Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Ben Linsey spins the quarterback wheel and breaks down Kirk Cousins' PFF Annual stats

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Matthew Coller is joined by Pro Football Focus's Ben Linsey to talk about the PFF QB Annual, which breaks down a ton of statistics pertaining to Kirk Cousins. What do the numbers say about the Vikings' decision about keeping or moving on from Cousins? Do PFF's analytics suggest a bright or concerning future for the 2021 QB class? Why Justin Fields has the strangest numbers and we spin the wheel of QBs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here, and before we get to our guest, Ben Lindsay from Pro Football Focus, let me give a jury duty day six update board. Long days, lots of testimony. Can't talk about it still. But after the case is over, I can talk about it. And it will be interesting, I think, to discuss a little bit to tell everyone how it works. But basically, I'm going and i'm listening to these things happen and i'm taking notes and then at the end we're going to get together and decide so that's that's where we're at but i'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel anyway so that's it there's no real

other sexy updates to give you at this point but you talk about sexy you talk about breaking down quarterback statistics uh ben l Ben Lindsay is our guest. He is responsible for the Pro Football Focus QB Annual, which is the most preposterous collection of quarterback statistics you have ever seen in your life. I've spent my last two days pouring through it. And, Ben, I have to say, every year I feel like you guys have upped your game with the PFF QB Annual. And every year I've written a full breakdown of it, but now I almost feel like I have too upped your game with the PFF QB annual. And every year I've written a full breakdown of it, but now I almost feel like I have too much to work with. Well, well, thank you.

I couldn't agree more that there's nothing sexier than, than a bunch of quarterback data, but, but I appreciate that. It was my sort of my first year really diving in and taking control of that. But it was a lot of fun just going through. I think I've had enough PDF formatting for the year at this point, but it was fun going through and seeing where guys had success, where guys struggled, some league-wide stuff. So fun little project. That is the only challenge is zooming in and zooming out when you're trying to look at all the numbers, because sometimes you have to fit a lot on a single page but uh here's the interesting thing about kirk cousins is that when you go through the qb annual and you look at his

statistics it's hard to find anything that's bad about his statistics last year that he has great numbers with a clean pocket his overall grade was the best of his career i mean there's a lot of different things that you could break down. His numbers when throwing to Jefferson and Thielen are absolutely fantastic. He is one of the more accurate quarterbacks in the NFL. Even the idea, this is why I love this, is the idea that he checks down all the time. It's more of that he checks down about on an average basis instead of like an above average amount of checkdowns.

So the question that gets asked all the time, and now we have more data to work with to discuss it, Ben, is why does the statistics look so much different than what everyone watching is taking in? Because people watch the games and they've seen Kirk Cousins and they've seen him disappoint repeatedly year after year. And then they get to the end of the year and go, why, why do his statistics say he's number one in this and he's top in this and he's top 10 in this. So where is the gap in your mind with Kirk Cousins and some of the numbers? Yeah, I think that's, it's what's so interesting about the, the Kirk Cousins debate is you can go and look at that, the data in the quarterback annual and sort of both sides on the aisle have valid arguments.

Right. You have the Kirk Cousins defenders who will point to like his clean pocket numbers where he grades out at the best in the league with Joe Burrow. You look at his his early down stuff, his first read stuff, sort of these situations where everything's set up and you're like, that guy looks like one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, just, just based on those numbers. And I think it's, it, it certainly doesn't have bad numbers in these other areas, but it's sort of the go out and make a play scenarios where his numbers take a little bit of a backseat. So you look at under pressure, he's more closer to middle of the pack. 17th,

