Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Ben Brown answers whether the Vikings are a good bet for 2022

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Matthew Coller, Sam Ekstrom and Pro Football Focus analyst Ben Brown talk about some of the ways betting experts figure out which direction teams are going. Would Ben bet on the Vikings over 9 wins next year? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

welcome to another friday roundtable here on purple insider matthew collar along with sam ekstrom and our guest is Ben Brown for Pro Football Focus describes himself as just betting and data so that's what you do Ben you're just betting and data and anytime well okay so Sam knows much more about gambling than I do but I like to read what the gambling experts are saying because I feel like it's unique insight so that's what you do is provide a unique insight even for those of us who are afraid to bet because I get too mad if I lose any money. So how are you? I'm doing well. I do think you described it really well. That's kind of the appeal, I would say, of sports betting, right?

Somewhat of a leader in football analytics, asking some of those questions as far as how to maximize win probability and stuff. And I do think it's an exciting industry that's kind of only beginning to take hold. So I'm definitely excited about the direction that we're headed for sure. So here's where I want to start this whole week. We've been analyzing timelines of the Minnesota Vikings and other teams. We've looked at tanking teams. There's another conversation that I've recorded. That's another middling team like the Minnesota Vikings. I want you to tell me, cause I feel like the gambling world is the absolute sharpest to use a gambling word.

When it comes to figuring out which teams are on the right timelines. Although none of you people saw Cincinnati coming last year, but I want you to tell me your process for figuring out when a team is on the right timeline, when they're going to be better than expected, when they're going to be worse, when they're going to be better than expected, when they're going to be worse, when they're going to be middling? What process would you use to determine a team's timeline?

Yeah, I might push back just a little bit on the Cincinnati Bengals because I actually wrote them up around this time last year, plus 2,500 to at least win the AFC North. I didn't get them winning the conference championship or anything like that, but they were definitely a spot. And like you said, kind of an intriguing buy-low candidate before the draft. They had a top five pick. For all intents and purposes, it was kind of a discussion between Panay Sewell versus Jamar Chase. And I thought if they went in the direction of Jamar Chase and kind of got that dynamic playmaker that he looked capable of doing,

that was going to elevate their whole offense. And that is kind of what happened, right? Obviously, a lot of big plays, high chunk EPA type of plays, and that worked out really well from a betting perspective. So I definitely agree with you kind of trying to get ahead of the curve. Some things that we definitely look for is the rookie quarterback type contract situation that allows pieces to kind to be put in place. I do think that in looking at some of the 2022 candidates,

everybody wants to gravitate towards a team like Jacksonville, who had a lot of money to spend in free agency. Obviously, he has Trevor Lawrence, who was well below expectations in his rookie season, but has shown the ability to be the quote- the quote unquote generational type quarterback talent at that position. But given what they did in free agency, I think they're actually probably a little bit overvalued, not only in the betting market, but just as far as like, you know, the media pundits and everybody else kind of predicting them to make a Cincinnati Bengals type leap forward.

So I think that the overall mentality that I try to do from a gambling perspective is to really try and buy low on teams or sell high, right? And I do think that it's not only the teams that have the really high win totals, but it's also the teams that it seems like everyone's kind of trying to be popular and back at the same time.

So it's kind of almost like fading the general public narrative in a lot of situations that i do think that's where you find uh the most value on teams to either exceed or fall short of some of those gambling expectations well it's got to be tough for a sports better to nail a team like the minnesota vikings who's constantly right in the middle there i think their win total has been projected eight eight and a half nine for like four or five years in a row. Let's just lay the groundwork.

