duran Blander, Trayvon Diggs to that unit, it would have been even better. So they're set up to succeed right now. I don't think there'd need to even be much coaching up that Zim would need to do down there. And maybe these few years away have been good for him you know that's there's you know precedent uh across all sports that you know when uh guys sort of step away for a little bit maybe collect their thoughts and then just a change of scenery would be good and even you know towards i know the end

game for zimmer minnesota wasn't great uh but i still you know nothing he didn't show anything that would lead me to believe he's forgotten how to coach defense so i i kind of hope they hire him i just want to see how it goes well that's a great point because there were many things over the years that i criticized about mike zimmer but absolutely none of them were his ability to coach defense and when their defense has struggled in his final couple of years, I don't think it was really the lack of coaching or lack of trying. I think it was lack of personnel. When you have failed draft after failed draft of defensive players, when you're desperately flailing at signing free agents like Bashad Breeland. I mean, usually that's going to be a problem for the defensive coordinator.

But at his best, which was for many years, I mean, he doesn't have a small sample size of one good season with the Vikings. He had a bunch of good seasons with the Vikings. And then before that with Cincinnati, a long, long history. And he's been around in the game for so long that he's had to adapt his defense many times. And I think that's what you're talking about is somebody who probably spent the year studying. What did I miss? What could I see better? What are the trends that people are doing now? And he's been able to change things around. He came in to the Vikings with the double a gap blitz and he was doing that like crazy, but then teams started to figure it out. So he adapted and

he went to different types of pressure packages and things like that and you mentioned like you're not really going to have to get young players and coach them up you're going to have star players that are just handed to you on a silver platter it really is a great fit for him there him and mike mccarthy being in the same team would be pretty strange considering all the times that they went to battle against each other so we we'll see if Dallas decides to do this. The connections run extremely deep. He worked for the Dallas Cowboys for a long time, going back to the Deion Sanders days. And when they passed up on Zimmer to name Chan Gailey, the coach years later, Jerry Jones said that he regretted that and that he had wished that he had hired Zimmer instead. And then to take this even another level,

in 2019 at the end of the season, there was a rumor that the Dallas Cowboys might trade for Mike Zimmer to become their head coach if they had lost the game against the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs. Instead, they won. And the next day, Mike McCarthy was named the coach. So can I maybe all come back, all roads lead back to Dallas for Mike Zimmer?

Potentially. Not hired yet, but just an interview. But we could see Mike Zimmer on an NFL sideline again. So let's get to the Senior Bowl here. All week I was thinking about, you know, we don't need football. That's sad. And that upsets me. But here's what I know I'm looking forward to.

Michael Penix versus bo nix i think they were on the same team but still they were but still yeah it doesn't matter it's the senior bowl who's going to perform better what is what's it going to look like when they actually get out there and um we got none of that michael pennix decided not to let's start there decided not to participate in the Senior Bowl. What was your takeaway from that decision? Disappointment, for sure. Just as a person who is going to the game and has been down here all week and someone who I've been very high on Penix the whole time.

And Penix as a prospect, especially in the last six days, has really split a crowd. So I was looking forward to watching him play. I think that it could be based on decent feedback that his practices have actually been more well-received by the NFL community than they have been by the media community. I was listening to the Athletic GM football football show and former Seahawks and Saints GM Randy Mueller was on and he was down here. He left before the game, but he was down here and said that he has Pennix higher than Drake May in his draft preferences. And he was at these practices where people are saying Pennix is, you know, his draft is like his draft stock has continued to tank from the national championship game. So I don't think it hurts him much.

I'm sure he and his agent had a long conversation about the benefits of playing versus the benefits of opting out. He was one of many players to opt out. Obviously, he's the biggest name to do it, so we get some attention. And since his practices weren't just sort of like overarching, like this is the best quarterback we've ever seen, just launching the ball like crazy. Everyone should trade up with the Bears to get him now. Like I think, you know, there's going to be some discourse around it. So really it was disappointing, but ultimately I don't think it matters.

And I think it's kind of just this trend that the senior bowl, while it being a showcase game of players entering the NFL, they play with NFL rules of funny things that happened today. Multiple players intercepting balls by diving for them, not knowing that you're not down just when you hit the ground, playing with NFL rules, but kind of going the way of college football bowl games where it sort of seems like the playing of the actual game

doesn't really matter. And I think that's tough for fans to swallow. That's been a tough adjustment of this current era in college football. And I think if you follow the senior bowl closely for a number of years, like, you know, there's been discourse before that it's the practices that's what matters the most. But we didn't see a ton of opt-outs.