I think is where he's slottedotted in in terms of grade rank. And the team success is even worse, which goes part of into that question. I think Cousins is good at sort of avoiding doing neutral plays that aren't really affecting his overall numbers in terms of like getting rid of the ball when he's under pressure. And he took sacks at one of the lowest rates in the league when he was pressured he doesn't bring that much pressure on himself i think he had just had seven total pressures that were assigned to him last year um but he's not really going out and making plays in those scenarios either which hurts your team it might not show up in all of the stats but it the elite quarterbacks in the nfl go out and make plays on third down when they're

pressured, when things break down. And that's really where it's sort of that eye test and where Kirk Cousins falls off a little bit, even if in the grand picture of things, his numbers still look like he's a top tier quarterback. Yeah. There's a few things that stuck out. One of them was in the scramble drill, which does not make up an incredibly high amount of plays it's like five percent of plays or four percent for Kirk Cousins because he's not often in the scramble drill but his accuracy only one out of every four passes accurate and this is how it looks almost every year his uncatchable passes rate is is really poor uh it's it's not like I mean that would match up with the eye test it's not like there's playmaking outside of the structure,

which is often what it takes to make a big play at a big time. You mentioned the third down numbers and they are very average. And the thing about league average is league average doesn't sound bad. Like when you say, oh, you know, he's league average under pressure, league average third down. But part of the issue with that is there's some quarterbacks who are so absolutely god-awful in the nfl that they shouldn't even be on like the same chart as a kirk cousins it's like if you took the accumulation of the top 15 i think the average would look very much different because like sam darnold is so terrible that he's dragging all of

these numbers down so you can say well okay he was average on third down, but he was not average among quarterbacks who are supposed to be good. He was, he would be like at the bottom rung of that. And I think those are the spaces in between. Let me point out another thing too, is that when you look at his game by game grading, which I want to get into how you guys grade, because I think it's really insightful to like what it all means. But when you go by his game by game grading the beginning of the season, just over 80 week one, week two, week three, week five, and then the rest of the season, none outside of week 18, when they played a meaningless game. And there are some toward the end of the season where it's way down there, like three, four, five games stretch. That's way down there.

And I think that's when we do these accumulation stats, it's hard to look at like, oh, actually these were the most important games of the season and they were at the lowest level. And I think that's something that we have to always consider with cousins is the roller coaster goes very high and very low. Yeah. I think that can be applied just beyond grading to his other stats right it's it's not just the overall stats but it's it's what situations you accumulate those stats in and we can say like like the third down stuff um all that stuff i sort of brought up before under pressure it's it's less stable from year to year but that doesn't mean it's not important right it's still important to be good in those areas um and it's where Cousins sort of takes a back seat. And that's not saying he's a

bad quarterback, right? Like you said, average, he's average. But when you're paying him what you're paying him, that's sort of where the disconnect comes in. And average isn't always good enough. So there's another thing that I wanted to talk about that I think is a discussion pretty often is getting the most out of Kirk Cousins. Statistically, how can you get a grasp of how much a coaching staff and a supporting cast was able to get out of someone? Because that's something that in a QB annual it's cousin statistics and one thing when you scroll down and you look at throwing to Jefferson or Thielen it's pretty mind-blowing their quarterback his quarterback rating when throwing to those guys 130 to Thielen

117 to Jefferson which considering the depth of target to Jefferson is really crazy to think about his success like he's doing Julio Jones type stuff out there, but I think there's an idea that, and it's not like I'm saying this is the wrong idea, but I just want your opinion that Kevin O'Connell is the new head coach can get more than the previous office of coordinators have gotten out of Kirk cousins. I guess what can we look for in the numbers to determine whether that might be the case?