How do you read the Vikings' outlook for next year from a gambling perspective? Yeah, I mean, I think they're going to go 9 and 8 again, right? That's right where their win total is, 8.5 games. They just haven't done anything that I would say is going to elevate their performance from last year outside of maybe getting a better offensive coach uh in the mix uh you know upgrading the defense coordinator position those sorts of things but everybody is a year older on a roster that uh is kind of already coming apart at the seams so I think they I think they're priced kind of well I would probably be playing uh they're under uh especially on their win total but also to maybe like miss the playoffs

in that sort of scenario because uh outside the fact that the nfc north i think you know it's going to be dominated by green bay packers i think you know both the bears and the lions also have uh opportunities to exceed expectations so i do think that uh in kind of folding all those things into play uh it looks like the vikings are you know maybe going to fall short of expectations because they're kind of, you know, I would say a lot of people, I know you guys probably agree with this, but they're, they seem almost directionless, right? Like they're trying to do this competitive rebuild type of thing. But at some point, I think they're going to have to tear the whole thing down and potentially start over until that happens. You know, it looks like eight, nine, nine and eight type seasons are going to be about as good as it's going to be from a Minnesota perspective.

So let me ask you about some of those factors that you mentioned. I mean, you mentioned the age of the players, and I think this is something that's really not easy to discuss for people like us who do the day to day, because we can only work with what we just saw in terms of, well, you know, this guy was good last year. So how can we come out and be like, oh, he'll fall off the edge of a cliff, folks. Just wait. It's a hard proclamation to make. How do you determine age of players and projections

and things like that and where they can go? Because I've always found it to be very tricky. I've seen players in their 30s succeed. It'd be great. Everson Griffin last year when he played, we thought, you know, Griffin, he's not going to be the same guy. Comes out and has a, I think, top 10 pass rush win rate.

What? But then there's been other players we've seen that one year, Xavier Rhodes is terrific. And the next year he is in no way, shape or form the same guy. I think it's one of the hardest things to figure out in all of sports. Yeah, definitely. And we kind of saw, especially with Xavier Rhodes, kind of have like a rebound year after he left Minnesota and went to Indianapolis and had a really good PFF coverage grade.

So I definitely agree with you. We've tried to do some modeling as far as age curves for specific positions in the NFL. But there are obviously injury concerns that happen in any given year that can result in a guy having a down year, even if it is maybe just a little bit of a lingering injury that doesn't allow him to necessarily live up to his expectation. But it is a really difficult problem to solve. But looking back at the Vikings from last year, of course, looking back on it now,

we can understand the whole coaching and everything else was kind of in disarray. But they were relatively, I would say almost lucky from a injury perspective. And they also got, you know, a really solid performance from Kirk Cousins at quarterback. And I think, you know, from those things kind of carrying forward from one year to the next, maybe aren't going to be as repeatable as they were in 2021. So I do think taking those sorts of things into account as well,

like do we all agree that Kirk Cousins is, you know, a top five quarterback in the NFL? Because that's, you know, essentially where he graded at from a PFF perspective last year. But I'm not sure that I'm overly confident in him, you know, being able to achieve that level of success again in 2022 and everything else improving around him. So that's probably the reason why I would lean more towards fading a team

like Minnesota than actually buying into them to exceed expectations. Cause I just think their ceiling is too low to the point where they're kind of priced towards their ceiling more so than they would be anywhere close to their floor. I would say. You can certainly take this upcoming question and apply it to the Vikings or just the league at large, but how do you take a new coach into account? and we know that offense is just like the engine to what makes these teams go um do you look at that and say that could be a sneaky factor that

that maybe would fly in the face of my other opinion that the that you should fade the vikings yeah i mean it it definitely i think it definitely helps their cause, especially moving from a defensive-minded coach like Mike Zimmer to an offensive guy like Kevin O'Connell. I definitely think that matters. We have seen, like you touched on a little bit, when a coach is fired, obviously they're not living up to expectations. So for a new guy to come in and at least meet that floor level expectation, we do see that quite a bit.