Maybe this is kind of just like the last couple of years. So disappointing. I don't think he ended up hurting his draft stock. And if you're a Pennix believer like I am or you just want to be optimistic about it, maybe it's because he got some good feedback. And then on the negative side, maybe he just was truly worried about hurting his stock anymore if not having the best week of practice has got to him. So it could be either sets of the coin. We're not going to know for a long time what it actually was,

but definitely disappointing for the game itself because it would have been fun to see both him and nicks taking the field uh for what would have been the fourth time uh since they transferred to their respective schools in the pacific northwest one thing we know is that the nfl has a little bit different criteria for quarterbacks than the draft analysis world. Now, why that is, I'm not entirely sure. But in recent years, we have seen the draft industry complex or whatever you want to call it of analysts be extremely far off from what the actual NFL was, which makes me wonder about someone like Pennix because I was watching Rick Spielman, who's down there doing doing some stuff for cbs now don't everybody laugh at once uh because but i wasn't gonna laugh until

you said that but the thing about rick is i watched him last year and the stuff that he said about will levis and he was dead on i mean he was exactly right he was saying look will levis didn't have a good pro day he's all all over the place. His mechanics are brutal. I don't believe his accuracy. And he ends up dropping out of the first round. And, you know, so I wonder about like someone who has been a general manager like Rick Spielman, if he has a good eye for these things, or at least from talking to all the people that he knows in the industry has a much better sense than say like whatever draft analyst who everyone knows is on television you know what i mean like if it's rick they're just talking ball if it's tv analyst they're talking to a tv analyst so the opinions shared might be a little less honest and he was really praising michael pennix's uh practices and and that's what makes me wonder about seeing different things from just was it a completed pass or whatever else because the analysis world came out of it saying i don't

think anybody really separated themselves here but rick seemed to feel like michael pennix did yeah and i think that's a great point too and that marks you know just two former gms who have performed deep analysis on more quarterbacks than I ever will in my lifetime. Or pretty much anyone who's sitting in the stands at the Senior Bowl with me. You know, I think a lot of it is this kind of people are down here to create content. And the draft is sort of this year-round thing now. And I'm not saying people are just inventing takes for having takes sake but a lot of people are who don't necessarily watch college football weekend and week out are watching him for the

first time and it's a practice and these things are supposed to matter and I think that that's fair and he didn't necessarily set the world on fire but I also think it's important to note the most important things that happened this week and have always been the most important things that happened this week are the closed door meetings that we don't get to. You know how he performs in meetings with NFL personnel, the GMs, the head coaches, they meet with pretty much all of them. And it's pretty it's a very intense process. And he, at media day, Michael Penix walked us through just an example of one of the plays that he, you know, went to the board to go through and like, what would be the proper read? What would be the second read? And it was almost like a person speaking Mandarin to me, by the way, a quarterback, you know, goes through that kind of stuff. So he has been impressive,

at least in his, you know, speaking engagements here, how he reads a defense. And I think it's also important to remember that whenever you're watching people practice in any sport you don't know what specific instruction they're receiving from coaches and that like this happens in basketball a lot when it's like a player who needs to improve their three-point shot you can watch them in training camp and they might be missing way more than they make but they're trying new mechanics and shooting in a brand new way. And coaches would rather have them miss a hundred in practice by doing it the right way than doing it wrong and just have them make them in practice and things like that. So that's something that is also present here. And I think, you know,

GMs and scouts are much more aware of that than us on the media side of the stadium analyzing every single throw. So, yeah, I hadn't heard any of Rick's coverage yet this week. So for the Pennix believer in me, I'm happy to hear that Rick and I are on the same side. So, yeah, that'll be interesting to see how it plays out and see how he throws at the combine. It's obviously different kinds of throws there. They don't, I don't think ever have any kind of a defensive front facing them. And then another just couldn't criticism that was on all the quarterbacks this week was that they're hanging onto the ball too long.

And that's just something where like, I don't know that the coach didn't say, all right, you have to go until you're into your fourth read and only make that throw for the sake of this drill. Like, we don't know that that's not the instruction that's happening in practice. So were there moments where they hung onto the ball too long and didn't sense the pressure? Yeah, but also that's what practice is for. Right. And you would also look for tools.