Yeah. of Kirk Cousins? I guess, what can we look for in the numbers to determine whether that might be the case? Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily a situation where the coaches haven't done a good job of getting the most out of Kirk Cousins in the past. Like we said, his numbers have been good these past three or four years. I think a big sort of thing you look for and when you're getting the most out of a quarterback is the disconnect um and sort of how often you're getting these easy scenarios um the scenarios that he has success in all right so how often are you passing on early downs where he's performing better how often are you giving him clean pockets play action ties into that right that slows down a pass rush that's something the vikings have done a pretty good job of with Kirk Cousins, running play action at an above-average rate. Maybe with the exception of last year, they calmed down with that a little bit. But sort of giving him those scenarios where he has success

and not forcing him to create outside of structure, it's sort of similar to the 49ers with Garoppolo. I think Cousins is a better quarterback than Garoppolo, but it's sort of the same idea where you want to minimize those situations where he's shown that he's closer to league average and not a top five quarterback in the NFL like he looks like in other situations. Right. That's the back and forth that I have with myself sometimes when it comes to Kirk Cousins or guests is like, I think that they had the system right. That a Shanahan style Kubiak style system is absolutely perfectly fit for Kirk cousins to roll him away from pressure, to give him easy reads, to create those deep shots that he can

throw accurately for sure. And then a lot of times when you have great quarterbacks in that system, John Elway back in the day, a little before you. But I mean, that's where it really like blew up of, oh my gosh, they were asking John Elway to take the snap out of the shotgun and do everything. And now he's running boots and people are wide open all over the place. But I think the league has figured out, Ben, tell me what the numbers say about this, that you could do this with a lot of quarterbacks. Tannehill, Garoppolo, Jared Goff when he was in LA. And it's the next level of that is kind of where this is all determined of, can you get over the top? Can

you compete for a Superbowl with this quarterback? Yeah, I agree with that. And if you have a quarterback who is more reliant on those systems, it's, it's harder to win consistently. It's, it's why the Rams went out and got Matthew Stafford because Jared golf had success in that, in that same kind of offense in 2018, 2017, but Stafford allows you to, to win with a straight drop back game to elevate, create outside of structure. You can argue sort of what tier Stafford's in in the NFL. But I think you can win with more quarterbacks where you're pushing the easy buttons. And we've seen that these last few years with the Mayfields, Tannehills, Garoppolo's sort of the guys you mentioned. And I think Cousins is probably towards the top of that group,

but he's still in that group, I believe. Not a leading question. Similarities between Stafford and Cousins or not? I think Stafford has shown he's sort of similar to Cousins in that he was a lot better when clean than when pressured this year there's sort of some similarities in the data but Stafford he just has he's a better improviser than cousins in my opinion and I think that's the the main thing that separates them he probably has a little bit better arm not to say cousins doesn't have a good

arm but it's just sort of those those those little things that push a quarterback over the top. You mean being able to throw a no-look rocket in the final drive of the Super Bowl? That helps. That helps. Well, and you know, that is the thing about Cousins is that his spectacular throws, of which he makes them. He's 10th in big-time throw percentage, which is not bad at all. But they're usually the same type of throw. It's like drop back, let it go deep down the field

and he'll make an accurate throw deep down the field if he's got time to make that play. So it's not like he's just, you know, check down and that's it or short underneath and that's it. I mean, he's making some big time throws. It's making the play that everybody screen grabs and posts on Twitter to watch a thousand times over again.

We just don't see a whole lot of that. And that goes along with the mobility too. I was hoping- It's like the, it's another thing is just going through progressions. That's something that Seth Galina, PFF, does great work. He talked a lot about Stafford getting to that backside dig this year and sort of going through. And if you look at Cousins' numbers,

his numbers really dropped off after the first read. So it's making a variety of throws from different arm angles, but also being able to go through your progressions and have confidence that you can fit the ball in there on a guy you're coming on too late in the progression. And that's something that Stafford really helped the Rams this year. That's a great observation. I remember when I was trying to formulate my opinion on whether the Vikings should sign Cousins back in 2018. And so I was going through everything I could find. And Doug Farrar, who writes for USA Today now, did a tremendous piece, a film piece,

about being slow to those next reads for Cousins and how it would hurt him in Washington. And I think that's very much come to fruition here, where if it's not right there, then we see that kind of panicky look that everyone can envision when I'm saying it right now. I wanted to know if you could explain, well, I know you can, the way that the grading system works and what might be the strengths and the weaknesses of the grading system so we can sort of better understand

when we talk about, well, he graded first in a clean pocket. He graded this or that. Grading first, let's say he's first, Joe Burrow's second. What would be differences? What strengths and weaknesses of the system? What does it really tell us?