But in some of our specific to our betting miles and those sorts of things, continuity actually matters a lot. And it matters a lot at the head coaching, offensive and defensive coordinator positions, and at the quarterback position. So those are all things we take into account. So we would probably not necessarily completely ding the Vikings for moving to a new head coach, but it's something that they're probably not going to get as much love in our modeling perspective than a team that does have the continuity at the coordinator, head coach, and quarterback position. So I think that's a team like, for example, like a team like the Denver Broncos, the betting market is really high on, given the fact that they upgraded with Russell Wilson. They have Nathaniel Hackett now as head coach, but they have, you know, continuity issues basically at all three of those positions. So for all of them to

kind of come in and mold together and be successful, I think is a pretty high bar to achieve, especially in year one. So they're a team that we are, you know, a lot lower than the betting market expectation. I do think that it's mainly due to the fact that uh it's really hard to piece all those things together and be really successful right away uh given given the complete turnover that they've experienced so uh vikings aren't as in bad of a position as them but uh it's definitely something that we do take into account from our modeling perspective so something that comes up all the time from vikings fans is that they were close in a lot of games last year right and you mentioned luck i was going to ask you how many like to estimate how many teams think they got unlucky but my guess is either 30 or 31 for last year for their fan bases and um you know

there's there's i've mentioned it before on the show but a great tweet from justice muscata who i'm sure you know who said something like every team that wins seven or eight games thinks that they're one piece away from 12 and like yeah okay but the the vikings last year it's been a big discussion like were they lucky were they unlucky give me your process of trying to figure that out because i think this is a huge factor when you're determining do i bet on this team do i not bet on this team yeah definitely and and in a lot of ways like like you said like the one score games they can be completely random at the end but we do see you know quarterbacks specifically who have uh been really good uh actually do exceed some of those expectations of one score games so uh the question goes back to is Kirk Cousins one of those guys and I just

don't think that he is so I would say that know, even though they had a lot of one score games, it wasn't necessarily that they were losing that lead, right? They were kind of playing this catch up in order to make the scoreboard almost close to them, what it actually appeared to be at the end. So from that perspective, we can do some things as far as where they were at throughout, you know, until like, you know, five minutes or six minutes to go in the fourth quarter and take that sort of score and then model out from there kind of how they performed. And I do think that when you do that, the Vikings were probably league average

from like a luck standpoint in a lot of scenarios. And I think if you fold in injuries, of course, you know, Daniel Hunter had the season-ending injury. He's been out for, you know, a year and a half in some ways over the past two seasons, so maybe that's a little bit unlucky. But outside of that, Adam Thielen was hurt, but again, he's on the older end of wide receiver play, and if you're thinking that you're going to get 1,000 snaps from a guy

in his age range, I think that's probably a foolish thought to actually have, so I'm not really going to give them credit for injury situations that I think a lot of people would have maybe projected out or at least had some inclination that those were going to happen. But yeah, it is an interesting question. I do think, you know, modeling one score games is something that analytics hasn't necessarily come up with a really good solution for right now. But it's, you know, it's something that we're continuing to work on. And it does, you know, it is things that people kind of evaluate, not necessarily from a model perspective, but more so just like a overall understanding and inclination that they would then use to kind of determine if they do want to bet on the Vikings or not. Yeah, Mike Zimmer was very quick to point to those one score games, but he always he always neglected to mention that they won a bunch of them as well. And it almost canceled canceled each other out.

But let me ask you a question just at large. In free agency, when a big name moves from team to team, does it have to be a quarterback for that to move the gambling needle, or are there certain players that can have an impact, maybe a Devontae Adams or a Tyreek Hill, that really can change the outlook on a team? Yeah, I mean, I think what we saw with the Las Vegas Raiders, their price adjusted more so than their odds on going over under their window. They didn't see a number change like you would from from like the denver broncos landing russell wilson uh but there was like a material price change given the fact that you know davante ams is expected to be you know top three type wide receiver similar similar idea with tyree kill as well we do

occasionally see uh specifically you know wide receivers as well can maybe have like a very small impact uh on the betting market uh future for a certain team but it's not going to be anything more than like a a price adjustment more so than you know like a half half game movement up on their win total or anything like that so uh it does matter in some ways and i think you know more of like the week to week nature uh we do see some of those things obviously uh shift if there's especially like cluster injuries along you know the offensive line or secondary or something like that but outside of that it's it's it's heavily influenced by the quarterback and not a lot of uh other other players really have a huge impact on the spire total isn't this the hardest thing to explain to people like that when we try to deep dive on what it means to sign a

