Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Eric Eager goes on the record with Vikings 2022 season predictions

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

PFF's Eric Eager joins Matthew Coller to make official final statements of the offseason. Matthew believes the Vikings' defense will be largely improved but Eric is skeptical. Eric thinks Kevin O'Connell can be coach of the year. Plus how Kirk Cousins' stats could go down but the team could be better and why Patrick Mahomes could be MVP.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider and the adventures continue with where I am podcasting back at the park today and in the car again because there is a preschool, I don't know, class behind me, I think, of little tiny children that are running around and making an incredible amount of noise, as they should. They seem like they're having a great time, but that means I can't sit outside because there would be too much noise. So we've had in the car, we've had outside at the park, we've had the power was off and I was in the dark.

But you know what? On this show, there is football to be talked about, and we will not slow down that train toward the beginning of the season. So for the show, we have Eric Eager, data scientist for Pro Football Focus, and the PFF forecast has been on many times, of course. And Eric, how are you? What's going on? I'm doing well. Man, we have football in a couple weeks. We had football last week that counted my Nebraska Cornhuskers. Find a way, again, it's crazy that I grew up in Minnesota

and how the Vikings act. Went to Nebraska for my graduate work on Nebraska acts. It seemed to follow me into a certain fraction of my life. Nebraska might have a quarterback, though. There's at least that. me into a certain fraction of my life. Nebraska might have a quarterback, though. There's at least that. It looked like he was throwing it around. He still threw it away.

It has been a tough time since Nebraska had a quarterback that was reasonably decent. So maybe you'll have that in your life. So I got a game for you, as I always do. We so often play myth or legend. But since the season is upon us, I want to play put it on record. So I want to go back and forth with things about the NFL. And, of course, we'll start out with the Minnesota Vikings, including their final record after seeing training camp and preseason and all that. So we'll save that for the end. But I want to put it on record what we think of stuff

and what we think is going to happen in the 2022 National Football League season. So I am going to start out and put something on record, and you can react, and then we'll go back and forth. I'm going to start right out with the Minnesota Vikings, and I am going to say that the Minnesota Vikings defense this year will be better, and it will make a difference for them. I'm going to put that on record after watching them in training camp, after seeing Z'Darrius Smith and Daniil Hunter completely healthy.

I still have my questions, but I'm going to say better by a significant margin from where they were the last two years. Vikings defense putting it on record reaction. OK. It's sort of I mean, you're basically just making the argument that the defense will be healthy, right? Because 2020, that was a bad defense, but it was also not a healthy defense. I think anybody who had, you know, purple and gold colored glasses could say if Daniil Hunter was healthy the whole year

instead of missing the whole year, they'd have a pass rush and they wouldn't have had to go with Yannick Ngakwe in a trade and, you know, and so on. And they didn't have to ask too much of him. If Eric Hendricks wouldn't have missed the last five games of the season, you might not have given up the six touchdowns to Alvin Kamara and, you know, so on and so forth. I mean, this team has always been one where the top 11 have been pretty decent. And last season we saw early in the year, they were actually a fairly solid team in terms of expected points added. And, you know, for what it's worth DVOA and things like that, Hunter gets injured, Everson Griffin leaves town.

And of course that thing goes pear shaped relatively quickly. You missed three games of Patrick Peterson. You, you know, you, you have Bashad Breeland in there when it was very clear that he wasn't the better or wasn't a good enough player. And so the whole thing went poorly after that. I personally don't think the person, like, I don't know,

Z'Darrius Smith has reportedly been amazing in training camp. I think he's the one upgrade that you have. I think he's the one upgrade that you have on that defense. Hunter being healthy, that helps a lot. So you're basically, if those guys can stay healthy, then I think the defense will be okay.

I don't think that the defense has high-end potential the way it used to with Zimmer. But I think, you know, the offense does have high-end potential. So if the defense plays okay football in this week conference, it should be enough. But I sort of disagree that it can be a lot better, but I do agree that if healthy, the outcomes can be better for this team. Yeah. Okay. Let me continue the case. Cause it's not just based on Zedaria Smith, though. He has looked really fantastic in training camp and that could, you know, that can go up in flames two weeks into the season. You're right that this putting it on record prediction could be, you know, just explode

if one or two people get hurt right away early in the year. But when I look down the schedule at the way that things have gone for a lot of the teams that they're going to go up against during preseason and training camp, like Zach Wilson got hurt. I imagine he'll be back, but like he's set back and I'm not convinced that he's going to be great. Daniel Jones hasn't looked spectacular. And Brian Dable was even talking about giving Tyrod Taylor first team reps and being like, oh, no, that's we do stuff like that.