Like, if somebody does not have pristine footwork, they have a quarterback coach, they have an assistant quarterback coach. The guy will also probably have his own throwing coach. I mean, they're going to work on the mechanical stuff. But what you can't work on is that Michael Penix has 10 and a half inch hands and throws the football 700 miles an hour into tight windows and completes touch passes 45 yards down the field like he is the best thrower of the football i think out of the whole lot i mean even maybe drake may probably has a conversation for that but as far as the velo the ability to fit it into tight windows i think panics is all the way at the top which may be what randy mueller is talking

about uh when he's saying like that he likes him so much. Now, Bo Nix came into the game. And so I was like, all right, at least we'll see a little Bo Nix. We got something here. And he threw, I think, five passes for like 20 yards. And most of them were screens. He, I thought did a good job on his touchdown pass. This is really stretching, but like he rolled out his first read wasn't open. His second read wasn't open. Kind of had to come back to the back side if you will of the play a little bit and completed a touchdown pass for five yards to a wide open tight end and that's all i've got he kind of threw it behind another guy who was coming across the field again there was almost no passes not a whole lot to really work with when it came to Bo Nix. But if anything,

he came away, at least from everything that I've read, as kind of the loser of this week, that when you go in and have the buzz from Dane Brugler, that you could be propelled up to the top 10 with a great week. And then your practices are just okay. Daniel Jeremiah said he thought he got better as the week went on. So you saw the accumulation of all the practices and I'd love to hear what you think, but it doesn't appear that if his draft stock was at one spot, everyone saw him up close and went, Oh my gosh, clear the deck. He is going in the top five or something like that. Just doesn't seem like there was a big change. Folks. If you've been listening to the show, then you know how much fun we have been having with prize picks this year.

Just go to prizepicks.com slash purple. Use the code purple for a first deposit match up to $100. And let me tell you how it works. If you haven't heard us talk about it enough yet, or you haven't tried it yet, very simple. There are yardage totals on prize picks. You either pick more or less, and boom. Each week has been a roller coaster ride of fun.

And the best part is that when I have a bad week, I didn't lose much. It doesn't cost much to play. You can turn $10 into $250 very easily. And if things go sideways for you, you're not out a whole heck of a lot of money that is prizepix.com slash purple just more or less on yardage totals and you are in prizepix.com slash purple the code purple for a first deposit match up to $100. Well, starting with his touchdown, and I texted this to some Gopher fans, I know, the touchdown was to tight end Brevin Spanford, the great Gopher tight end. So I was like, is that just random? Or is Bo already currying favor with football fans in the state of Minnesota?

Who knows? I don't actually believe that. Just, you know, floating fun conspiracies here. Cause it's been a, it's been a long week. As I said, I thought he did look pretty good today. It was four or five for 21 yards and one touchdown. And the one in completion was his first throw. The game was a flea fit flea flicker intended for UNC's Taz Walker, which was a downfield throw of more than 40 yards. And I honestly thought Walker probably should have caught it it would have been a tough catch uh but the coverage was coverage was good too um but it was a good throw

for the people who are all pretty much overreacting to one bounce pass thrown to roman wilson on i think day two of practice um it showed you know bo nicks can throw the ball more than 40 yards i think that one probably had about 50 55 55 in the air or something like that. So I think he was fine. He did what he needed to do today. And I think just a fun hypothetical is how different would the discourse be if there hadn't been Dane Brugler putting him in the top 10 right before the week started? And Dane's just doing his job and he does it arguably better than anyone in the nfl draft community um but i think that hype coming out you

know on i think it was senior bowl sunday or senior bowl monday or whenever it was and then just a regular couple of practices you know people i think want a little bit more to chew on so that might just be uh some a product of just the reality that we were in with. We obviously have to start talking about mock drafts. We got to talk about who could rise, who could fall. Dane's bullish on bull on Bo Nix says how bullish he is. And then just mediocre practices, which are probably, as I've said on this before, I think are just mediocre practices and it's fine.