replacement level guard uh maybe that's an extreme example, but we've dealt with this kind of a lot where there have been players who are brought in. I'll use Z'Darrius Smith, for example. I don't think that they really hurt themselves by bringing in Z'Darrius Smith. And if he plays 17 games like he did two years ago, then yes, he is absolutely moving the needle. We can't project that. But even if he does he does a defensive end a linebacker these guys aren't really worth like whole wins they're worth like they're making you better but they're not like changing your fate and i think that's one of the hardest things because you sound like a jerk when you say it when you're like yeah the signing is good but i mean you know eight wins or something

you just right i think it's i think it's a challenge because we understand we're part of the discussion machine that the more exciting it is for fans, the more fun it is for us. But also we have to be realistic here when we're analyzing moves and saying what really moves the needle. Right. And I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head. And it goes back to this discussion of what's replacement level versus what's starter level. There are a lot of really, really, really good athletes in the nfl a lot of really good players in the nfl so moving from you know one guy to maybe a guy that's you know five or ten percent better uh on any given play isn't necessarily moving things a whole lot because it is still a team game that is driven mainly and only by the quarterback position right and then you got

to fold in some of these coaching decisions and everything else and it's a really complicated uh you know overall formula or structure to kind of try to assign the value to one specific player and on one specific game uh and i do think that you know there's there's fandom and obviously you know i would love to see the vikings win a super Bowl in my lifetime. I'm not sure it's going to happen or not, but I do think that people want to buy into, you know, their team signed the best guys and let all these guys that probably can't play as well walk away. And that's just like, it's just not as nuanced as it needs to be. And like a lot of these guys, they're just, you know,

maybe slightly a little bit upgraded better in certain situations, but that's not really going to impact, you know, the, the wind total, or even on a week to week basis, the spread, I would say.

So you're saying that Patrick Peterson is not going to count for three wins. He's not. That's what I saw on Twitter. That's yeah. I mean, it was good contract, right.

But I think it, it goes back to like, what is where, where are we trying to head or what are we actually trying to do here i think you know right like i i like the patrick peterson signing last year i thought this year obviously uh pretty good value uh from a team perspective but uh it still signals this idea that they are you know going to compete to win the nfc championship game or something like that right and i think you know given the state of the rest of the NFC, they can definitely be a legitimate playoff contender.

But I don't want that to be the goal, right? I want it to, I want them to actually compete for Super Bowls. And I just don't know, given the current state of the roster, if they're actually going to be able to be able or capable of doing that.

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I've got another question for you just about teams that cover. Five teams last year had a 60% cover rate or better. One of these teams is not like the other. Dallas, Green Bay, Cincinnati, San Francisco, and, drumroll, Detroit. I knew it. Dan Campbell's. Detroit. So is Detroit better than their record last year indicated?

Yeah, I actually think they definitely exceeded expectations. I think, you know, Dan Campbell's first year, I thought they were going to be the worst team in football, and they played hard every single week. They came back, they did cover in a couple scenarios where they were down pretty big early on in the game, but they're a team that closer than what people are giving them credit for, but even a team like Chicago or Minnesota is, and actually potentially winning the NFC North when the Green Bay Packers inevitably do move on from Eric Rodgers. So I think that going back to the initial discussion we had as far as what teams could exceed or fall short of expectation, the Detroit Lions are definitely an intriguing team that I

think could definitely go over their win total again here in 2022. And slightly related to that, one more on this topic. How is the market not caught up to the Packers yet? Because I think they've been 60% or more three years in a row now, and that's just unprecedented. That doesn't happen. Even the Patriots were, were still around, you know, 50% cover rate a lot of those years during their dynasty. So how is green Bay continually doing this? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's honestly, it goes back to the quarterback play. We've seen it where, you know, these historic type quarterbacks were, you know, consistently the best second best or third best quarterbacks in the NFL. Uh, they greatly exceed,