Yeah, it's like any tool. I, I think it's one of the better quarterback evaluation tools out there, but it's not something you can just take on its own and just use it in a vacuum, right? It's so just generally how it works. Each quarterback gets a grade from negative two to two. I think it does a good job of adding context um on a given play so if a receiver drops a pass and it gets intercepted the quarterback's not gonna get penalized for that i think that's the one glaring area where it sort of adds another level context that most stats don't and i think that's one of the bigger

strengths um which has a couple different applications as far as weaknesses um i i do think there's plays where a quarterback can can make a play that's not he takes the safe route right he he gets rid of the ball um he takes a sack he does something that might not necessarily be a negative per se. So we, we don't grade it as such, but it's, it's not helping. It's not making a play going back to that earlier. It's not, it's not moving the offense forward and it could be a net negative for the offense. If you throw away a pass or obviously take a sack,

that's a net negative. That's not necessarily going to get assigned to the quarterback just based off it's tough to give them blame per se for it folks we've got an even better offer to tell you about from soda stick if you use the promo code purple insider one word you can get 15 off your purchase that's right at soda stick.com your place for for Minnesota sports-inspired apparel. You can get 15% off just by using the code PURPLEINSIDER. I've told you about all the great football designs, but they've added a few more, including the Axe is Back for Minnesota football fans. You can get that on a shirt, on a hat.

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So an example might be that let's say you have a third down in 11 and you throw a six yard pass underneath and then you punt the ball away when there was a tight window throw there or a second read or a play to be made and you didn't make it but how can you penalize a guy for a throw that he didn't attempt and so he'll get a zero for that on your minus two to two system which is for every play and he'll get a zero so it won't say he did anything wrong but really like there was opportunity to do something else so it's kind of a blind spot in the system and this was something that popped out to me is that in terms of the positive grade rate so anything over zero uh cousins was 14th So he was basically dead in the middle

of the league in terms of your positive grade rate. And I feel like what these numbers do is they sort of paint us a portrait of a quarterback and they say like, okay, well, this is kind of what you have here. And I think that this is just very accurate of cousins. And I guess my question is, and you sort of alluded to it earlier, but do you keep this type of quarterback? Like, is it worth building around him in the future? If you're Kevin O'Connell and Kwasi Adafomensa, and you have a couple of analytics on your hands to look at, to paint the picture of what you're inheriting, you look at the numbers, what do you say? Yeah, I think it's an interesting question, and I think it

comes down to two questions they have to ask this offseason. The first is, what is the trade market going to be for Kirk Cousins? How aggressive is that going to be? Are they going to be able to get a first-round pick for him? Personally, if you are offered a first-round pick, I think you take it at this point of your Minnesota. Just based off, you've tried this with Cousins. It hasn't worked as far as building the roster around him. He's had success. The offense has had success at times. Team still hasn't had success.

It might be time to move on before he potentially leaves in 2023 anyways. Brad Spielberger recently did an article for us on trades, and I think he had the Panthers giving him a first and a second. If that's what it is, that's something I would definitely do if I'm Minnesota. And then you sort of see what you have in the draft, see which quarterback. If a quarterback you like drops to 12, sure, take a chance there. Potentially even trade back and take a chance. Just based on the way this quarterback class is, there's no clear consensus on which prospect is at the top. And there's plenty of bridge veterans out there in free agency who you can roll with on a one-year $10 million deal,