And like, no, they don't. They never give the backup quarterback first team reps unless there's a reason for it. James Winston got hurt. And I'm not convinced that James Winston is a good quarterback at all anyway. Like, you know, I think that that's part of it. And also you play Aaron Rodgers at the exact right time. You don't play him six weeks into the season when he's figured out which receiver he loves the most. He is coming out week one trying to figure out an entire new group of receivers,

which doesn't mean they'll win the game, but I think it does mean that there's going to be some adjustment period there. And I don't know if David Bakhtiari is going to be ready by then, but I think that Green Bay's offensive line isn't as good too, which just makes a difference. Chicago will probably be a little better with Justin Fields now that they're running the bootlegs, but I'm not particularly scared of that offense. I think that there's just a lot of things schedule wise. And then you combine that

with having Zedarius Smith here. I think Jordan Hicks has looked extremely good. You know, I don't think the safety group is going to be much different. What it really comes down to for me is if Patrick Peterson and Cam Dantzler are both healthy, I think they could be fine. I think they could be like, you know, like the 20th best pair of corners in the league or 15th at absolute best if Cam Dantzler plays really well. But you're right. I mean, if corners get hurt, it's just a problem. I mean, Andrew Booth Jr. is injured,

and we don't really know when he's going to be back. You know, they say he's going to be back by week one, but he's missed some camp here, and he seems to be a perpetually injured guy. And then you're getting into, like, Chris Boyd territory, and we've been in Chris Boyd territory before, and it's not great. But I think that they're going to stop the run way better. I mean, look at what they did against the run last year. We sort of just throw run out like, ah, running, who cares?

It's football now, 2022. But, like, they were one of the worst teams in the league in EPA in run allowed. And Harrison Phillips has been really good. And Delvin Tomlinson is a good player. So I think that we kind of didn't appreciate how much Michael Pierce cost them when he got hurt as far as stopping the run because then they were asking Sheldon Richardson or Armond Watts to stuff the middle.

And it was just sort of a domino effect of how they wanted to play so if those guys who have great track records of health can be better against the run and then the schedule adds up I think that they can be significantly better doesn't mean number one in the league or even close but if it goes from 24th to 15th that's a pretty big game certainly yep I think that, and the hard part is I think the, the benefits to a team. So the hard part about projecting this is the benefits of a team from going from the worst defense in the NFL to like 15th is much higher than going from 15 to like first, you know, because the NFL is just one of those. I mean,

you look at Buffalo last year and, you know, they had the best defense in the league by a country mile. They faced Kansas city in the playoffs and they get roasted and, you know, it's just like great offenses can beat you. But in, but you know, if you're so such a horrible defense that the schedule of quarterbacks at the Vikings faces here can have their way with you, then it's going to be really bad. If you're an average defense, a schedule of quarterbacks that the Vikings face,

you can be a fairly good results-based defense just because you're not blowing coverages, you're not getting pressure on the quarterback, and et cetera. I get a little worried about the run defense still just because I don't think that that's Jordan Hicks' or Eric Hendricks' strength. I think both guys, and Brian Asamoah as well, I know Kwesi Adafo-Mensah said he's a modern linebacker, which is just like saying he's good at coverage. Those three guys, in my opinion, are kind of soft, you know, in the middle there. And then when you run a 3-4, which again, talking about this as a, you know, when you run a 3-4 on early downs, you are going to take on guards because there is one fewer defensive lineman in front of you. And they don't have that sort of like Ted Washington, Jordan Davis, who I think reportedly the Vikings wanted in the draft if if they didn't hadn't traded back etc etc you don't have that space eater guy you have a few like kind of penetrator guys and that I think could be bad like even if you don't get injuries there like

I think the the secondary is very vulnerable to injuries and a week the fact that their slot corner is probably the worst player. But the run defense worries me a little bit. And they'll find out week one and week two, though. Like this is, or actually, you look at the Vikings' first four contests, you have a Packers team whose offensive line is getting healthy and a team that's going to emphasize the run with Aaron Jones and A.J. Dillon without any wide receivers.

Week two, the Eagles are really good at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball and very good at running the football, both with their quarterback, but also their backs. And then Detroit, if you watch them this preseason and you look at who they have up front, that's three first round picks. Halopoti Vitae is a starter in this league, and they're committed there. And then New Orleans as well, which isn't quite as good on the O-line as they were, and Trevor Penning's been hurt and so on and so forth. But they were famously the team that ran for six touchdowns against the Vikings on Christmas a couple years ago.

So they're going to find out immediately if their defense is soft or not by their early-season opponents. All right. What do you want to go on record you could say vikings ones or you could throw vikings ones out now what do you want to go on record with about the 2022 nfl season yeah and i've uh i've ticked talked about this i've tweeted about this i i think linkedin if the vikings win the division i think that kevin o'connell is going to win coach of the year.

So that's a qualifying statement. If they don't win the division, of course, like all this bet is off. But if they win the division, you sort of think about, you know, the history of this team, 15 and 18 the last two years, and effectively a 13 and 18 team. Like we don't really count the detroit and chicago week last week of the season wins for obvious reasons um so they're they're effectively a below 500 team the last two years they've never been above 500 last years despite that they've

gotten great production out of kirk cousins and they've gotten great production out of dalvin cook and they've gotten great production out of justin je Jefferson, you know, the most yards in the history of the NFL through the first two years that anybody's ever had, right? And I know there's 17 games this year, but, you know, still among the best in NFL history. And so, like, I don't see that their production is going to get better. Like, I don't see Kirk Cousins as like a 40 touchdown guy. I don't see Jefferson getting like 2,000 receiving yards. And frankly, I don't see dalvin cook i i actually think this running back group is going to be by committee and like because dalvin is you know we're starting to see that with the running back an injury prone guy all you know also like yards per touch has declined you know the last

few years um all this is to say they can still win the division with everything they have. But if they do that, you're not going to see this whole like, oh, my God, look what happened. Cooper Cup went from such and such stats to such and such stats that he's offensive player of the year type of thing. I think that they're going to produce effectively the same level of statistics this year. If they win 11 games, then that means everybody's going to look and say,

well, what was the delta for this team? And the delta for this team was the fact that Kevin O'Connell is now the head coach and Mike Zimmer is not, and Kevin O'Connell is calling the plays and the litany of guys that called plays before him or not. And so I think that's the narrative that you need. I went back and looked at all the coach of the year winners over the last four or five, six, seven, eight years. The only one that had what I would consider to be a superstar

quarterback were the Ravens and Lamar Jackson. That team had 14-2, and they had a lot of like the fourth down stuff and kind of like weird things. They're also 14-2, and so you could spread the wealth around a quarterback as well as a coach. Every other one, you look at Kevin Stefanski with Baker mayfield baker mayfield is in the same equivalence class as kirk cousins at his best you had the titans with with mike rabel ryan tannehill's in the same equivalence class as kirk cousins um you had prior to that like the rams of jared goff who again is sort of a similar you know at his best is a similar production player to kirk cousins you know you have guys that are kind of like good but not great quarterbacks

winning a lot of games. Generally speaking, the coach gets a lot of credit for that. And we've seen it with Kirk's own career where he's oscillated between getting an offensive coordinator a head coach job and getting an offensive coordinator fired. That's been his – and so they don't have an offensive coordinator who's's been his like and so you know they don't have an offensive coordinator who's who's a candidate for a head coaching position because he is his head coach now and so I think the light shines a little bit on O'Connell if they win the division

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I've got a bunch of them in my closet so make sure you check that out s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com okay so my natural follow-up then is if we feel like the players who have produced x in the past which is an x has been very good from Jefferson Thielen and so forth. Irv Smith is a bit of an X factor here. He hasn't played much in camp because of his injury. That might set him back a little bit. I don't know that he's going to be like worlds better than what they got out of Tyler Conklin last year.

That Conklin was legit. He was pretty good. Maybe a few more throws down the field to Irv Smith is possible, but let's just say that it's, you know, similar production, but you win more games. I mean, part of that might tie into the defense for Kevin O'Connell to be the coach of the year. Of course they would have to win more than they did. Where, where is that? Like, where are those points coming from? Where are those wins coming from? Because I think that when we talk about Mike Zimmer, I always try to

talk about Mike Zimmer in the right way. Like what Zimmer really do wrong and you go back to the game against Arizona last year and there were some of the poorest in-game decisions and I don't think that he was horrible for the whole year but if you break it down by the numbers like he was not one of the top guys he was probably not even middle of the pack at this point because the league has changed very quick on game management everybody's so much sharper than they used to be before they've got analytics some teams and including this one analytics people in the booth who are going to be influencing their decisions like i think that the in-game decision stuff and i also think, you know, that there were moments throughout Zimmer's tenure where the train was wobbling on the tracks, right?

It was hitting some rocky areas and it often fell off. And their seasons often went down the tube when they hit some rocky areas. Now that didn't always happen. 2017, you know, they lose their starting quarterback and still found a way. But the last two years, there have been opportunities to be in the playoffs and really no excuse for not being in the playoffs they lost to Mitch Trubisky at home to to get eliminated from the playoffs I mean like you said they gave up six touchdowns to New Orleans I mean there were

there were plenty of times where they had their chances Matt Stafford threw three picks against them at US Bank Stadium, and they lost that game. How often does that ever happen that a quarterback throws three picks? It was effectively a two-score loss. They had the backdoor field goal. But, yeah, they were handled in a game against the Rams, even though the Rams played horribly. Yeah, that's the thing.

O'Connell really – I mean, if that's the thing like o'connell really i mean if you're thinking about telling o'connell like you're saying okay what's the biggest difference for o'connell this year or you know what what will make him successful that made zimmer unsuccessful like sports betters for the longest time loved mike zimmer because he covered a lot as an underdog and you know they and generally speaking like sharp and this isn't completely true but like he also killed the teams that he should have killed in a lot of cases like I think like Miami uh in week 15 of 2018 like you know he always won and mostly covered against Detroit and like and then as and I don't and I again we get this reputation

here I'm not trying to put this all on Kirk Cousins but as soon as they got Kirk Cousins they stopped winning a lot of the games they should win and they stopped winning they they still I think are super competitive in the games that they should lose it's weird right like like I think that that's the funny part of this team is like under Mike Zimmer and Kirk Cousins, the Vikings were never more than a six and a half or seven point underdog in any regular season game. They got to the playoffs. There were seven and a half point dogs to the Niners and eight point dogs, I believe eight and a half to the Saints. And weirdly they, they won one of those games, you know, but that's better than expectation for those two games. But, you know, over time, what Zimmer effectively got bad at was winning the games he should have

won. He should win, right? So you say, like, even you think about the last couple years, if they, you know, they follow up losing a one-point game in a game they played wonderfully against Seattle, really, and, you know, they lose a one-point game in the rain. They come back and get blown out by the Falcons. Like, that is exactly the kind of stuff that Mike Zimmer does. They go, and I can't remember the order here. I believe it was they lost to Cooper Rush at home. And then they go to Baltimore and, again, play an extremely inspired game and lose by

a field goal because the Baltimore Ravens are better than them. You know, and it's, if you're O'Connell, you come in and you just beat the teams you're supposed to beat, right? You're probably winning 10 games in and of itself. And I guess the, the big issue and the big elephant in the room is that Kirk Cousins sometimes isn't the quarterback that can win you the games you're supposed to win. That's the hardest part of the whole thing is that is it wasn't Zimmer because when Zimmer was the coach before Cousins, they won the games they were supposed to win and they were competitive. I mean, the guy's record against the spread was fantastic.

You bring Cousins in and they're basically a little bit below 500 against the spread. So they're basically playing to expectation. And the composition of it is the sucky part right the composition of it i gotta go back and look but the composition of it is covering but losing to teams that you should beat or she that should beat you and then losing outright to teams that you that you should beat and and that that has led to the neck the less than 500 record and that's led to i think an optimism that is probably deserved here like again if o'connell can simply win the games that they're supposed to win and and when i say that i mean like beating these teams by multiple scores like you should be beating the lions by multiple scores if you if you're a real football team in this nfl

you should be beating and i know they finally did did in week 18 and they controlled the Chicago game in soldier. That ended up being a one score game. A lot of that was a litany of Chicago errors, right? Kirk was really bad in that game. You, you, you not only need to beat the teams you're supposed to win, but you need to beat them by multiple scores. When Andy Reed led the chiefs with Alex Smith to a, I believe it was a 20 or 40 and 20 record. It was a 66% win percentage.

His record in games decided by multiple scores was only bested by Belichick during that time. Like, if you have a quarterback like Cousins, you have to win some of those games by multiple scores. Because when it gets to the end of the game, he's simply the kind of guy that lines up behind the guard. He's simply the guy that knees the ball when he's supposed to spike the ball. And he's great most of the time. But football is about – I was talking – I was in Vegas this week. I was talking to Adam Hill, who's the Las Vegas Sports Review, and we were talking about Derek Carr and how Derek Carr spiked the ball

in the playoff game on first down with 30 seconds left. And Adam said, I wanted to write about Derek Carr. And my editor said, oh, that's too in the weeds. He goes, everything's in the weeds. Once you get down to the difference between the Bradys, the Mahomeses, and all those guys, and the Kirks, it's all in the weeds, right? It's in the weeds. And so, again, I have some optimism here because I think O'Connell probably knows what the problem is.

I have some pessimism because I don't know if Kirk can actually execute to get them. And that's why he's a 500 career quarterback. That's like ultimately what it is. Right. And that's where when we talk about like, you know, what O'Connell can change. I do think that there are some moments with Kevin O'Connell where even in training camp where he has, you know, he's had those moments where like you look over at him in practice and he's kind of shaking his head a little bit that he is not demonstrative and he does not really show his cards about Kirk, but there are,

there have definitely been some times in practices where there's been interceptions or where there's been a lack of execution, where you could sort of see the wheels turning of like, oh, this is going to happen during the regular season at times. Now, I think that O'Connell's ability to navigate that, where Zimmer, I think, really struggled with, this was a game we were supposed to win and our quarterback let us down. How do we move on from that, right? Like, how do we just go on to the next game and put that in the past and so forth and I think when the coach already did not like the fact that the quarterback was there did not like how much he was getting

paid and etc etc that you know maybe that permeated the whole team like the coach didn't believe in the quarterback and they all there he did that he didn't come through in that big situation there you go I mean I even like looked at the numbers one time there he did that. He didn't come through in that big situation. And there you go. I mean, I even like looked at the numbers one time and this is not to say Kirk is clutch, but when it came to like the game winning drives, fourth quarter comebacks, his percentages of doing those things were not super different than most quarterbacks. Like those are weird kind of metrics,

but like every time that it didn't happen, it was almost like, here we go again. And is more belief going to change that I don't know like I'm not sure that I'm gonna have to see that to believe that but I also think that if it does tying all the way back into your on the record prediction then yes Kevin O'Connell will win the coach of the year because people will look at it and say Kirk has never done this before and now he did with Kevin O'Connell the only season being 2019 where they made the playoffs and got a playoff win and otherwise