On both of these quarterbacks, I did in the piece that I wrote for Purple Insider this week, I am higher on Pennix and have been the whole time. But I'm also, I think Nix will grasp an NFL offense and it will not surprise me at all if he ends up being a good quarterback. As I think you've said several times in these pods like the odds of any of these guys working out is you know not in their favor even for you know a guy

like caleb williams it's probably like a 50 50 shot at best um so i'm not really expecting nicks to be you know as the player we'll talk about going into the super bowl this time you know two three four years from now. But I thought he was in practice. I wasn't freaking out about it. It was kind of like, you know, I heard the criticisms of his deep ball. It was like there's a couple times it was like eek. But then there was a couple times a few throws later, it was like, oh, yeah,

there it is. That's what Bo did to my favorite college football team a number of times and drove a stake through my heart. So it was nice to see him come out and have a great series uh and i think that will maybe help the public perception of his draft stock ultimately i don't know uh how much the practices or his play today really affected anything i think we'll we'll find out we won't ever actually find out because GMs and NFL teams won't ever actually tell us anything. But I think when you see where he ends up going in the draft, I think you'll see how well he performed in meetings and at the board and in conversations with GMs. But it was nice to see him as a kid.

You know, even though he went to Oregon, I don't want to see him completely fail. So had he gone like 0 for 6, it would have been hard for me to come on here and be like, I think Bo Nix might be a decent NFL quarterback. So I think it's just all relative, kind of a non-answer from me on that one. But I think it's just, you know, it's all just kind of fine, just steady. Yeah, well, that's the thing is that there wasn't anything to take away from Bo Nix in the game or as far as people's practice recaps, where you were pulling out the highlighter and saying, this is why I'm going to be a Bo Nix guy.

At the same time, let's not let this recent information cloud us more than 45 touchdowns and, you know, the, the athleticism that he has. And I do think he has good arm strength. And we saw that on the first throw. I wonder if they had kind of plotted that out

to get him at least one deep pass. And I think probably the TV broadcast could see this better than in the press box. Tez Walker should have caught that. I mean, it was right there. It was a great pass deep downfield. But the thing is, with quarterbacks in the NFL, so much of it, if you look at the average depth of target of even Patrick Mahomes

or Brock Purdy, so much of it is just how much can you operate at the line of scrimmage. And a lot of it, and I know with this offense in particular, with the Vikings, they do like to push the ball downfield. So that is a factor for sure. But a lot of offenses are shorter average depth of target. They are getting wide receivers wide open. It's can you handle all the complex stuff that is required to get them open,

which means checks at the line of scrimmage, reading defenses, hanging in the pocket and hanging tough and getting enough mustard on the football to get it there. But we really saw this with Nick Mullins. And I don't like to keep going back to it, but I kind of have to. Like he doesn't have a big arm and yet was still able to complete a lot of passes to open wide receivers. So the question with someone like Bo Nix is, is there enough there as far as what he could do with the line of scrimmage? And with Pennix, I'm a little more confident in that because I saw how much he was operating with Washington. But I still think that we're talking about two quarterbacks that are

very likely to be available to the Vikings. The big question just is, are the Vikings going to be willing to pull that trigger? And, you know, I saw a write-up from my friend, Chad Graff, who now covers the Patriots, used to cover the Vikings, where he wrote, Patriots, you should just take a quarterback because nobody wowed you that you're going to be able to wait around for a trade down for us. So just draft a quarterback. So it may just come down to, could the Vikings A, convince anybody to trade everything to move up and get to the top and get Jaden Daniel daniels or would they be comfortable after this week looking at pennix or nicks and saying i can make that my guy yeah and maybe maybe they could and

depending on what happens the rest of this process um i know the combine starts later this month i the last day of february is the first day of, I think that's the weigh-in day, which is just wild to think about that. We're just a few short weeks away of being in Indy and everyone being the smartest armchair GM on the planet. So it will be interesting to see what they do and if both Knicks and Pennix are on the board, if they feel comfortable maybe trading back. I saw, I think, if both Knicks and Pennix are on the board, if they feel comfortable, maybe like trading back.

I saw, I think Ben Lieber had the take that he's confident that the Vikings will draft someone else at 11 and then try and trade back into the first round, which is we touched on briefly when we spoke earlier in the week, which would be exciting. I'd want to see what that price tag is and uh what what pick it would be and of course then you do run the risk of anyone else jumping in uh ahead of you if you do really like one of these guys uh then it's best to just take them but if you think you can oh maybe get one of the best edge rushers uh in the draft and then also get this quarterback that would make a lot of Vikings fans pretty happy. And as we discussed last time, that there's probably no way that Kweisi doesn't piss off at least half the fan base with just how many needs there are.