uh, spread expectations more than any other team. Right. And I think with Aaron Rodgers, that quarterback, the Packers have consistently done that. And it's it's it's hard because, you know, at a certain point, no one's going to want to buy into a bet. The Packers, if their spread does become overly inflated but uh there's definitely an adjustment that i think uh you know great quarterbacks maybe haven't gotten uh as much recognition or uh respect from the market as they probably should have because they are you know one of the key things that actually has shown to consistently outperform uh the spread expectations so guys like tom brady guys like aaron rogers uh are probably worth even more to the spread uh than what you know vegas or or betters are even giving them credit for right now, I would say.

So I was going to ask you a schedule-related question, and I was going through the Vikings opponents, and Kirk Cousins has probably got a good case for being better than 11 out of the 17 quarterbacks he's going to face, or counting Jared Goff twice and counting Justin Fields twice, maybe. But also then you look at the rosters, and I think that there's a lot of stronger rosters like Miami that they have to face. That's a stronger roster than the Vikings.

At this point in the game where we stand right now, and you're trying to project how good will this team be, does that mean anything to you or does it? Or do you factor that in? Because I've always found the strength of schedule is something we got to look at at the end of the year because it's really hard to say when we're going into a season. Right. Yeah, it definitely does matter.

Right. And it is something that we fold in. So, you know, not to like go too far into the weeds with anything, but for a lot of years, you know, Eric, Eric, you and I, you know, betting process has been kind of this top-down approach, where you start with some key metrics and you try to predict or express out or project out what you think the win total is going to be, what you think the spread is going to be, and everything else. I think that this offseason specifically, we have had simulations in prior years, but we're trying to do more of this bottom-up approach where we would simulate every single play for every single game and then kind of see given the distribution where do the vikings actually

stack up and that does take into account uh you know like the elo rankings uh for those other teams it takes into account like the expected facet grades given their uh depth charts uh that we have currently available for all those teams so uh it definitely is something that we fold in uh given you know pff specific power rankings and it definitely is something that we fold in given, you know, PFF specific power rankings. And it definitely does matter quite a bit. And I do think that right now it's not, it's not talked about a lot because we do, we know the teams that they're going to play, but we don't know the order in which they're going to be played. So I think that maybe people overlook it when they're trying to, you know, find teams that

they think are going to be valuable to either go over or under their win total. But it's something that definitely needs to be considered, especially given some of those teams that are maybe finished at the bottom of the division last year are going to have a lot of worthwhile games where they're probably going to be able to sneak one or two victories out. And then from there, it's beating one or two division opponents at that point. And then if they do that, they're well over their win total already. So it's something that matters quite a bit and something that we definitely take into account. Ben, I would love to hear about a couple of your hits and misses from last year.

I mean, you mentioned that you were pretty high on Cincinnati. That's obviously a hit. I would love to hear maybe another example, like why you believed in those teams. And then you could share a miss as well. Like what went wrong or why didn't you get that projection? Correct. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, Bengals were definitely my biggest hit, I would say for sure. I'm trying to think of a couple other ones as well.

But yeah, I mean, specifically with the Bengals, I was actually probably early on them. I thought they were a decent dark horse candidate to make the playoffs at like a plus 600 uh payout in 2020 uh and I do think you know with with what Joel Burrow basically showed at LSU in 2019 I did think that he even though he went number one overall I don't think he was probably getting enough credit for being uh this generational type quarterback like like we saw from you know the trevor lawrence coming out in the year after so i thought that he could easily exceed expectations really accurate passer uh and i think that given the direction that uh the league is moving to be in more a much more of a pass heavy team i did think that they could definitely arrive earlier uh and they did right

and i think after you know jamar chase was drafted with them it just made a lot of sense for them to actually be able to uh be a pretty dynamic offense given that they already had Tee Higgins as well, who looked like a pretty big hit in the second round of that 2020 draft as well. So they had the pieces, I would say, in place, especially at the skill position. And then they just kind of needed to figure out a way to do it along the offensive line. And they got enough there. And I do think that they're going to be obviously vastly improved again, heading into 2022. But I think the cat's obviously out of the bag with Cincinnati.