and really Delvin Cook drove that team if you look at the you know Kirk's passing that was it like this year an easy schedule too like people the bulk the bear case on the Vikings in 2020 was the fact that the 2019 schedule was full of backup quarterbacks. And, you know, not to say this season is the same, but this season is shaping up. Like, this schedule this year is, unless some quarterbacks take some monumental steps, it's going to be a bad season of opposing quarterbacks. So, again, this is a bet, like, I think it's 16 to 1 now on draft kings like i'd rather bet like if i'm gonna if i'm gonna bet on the vikings doing well this year you know they're like something like two and a half to one to win the division maybe it's only two to one now i think people

and as somebody who has studied betting for quite some time the vikings win total has gone from eight and a half to nine and a half like there is there is always optimism about the vikings this time of year and it's always moved the markets frankly to places where when it where it opens i'm like hey this is a pretty good number this the vegas odds you know the providers have made and then people always bet them up because the efficiency metrics and they watch justin jefferson play and in pre like, Oh my God, this seems going to be amazing. If I, and so the most of the market is bullish on the Vikings at this point. So there's not a lot of value in being positive on them betting which you, you know, explains my tenor all the time. But if you,

but if you want a long shot bet that'll win with the Vikings doing well, it's the O'Connell twin coach of the year bet. Yeah. I like it uh I'm gonna go on the record with something uh not NFC or Vikings related but I am going to go on the record with saying that Patrick Mahomes will return to MVP competition and I know this isn't a hot take this is not a hot take show this is an on the record show uh but you know i don't know why they play patrick mahomes in preseason he was incredible in preseason as you would expect but i also think that this wide receiver competition or a conversation is a really

interesting one because i think tyreek hill is a very very very good wide receiver and is unbelievably fast and was a great fit as a deep threat for Patrick Mahomes. But as defenses change to manage the fact that Patrick Mahomes is unbelievable down the field, and we saw that last year, that Tyreek Hill, I think, was less effective. And that's not to say that he wasn't good. Like, look at his numbers. Anyone who had him on fantasy will tell you he was absolutely fantastic. But that role that is required might be in the future. Somebody who's a little more sharp with route running a little better of an underneath wide receiver. And the by committee sort of thing that they're going to have to do with that team.

I don't know how much like Sky Moore is going to be a part of it. But I saw a lot of buzz, you know, throughout training camp and preseason with Sky Moore. Like, I think that Kansas City is going to be the team that everyone went like, oh, you know, it's might be Denver's division now. It might be somebody else's like Josh Allen. He's the real quarterback one and so forth. And then we're going to go like, oh, OK, it wasn't necessarily wide receiver one. It was QB one. And I also think that that fluctuates from team to team, like who's driving the success.

Like if the Vikings lose Justin Jefferson, they will win six football games, and that is it. But if Kansas City goes without their guy, I think Patrick Mahomes will make somebody else even better. I think Kansas City wins that division. And I think Mahomes at the end of the day is going like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The M is for MVP. I'm with you. I've already made some sizable wagers on this one.

Eight to one, nine to one, 10 to one, basically whatever they'll give me at this point. I think the thesis is fairly strong. Like, look, the composition of Kansas City's offense fundamentally had to change last year, right? basically whatever they'll give me at this point. I think the thesis is fairly strong. Like, look, the composition of Kansas City's offense fundamentally had to change last year, right? Because for years, you look at Patrick Mahomes, including playoffs, here are his yards per attempt. 2018, 8.7. That was the MVP year.

2019, 8.3. That was a Super Bowl winning year. 2020, 7.9. 2021, 7.6. And actually, the 7.6 is up because he had a good playoffs, right, if you count playoffs. His big-time throw rate was pretty steady, 7.3, 5.4, 6.7. Last year was at 3.6% of his dropbacks for big-time throws.

Now, a lot of that is because of the too-high stuff. And as much as Andy Reid tried, they could not get teams out of the too high stuff uh my my colleague lao shui we did a study on like basically what levers can teams push to get teams out of the box counts uh into bigger box counts and the chiefs just simply could not do it they could not put guys in the box they could not put tight ends and fullbacks in teams just play too too high on them regardless. You saw Tyreek Hill, his average depth of target went down two and a half yards last year from 2020. His yards after catch went down 1.5 yards. They still had to give him the volume because he's being paid so much and he's their best player on offense. You also saw 23 drops the last few years.

And again, you have some receivers who are better at catching the deeper balls. Some of the stuff underneath, Tyreek Hill struggled hanging onto, and you saw some interceptions. You saw a lot of balls glance off his hands for interceptions that really ruined offenses. And again, when the team blow torches the league for a bunch of years on offense and there's this best player in the league comes in and really has a start that's unprecedented since Dan Dan Marino the league is going to adjust and all these teams engineer their

defenses to stop Mahomes and by extension Allen who had a regression year last year by the way I think passer rating went down like 15 points from 2020 to 2021 some of that's weather some of that's crowd noise stuff like that but they But Andy Reid, middle of the year, they had a loss. It was 34-3, I think, to Tennessee. They had a win against the Giants that was ugly. They had a 19-9 win against Dallas. They had a 13-7 win against Green Bay. They had a 23-9 win against Denver.