Doing something like that might actually please everybody. And it would be a tough needle to thread, but I'll be fascinated to see if uh if he can do it well that's the thing is that once you get by where the vikings are the most of the quarterbacks are quarterback needy teams are at the top of the draft and so whoever does not get picked if it's not the vikings and there's conversation about denver i suppose they could do it or maybe even new orleans but i don't get that one they're all in on derrick carr um and then there's conversation about Denver. I suppose they could do it or maybe even New Orleans, but I don't get that one. They're all in on Derek Carr.

And then there's a report that they're going to restructure his contract because they have to because the salary cap is real, Saints fans. Nice for you to join the rest of us and find that out, but it's extremely real. And they're dealing with that. I don't know if they're thinking about two, three years from now with the quarterback position. And then you go through and you go, well, there's everybody else.

And who's going to put their eggs in that basket? Very plausible that if this week dropped the stock a little bit of either one of these quarterbacks, it could play in the Vikings' favor if that's what they wanted to do, or even just trade back down from 11 to get more draft capital as long as they come away with their quarterback. And this comes along with the caveat that they have to have moved on from Kirk cousins first, which we still don't know if they're doing now, there's one more quarterback. I want to ask you about, and then I had some observations about the rest of the guys who were playing today. And you could tell me about some others who you saw practice through the week

since, as you mentioned, a lot of them went home. But Spencer Rattler looked great. He came out and just, I mean, right down the field, nice fade ball into the end zone. He was another guy that Rick Spielman mentioned as somebody that he had really liked in the practices. And I know how weird it is to have me quoting Rick Spielman on quarterbacks, but I mean, he does have more experience evaluating them than most people, but Spencer Rattler came in with some buzz, then didn't stand out right away and then comes out and was easily the best quarterback on the field today. So what do we think of his week?

Yeah, he had a good week overall and he had a, I spoke with you after day one of practice, which was pretty up and down for him. And then he had a i spoke with you after day one of practice which was pretty up and down for him uh and then he had a good uh second practice and an even better third practice i thought and yeah he was really the only one today who i think completed like a real pass that was down the field um and if i'm forgetting someone let me know but yeah he that was a beautiful uh fade route into um um who was the uh it was the georgia receiver who was yeah it was um

marcus rosamy jack saint who i observed had a pretty tough day too in practice so nice to see that kid make a nice play as well that was a beautiful fade route i thought the corner uh willie drew had decent coverage on it too um and yeah rattler looked poised and that four for four 65 yards and a touchdown was enough to get him senior bowl mvp uh which can mean anything when quarterbacks go on justin herbert won that award uh so did um uh kellen mon what that was i was thinking about that this whole week kellen one senior bowl mvp and vikings fans are not going to want to hear that um so you know it could just be anything it really means nothing uh at the end of the day but he did put some great tape out there

and got a giant trophy filled with reese's peanut butter cups to take home. And I think it mirrors what we saw from him in practice. It was, he was getting better these last few days and I don't know what kind of stock he played his game into as you go through the first round of the quarterback, needy teams all kind of get their guy and then the rest have kind of have to sit. And we've,

you've talked about on your pod over and over again. We talked about it earlier this week that once you get into those mid rounds, it sure it's great to take a flyer on a guy, but it hardly ever works out. And the odds just really plummet after the top of the draft. So you kind of need to be in a unique position to feel like you're investing a third round,

fourth round pick on a quarterback and having it be well used, like a good use of draft capital. And it'll be fascinating to see who that is. And it'll be fascinating to see what Rattler does at the combine and how his stock moves from there. If he can continue to go sky high,

because at one point he was viewed as the best quarterback prospect in the country so it's not that crazy to assume that he could be moving up and maybe even challenging someone like J.J. McCarthy for the top spot and maybe that next tier um I don't know I almost just said day one I don't want to speak my way into those kind of draft shenanigans but who knows and so yeah he definitely i think made at least a little bit of money uh today with um what what he showed i would have liked i wanted one more series out of him when uh after after his last one i was like waiting to see one more Rattler and I saw Joe Milton come out. I had a great conversation with Joe Milton after day one.

I love Joe Milton. I don't know if he's going to work out as an NFL quarterback though, but I am cheering for him. And then he threw two interceptions. So I did want to see one more series of Rattler. Disappoint we didn't get it, but happy for the kid to have a great performance today

and improve every day in practice as well. So they ever come up with a longest drive competition for throwing a football Joe will be great. Yeah. And otherwise he might want to consider switching to tight end kind of reminded me of it truly. I'm not even kidding. Like he reminded me of Tyree Jackson where Tyree Jackson came in and draft analysts were like, look at his arm. It's amazing.