So you do have to look for, you know, other betting or value opportunities on teams that maybe aren't necessarily going to make the same type of leap, but at least have some of those like core pieces or opportunities in place to actually be more successful than what the betting market indicates but i think uh going back to your question uh the biggest miss for me i think was probably listening to eric eager uh ram splaining uh and being basically completely off completely off base on the los angeles rams i do think you know given our you know research and

those sorts of things we want to see teams build through the draft. We want to see a quarterback on that rookie contract, kind of get the pieces in place and fit some of those veteran deals in around them and really build a winner that way. And I think the Rams obviously kind of fly in the face of that analysis. So it was something that we kind of missed the boat on. Obviously, we need to reevaluate some things but they were uh definitely my biggest miss i think i had their under win total uh it wasn't really on any futures for them whatsoever and probably probably for the most part faded them throughout the playoffs as well uh on their on their spreads and those sorts of things so that was that was definitely a painful one for me uh given the fact that they ended up winning the super bowl when it was all said and done so there's there's makes and misses uh from a gambling perspective thankfully you only really

need to hit like 54 55 percent of your bets to be a successful sports better so take your chances you gotta take your lumps as well yeah but I mean isn't it like the Rams a great example of just can't predict football I mean when you I mean in the middle of the season they had Odell Beckham and Vaughn Miller and we talk about how one player doesn't make that big of a difference. But when Robert Woods goes down, who's a key player, and then Beckham starts playing great for them. It's like, well, that does make a difference because the guy they would have been playing in Robert Woods place is hysterically bad. It dropped every pass that I ever saw thrown his way. I forget his name.

But even in the Super Bowl, like bounces off his hands and it's a pick. Like that's the guy who would have been playing. And instead it was Odell Beckham and then a blocked pun in Green Bay, a 17-7 lead blown a what the hell were you doing? Todd Bowles defense in the playoff, like all these things now, like Eric will say, and everyone should. They don't have to apologize to anybody for winning that Super Bowl. It's just that the odds were against them but sometimes if something has a five percent chance of happening that means it happens five times out of exactly so and that to me was the rams yeah and it and it happened and

and and you know they definitely they got they got the performances that they needed at key positions right like jaylen ramsey probably the best cover quarterback in the nfl they had that i think cooper cup played at you know the best wide receiver season that we've seen in quite some time all these factors uh that i don't think you can necessarily bank on year in and year out happened in the perfect year and they got the right dice roll uh and they ended up winning right and that that happens but but to go back to like your initial point like football is such a random game i would say more so than any other sport. So modeling it, there's a lot of gray in a lot of situations

and things obviously don't work out close to our expectation in a lot of scenarios. But I think that's also what makes it kind of fun in a lot of scenarios as well. Cleveland Browns, Deshaun Watson, your thoughts on their projection for this year? Yes, we did just get their win total. I think it's nine and a half. The question I think has to be answered is, you know, how long is Deshaun Watson going to be suspended for? I think it's going to be right around six games or something like that. So I firmly believe that they're probably overvalued in the betting market, probably going to be a popular team to fade as well.

So I think the team that I like from the AFC North quite a bit is probably the Baltimore Ravens, I would say, at like plus 225 or something like that. All right, well, I got a draft question for you and then a game for you to play before you go. The draft question is, what's the thinking on quarterbacks who will be drafted first when how many first round picks uh if if i were to spend my money on gambling um and have any belief in myself this would be a fun one to do especially

with everyone saying it's a weak class everyone hates these quarterbacks like put me down on Detroit for Malik Willis at the number two pick or something like give give me your thoughts on the quarterbacks and what the betting market is telling us about where they might go yeah I mean I actually really do like Malik Willis as a prospect I had him to go first overall a little while ago when he was like not actually a pretty heavy favorite at a minus price I think he's like minus 200 right now in DraftKings so I think the ship has kind of sailed on him being the first overall or first first quarterback selected off the board but uh and i know you touched on detroit it sounds like they might go uh you know more like edge defender or something like that i think that

