Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Eric Eager breaks down the math of the Vikings' draft trades and what happened to the quarterbacks

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Pro Football Focus data analyst and host of the PFF Forecast podcast Eric Eager talks about the actual analytics behind Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's draft day trades, the odds at the No. 12 pick and No. 32 picks are hits, whether trading up in the second round was a good idea, the decision to take a guard and linebacker in the second and third rounds and why all of the quarterbacks dropped in the draft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and joining us on the show. Literally needed a PhD in math to break down whether the Vikings did a good job in the NFL draft. Eric Eager, data scientist, pro football focus, and the PFF forecast podcast. And there's two questions that have to be asked right off the beginning. And I'll give you the choice of which one you want to answer first. A is what happened with all the quarterbacks and B is what does the math say about all of the Vikings trades? Which one do you want to talk about first? Well, I think the quarterback one's a good one.

I know you and i have discussed you know the the you know sort of position and and how teams view it you and i are both you know historians of the league we we look back at a time when we look back at a time when you know uh jake delome was making super bowls when you know kurt warner was a developmental prospect matt hasselbeck basically everybody that was the packers backup quarterback um so on and so forth and you know nowadays like i think teams are looking at the incentives and thinking like why would i want to develop a quarterback when i can have access to a matt ryan if i really want one or i can have access to a Baker Mayfield if I really want one,

or, you know, so on and so forth. And so I think when playing this thing out, it was sort of one of those things where we all sort of said, oh, yeah, Seattle will want a quarterback. Oh, you know, the Pittsburgh Steelers want a quarterback, and they got one right it wasn't the one we all thought he would they would take or oh you know i'm trying to think tennessee will want a quarterback etc etc and it's like well no these teams are sort of like this is an all-in league

and you know basically you draft the quarterback when you need a starter and when you're bad and like none of the teams that were bad needed a starter you look at the top of the draft it's sort of you know it's it's Trevor Lawrence with Jacksonville it's Jared Goff with Detroit it's uh you know uh New York Jets with Zach Wilson it's the Houston Texans with Davis Mills it's uh the Giants with with Daniel Jones it's you know all these teams sort of presumably have their quarterback. And so there was really like these teams are trying to supplement that quarterback with players in rounds one and two and not competition for a spot that only one man gets to play.

I think that the other part of it is that draft analysts believed that these teams would take a big swing on the upside of Malik Willis or the quote high floor of Desmond Ritter. And the answer was neither because they watched them play football in great detail. And I think that the NFL has a much better sense for the outside world trying to watch tape and also even just looking at a lot of the numbers, but the numbers didn't suggest this was supposed to be good. It was really a lot of people's opinion on Malik Willis centrally focused on the dude can throw the ball a million yards and he runs really super fast. But the details of what actually projects to success might go many layers deeper for scouting than that. And if you are so far away on those things, then you go from being a Josh Allen prospect

to a Seneca Wallace prospect, right? I mean, like all of a sudden, like, I think that, uh, we looked at what has happened recently with some guys who have hit, who have these supposed high ceilings and maybe ignored some that the league has not loved or has really blown up in their face. I mean, I still look at, you know, high end tools is what the NFL is going to want most for the quarterbacks that they draft next year that are supposed to be better. But I mean, before Josh Allen, there was like Christian Hackenberg. I mean, there was a lot of times where they drafted guys who had supposedly huge arms

who did not turn out to be very good. And I think that they looked at specifically Malik Willis and just said, it's going to take a miracle for him to solve this, this, this, this, this, and this. And I think also, you know, Kevin Cole of PFF has been on this very much too, of like charting some of the things that correlate to success. And this draft class really looked bad with that. And that to me was the miscalculation is that those things that looked really bad on paper and looked like you should draft these guys in the third round at best.

That's what the NFL ultimately sided with rather than saying hey you should take this guy and maybe he turns into josh allen yeah i think so and i and i just don't think that there was the the opportunity cost you know when it was the buffalo bills and the opportunity cost was getting rid of tyrod taylor you know with a lot of these teams you know a you know you take a look at the Minnesota Vikings, right? When everything fell to them at 12, I was thinking on the show, I was like, oh, this could be a Malik Willis spot, right?

I think a lot of us thought, you know, much like with Mac Jones last year, if that quarterback falls to the Vikings at their pick, they should pick him. And, you know, when they traded out, I said this chris collinsworth who was on the show with me i said like this is the first sign that the quarterbacks are not that liked because you know questia dofamensa you know we'll talk about him in a little bit but like i think he understands positional value or at least you know like that that was my at least initial thought process you know cousins is on a two-year deal, so you're still like the – again, it was sort of the same thing the Falcons were like

when they took Kyle Pitts over, let's say, Justin Fields. You still got a quarterback for two more years. It cuts into the edge that a rookie quarterback deal can have. But then Detroit doesn't take him either when they trade up. They trade up for a wide receiver. Vikings get to 32. They don't even use that, take a flyer on him. Then they go for safety.