similar to what Washington did last year with Fitzpatrick, similar to what the Saints did with Winston. Winston's out there again. Fitzpatrick might be, who knows, he might retire. But there's the Winstons, Bridgewater, Mariota. Fitzpatrick will never retire. Never. He will play forever. Yeah. And keep going to Bill's game shirtless. It's just going to keep running on. But there's those guys out there who, I don't hate the idea for Minnesota. If you want to go get one of those guys on a one-year deal, pair him with a rookie, I don't hate the idea for Minnesota if you want to go get one of those guys on one year deal pair him with a rookie I don't hate that at all for the Vikings especially if you can return a first for Cousins if not and you want to see what he does which is sort of the other question how much does Kevin O'Connell really like him was what he was saying just part

of like yeah the Minnesota Vikings are interviewing me I need to say nice things about Kirk Cousins. It's just sort of weighing whether you want that other year. Personally, I think trading them if you can and then going other routes. Well, it was really noticeable how different the quote insider reports were from what Kevin O'Connell actually said when he got here, which is not surprising because Rick Spielman was texting all of these national reporters this whole time and they had a very clear source. So we knew that they had the right information. We don't know that now. I don't know that Kwesi Adafo-Mensah has taken the same

approach to the media, which is to text NFL Network anytime you want something out there. That's what Rick Spielman did. So I think that they are really not as reliable. They haven't been. I mean, they had defensive coordinators who weren't defensive coordinating. They had Jim Harbaugh here when he wasn't. They had lots of things recently that I'm starting to notice. There's less of a good feel from the outside from a lot of the national reporters than there has been in the past because they're not getting those direct messages, at least right now. So I don't know what they'll do. I do think that a lot

of people on Twitter hugged Brad Spielberger digitally after giving them a first and a second. That seems to be aggressive to me, Ben. I mean, I think so too, right? That seems to be a lot. They would have to be incredibly desperate and fail on other levels with different quarterbacks first. Yeah, but the Panthers might be desperate, right? If you look at the teams out there, there's a couple teams that I don't want to say they're winning now, but they have rosters that can win if they make a significant upgrade at quarterback. You have the Steelers, Cousins, clearly a significant upgrade over Mason Rudolph, whatever you want to think about them. Saints, potentially their cap space might make that tough. But Broncos, whether or not the Rodgers debacle, whatever happens there. But the Panthers, they're not in that tier.

I think it could go poorly if they trade for Cousins with that offensive line and sort of where they are as a team. But you look at Matt Rule and sort of where they are as a team. But you look at Matt Rule and sort of that front office, I think they are desperate because they took a big swing on Darnold last year. That didn't pay off at all. And if they don't get someone in there who can sort of turn things around next season, their jobs could be in jeopardy. And that sort of leads to desperation. And I saw Ian Rappaport say on Pat McAfee show that he's confident cousins is

going to be in Minnesota. And I just don't understand that because you just ran through a bunch of teams that makes sense to do it and the reasoning to do it. And I mean, we haven't even gotten to the point where teams have gotten to the combine and can have discussions at St. Elmo's if you've been, you know, and things like that. That's where I don't understand, like, why would you be confident right now? I don't think any of us really know how this is going to play out, but there's a

stronger case to move on, especially with the roster that they have, than there is to keep them and add void years or keep him at a long-term contract, especially considering, and I think of this too, and I was going to ask you about this. So Cousins had his highest graded season by PFF and he's going into his age 34 season, but quarterbacks do last longer. It's just like the regression part of me of having, you know, written about and use statistics for a long time thinks, well, they've actually gotten several really good seasons out of Kirk Cousins and they failed to capitalize them on them. That's on a lot of people, including Kirk, but like a lot of other people too. But repeating this year after year, even if it's a better system,