The offense was struggling. And then eventually they figured out how to do it. And at the end of the season, they led the league in points per drive. They had the fewest drives in the NFL. What that means is they had to grind it out. You know, they had this great weapon who was engineered to take the top off the defense, but other teams weren't letting them take the top off the defense. But their investment in him meant that they had to throw him the ball.

They had to throw him the ball underneath. Andy Reid got very good at playing the game left-handed, but there's only so much juice you can squeeze out of the orange when it's with your bad hand, right? And so instead of taking this entire offseason and getting really good at being left-handed, they just reinvented what their right hand was, right? And that is MV mccall hardman being guys that can take the top off the defense but not so much that they face the the same boring coverages all the time and that that coverages that aren't uh you know conducive to their deception you have juju who is the underneath receiver that they haven't really had for a long time you have travis kelsey

still you know very good and then sky more a guy who I think by the end of the season will be their number one wide receiver. I'm very bullish on this. I was the one that wrote the article that said, hey, the value of secondary receivers, especially in the playoffs, is immense. It's why you see Green Bay not win the title when they had Adams. It's why Kansas City, when they won the Super Bowl, got big contributions out of Sammy Watkins. When they didn't win the Super Bowl, Sammy Watkins is either gone or injured. I think that the bull case on the Chiefs is very strong. I also think there's a non-analytical aspect to this, which is the NFL top 100 had Mahomes eighth. You had Tyree Kill talking mess about him,

comparing him to Tua, which is just absurd on its face. You also have a lot of Bills fans. And, frankly, I'll be all – I'm actually okay with the idea that Josh Allen's in the same equivalence class as Mahomes. But, like, come on. You've seen his pettiness before. You scored a touchdown against the Bears. It counts to 10, right, because the Bears passed on him.

You know, I think there's a little bit – there's going to be a dialed in aspect to my home so i absolutely like that uh call by you yeah you know and i think that it's just sort of the way we are in football where it's like whatever the last thing we saw ends up being the truth and it's like the last thing we saw was Mahomes kind of missing some open people and blowing a lead against Cincinnati. Though if Tyreek Hill doesn't drop a ball in overtime into the hands of Cincinnati, maybe it is a different story. And they're going to the Super Bowl. I don't know. Or if, you know, they had gotten whatever that execution was at the end of the half or like like the tiny little details that results in the Kansas City Chiefs not making the Super Bowl. But we used to do this with Tom Brady all the time.

I mean, I am old enough to remember an ESPN NFL live conversation. Should they move on from Brady and have Matt Castle be their quarterback? Because, you know, Matt Castle just went 11 and five and Brady yada yada yada is like and and then every year it's like here he comes uh there was a time where Brady was having trouble gripping the ball in Kansas City and had a tough night there early in the season like ah okay this is the time Brady falls off and like we've done this dance we did it with Rodgers Rodgers is. It's like when it comes to the elite of the elite, the all time great quarterbacks, I think history proves that these guys are usually supermen and that we're going to see that again from Mahomes. Also, Andy Reid is one of the best and most adaptive offensive minds in history.

And however, they were playing him last year. Don't play him again that way this year because you're going to end up with a lot of different things um so yeah i mean i think we're very much on this on the same page with mahomes bouncing back uh again like not a super super hot take to say the best quarterback in the world is going to be good but um you know i think it is interesting for just narrative sake how we always overreact to things and and go back too far like any list that doesn't have mahomes is the best player in football is insane. But, you know, I mean, the top 100, the way it's done is usually insane anyway. But go on the record with something else.

OK, this one is going to be. I think. a little weird. I sort of hinted to this. If the Vikings have a winning record this year, Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson's numbers will be worse than they were last year. Hmm. Okay, yeah, you're going to have to explain that one. So, like, the fact is, is, like, this team, you know,

when this team has success, you don't want Kirk Cousins throwing the ball that much, right? You don't want – you want to be – and, like, they've had sort of the perfect cocktail of getting these guys great numbers. And I know the people who love Cousins will point to them and say, oh, what's wrong with a 4,000-yard quarterback and i agree i mean other than you know these guys not understanding eras like kirk cousins has been great you know um from a from a numbers perspective but there's a part of cousins that and there's a part of how they've played with cousins that

induces those numbers right you we talk about at the end of games, he was great. I mean, he got them the game-winning score, the game-winning score, right, against, you know, Arizona. You know, he got them down to field goal range. He got the game-winning score against Carolina. He got, you know, he got them the game-winning score twice against Detroit, even though the Vikings gave up to Detroit, et cetera, et cetera. And those drives are like 80 yards and a touchdown, right?

So they're adding 80 yards and a touchdown to every single one of his ledgers, right? Every single one of his ledgers has a tacked on Kirk-y-lean, Kirk-time, garbage. And it's not garbage time because the games matter, but I will throw a suggestion to people that a game-winning drive against Jacksonville is kind of like garbage time, right? A game-winning drive against a Matt Rule Carolina Panthers team in 2020, it's kind of like garbage time, right? And so if the Vikings do what they're supposed to do this

year which is win 10 games right the markets have them at nine and a half if they overcome expectations they're a 10-win team right you're sort of making the case for the under frankly right here if they win those games the Detroit game will be decided by 17 points in the fourth quarter and Kirk's not throwing the 80 yards and a touchdown at the end to Justin Jefferson when they really need it. Right. And they're going to be saving those those statistics in the games where it really counts. Like week one against Green Bay and, you know, week four against New Orleans. And so the Chicago game should be three touchdown games. Chicago's horrid. Chicago's horrid Chicago's horrid so you

shouldn't have to come back from 14 down against Chicago and put up all those yards and touchdowns right you should Ty Chandler should be carrying the ball at the end of those games and that so I think that that you know and again like this is one of the reasons like you know the NFL top 100 was out and Tom Brady got the number one spot and i actually think it's defensible defensible because brady i mean that was the first team in nfl history to win 12 or more games and pass the ball more than 70 of the time because usually when a team when you look at the guy that led the nfl and pass attempts it's for a crappy team right because they're behind all the time he's got it's matthew stafford in detroit he's like he's doing that the bucks were like no we have to throw 70 of the time because our best players are quarterback and and we're going to do it that way every other team there's like kind of an

inverse relationship between these statistics these volume stats and winning because you you put up the volume because you have to at the end because you're not that good. And that was the Vikings the last few years. Being in a bunch of one-score games because of their deficiency and then Kirk putting up great statistics within those game scripts, if they're good this year, they won't have some of those game scripts because they're going to be good by virtue of stomping on bad teams, which are going to diminish Kirk's statistics and help them win more boy that would be interesting to look at the uh statistics posted against teams where they were favored by like more than a touchdown I mean even you know

that Carolina game is a great example where they were absolutely miserable in the first half of that game they let it be close and then at the end they put up a bunch of huge statistics when really like that shouldn't have been close sam darnold was the same thing like yeah yeah and then the bangles ended up being a good team but the vikings were three-point road favorites in that game right yeah at the end there's a yeah there's a lot of those where you know this was the biggest one of the biggest things from the zimmer era with, though, that Kevin O'Connell can change. And statistically, you know, I think you make a really good point that in the fourth quarter, if you're beating Detroit by 17 points, you're just running the football and running the clock out and everything else. But, you know, I think that one of the biggest things, that's why, like, order of operations has always mattered to me. When these things happen, when these yards happen,

when Justin Jefferson's catches happen, that I look this up and I think that no receiver has more yards when his team is trailing by two scores than Justin Jefferson. As you would expect because that's like, oh no, we're down, bail us out. That if they allow Justin Jefferson to drive their success as an offense, when you get up seven points, not, oh, we're up seven points in the third quarter. Let's hand off to Delvin. No, no, no.

You don't have the number one defense anymore, Mike. You're up seven points. That means you throw to Justin Jefferson more. In fact, even, you know, Kirk deserves credit for a phenomenal game against New Orleans in the playoffs and the clutchiest Kirk thing that he ever did clutch Kirk. But, like, they were running the ball at the end of that game when all they needed was a first down pass to Stephon Diggs or Adam Thielen or Kyle Rudolph, and it was like run, run, run, punt, let's play defense. Uh-oh, New Orleans tied the game.

Like, that was a Zimmer thing that probably drove me more nuts about Mike Zimmer than anything else, was that he kept thinking his defense could do what they did in 2017. And how many times over the last few years did we see somebody else walk off on the Vikings because they, like, kept it close? I mean, you even mentioned that, you know, that Seattle game where they played really well, but they still didn't, like, they still didn't just go after it. It was like, you know, they settle for field goals or, you know, field position like 90s football a little bit there at times. And I think that if you have an opening script that produces a touchdown and you come out and you're up seven, nothing, you get to stop, make it 14.

Like, don't run on second and 10 after that. Don't be like, okay, we're up. We better play conservative. Like that's, that was something that never really made any sense to me about how Zimmer played. And I think that if Justin Jefferson catches 94 balls for 1200 yards, but all those 94 are putting the other team away and then he's sitting on the bench doing the gritty or whatever, like at the, in the fourth quarter,

cause you're winning that. That is way better than him out in the fourth quarter, having to catch a bunch of passes at the end to keep you alive in it. And there's some chicken and egg to it. Right. So there's some chicken and egg to the, that, you know,

to what I'm about to say, which is okay. You look at uh total passing yards for cousins it's 4300 when they win eight seven and one 4265 when they went seven and nine 4221 when they when he went eight and eight 3603 when they went 10 and five with him as a starter right and that is you know his lowest touchdown pass total was 26 in 2019. And some of that I think people will say, well, that's because they played weak opponents and they could run the ball and they could be in play action and they could do all that.

And that's like how this year is setting up, right? Like the worst thing that could happen for the Vikings is to be in games that Cousins has to throw a lot. Because if you're in the fourth quarter and the game's tied against Detroit with your five-point favor in week three, you've lost. The season's already in a rough spot for you. It's different with Green Bay. And again, this is the hard part.

This is the sticky wicket about the Vikings. They have such transcendent talent on the team, like at the top with Jefferson, who is their – like when you talk about losing a player, they're a team where their best player isn't their quarterback. And that is kind of the difference between the Mahomes and the Downs and stuff like that. Jefferson's such a transcendent talent. Danell Hunter is such a transcendent talent. Harrison Smith, et cetera, where you can come back on these teams that are better than you and lose respectively. And that's what they've done.

But because of how they play and maybe the, the sort of way that their quarterback is sort of invariant with respect to everything that they don't win these games that they're supposed to win by multiple scores. And as such, I think that, you know, if, if, if that's something that O'Connell can sort of like trick them into doing, then you'll see worse numbers from cousins, but better outcomes for the Vikings. All right, let's wrap it up on this on the record, Minnesota Vikings final record. What will it be? what is your choice i'm gonna go um my simulation says eight and a half which is down a little bit i think like some of the teams the nfc have seen some of their market numbers increase and also

um i i'm not as sensitive i guess to the to the the market being bullish on the vikings so um i'm gonna go i'm gonna round up a little bit. I'll go nine and eight. I think that there are, unlike last year, I said eight, nine and they finished eight, nine. Thank you very much. I actually don't think there's a chance that they'll finish with nine wins. I think it's either going to be a disaster of like the six and 11, seven and 10 proportion, or if things come together for them, they'll be pretty good.

I mean, there's a lot of, when you think of the NFC, you know, Brady and the Bucs have their, you know, offensive line injuries, their wide receiver injuries, the losses defensively with Sue and Pierre Paul, as well as Jordan Whitehead. You know, the Saints have Jameis, which could go either way, especially if he gets hurt. Packers don't have the wide receiver positions are real. And the Vikings get the Packers early, which I think is great for them, a great break for them.

San Francisco goes as Lance goes, which is scary. The Rams go as Stafford's elbow goes, which is scary. And we've already seen the Cowboys lose some significant players. The NFC is wide open. And if the Vikings can stay above the fray, injury-wise and shenanigans-wise, which, to O'Connell's credit, other than the B.C. Johnson injury, they've been better with the injuries this year than before. And that's something that he might have brought over from the Rams, which has been statistically

significant during his tenure with the Rams. If they can stay above the fray injury wise and scandal wise, which they have, then that team can be really good. So I'll say nine and eight on average, but I think it is a really good chance that they could win 11, 12 games and an equally good chance they could win seven or eight, six or seven games. Yeah, I think that you have to add scandal-wise just based on the team, just based on who they are. There's always that possibility, and last year there was multiples of those. And we don't know how Kevin O'Connell will handle those. That's the thing, is that Zimmer sometimes was able to get his team

to absolutely grind through the craziest thing happening on the outside. But then have something on the, you know, something just like a bad loss, send them in a tailspin. Like you could never really predict with Zimmer. I remember when we talked, I mean, way back when, like 2016, I was like, I don't know if Zimmer can handle this, you know, adversity and stuff after 2016 because it went so bad. And then the next year they faced a bunch of it and made the NFC championship. Like, I don't know if Zimmer can handle this adversity and stuff after 2016 because it went so bad. And then the next year they faced a bunch of it and made the NFC championship. Like, I don't know. But we don't know with O'Connell at all how he's going to handle the things that do come for an NFL head coach. I have them as a 10 and 17 because I think 10 is kind of the higher end.

Like you said, the word 12. And that would be really something to me if they were healthy enough to win 12 and got enough breaks along the way that would put them in legitimate Super Bowl contender territory and since we haven't seen this group do that I'm hesitant to go there but I'll go on the record with my original prediction when the schedule came out was 10 and 7 when I did the little W's and L's. And I'm staying with that. Like nothing has really changed throughout training camp that would change that for me. But I I've, you know, at times wondered, like, how is Kirk really going to adapt to this offense? When, you know, this was this was an offense that required a very aggressive quarterback like there.

They're not playing the Jared Goff training wheels version. They're playing the Matt Stafford version, which could be great or could blow up on them. So I think that this team has the widest variance that they have had in a very long time, probably since 2018. And that's what makes them interesting, but I'll go, I'll go with 10. well this was super fun i'm really glad that we could get together as always and play a little game of on the record which we will maybe at some point go back and look at halfway through the season and say like oh all of our on the record predictions were absolutely right because we're geniuses of football and sometimes very wrong because neither one of us believed in the rams last year so you know that's how football goes but But anyway, Eric, great stuff. Listen to the PFF Forecast podcast, pff.com, all of your great work. And you have a bunch of interns who are now also producing amazing data science work. And that is really cool to see. So follow them at pff underscore Eric.

And we will do this again soon, my friend. Can't wait. Can't wait for the season to start. And like I said, I think the Vikings are getting the Packers at a good time for them. So I'm really excited. 4-25 Eastern on opening night.