You know, again, it's just these teams are looking at almost everybody's locked into a quarterback. And so, you know, when you're locked into a quarterback, the draft is for supporting that quarterback, not providing competition for him. And so, you know, that ended up being the thing. You know, Pittsburgh was the only team without really a quarterback. And, you know, with Trubisky in there, you know, I think Seattle likes Drew Locke,

I guess, and Carolina likes Sam Darnall, I guess. So it was very strange. It was a very strange situation. And then ultimately the only thing I'm – I had limit-sized bets on the overs for both quarterbacks. My only thing I'm kicking myself about from a betting perspective was not betting over in the second round. Like Kevin Cole, my colleague, as you talk about,

he posted a list of all the second-round quarterbacks that have been taken during the post cba uh and it's like 1.2 right and then we all thought like oh all these teams were were sour on these quarterbacks in day one they were going to start taking immediately in day two and like ultimately the betting markets were like 50 picks off on like every one of them so you know that it was it was a collective failure to understand what the marketplace was going to look like on behalf of the media and even the betters, the people with skin in the game like myself. We certainly missed. I had Willis as first quarterback over Pickett and lost a decent amount of money over that.

So it was a very strange thing. And I think ultimately when people say it's a weak class, we should maybe believe them, but it's been so long since teams have actually acted like there's been a weak class that, you know, we weren't ready for this. Really since 2013, that there was no one worth taking. And the guy that year's Kenny Pickett was EJ Manuel and the Buffalo Bills traded down and still took EJ Manuel. If you are traded down and still took EJ manual. If you are trading down and taking a quarterback, it's not always the best sign. And yeah, I think that there was an overestimation of the need and the tools and the desperation from teams

to have to take one of these. But I look at as more of right the evaluation versus the circumstance like maybe circumstance played a role but if you believe in anything with those guys you're going to take them um if you even slightly think that someone can be something you'll take them before the third round and christian hackenberg is the example that you have to keep going back to but there's a bunch of them for second round draft picks where you go that that guy wasn't even good in college, but they thought he had upside. How about Jordan Love? Jordan Love is an example of this.

He was talked about similarly to Malik Willis. This is the upside guy, the freak athlete that if he clicks, he could be a great quarterback. Maybe someday we'll find out. I don't know when, but he was still taking 25th overall which that's where it says to me that everybody all the teams scouting departments and analytics departments all got together and they all looked at these guys with more information than we have from the outside world and said they're just not good they're just not good prospects and that's where

i think you know we we have to ask with draft analysts and and that's not your job. And that's where I think, you know, we, we have to ask with draft analysts and that's not your job. I know that, but it, and I know Mike Renner was not high on, on these quarterbacks and, you know, the PFF. We were still higher than what they were picked. I mean, we had Willis, I think in the late twenties, early thirties, I think by the time it was said and done and, and even pick it, like we had pick it over drafted, right. We had pick it in the thirties said and done. And even Pickett, we had Pickett overdrafted. We had Pickett in the 30s or 40s.

I can't remember the exact number. But even people like us who had the board sort of stacked okay, I thought, we did not predict Willis going in round three. And some of us, I was on Red, Gold, and Bold podcast with Petro and Shadia. I had the Lions go with Willis at two. I thought there was a 30% chance it could happen. I know George Shahuri, when we did the exercise on the PFF forecast, he took Willis too.

I mean, I took Sam – like, Chris Collinsworth took Sam Howell in the first round when I did his podcast. So, I mean, we all missed it. I think we have to be careful about, okay, what does this mean about the league in general? Because, you know, you always think about, like, I'm trying to think of, you know, but, like, there are always, like, individual sporting events where things happen and we extrapolate too much from them.

You know, this is a very weird year. But at the same time, there were things that were like first guesses the people gassing up desmond ritter and saying oh you don't know how to look at quarterback play unless you believe dennis desmond ritter's great and you know when people say that you know they're a little bit um you know they're missing a little bit i'll just say from my perspective when i looked you know and you can look at pff.com all these quarterbacks when I wrote them up their projections were similar to Kellen Mons and you know 6.7 yards per attempt you know 59 60 61 completion percentages which are not good enough in the league right now and you know that was the whole time I said look like you know Zach Wilson had a 7.1 7.2 yards per

pass attempt projection for me so you're taking a guy with a half a yard worse. And Zach Wilson, we all saw how, you know, even with a good projection, the guy could struggle. You know, Lawrence is the same thing. Fields is the same thing. Actually, you know, Fields is, from a yardage standpoint, he was fine last year. But then, like, Mack Jones ended up being the guy.