I think would be hard for somebody who is already kind of maxed out every ability that they have. I agree with you. It goes back to that. What we were talking about earlier with the sort of the environment that he needs to be in. We've seen peak seasons from quarterbacks in that, in that sort of cluster, the Mayfields, the Tannehills, and it's more difficult to sustain it. Even if cousins is better than those quarterbacks With the way that the roster is trending, I think it makes sense to move on

just because you might not get this kind of play out of him like you alluded to moving forward. Okay, so I have two more things for you, Ben. Number one, I want to hear from you about some of these other quarterbacks who could be potentially on the move and what you think. I mean, because you guys cover every quarterback or every starter in the league and the top end guys. Okay. We all know that everyone would want Russell Wilson or Aaron Rogers as their quarterback. It's not worth really even covering whoever they go to becomes a Superbowl contender the day they arrive. But when you talk about like someone like garoppolo this is always a thing if garoppolo wins a playoff game 10 to 7 or something it's like

garoppolo underrated winner and then the minute he loses everyone goes i told you garoppolo can't play uh is garoppolo if you're a team that's on the look for a quarterback and you're sitting down and you're having a big meeting with all your analytics people and you're saying, all right, folks, we got enough money for a Jimmy G or a Kirk C, what should we do? How would you break that down? Yeah, I think Cousins would be the preferred choice there if you're talking about remotely similar investment. Just based off, you look at the difference between clean and pressure for Cousins, Garoppolo's an even more exaggerated version of that. If you look at the sort of scatterplot in the beginning of the quarterback annual with pressure grade on one axis, clean grade on the other, Garoppolo's an outlier.

He was one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL when he pressured. Hats and success when clean. He is also much more prone to the mistakes than Cousins is. The turnover really play weight rate is pretty high. Big time throw rates pretty low. So he's someone who can come in and I think he can operate an offense if everything's in place. But he's already been in the arguably the best case scenario for a quarterback like him in san francisco and they've had success

uh they went to the super bowl they went to the nc championship game um but they still wanted to move on they still traded three first round picks to there to go up and get trey lance um so i i think in that situation, I prefer cousins. That would have been so awkward if they made the Superbowl, it just would have been, no, we traded for this other quarterback. And yet maybe this is the new model, Ben, every team that tries to do the Alex Smith thing, then the quarterback, that's the starter, including Alex Smith that year with Patrick Mahomes. It was almost, it's almost like when you tell the quarterback, we're moving on from you and we, you do not have to care about this season. The guy can go out and ball. It's kind of funny. What insight can we get out of some of the rookie

quarterbacks? Because of course here you're kind of looking over, you know, a little bit to the South in Chicago and saying, what do we make of Justin Fields? And I was looking over his numbers and like, talk about a roller coaster of emotions. Cause you're like, oh, wow, that number actually looks really good. Oh my God, what happened there? Like that's Justin Fields. But I mean, all of these guys like Mac Jones, Zach Wilson, there was some really disturbing Zach Wilson statistics. Like, what can we take from that to get an idea of how good someone like Justin Fields can be?

Yeah, I think with Fields, it was at least you saw the high end, which is more than you can say for some of the other rookie quarterbacks that were picked ahead of him. Like Zach Wilson, like you mentioned, there's not that many positive Zach Wilson numbers out there to sort of latch on to. It's more moments. But with Fields, he played sort of a high variance style of football he held onto the ball he had one of the highest average depth of targets in the league so that's naturally going to lead to a little bit more variance but you saw the playmaking ability there and that was even in a scheme that you could say limited him um it didn't tap into his rushing ability as much as it could have it didn't scheme open as much as it could have. It didn't scheme open as

much as it could have. He had one of the highest percentage of tight window throws in the NFL, partially on him, partially on scheme. But I think it was at least promising enough to be confident about him moving forward. Whereas someone like Zach Wilson, you're really just hoping it sort of clicks for him. Because it's not like he was he was in a floor offense that was supposed to make things easier on him. Didn't have a lot of talent around him, but I think it's just the processing speed, getting through reads, sort of calming down a little bit for Zach Wilson. Trevor Lawrence, in terms of the other rookies. I think the big thing with Lawrence that is promising, there's a lot of ugly numbers for him too,

but he's showed a lot of poise in the pocket. That pressure to sack ratio is one of the lowest in the NFL, which is impressive for a rookie in sort of the situation he was in without a lot of help. And he had some high-end flashes too. So it was a disappointing rookie class overall. But some of these guys I think could take a big step in year two with more around them. Hey, everybody.