probably fits in with dan campbell's you know, philosophy or, you know, team building perspective and everything else. I believe with my heart and a long shot bet that I actually find really intriguing is Malik Willis to go to the Houston Texans. I think if you, if you buy into, you know, Eric Eager's belief that they're setting up some sort of maybe Christian cult or something like that, I do think drafting the Liberty quarterback and getting him on board makes too much sense, right? And they have the third overall selection. So if they want to reach for him in that particular position, they definitely can. They also have 12th overall. I'm not sure he's going to be there at the 12th overall pick, but I do think that the least talked about lane and spot for him that I think makes the most sense.

And it's probably priced at a really good thing. I think it's plus 1600 on DraftKings. I think it's like plus 1200 on Bandle or something like that. But Leak Willis to go to the Houston Texans, I think is just, maybe I'm galaxy braining it too much, but I think there's just too many things where that's actually going to happen to the point where it justifies the price that you're getting in order to lay those odds, I would say. And how many of these guys do you think will go in the first round? How many quarterbacks?

Yes, we have actually seen it move down. I think it went from 3.5 down to 2.5. Maybe that's the Kenny Pickett hand size and everything else. I think Desmond Ritter is probably my second favorite quarterback prospect. I do think it's going to be really hard to see three guys go in this draft class. So I'd probably take the under two and a half as well. Maybe we see somebody move up into the latter half of the first round or just select a guy and get that fifth year option. But I think from my perspective, it's going to be a lot more round two guys than round one guys at the quarterback position. So I think Malik Willis, Locke, no one else really, I think is probably

going to go in the first round, I would say. say okay let's finish off with the game here we'll bounce back and forth sam we're gonna throw the most ridiculous football bets we could come up with at you and you have to tell us how you'd figure out whether like what the bet would be if you had to bet this so i want to start off with would you, or how would you determine if you would bet CJ Hamm, the Vikings fullback, over under 11 and a half catches this year? How would you figure out if you were going to make that bet? Okay, so what I would do is I would look at his overall snap percentages based on, you know, overall offensive snaps, how often he was actually on the field and what personnel

and then how often he was actually even in and passing downs. I would look at, you know, PFF data to see how many routes he actually ran over the given timeframe and see if he would even have opportunities at 11 and a half targets or whatever. Right. And I do think that, you know, looking at Kevin O'Connell's, you know, expected base usage, how often he was throwing in short yardage situations, how often he was even getting you know fullback on the field are things that i would definitely try and take into account

uh but i don't know i mean i think cj ham's shown a few times that he's definitely more than capable yards after the catch back so i feel like i i feel like the only side to that bet is probably the over uh if if i was getting decent odds on it i would say say so. I don't know. That is an intriguing question, I would say for sure, though. Is it? 17 catches last year for CJ Hamm. I would not have guessed that, right? Yeah, he's going to get used. All right, what's your ridiculous bet, Sam?

What about something like, I mean, I know that there's barely any challenges anymore in football because it's all reviewed by the booth, but over under two and a half missed challenges in a season for for kevin o'connell how would you even go about go uh researching that yeah i mean i would i would honestly look at league league wide base rates like you said uh the rules have kind of been shifting a little bit to the point where they don't necessarily have to uh have to call in a challenge if it's obvious so i'd probably look at at the most recent base rates and try and go from there.