It's a tough game. And I think people in this league right now are trying their best to sort of take noise out of the equation. And, and the easiest place to do it is at quarterback. And, and the easiest place to do is at quarterback by not, uh, you know, buying into a rookie with all that variance. Well, and there is another element to it of it that when you draft a quarterback in the first and even the second last year, we stretched this out to the third with some of the analysis of Kellen Mon. But if you draft a quarterback in the first, he doesn't have to be your guy, but if you take him and it's huge risk and your scouts don't believe in him and your analytics

people don't believe in him and your analytics people don't believe in him. And you just say, well, we're taking Malik Willis anyway, despite the red flags that are all over the place with him on the tape. Uh, as we find out now, I mean, that's, I think the biggest thing is that people looked at the highlight reel and thought, well, that's what the league will believe in. But instead maybe they factored, well, if we draft him in the first round, it alienates whoever our quarterback is presently. So some teams would have a problem with that. If you draft Willis in the third, Ryan Tannehill is still going to play hard for you next year. He's not going to be too upset, right? But if you draft him in the first, then you're saying,

well, that could have been someone to help me. And you just traded away our top wide receiver. And instead you picked a quarterback. That means you totally don't believe in me. Trade me, get me out of here. Like there are all these things that are floating in the air with different teams and different circumstances. And if you're some of those bad teams at the top, the giants, the jets, the Texans, the lions, they need football players. They're rebuilding their entire rosters.

And maybe they didn't believe that it was worth taking a prospect that has say only a 10% chance. I think that people like you and I and the betters, we are more of trusting of what the mock drafts say in mass and the scout people and the analysts and the tape watchers and all that sort of stuff. And traditionally, if you looked at where quarterbacks were mocked, it was usually fairly accurate, but it was also much easier to discern when you had elite quarterback prospects that were really good and you knew they were going to be at the top. And then a very clear second wave where this year it was much more muddy. But, you know, to be off by five rounds in some cases with some of these quarterbacks,

it really requires an explanation from people. And we'll talk to more throughout the week. But like from people who analyze this to say, OK, if you have someone is a first round prospect that misses by five rounds, there is a gargantuan gap between what you think and what everyone in the league thinks. And that is we see that a lot with guards. We don't usually see that a lot of quarterbacks. it's hard to it's hard not to look at the results of previous classes and compare them to expectations for current classes so what i mean by that is you know we look at justin fields and he struggles a lot as a rookie we look at zach wilson he struggles a lot as a rookie i even think back like i watched the 94 draft and like the two

quarterbacks taken at top were Heath Shuler and Trent Dilfer. Surely Carson Strong and Malik Willis and those guys are better than Trent Dilfer and Heath Shuler. Problem is the expectations for both of those guys are much higher, right? Essentially, it's sort of like looking at, you know, I know we play blackjack and stuff like that. It's like you look at a hand that is, you know, let's say an 11 against a dealer showing a six, and you look at all the hands there that lost, right, even though they were favorites to win.

And you say, well, you know, that hand lost, so it's just the same as this one hand I have now, which is a six, a 16, right? And so like – but that's not how it works, right? Like you have to look and – and that's why evaluation matters because – and analytics matter. That's why when I say the projected passing yards per attempt for Malik Willis was 6.7 and Desmond Ritter's was 67 and all you know I have to compare

that to Zach Wilson because Zach Wilson had the goods early on he might average five yards an attempt for his career but that doesn't mean that going in he wasn't a good you know hand in the in the blackjack uh game right like and so so that's really hard to do because good prospects bust all the time. That doesn't mean you should take bad prospects because they're the same. Folks. Well, there is plenty of classic football gear to check out. It's so to stick the hockey playoffs are beginning and you can jump on board with soda sticks, amazing hockey designs, dollar bill, krill,ill moose madonna the old north stars logo they've got everything for you for a deep playoff run hats shirts hoodies and

prints for your fan cave go to soda stick.com that is s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com use the code purple insider for 15 off um okay before we move on to the vikings math what are the odds that one of these players that's not kenny pickett first round draft pick um what are the odds that somebody proves everybody in the league wrong and then the draft analysis world gets to come back and say aha i told you that this guy was my favorite guy i mean hey would we be shocked and this is tongue and cheek if carson wentz alienated another team and sam howell emerged as their star um pretty unlikely but what are the what are the the actual chances that somebody bucks the trend and proves that the whole league was making a mistake by underrating the draft class? I think there's a good chance. So here's what I'll say. I made a joke about this on Twitter today. I said, look, there's going to be undrafted rookies

that play really well um the chances that they're the specific undrafted rookies that you want to play well uh is not that hot i think there's going to be at least one quarterback in this class that does okay now the million dollar question is which which one of these quarterbacks is it obviously the way in which they're drafted, the most likely is Kenny Pickett. The second likely is Desmond Ritter. The third likely is Malik Willis. And as it goes down, Carson Strong being undrafted is the least likely. But we're talking about rolls of the dice here.

So that's kind of where I'm at. I think that they, you know, I think that they're, you know, in a position here where, you know, at least one will do okay, but that's, that's still not that great. Right. Well, Kenny Pickett is to me, an entire side conversation. Kenny Pickett went exactly where he was supposed to go in a lot of people's minds, which was in the middle to the late first round from the evaluation. It was just everybody else was not in his ballpark, which also, I guess, draws the question of, well, why did Kenny Pickett get much more attention than these other quarterbacks? And I mean, one reason is that he played a heck of a lot better in his last year in college. He is the only one who actually played good in his last year in college,

which I think probably mattered with the focus on the tape. But let's go to the Vikings, though, part of this. What a sport. Did he win the trade or not was over the draft? And I asked Kweisi Adafo-Mensah that directly of like, you got your own chart or I mean, whose chart do you like? Whose chart should we use?

Because the PFF chart, like the first trade, the Jimmy Johnson chart hated the first trade. Neither chart knows that it was your division opponent who you gave a really good wide receiver to, which I think is, I mean, talk about playing with gas or whatever. What's the saying? Playing with fire, playing with well, juggling gas, something in there, but anyway, potentially walking right into a classic Vikings, LOL of the guy going for 200 yards a game against you. I mean, it just, you know, if you're a long time Vikings follower, you can write that one before it happens, but was it a good idea the way they handled all of their trades, and how should we figure that out?

I think the first trade, you know, the issue that you have to sort of evaluate is I think that the issue you have to evaluate is, you know, what is the opportunity cost of doing this? Right. And, you know, the chief, you know, the chiefs, you know, when they went up and got McDuffie, that was a player that was five positions behind where the betting markets were. So you can kind of squint and say, oh, you know, this is a player who is worth more maybe to me than he would have been to other teams, so maybe we can do it.

And, again, like this one, I had a bunch of people in the league who were like, oh, look, Questy got fleeced in this trade. And, you know, then I look at our model and it looks like, you know, in the first trade, which was 34, 32, 66 for 12 and 46, the Vikings win this trade 57% of the time they gain. And again, this is the game of inches. They gain about one sixth of a win above replacement during the course of the rookie deals here. Now, I think there's a real edge when the market is based upon something that isn't true and you get them to believe that they're making a good trade with you while you're actually making a good trade.

Now, far be it from me. We've done extensive research at PFF. I trust Timo Riske. I trust Brad Spielberg. I trust everybody in my group. I believe we're right, and so I think that the Vikings got a positive EV trade here. And I believe that it's sharp to make positive EV trades with your division because ultimately if you continue to do that you're

going to eventually over time have have them by the stones if you will the issue obviously is you know the Vikings aren't playing the long game they signed Kirk Cousins to a two-year like it's not it's not consistent with who they are or who they want to be, but it, but in a vacuum, this trade was good for the Vikings. Now from Detroit's perspective, this is where I think you can get on their side a little bit. Let's say that you had, so again, like I said, 0.15 wins above replacement, Minnesota wins a trade 57% of that. Let's assume Detroit believes he's like the eighth best player in the draft.

Right. And again, he's not because that's not what the market said. If they believe he's the eighth best player in the draft, then Detroit gets a 0.01. It's basically breakeven, right? So that's how you look at it from Detroit's perspective and say, look, we're getting a steal here. We're going to give up some picks to do it. And it's already positive by the Jimmy Johnson chart. Now it's positive by the PFF chart. Right. So here's my struggle with that, with the whole thing is, I mean, one is great players win championships.

Like, it's not okay guys that drive your success. It's great. Right. Oh, wow. So anyway, from what I've heard, great players are the ones that drive championships. And your odds of getting a great player at number 12 are so much different than a great player at number 32. And so that when I was listening to Renner and Gale on the tailgate podcast, break this down. That was the way that they looked at it. They said, look, yes, the chart that we have says the Vikings got a slight edge here. However,

Detroit gets to have Jamison Williams on their football team. And that player just has a better chance at a much bigger position than Lewis seen over the long haul and the 66 overall pick. What's the chances that player becomes great? Uh, quite a, quite a bit lower. So I think that that's another way to look at this is could you, could you get another, if, okay, you don't get a good player there because you're Detroit and you've given up some draft capital, but you can replace the good player that might be missing that you would have drafted in free agency, which you can't replace as a dude who, if he ran the 40, probably would have gone for three

and is one of the quickest and most explosive players at a very much premium position to eventually pair with their next quarterback and Amon Ross St. Brown. Like the whole context of it, when it's close, and I think you have to take that very much into account. It's not like, oh,

well they just absolutely murdered this team in this trade. Like when the saints gave up a first round pick to trade up to get Marcus Davenport, the minute they did that, you're like, you're insane. That makes no sense at all with this one. I think it's very much nuanced. And in a lot of ways,

just like all depends on what Jamison Williams becomes even more to me than it matters. What Lewis scene becomes. Yeah. And I think one, Like all depends on what Jamison Williams becomes even more to me than it matters what Louis seen becomes. Yeah. And I think one, one other thing is important to consider is, is even just the pro and again, you're taking multiple swings at this.

So, you know, take that with a grain of salt. You're not just getting 32. You're also getting 34, but let, but let's consider for a second. The, cause the Minnesota Vikings don't even need –

like I'm not even thinking about superstar this one. Let's just think about competent players, right? And a sure sign of competence, I tweeted this out just a little bit ago because all the fifth-year options are being decided upon, including Garrett Bradbury's. The 12th pick of the nine years that we have of post-CBA play, the 11th pick, interestingly, the fifth-year option has been exercised 100% of those guys.

The 13th pick is seven out of nine, and the 12th pick is six out of nine. So let's take an average of those of those positions and let's say set let's say 75 you know what i mean let's just go 75 so the 12th pick has a 75 chance of hitting you know in other words you're going to actually give take his fifth year option and the that 10th pick through the 32nd pick, they have the same rules. Top 10 has a different rule set. So it's not apples to oranges here. So you have a 75% chance of that hitting. The 32nd pick is the worst of the group. There's only been eight of them because there was the one year the Patriots cheated. And so Emmanuel Ogbet, 32, was the second round pick. He didn't get a fifth year option, a bad bounce for the guy. But you look at this, the 28th pick, one out of nine have exercised their fifth year option.

The 29th pick, two out of nine. The 30th pick, five out of nine. The 31st pick, three out of nine. And the 32nd pick, four out of eight. Okay, so let's say, you know, let's assume that we have like a, you know, let's say a 33% chance of those hitting, okay? Essentially, you know, like you're not really necessarily going to, you know, like again, those are reduced there. So the fact that those guys are hitting is not going to be particularly high. Let's say you take 33%. Again, you're taking one of those two at least.

So you do have a decent shot of at least one hitting. But again, you do that with the ceiling necessarily not quite as high as he would have been at 12. Does that make sense? So you have a higher rate of the guy actually being good. I'm doing this sort of math on the fly here. And then so with 32, let's assume 32 and 34 are sort of the same hit rate, even though at 34 you wouldn't have the fifth-year option.

Essentially, you'd have the chances that they both bust are about 44%. So you have a 55% chance of at least one hitting. If you assume a 33% chance of either one hitting, you know, individually. So you're for a 75% chance of one guy hitting versus a 55% chance of at least one hitting. Plus you have the high-end loss there. Now, again, we know that they got pick 66. They also gave up pick 46. So, again, I can see where the people who would be detracting this trade

are coming from. And I also, when I think about safeties, when you look at, and I tweeted this out too, as far as positions are concerned, when you look at the history of safeties taken in round one, their hit rate, if I look at it here, is about 65%. That's, I think, fifth most average draft position there though is 20, not 32. Now the, the second, the second round though,

this is where it gets really dicey. So they trade back with the Packers. And I think that this one is much easier to say, good job because the Packers go up, they reach on a wide receiver, which was being discussed today on the interwebs. But if you're reaching far past the consensus, it's probably not a good idea for you historically. And that's what Green Bay was doing with Christian Watson. And then you move back into the fifties

where there are still very good prospects at positions that you need but the vikings then decide to go get your guy and then trade back up to get andrew booth and then my head is spinning like what trading back was really good there's a lot of good players back there and then now wait you're giving up something else to go back up and and that's where they lost me on the like let's drop back to accumulate good players because we need to rebuild major parts of this roster but then it was like oh no we've got a corner that we particularly really love so we've got to go get him but then just to make it all the more complex andrew booth jr was projected to go much higher so he slipped which can be a good thing that you try to get that

player who ends up being a steal. And then, I mean, you're just a meme at that point, like with all the math numbers floating in front of your eyes, and you can't figure out whether this was a good idea or not. And what I come away with is the first two picks, which are vastly more important than any other draft pick that they made. And those are the guys that have the best chance to make an impact. Those guys rebuilding a secondary together, if they both hit could be very, very valuable.

But if one of them doesn't, then I think you end up taking an L. That's how, that's how I'm taking it away. But how do you evaluate it? Yeah. So we have with the Packers, the draft is basically two – like as you go further on in the draft, the wins become smaller. So into the second round, they win. I agree.

Everybody believed they won the trade with Green Bay. They get about two-tenths of a win in the Green Bay trade from what it looks like. And again, I'm punching these numbers in on the fly. And then they lose about 11, yeah, 11 one hundredths of a win. So in total, those three trades netted them about a quarter of a win over the course of four years. The Andrew Booth thing is interesting, right? Like this is exactly where you look at like Cleveland Browns in sort of this gross way, looking at their quarterback as a distressed asset. Andrew Booth, as he said, was never healthy in college.

He comes to a cornerback room where they have a history of taking first-round, second-round guys who are never healthy. Mike Hughes, an example they're in um you know it's it's a risky one uh but as you said i think they they rightfully identified the secondary as a huge issue they rightfully identified depth in the secondary and when we look at asamoah as well they identified basically coverage uh depth as an as an issue for them. The opportunity cost was a chance to take a player like Jameson Williams. The opportunity cost was a chance to take a quarterback. The opportunity cost, and again, the quarterbacks in hindsight are a lot less valuable than we thought they were, but it's still a thing.

So yeah, I mean, look, I like the tradebacks. All the risks that we talked about associated with that understood. I like going secondary even though, again, in a vacuum, I like going secondary. I don't like going secondary if you have a good safety in Cam Bynum and have an old safety who's going to be playing into a year 35 on big deals for you but in a vacuum i like the picks from a team building standpoint at least the first two yeah and then the rest of it though uh now day three like i don't want to just blow over day

three but like give me until halfway through training camp to tell you whether there's anything happening with day three picks or not so we'll talk about them and we'll try to pick which one might be good or whatever else, but it's really hard to focus on for a draft grade, so to speak. When you talk about, hey, is the seventh round tight end good? Like, I don't know. I mean, probably not, but maybe. But the other two picks, I think, are extreme head scratchers. Brian Asamoah seems like a nice player, but he's undersized. They've gone back to this well a bunch of times, but not just undersized,

but it's in like legitimately tiny for the position. And then you talk about the guard at Ingram. And this one to me kind of implodes the whole thing. Like if you were trying to get real jazzed, which a lot of people still are about the draft. And like you said, like there's a, a really good justification for rebuild the secondary really good. And I, you know, through those two picks, you can go, I see it. I get what you're doing here. And if they had picked another corner, I would have been like, Oh, okay. All right. Secondary for L Y F E. If they had gone, if they had done that in the uh in the second round but then

they take a guard and a guard who is supposed to be nowhere close to where he was taken and who does not have rave reviews nfl.com has him as a fifth round pick yeah i mean this is this is the one where you just scratch your head i i think not even even if we took the background stuff out of it which of course you can't when you make a pick like this but even if we took the background stuff out of it, which of course you can't when you make a pick like this, but even just based on the skillset and the reviews of this player, no one had this as somebody that you needed to take. And then look at the guys that they passed on to take him like Drake Jackson. What is Sky Moore still there at that point?

Like you have, I don't have the list in front of me, but like there's, there's, there's wide receivers and there's DNs. And maybe you can explain it through the lens of surplus value, because I've been trying to use Timo risque study as a, as a light pole here or whatever you call it, um, to help me out on positional value. But if you take a guard and he turns out to be just okay, there's almost no surplus value there. It's like, you could have got that guy anywhere. And they just kind of did with two dudes in free agency. Whereas if you take a receiver and he's even okay, it's huge surplus value. If you take an edge rusher and he's a five to seven sack guy a year, huge surplus value,

even if he never becomes a star. This is the one I just feel like someone called the shot here. This is the guy I want. We got to take them stood on the table. And we did hear the word stood on the table once in draft weekend, which I, you know, sort of shot an eyebrow up at that, but I don't know. I mean, the second and third round picks to me are just very head scratching. They're not the ones that will define the draft, but I, I, I just, I can't find a way to really justify what they did there. Yeah. And the interesting thing is that,

you know, at Timo said like about the two first guys, you know, positive surplus value, the, it depends upon where you look. I think us at PFF, we use sort of like the regression and the war stuff. The Vikings ended up a little little bit ahead if you look at benjamin robinson's draft capital over expected the vikings were negative um and you know you have to factor into that the trades like if you trade up and take a guy or try to trade back and take a guy you get i think a boost because you're getting capital back so the player you take and so i think that's the discrepancy between what we're doing and what Benjamin Robinson's doing. That being said,

this is tricky for me because everybody in Vikings Twitter and every apologist for the team is telling me that the whole thing that was wrong with the Vikings the last two years. And beyond that was a, the Vikings the last two years and beyond that was, A, the general manager, and B, the coaching. And the problem is the general manager is only as good as the scouts and the analytics people that work for him. And those are the people who, with the exception of Ryan Grigson, are working for Quessie Adafo Mensah right now. And so these rankings are coming from them. So that's the same.

The other one is these are positions, linebacker and guard, that the Vikings have spent significant capital on in the past. You know, Ole Udo, Wyatt Davis, Sage Sherratt, Troy Dye are all guys that the previous regime drafted, Sage Sherratt, Troy Dye, are all guys that the previous regime drafted, but the last coaching staff got fired for apparently not being able to reach. Now, if you are going to go out of your way to talk up Kevin O'Connell.

Kevin O'Connell. Sorry about that. That's Casey right there, calling. It's just like, stop criticizing my guard. Yeah. If you're going to go out of your way to praise Kevin O'Connell, Ed Donatel, at the expense of Mike Zimmer and all the offensive line coaches and all that kind of stuff you've had.

This is not congruent with that. This is basically saying the old coaching staff couldn't coach these guys up, and we don't think we can either. And that takes away from some of the value because basically you're starting over with your own men, which means that you're further behind than you thought you were as a team. So, sure, if Brian Asamoah is a great linebacker that's fine but you also it comes at the opportunity cost of being able to take what mike zimmer couldn't do and that's coach up troy die coach up shade uh uh sage

that comes at the chas he did chas roth sage and his brother play wide receiver for the same North Carolina team. Well, that's right. That's right. I thought you were trying to just shout out our friend Sage Rosenfels. Oh, true. And, you know, the fact that the guard that they took out of LSU, Ed Ingram, seems to be also a character concern and a huge one is, is all is bad, but it also just shows that like,

you know, you have draft capital from previous years that you're basically lighting on fire at this point. And so the, when I, when I saw those picks, I, it brought me,

it made me concerned after the first, you know, first two rounds of the draft, your first round and a half, let's say he had my interest after that. He had my attention, I think for the wrong reasons. Also with Ed Ingram, he's a guy who's played left guard for the last three years. You have a left guard set probably for the foreseeable future. So we're talking about moving somebody

to right guard. I got a note from somebody that in 2017, he had played right guard. I mean, that is a lifetime ago. I mean, that's before he got suspended a year. Right. Right. Right. So this is not like a positional flexibility always played all over the line. No, he's been a left guard. And so you're asking him to compete at right guard, but the chances that he wins that job are very low because Ezra Cleveland was a much better prospect than him. Ezra Cleveland was taken where expected or even a little bit behind as opposed to a big reach. And it took him half a year to even get on the field against even worse competition in a battle for that position. So there's not even a today element

of either one of those guys like, oh, they can help right away. But you're right. I mean, it's kind of, you know, you're not even giving yourself a chance to coach up the guys who might be prospects still on the roster and not taking positions that if they hit, how much do they matter? If Ed Ingram is good, what does it matter? Like, I mean, it matters some, but it doesn't matter as much as it would if you took Skymore or Drake Jackson and they hit. And I think that's, you know, it's another complicated formula, which is what makes this so't really fit rebuild and it didn't make them a lot better right away. And I'm not sure how much better it made them in the future. Aside from if Andrew Booth hits, that's where I think it's really resting is if that guy's really good, which I think he has the potential to be, then this whole draft looks a lot better for you. Um, but overall, now we have the whole picture of the Vikings off season and everybody else's, uh, where are they, where are they in the NFC, especially since, you know, the, uh, Eagles just

added another really good player to their roster. So lots of teams drafted, they got players, some will impact them right away. Some won't. Um, did it change anything about where the Vikings previously stood? Did Vegas move? It did, but I'll say this, like, it's kind of embarrassing to see, like, oh, their odds moved down from 40 to 1 to 45 to 1. Folks, that's like a, that's less than a percent with a chance of winning the Super Bowl. It's less than a half a percent to win the Super Bowl. I think it's instructive to say the only two teams whose odds moved from the first round are the Eagles, who went from 45 to 1 to 35 to 1. That's still only six-tenths of a percent better. And the Vikings moved from 40 to 1 to 45 to 1, which is like two-tenths of a percent worse.

So it's not much. And that, again, goes to to show you unless a team unexpectedly takes a quarterback these odds don't move for much of anything unless a team unexpectedly trades Tyree Kill these odds don't move for much of anything we saw DeAndre Hopkins is going to be suspended for six games uh for PEDs that'll move the line a little bit um stuff like that. But for the most part, these, I mean, Lewis' scene is not, like the scenes and win total for the Vikings is not moving much at all. It's nine wins in some books. It's eight and a half in books that don't want my money.

So that's kind of where, you know, they're still, you know, plus 275, basically 3-1 to win the NFC North. They're still well behind the Packers. And to me, that's probably where they should be. Can they win this division? Absolutely. Can they make the playoffs? Yeah, of course. I think so. Are they basically lined to be the same team as they were last year? Yes.

I think that the big question is we can wrap on this, and I'd like you to end it by saying, and seen. There's going to be some good ones out of this from you, I feel like. This has great potential. Yeah, for sure. So you don't draft for this year almost ever anyway. It's usually for the following season and beyond. And that is the bigger question that is much harder to answer is how much they got better

for 2023 and 2024 when a lot of these other players will be moving out and they'll need these younger guys to move in? How much better did they get in the long term? Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think, you know, Sine is going to be a player who is, you know, in theory, they want him to be a cornerstone of this defense. I don't know how important safety is to an Ed Donatel defense, though. I mean, it's clear, like, I sort of think about where they're constructed. And, you know, you have Eric Kendricks, who I don't think is long for this team. He's been a fantastic Viking, but he regressed significantly last year.

He's never been a very physical linebacker. And now that his coverage skills are not quite as good, it's not a long time for him. Jordan Hicks is a two-year deal. You have Brian Asamoah in there as well. You have Cam Bynum. Maybe they'll play three safety looks. They really never wanted to. There was the time they were flirting with J. Ron Curse as sort of their nickel slot guy, but for the most part, they never wanted to play three safeties under Mike Zimmer, and that kept them from developing guys like J. Ron Curse. That kept them from developing guys. Even Cam Bynum barely played if he wasn't starting games last year.

So that's been something that maybe we're not used to. But playing three safeties is going to come at the expense of one of their veteran linebackers, which is going to come at the expense of one of their veteran linebackers, which is going to come at the expense of one of their younger linebackers, too. And so that's certainly an issue there. They, again, and I don't know, is the ghost of Andre Patterson walking around that building? They did not address defensive end at all. And to me, I think that that's something that can be, you know, defensive end I mean by outside linebacker rush guy. So, like, for the future, like, I mean,

they're a couple bad breaks away from, like, neither having Zedaria Smith or Danell Hunter being long-term deals for them. So that one was interesting for me. Defensive line, they have veterans there, but again, they didn't do a ton there as well. The Odamoto guy, again, that's a projected draft pick that's not supposed to do anything. Wide receiver, I play a lot of college DFS. I love Jalen Naylor. He had some good seasons, but he's clearly a limited player. And you forewent the opportunity to take a high-end player there in Jamison Williams

or Chris Olavi was taken in front of him. Jamison Williams, Jahan Dotson, or Traylon Burks were all opportunities for them to make plays there. The wide receiver core this year is going to be what it was last year. So I guess, you know, on the offensive side of the ball, they're really leaning into coaching, especially at the skill position players. On the defensive side of the ball, they're looking to build depth. How does that help them long term? I don't know.

Again, I think it's all tied to what they decide to do at quarterback and you know they've made their decision to you know push the can down the road on quarterback and i don't know how much this draft changes what we think of the quarterback it's uh a sazy automa is how you uh at least according to him and his page if we were wondering because i think i said it wrong on the show the other day. Anyway, Eric Eager, PFF Forecast Podcast. We will, of course, do this on a semi-regular basis. Great job with all of Pro Football Focus's coverage.

It has become more and more that I can, I guess, reach to different buckets of information to form an opinion on things. And that comes centrally from pro football focus, the data team that you have and the things that you guys are able to put out there in terms of studying the draft. So great stuff with that. And people should listen to the forecast with you and George to hurry. And we will definitely do this again.

This is fun, Matt. It's always good to sort of think back on a draft that I don't know. I don't know if it's going to be all that impactful, but it certainly made us think about things.