And then when he actually played, you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not that's not going to work. There's nothing that works there. He tried to throw a check down and bounced it to the sideline, like 11 yards away from the receiver. Just the interceptions were terrible. Everything about every other quarterback was unwatchable. And those guys are undraftable. Wouldn't even bother bringing him in his undrafted free age.

I mean that like Sam Hartman, Hallmark channel actor, handsome guy, great, great head of hair. I'm jealous of Sam Hartman's hair. You could definitely see him like around christmas time where he is a guy who owns a christmas tree farm and some girl who's a lawyer in the big city

comes back home and she discovers that she actually loves the small town life and falls in love with sam hartman like that's where he belongs because that quarterback play is totally not anywhere close to the NFL. But Rattler does intrigue me as maybe a second-round type. If you go through the history of second-rounders, hold your nose because there are really not many outside of Jalen Hurts, Derek Carr, Jimmy Garoppolo. That's the highest end of what you can get, which those guys are successful. Hurts obviously was maybe a strange situation where people didn't think he could throw,

but he could, but you know, I, the rattler though, that you've sort of got my attention with how much the football people are saying, Hey, like this guy had a really good practice and his team at South Carolina was

truly putrid and pathetic and awful. And he did a lot of good things. So anyway, we'll see if the many scenarios that could play out, but if the Vikings don't pick one in the first round, then it becomes intriguing whether they would consider him in the second, because he does have very good tools. Now, as far as the rest of the game went, where were the defensive linemen? So one guy was great. The guy who switched teams, his name is fist. You can tell me more about that.

He was great. He just killed everybody. He was mad that he got traded to the other team. But this week, my understanding is there were a lot of really good defensive linemen talents, just not all of them played in the game. Yeah,

that's true. And I did it, had to do a double take when I saw him at the stadium before the game started, because I was like, wait, Fisk is on the American team. And then he went on to have a great game for the national team. And yeah, there is some, some guys who didn't play. I thought Ohio state's Michael Hall had a really nice set of practices. And then, you know, Marshawn Nealon's another guy we've talked about who's kind of up and down in the game itself. So I, I don't know if it's just everyone opted out or just kind of forgot how to play, but there was room for for the running backs then

in like the set of interior defensive linemen looked a lot better once it got to actual goal line like there's some nice stops swarms of tackles made close to the end zone but no one that like really popped and was like oh that's the next Linval Joseph and solves the nose tackle issue that the Vikings have been having since Linval Joseph. But yeah, Braden Fisk out of Florida State had a fantastic day. Not sure if he'll be there on day three still, and I don't think the Vikings will be in range of him

on day two, but if he's brought in on day three, he'll be like, yep, that guy had a great senior senior bowl and i hope it will translate to a flora's uh defense but yeah it was not sort of the defensive line performance um that we were expecting uh slash hoping for um as we did see some pretty pretty good performances earlier in the week and the guy from uh ucla went home early so he didn't play in the game and uh now i saw a lot of hype for uh the kid robinson out of missouri but i couldn't find him in the game i mean he was out there but i didn't see a single time where he created a pressure or made a big tackle or anything else like that which i don't know how much to make of that but

i feel like you should pop a little bit in the game you should yeah I don't know how much to make of that, but I feel like you should pop a little bit in the game. You should, yeah. I don't know how much he played. At one point during the game, I did think he had opted out because I hadn't seen him do anything for a while. But, yeah, maybe that was kind of a half opt-out, like I'm going to play but just three snaps total and then just nothing came his way or something like that.

Darius Robinson did have a fantastic week of practice the player that i did write down that i really wanted to at least mention um who did get home and sacked sam hartman and i forced a fumble that hartman ended up recovering is uh the houston christian kid jalex hunt uh who started his college career as a safety at Cornell and is now an edge slash outside linebacker at Houston Christian. He's a raw athlete, as you'd expect, you know, a player who's at that level to be. But he was one of the routinely the fastest measured players

among D linemen and edge here in practices in, in mobile. And you know, Jim Nagy, the executive vice president of the senior bowl has, you know, is, has not been shy about praising him and really wanting to get him for this game. Cause senior bowls had a long history of elevating small school players and seeing them to go on to have good careers. And I think, you know, where we were talking about this earlier in the week,

where we don't want to see the Vikings sort of invest in a ball of clay at the quarterback position and bring back Kirk on whatever expensive contracts to help mold that like player into whatever. But I do think on the defensive side, you have you're coming off a year where we think flora is at a pretty tremendous coaching job despite the defense not being that great overall and you're kind of hoping you're i think you can expect that kind of repeat coaching performance and i think investing in high-end talent that's probably nfl right at the top of the draft would be very smart for them

to do but as you get further down the draft in the fourth round I would love to see uh Jalek's Hunt be someone that they target because I think Flores would do would work wonders with uh with that kind of kid and there are obviously going to be a ton of questions with someone who only played at Cornell or and Houston Christian and had to, and ended up changing positions. Um, but if it go as well, that's a pretty athletic piece, uh, who could be a great pass rushing asset, uh, for, for years to come. And I, I trust Flores, um, with a player like that who probably just needs to get coached up a bit. Um, so he had a nice day. I thought he at least popped a few times, me. So yeah, but there

weren't, yeah, there was some of the other edge guys went home early. A lot of the corners that I was excited about didn't play either. So just, you know, it's kind of that same, you know, just bowl season letdown where you're really excited to see what someone does when the lights turn on and they're in full pads and uniforms and the i guess the score doesn't really matter in this count it's an exhibition but um yeah and then that kind of just um is is a little bit of a wet blanket uh tossed on top of uh an otherwise exciting day so um not yeah not a ton of great defensive line standouts but i do think the hype around Robinson is real, and it was also nice to see Jalex Hunt make some plays out there too.

I wrote down, who is Hunt? Because I didn't recognize the helmet. I was like, who is this? That might be the type of player that, as you mentioned, if you've got some high-end talent but you're raw, that the Vikings should pick and try to develop under Flores, he is extremely good at that. And I would trust him to develop players more than I trusted Mike Zimmer or that I definitely did not trust at Donatello with literally anything. So I think that knowing that Flores is probably going to be here for years, that would be something that they should do is get players that he likes in the later rounds to try to mold them.

So I like those guys. The last position group that I want to talk about was just the running backs. And you mentioned it. I mean, they were on fire to start this game. And I thought it was kind of funny. Like you said about the vibe of this game, the vibe of this game, it wasn't always the best football in the past, but was really intense. But it was not

today at all and before the game they showed one of the coaches on tv in the locker room and he mentioned that one of the players asked them if he could hit the quarterback and he was like uh yeah i'd like you to hit the quarterback so then they interviewed the coach at halftime and he was like i told them to hit the quarterback but we're not doing any of that so it's hard to tell a little bit because of the lack of intensity of the game how much these running backs were looking great and how much was just the defense not doing it but one guy i want to highlight specifically that my friend alec lewis from the athletic who went to missouri covers the vikings now had mentioned is Schrader, their running back,

who came from who cares state and then showed up at Missouri, won their job, put up a gazillion yards. And every time someone attempted to tackle him, he ran through their face. Like he would get like a three yard gain and then it would be like a seven yard gain. And he catches the ball. He's quick.

I mean,ikings are looking for a mid-round type of running back which is really where you should only pick them if you're in the state that the vikings are in with the rest of their roster him and uh was it bailey from uh tcu yeah amani bailey yeah both of them really looked great today yeah schrader's looks great in practice too and the guy is he's just a house with you know tree trunks for legs and it's that's the type of power running that i think we'd love to have uh access to or to see the vikings uh take advantage of um i was hoping to see i don't think the american team had many snaps like inside the five to give Schrader like a true goal line opportunity. But he looked fluid and smooth in addition to just being powerful in practice and nice set of hands too.

I think you and Manny were talking about this in the last episode of Purple Insider, just about one of the bigger disappointments with Madison's game has just been the lack of, you know, pass catching threat that he's given to the offense. And Schrader's, you know, probably not going to have any type of, you know, 100 reception seasons like, you know, we saw Steven Jackson or LaDainian Tomlinson have. But you know that if there's a, it's a third and short or a passing situation and a check down can be a really valuable play, that he might catch that ball. And he gets going with a head of steam and he will just try and run over you. So, yeah, he had a nice day today.

And I think he earned a lot of fans this week with his game. And also just that highlight reel of him at Missouri as people get more and more into the, the doldrums of draft content content and are watching all of the YouTube highlights. I think he'll become kind of a draft fan favorite. And yeah, Bailey looked fine in practice. Didn't really wow me a ton,

but he looked good um and they were just giving him the ball on every play like i think he had uh 10 carries which is a lot for a game like this for 53 yards and i think he had four catches for another 30 and he had the tackle on one of joe milton's second interceptions to uh uh shaw smith wade from washington state go pack two uh who returned it 86 yards. And had it been 87, it would have been a touchdown. And Imani Bailey came from all the way across the other side of the field to make the touchdown saving tackle. And they were not able to punch it in after that.

So that's something that we're always looking for when you see a prospect that's like nearly there, but you just maybe need a cherry on top to fall in love with the kid. He had that moment today. So I think if there is money to be made in the running back area, I think both Cody Schrader and Amani Bailey, they looked good. And I don't know at what range in the draft they'll be available. We'll probably be able to forecast that a little bit more accurately in, in the weeks to come. But I'd,

I'd be happy to see both those guys end up on the, on the Vikings final draft card and give them a shot in training camp. Cause I think, I think there'll be, you know, actual NFL assets in 2024. Well, more guys I wanted to mention,

I'll just say guys names because we're at that point in the podcast. Uh, uh, let's see Jarvis Brownlee, the cornerback had an interception. One of the darlings of the week, uh, the Vikings definitely need cornerbacks. So he is someone to keep an eye on. Uh, the Iowa punter is a God. That guy is unbelievable. I mean, I've always been like, don't ever draft a punter. That's insane. But the Vikings have had bad punting, including Ryan Wright, for quite some time now. And fifth round, sixth round, this guy is astounding. So maybe, maybe.

One of my notes today was we saw Torrey Taylor punt the ball 93 times for Iowa this season. I did not need to see him punt five or six more times today or however many times he punted because the offense is going to move the ball. But you are correct. Tori Taylor is a dynamite punter. He was great. He was really great. I'm only like mostly kidding about drafting him, but only mostly.

Sixth round I could get behind. Fifth is too early. The problem with the nfl and punters is there's always a college punter who punts at seven gazillion yards and everyone's like oh yeah yeah yeah but then you do that in the nfl and the punt returner takes it for 20 and you know you're not really doing a whole lot of good there but with this guy he's like phil mickelson out there chipping if he needs to or he could pull out the driver and look like Rory and the guy could do anything so maybe maybe uh field position it does matter uh

let's move off that very quickly and the other guy was Cedric Gray a linebacker from North Carolina again the Vikings cannot draft a linebacker very high but they will need players in the middle to late rounds to fill out their roster. I don't know if we're going to see Jordan Hicks come back or not. So who else is playing linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings is actually a question. So those are my guys. Let me just wrap on this. I want the one player that when he gets drafted and he makes a single play in week one of the NFL season, you will tweet, love that guy at the senior bowl. Who's it going to be?

I've told myself repeatedly that I won't be that guy. Did he have to play in the game today to be? Okay, well, then it's a little bit of home cooking for me, but it will be Katana Lado uh safety from oregon state uh my alma mater which i'm being biased on but he also had a good week uh by people according to people who did not attend oregon state university and i was really looking forward to seeing him play today another opt out because i think he his agent said you had three good practices don't do anything to spoil it um i don't know that i haven't sent him a message to get clarification on that or anything. But yeah, if Catano, Adapo, I don't think the Vikings will be in a market for a safety.

But I do think he shot up some draft boards, at least, you know, into sort of the back end. So if he makes a play week one, I will not be shy about how much I love that kid. So that's my answer for that. But you will be in the market of trying to be right because you're covering the draft so that's what uh the goal seems to be is uh tweet that you like someone then wait three years till they do something then retweet yourself so that's uh the best way to do it anyway i'm sort of kidding but i see a lot of that oh yeah that does happen a bit so it does it does look terry your coverage has been great uh people should go check out purpleinsider.com for your first write-up after the first day of practice

where you talked about the pennix and nick's thing and some of the overreactions and then your breakdown of the players who stood out to you that would be relevant to the Vikings throughout the entire week at purpleinsider.com. Great, great work as our Purple Insider Senior Bowl correspondent. And considering how exhausted you look, I'm glad you win and not me. I definitely got a little cooked in the stadium on the first day. It's not nearly as bad as it was a couple of days ago. But, yeah, I'm a little tired. I'm looking forward to getting back and sleeping in my own bed.

But it's been a great week. So thanks for letting me cover the most exciting football game that will take place in the month of February for the great Purple Insider as well. It's been a blast. All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Terry. People can also see your work covering the links at the next and they kept you busy this week as well. So check that out. And thanks everybody for watching. We'll catch you next.