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hellofresh.com slash insider16 hellofresh.com slash insider16 use the code insider16 for up to 16 meals for free and three free gifts hellofresh america's number one meal kit i think when it comes to coaching and quarterbacks that the top 18 coaches in the league or so uh all right if you're in that offense it's kind of on you right and then there's that bottom tier that could just ruin something any way possible uh for south park fans i like to say that like the bears their offense was run by manatees because like, if you remember the joke from South Park, it was, they were saying the family guy was written by manatees that took a bunch of

random balls with words on them and then just like put them into a bin. And that's how they wrote the show. That's like Matt Nagy and picking plays. It's just like, it's just all random. It doesn't really make any sense. And now they want to go to more of that bootleg offense, which I think is really good for a guy who's processing speed might not be

perfect, but has a cannon. And you mentioned it, Justin Fields was second in big time throw percentage, which really kind of took me back like, okay, wow. So he was making those, those special plays. And I think the Vikings fans need to be a little nervous about that. I mean, it's just like if they start getting it right and stop being run by manatees like they've got i mean they've got a decent chance for justin fields to be something yeah i agree um and that

he was his design rollout numbers last year it's not in the quarterback annual but those were really strong um so i think an offense that that gets him on the move um where he can use his athleticism he has a great arm um so so an offense more tailored to him which is kind of interesting because it wasn't that long ago that naggy was a good play caller right when trubisky was there as people were sort of giving him credit um back in 2018 but obviously last year wasn't a great scheme. So if you get fields in an offense more suited to him, it could be dangerous. I still think that roster has a lot of holes personally, but at least they have the quarterback in place if he pans out.

Okay. So we do a thing here. I can't remember exactly what I call it, but the wheel of quarterbacks. So the Vikings have so many different potential options at quarterback. And I mean, maybe it will be Kirk cousins. Maybe it won't he's on the list. But I've made a list of 21 potential starting opening day quarterbacks for the Vikings. And what I do is I spin the wheel, which is just a number randomizer. And then we talk about it. So let's spin the wheel a couple of times, Ben.

This is, this has really been quarterback week uh well while i spin the wheel we had a lot of fun on the last episode talking about like who kirk cousins is like from the past you're not that old but we came up with like trent green was a good one and sort of like peak andy dalton is who he's been like, like who's the, who's the Andy Donald's 2015. Really good. Who's the most similar statistically to him in the QB annual? Hmm. That's an interesting question.

I think most similar statistically to him. I think there's some similarities with that's a tough one. I think there's some similarities with that's a tough one. I think there's some similarities with Derek Carr. Um, some similarities with Ryan Tannehill. Um, sort of, sort of in that cluster.

It's, I think those two probably. Okay. Let's spin the wheel. You want to do the game show music or you want me to do it? It's all you. Okay. Let's spin the random wheel and find out who the quarterback is to do okay here's what i landed on matt corral is the quarterback who came up do

you think it's a good idea for the vikings regardless really of kirk cousin status to draft matt corral yeah i i don't know if I would draft him at 12. It might be only in a trade down, but I don't hate that at all. Does that matter? I mean, like if you draft him with your pick, this has been a theory of mine. It was sort of with the Mac Jones thing last year.

Like if I draft him with my pick, even if it goes bust, there's lots of guys I draft with my pick that go bust. If Trey Lance goes bust for the 49ers. Oh my God. Like it ruins their franchise. I think it's okay. Like if you overdraft the guy with your pick,

I think it's fine. Yeah. I, I, I don't hate him at 12. Um, I prefer him lower, but I think,

I think 12 is, is fine if he's your guy. Okay. Number and do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do do do do do this will be the last one we do i promise do do do do do number randomizer and uh tick tick tick tick tick we have landed on gardner minshu would it be a good idea for the vikings i suppose in that scenario to trade kirk cousins away and use gardner minshu as their bridge quarterback yeah i i think that would be i think that would be fine i think the best path for the

vikings is to trade kirk cousins um get one of these bridge quarterbacks which minchu i think is fine in that regard um he's capable starter he had some success in jacksonville um and draft a quarterback um so i think the bridge starter draft a quarterback model is probably the way I would go. So in that case, I have no issues with Minshew. Okay. I think it's a good idea too. I mean, there's a lot of different quarterbacks that you'd be okay with. Mariota.

I'm not really a fan of bringing Winston to town necessarily based on his past. But, you know, just as a quarterback. I like Mariota. I think in terms of like these one- year guy, the sort of free agent class, Mariota would probably be towards the top of the list just as a one year, potentially higher upside than these other guys. Just in terms of he in Tennessee before he injured that elbow in 2018 which was sort of a weird nerve injury that he had like weakness and tingling in his hands and then he lost the job to Tannehill and sort of never got it back so I wouldn't hate taking a shot on him and I know it's it's not a PFF statistic but you kind of look at Mariota's

QBRs and it gives you a little bit of a sense for how he played and they add in running and that kind of thing and some of his pff grades like they're not they're not terrible at all i mean like his qbrs were similar to cousins and his some of his pff grades were okay i think he was maybe as high as 12th in the league one year but what i like about mariotta is i don't think you'll ever like mistake him for being a franchise quarterback. Like we can win. Someone will get the ball to Justin Jefferson. You can make the playoffs, but no one's ever going to say, Oh my God, he was so good that he just has to be our quarterback for the future, which I think is it's weirdly important to draft someone

not or to sign someone not good enough. Especially for Minnesota with what they're going through right now and trying to decide if cousins is, is the franchise quarterback or not. Right. Exactly. Okay. Final question. I promise. Who was your favorite quarterback when you were 10? Favorite quarterback when I was 10, um, I was so 10, I was this 2007. I grew up, uh, sort of unfortunately, but I grew up a Steelers fan so uh at that point it was it was Ben Roethlisberger um but it's sort of an unfortunate answer but that's that's the truth

well I mean for me like Jim Kelly so that uh gives you a little insight on our on our difference of age but I was just thinking about this today about – because I made a joke about Aaron Rodgers and his cleanse. See, we just did a data cleanse right here. We did like a data cleanse where we just like immersed ourself in data and came out better on the other side, which is way better than Aaron Rodgers' cleanse, which includes throwing up on purpose. And if you haven't seen this on Twitter, don't even bother. Yeah, I saw it. It looked, it looked ridiculous, gnarly, gnarly stuff that he really did some sort of bizarro cleanse that

includes throwing up. Uh, but I tweeted that like watching football from 1994 is my cleanse. And I was just thinking about the quarterbacks of 1994 and how I watched them play and how currently old they are now. So that's how it goes. But Ben, you do tremendous work. Glad to have you back on the show. The PFF Quarterback Annual, go to pff.com. You can find it there for Edge subscribers and Elite subscribers. I mean, it's worth it just on that. There's so much information there.

It's fantastic, especially for somebody like me. So great stuff. Glad to have you on the show. And you are at pff underscore ben on twitter at pff underscore lindsey ben stockwell okay and stop it's one of the og uh og pff guys so you got the pff bits right yeah you can't you can't uh push aside an original um like ben so okay at uh pff underscoreff underscore Lindsay is where you can follow Ben. Great stuff, man. Great to have you back on the show

and we will do it again soon. Anytime. This was fun convo.