I do think that the over is probably correct just based on my initial napkin math or things that I'm thinking through in my head. I do think that he'd probably go over two and a half missed challenges given the fact that we don't have any prior history on him. I think it's league-wide base rates we also have seen sean mcbay uh you know kevin o'connell is obviously a disciple of sean mcbay a lot of people are saying uh hasn't necessarily been great from a challenge perspective either so maybe that holds true uh but i do think that uh the over is probably the smash spot from that perspective okay one more from each of us. Over under the fourth round of where Matt Ariza,

the punt god, gets taken in the draft. I feel like only from an analytics perspective, I have to say that it's going to be over, but I should not coach my bets whatsoever. So it's probably going to be like the third round. It's probably going to be, you know, the Patriots or somebody else going up there and getting them, you know,

making a mockery of all of us analytics folks who want who want who want the game to be as pure as possible uh so yeah he's it's it's honestly he he is really impressive i've never watched uh punter highlights as much as i've watched him actually punt it is it is a beautiful thing so i guess if he goes uh in the first four rounds uh i definitely don't mind seeing him get paid that That's for sure. And then I'm just thinking about the new overtime rules in the postseason. Over under half a game that actually gives the – where the second team has the rebuttal of the first team and it goes into a sudden death session.

I'm going to – so I think it's only postseason. I would be shocked if we even see the scenario play out in the postseason next year. So I'm going under with that quite a bit. But yeah, that rule change is really, I don't think it's necessarily going to do what everyone is hoping it's going to do, unfortunately. So we'll see.

But as a minnesota vikings fan uh i would love i would love to continue to see the overtime rules especially in the playoffs progress given the the 2009 fiasco that i'm still having nightmares about with brett farve so all right i'm just kind of bummed that you lose out i think on so many walk-off touchdowns now like it's fun when a team scores and they get swarmed in the end zone. That's pretty cool. It's a little less impressive when a quarterback just like throws an incomplete pass. Yay.

Like that's what we're going to have a lot more of now in those games. People just want defense to matter so much. So that's why we're going to see the fourth down and completions and stuff. Right. So I didn't need it to change change i probably never needed it to change and i've always thought that the nfls just have ties in the regular season right uh okay bonus one though bonus one uh over under 0.5 viking superbowls ever oh my god dude i don't i because if i say under then i'm like the biggest pessimist right and all my friends my friends are going to be like, Oh, some things never change or whatever. But

I, given the current state of the roster, like I, I, I don't think they're going to be any anywhere closer in the next like five to seven years. And then that's when the rebuild happens. So, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to die a sad man, but I think it's going to be under still from my perspective, unfortunately. So I'm curious both of your thoughts on it though i want to get your thoughts well i'm trying to think like you i'm trying to think like historically like what have we learned across the four major sports that typically like the longest level of drought is going to be like a century like at at the century mark or the 80 year mark that's when these cursed teams usually get one. So the question is, is the NFL going to exist in 50 years? Because I think there's enough pushback with the safety of football that that's the bet.

If it's going to sustain into like 2070, then I think you kind of hit that threshold where the Vikings have probably done it. You just got to have the league exist. Well, and I would say that, you know, I said ever so like Eddie Zongstar from Mars could always be the guy that they pick number one overall out of 740 teams in the year 8,000. So it's always possible, except for the world will have incinerated getting close to the sun.

The compensatory draft and then the intergalactic draft. The intergalactic. Yeah, that's right. You have to take so many earthlings and then the intergalactic draft. The intergalactic. Yeah, that's right. You have to take so many Earthlings, and then you get so many aliens. Someday. No, I think it only takes one year. It takes one. And it takes one bunch of things coming together or one quarterback to give you a bunch of chances.

And so I would absolutely not say never. I was talking with someone who covers the new orleans saints like what a laughing stock their franchise was for a long time and then just they weren't so right and then drew breeze just kind of fell into their lap right and all of a sudden it was amazing yeah that's it's it's it's the hope it's it's it's the hope i need to be more optimistic i would say i appreciate you guys putting me in my place with that so But I do think that it's proof that you were born in Minnesota. That's, that's what really solidifies it.

So at PFF underscore Ben Brown on Twitter, you do a lot of awesome stuff on, in the betting realm. If people couldn't figure that out by now and a great follow on Twitter. Good to get together with you, man. It's the first time we've been able to do this and I'm glad we could do it for this Friday round table. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks guys. Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure.