Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Eric Eager talks about what we're hearing in Indy about the Vikings' QB situation

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Matthew Coller and PFF's Eric Eager dive deep into the benefits of the Minnesota Vikings creating cap space. They talk about whether there is any good indicators of future success in terms of QB play and rank positional value by the analytics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the I have to Catch a Flight Soon. So we're going to do this podcast right before I get on a plane. Purple Insider podcast from the Indiana Convention Center at the NFL Combine. Matthew Collar, along with pro football focuses, Eric Eager. What is up, Eric? How are you? I'm doing great. You know, I have not gotten a full night of sleep all week. I haven't woken up in time for breakfast today, so things are going well. Yeah.

I think every night, Eastern time. So I'm actually built for this. Eastern time, it's been close to two or three, but that's really nothing for me. Central time, it just prepares you for anything you need. So you go out to the West Coast if you've got Central time, and you're like, oh, man. I'm a morning person. Yeah. Like, oh, this is this is right i'm up at six i could get so much done and then you come out to the east you're like i could stay up so late i'm not even tired and plus me not being a drinker everybody else is walking around here like ghouls and zombies and i'm like morning

everyone yeah how are you you want to diet dr Dr. Pepper? Indianapolis being Eastern Standard Time is pretty funny, in my opinion. Yeah, it is weird, right? Like, because we're nowhere close to a coast. Right. Like, you know, but I guess from a population standpoint, I guess it makes sense. But yeah, this place has been great. I mean, it's been fun to, you know, talk to people we haven't seen. I mean, this is the first time, this is the first Combine in two years, right? So

this is the last time we've gotten to see a lot of people. First time we've gotten to see a lot of people. And, you know, unlike the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl is sort of like one of those where it's media members. Here you actually get to see sort of coaches and players

in some cases. Like Alan Robinson makes this every single year, interestingly. So it's certainly a spectacle for sure. It's like the conference for football every year, basically. Did you tell me you saw RG3 in sweats, or who said that? Oh, Eric Edholm. Eric Edholm tweeted that he saw RG3 walking around in sweats. One of the first people I talked to on tuesday morning was

quesi adolfo mensa who was wearing uh the a track suit of a man who just signed a four-year 12 million dollar deal oh he this is so funny because quesi and kevin o'connell are doing this whole best friends thing and i think it was crazy talking about how he got out of his car one day at the same time as kevin o'connell probably at 3 a.m at least to come grind the tape yeah and they were both wearing sweats and they were like oh you wear sweats too to the office like do we just become best friends like guys this is a little much okay it's a little much but um no continuing the tradition of great friendships minnesota vikings between general manager and head coach yeah yeah i don't think mike zimmer or rick spielman knew what each other was wearing because they weren't talking uh but uh it's it's

always interesting when it's somebody's first time at anything like first time at the combine will raggets was on the show the other day it's his first combine so it's fun to ask like hey what's what's your first what's been your first combine like and with kevin o'connell and quesia daflamenza the the answer will be it was the easiest one because there were no questions to answer about mistakes they made yeah and so both of them have had big smiles on their faces and then you look at some of the other guys who have been around, you know, John Lynch, Doug Peterson, like different people who I've stood near, Howie Roseman. And there's just a little less there's a little less glow. And I was watching Kevin Stefanski interview take interview questions. And it was, do you believe in Baker Mayfield?

And Kevin Stefanski is not a rattleable human being but you could see some of the like deep breaths that were being taken of just yeah yeah I'm confident in him don't you think that Baker Mayfield should have had some backup quarterback competition like that was a real question like excuse me who are they oh what was Vinny Testaverde

supposed to come in here Eric Zier it was like it was such a asinine question Kelly Holcom at least is that a real thing that someone thinks that someone was supposed after baker had a good year and took them very close to going to the afc championship that they were supposed to have competition for him last year at backup quarterback also case keenum is good and won them a game as like a backup goes right and there's kevin ste Stefanski with just this blank look on his face. And then he had a deep breath.

And yeah, I think that I was very happy with the competition we had on a daily basis. You could just see, yeah, the man's been beaten down. Because when you don't win, you get beaten down as a head coach. And to see two fresh-faced gentlemen who are not jaded and who have not been crushed for their mistakes and questioned over and over and over and over again is interesting, and I'll remember it because a year from now it'll be different, and two years from now it could be very different.

But then if you win, you get to prance around here like you're the, you know, the whole bell of the ball. But it's just kind of a funny thing and very different for me because rick spielman and mike zimmer were just they were so grizzled by the point we got to the combine two two three years ago and even just covering this last year that everything was sort of contentious everything was sort of tense and now we're asking questions in the same way, like very carefully, as we got used to with those guys. And they're like, oh, yeah, I've got lots of answers to your question, lots of words to tell you and quote me up. It's just been such a different experience.

And I don't know how you feel about Kweisi Adafomensa from an analytics standpoint. It has blown me away, though, that listening to him is like listening to the PFF forecast podcast, which is what you and George Shahri do, because he has such a sharp understanding of how all of this works, how to apply analytics to football that I'm really impressed. time we ever hear him be this honest about it but i've come away from this thinking i believe that he really gets it from that perspective of things yeah i mean he he's such a you know i i it's always so hard to attribute credit right when he was on the 49ers um i know the people who he left back after he left and went to go join Andrew Barry in Cleveland, they swear by him. They talk about how great he was as a leader. And obviously the guy's sharp.

If you're trading commodities, you come into football. Cleveland was one of the best analytic staffs in all of football. I know you talk about the forecast. If I say something silly on my podcast, somebody from the Browns will email me, right. So there, you know, we might have the first GM who listens to the show, who knows. Um, uh, but the, the, the thing that impresses upon me, so like, you know, he'll, he'll come over and he, you know, he came over to, you know, our sort of, uh, you know, we're meeting with teams and he, he wasn't a part of these meetings, obviously,

because he's delegating at this point with Minnesota. But he just thanked some of us for the help. Like, hey, this whole analytics community sort of won a little bit here. And he's sort of the standard bearer for us all. And I think he understands the sort of gravity that he has as somebody who carries that torch, right? Like he, he knows that he has, you know, I think he knows that he has to be a good representative of the analytics community, which, you know, I think is some pressure and it's why, I mean, like, you know, we're not allowed to

root as much, you know, but like, I'll rooting for him, obviously, because he's a great person and, you know, and he deserves this opportunity. But also because I think it'll move football forward if he has success. I think there'll be more people like him who get general manager jobs. And and, you know, like like you said, it's sort of different how he talks about the game. Right. It's different how he talks about the game. And it's different, you know, but I think it's different in a good way. And I think that it holds, you know, there's so many fewer holes to the arguments and there's so many fewer and there's a humility to it as well. There's like when you're a data driven person, you're it's less of like, hey, I know better. And it's more like, hey, this information is what I'm going off of. It's less personal. It's less me. It's more let me be driven by this information. The tricky beast, though, to analytics is that the analytics will tell you percentages and chances and odds.

And you're playing those odds. But there are times where those odds just don't hit. And they don't hit repeatedly. And it's like if you I remember reading this about flipping a coin. there are times where those odds just don't hit and they don't hit repeatedly. And it's like if you, I remember reading this about flipping a coin. And if there was a study where they had two people flip coins, but one person was supposed to imagine the coin flips, the other person was supposed to do them.

And the person that imagined the coin flips did basically every other and evened it out because they know it's a 50-50 chance. The person who did the 1,000 coin flips for real got like 40 heads in a row. Yeah, yeah. The probability of those strings are pretty big. I mean, that's how – I don't know how familiar you are with Freakonomics. But essentially, that's how they discovered the Chicago public school teachers were cheating on the standardized test because, you know, actual random sequences are clumpy, more clumpy than we think. And so if you're trying to sort of fake randomness, you make things too even and it's easy to detect.

So, yeah. And look, there was, you know, it's not that hard to figure out which team this was. But yesterday, you know, I was in a meeting with a team that had really been forward-looking on fourth downs. And there were some high-profile games where they did not convert those plays, and so we were sort of talking about kind of the habits of mind, right? How the players need to deal with sort of the higher variances of going for more fourth downs or that kind of thing.

And I was really impressed with the commitment to wanting to win football games and the commitment to, you know, we might have been 9-8 this year, but we gave ourselves the best chance to win. And I don't want to turn our backs on that just because we had a season where it wasn't. It didn't work out quite as well for us. So I think, but you're right. I mean, there's going to be a point like, you know, and that's what makes it hard. Kwestia Dofamensa has four years. He has a four-year contract.

And, you know, what happens if he goes 0 for 4 on first-round picks? Like, that doesn't mean he's a bad evaluator. Sometimes that, you know, sometimes that's just the luck of the draw, right? And just the same way that Rick Spielman's 2015 draft didn't make him a good general manager and his 2016 draft didn't make him a bad general manager. It's the same person doing both drafts. So those are the things that I think Vikings fans are going to have to be patient with is this idea that just because somebody is using a data driven approach,

they're trying to get 50, 52 percent, 50, 55 percent. And so, you know, in the short term, 52 percent and 55 percent look an awful lot like 50 percent. Right. But from my perspective and from fans perspective, if you lose, I don't care what percent you claim it was. And that is the harsh reality of the thing, because even though we could evaluate their decisions and say, you know what, at the time I might have done the same thing, or at the time I didn't criticize it. A good example would be the Sam Bradford trade.

At the time, I looked at the Vikings and the roster they had and said, this is a good idea because you won the division the previous year. Your team is stacked. You could have a top five defense in the league. You've got a good coach. You have good wide receivers. You need to win and you should do this. And in the longterm, that was a total bust. They missed the playoffs with Sam Bradford. The next year, the team was so good. They could go to the NFC championship with a backup-level quarterback. Imagine how much better they could have been if they weren't paying him whatever, $20 million or something that they had been paying him. Oh, and by the way, Derek Barnett, the guy that was drafted by the Eagles,

made the key sack in the Super Bowl. And that's always a difficult challenge of the draft. And I asked Kwesi directly about this and the randomness, and he said exactly what you said like that he thinks that there are areas where they can spot that can give them a little better odds of being correct but the way that i look at it is with the draft is okay there's the quarterback thing it's a totally separate conversation from just about anything but i also think that there are ways to insulate yourself from the

effect of failure outside of the quarterback position if you draft duane haskins that can really hurt you it really really hurt you but if washington hadn't gotten afraid the next draft and had just drafted justin herbert like they'd be in a totally different spot even if they drafted tua they would have been in a totally different spot because they have a strong team. So I think that there's the ways to insulate yourself from the effects of failure that will absolutely happen to you in one way is to not let the previous failure impact your next decision.

And the other way is to be very savvy in free agency where it's more predictable. Free agency is a little bit random, but it's not anywhere near random because you have big sample sizes. And so every year there are really smart decisions team make in free agency that win them games and win them Super Bowls. And that is an area where if you are smart there, you can mitigate some of the effect. I think if you don't sign yourself up for contracts that are very risky and you sign young-ish players, I think the age of free agents should really matter. If you're 32, you're putting your life in your hands. If you're 27, you've got a much better chance. spot guys and this is something that pff has sort of like made its money on is being able to say these numbers point to this free agent that could be more successful and that's where i feel like

quasi adafo mensa gives himself a better chance and the other thing is too that when you like a player that you drafted i think he'll be more ruthless and no one's perfect but i think he'll be more ruthless than rick spielman to say no we drafted him. It's a hit in the draft, so we need to double down on this player. We need to give Delvin Cook a big contract. Since Delvin Cook got his contract, they haven't made the playoffs. Yeah, and I think that, so a couple things. I agree with you. I think that a big thing is you can do that kind of stuff in free agency if you get the quarterback position right. And I don't mean get the quarterback position right as in get a top eight quarterback,

no matter what. It's getting – and I wrote this article, pff.com. It was very much motivated by this Cousins discussion, although I've had this similar – I was on Brown's radio yesterday talking about, you know, sort of what the Baker Mayfield thing is. It's like the, if you get the quarterback position, right, which is to say, have a good enough team to support a rookie quarterback on a rookie or quarterback on a rookie deal, or you identify a quarterback who is good enough to earn the market level deal then you then free agency is a savvy thing because you know you can because it's not

only just who you get it's also who where you can slough off right so like take take the Cincinnati Bengals for an example Cincinnati has a great quarterback right they hit on the quarterback they they put I think the Bengals I forget what number it was like they have like I believe six example, Cincinnati has a great quarterback, right? They hit on the quarterback. They put, I think the Bengals, I forget what number it was, like they have like, I believe six or seven defensive backs who have over a thousand snaps with a different team. So when they signed Trey Wayans and he fails, everybody, you know, I think a lot of people were like, oh, that's the Bengals. Oh my gosh, they suck. It's like, well, no,. They found five defensive backs that could get them to the Super Bowl, shut down Patrick Mahomes in an AFC title game,

and so you think about it in the aggregate. And this is where I think Kwestia Dovamensa has a really good chance of overcoming some of the failures of other general managers because it's that, right? It's I drafted Nick Chubb, I drafted Dalvin Cook, and this is where I think he's got to go away from being Andrew Barry a little bit. I drafted Nick Chubb, I drafted Dalvin Cook, and damn it, he was good. That contract is every bit a reward of him as it is for the general manager.

And so having somebody who has less of an ego is going, I think that it's going to be avoided more often and it'll be to the vikings benefit right like you know we have not seen there are not instances of teams other than say baltimore who just let free agents go even ones that did really well patriots too the patriots patriots are the one yeah for sure um and and that has to be your approach but it starts with the quarterback. They have to get the quarterback position right. None of this other stuff really matters.

They'll be chasing that decision, much like Spielman did over the last four years. So I want to talk about what we've heard in Indy about the Vikings quarterback situation because I was out last night and spent some time with, I don't even know if I want to say how specifically of these people's job roles. I'll just say people who are in the league or have been in the league. And I'm not talking about Sage. Sage has already given his thoughts on the record. Sage has given, by the way, Sage has given everybody his thoughts.

Sage is the most talked to person at the combine. Like every minute of every day he's been here, he's having a long conversation with someone. I don't even know. By the way, I love Sage. I have no idea what he does. Sage? He's just around.

He's an NFL socialite. That is what he is. No, Sage is doing a little bit of a lot of things. Like he does some media stuff in Chicago, and he's training quarterbacks. He worked with Brock Purdy, and he works with QB collective and he's just in a different place all the, every time I talk to him.

And so that's kind of his life. Like he's invested his money really well. And I think that that has been a big benefit for him to kind of, he's not somebody who has bad days, right? Yeah. He just kind of does whatever he feels like doing, which,

so when we talked a while back i was like hey you you know might you be around to come to the combine i'd love to do that like sure okay and yesterday can i tell i want to tell you a quick story about sage though if you want to understand what kind of person he is i have a friend who has written some books about football and is a coach and is really really smart x's and o's wise a high school coach and so i introduced him to sage a few years ago and so they met uh really in person here had a chance to talk here and sage took a picture of his book and texted it to an nfl coach nfl head coach that he knows just because he, oh, this guy does good work and I want to help him out.

Like, that's what kind of person Sage is. So I think Sage is, like, going around doing good deeds and having fun conversations with people. I know that he spent some time talking with Kevin O'Connell because they know each other. And there's so much respect for someone who spent that much time in the league and you really see it here around the NFL people. And that was kind of the point that I was actually going to get to is talking to NFL people here.

If there are those Twitter accounts that you follow that tell you that Kirk Cousins deserves a contract extension, no one agrees with them. There was one that told me yesterday that he was better than Lamar Jackson. No one agrees with them. No one here agrees with them. that's what i could tell you i have talked to no less than i don't know two dozen people who are in the nfl in some capacity and i have not had a single person say that it's a good idea to extend kirk cousins yeah it's interesting i i actually had similar experience with a person who you know i can't divulge your name but but literally came up to me and was like, look, thanks. Because here's the thing. People who pom-pom for the team, and it's fine if you do, by the way, if you're a fan.

You should. I mean, if you derive enjoyment that way, that's great. But analysts who pom-pom for the team, like these people have been praised their whole life. You're running up the score at that point. You're not adding a ton of value. These people really respect differences of opinion because within a team, look, not every single person, member of the Vikings in 2018 wanted to sign Kirk Cousins. I can tell you that right now.

And sometimes if you offer opinions in the public that are different, those opinions are shared within the team. And so sometimes people appreciate them. them but what I found was really interesting was there was you know somebody yeah yeah like you said every single opinion by somebody here has been what the truth is I think which is that Kirk Cousins is a pretty good quarterback at doing a number of things and I think you and I differ a little bit here because I I think I I actually do buy I actually do think he is a very talented player I just but I I am steadfast in the steadfast in the notion that it's not enough and it's just not a good gamble for the team to make, and it wasn't in 2018. And that is an opinion that is widely shared in the league. And so if you're the Vikings, it's tricky because you have to sort of convince a team

to go away from your intuition like were the vikings the only team that thought that of him in 2018 yeah because because that's why i get worried if you're if you're trying to trade him like if all these other teams think you know if all these other teams think you can't build a team around him you're gonna be stuck holding the egg timer it's really it's just been really an interesting experience. And, no, I do think, and I have talked sort of in depth about what Cousins does well on the show, but at this point it doesn't really matter because it's not enough.

And so we could talk about how well he executes certain types of throws and things like that. He was a better downfield passer than Matt Stafford last year. Passes that went more than 20 yards, he was a better downfield passer than matt stafford last year yeah passes that went more than 20 yards he was significantly better than matt stafford so there's a lot of things that we could say that he does well but you can't separate the player from the contract and that's the thing about being here in indie and getting to talk with people is you have people who are very knowledgeable let's say about about the money side of things who will say that just you can't build around that. There's just no way to do it.

There's no amount of restructuring that allows you to do it. And then there are people on the former player side. I had a really good discussion with a former player about even some of the technical elements of Cousins that makes him struggle in these situations, which, I mean, was really enlightening for me to understand that, just even the way that he throws the ball and what's required to create the velocity of the ball and why that takes longer and why he has strip sacks and why he doesn't succeed under pressure and how those things will not change.

And so if I came here and had those people tell me, no, actually, they should extend Kirk, I don't know how much I would completely change my mind, but I would want to have that discussion a little more. Yeah, I just came here feeling like, let's see what everyone has to say and let's see what the team has to say. And I am leaving to get on this flight soon, thinking the Vikings and the rest of the people in the league are not seeing a good reason to extend him, which definitely relates to your point of who's trading for him and in what way. Because I do think there is an option here that's in the middle. Brad Spielberger suggested, well, what if he signs a contract with another team or agrees to one before a trade? I think the option is take money

back. Just take money back. Take a $20 million hit from Kirk Cousins this year or a $25 million Kirk Cousins hit. Accept the fact that you're still going to save money to spend in free agency and start the rest of your life. And I wanted to ask you about, because I know we agree on that, I wanted to ask you about analytics and looking at the quarterbacks because this is so tricky tricky figuring out these quarterbacks and i know the vikings are going to use the fullest extent of the analytics that they

possibly could in this universe is there an edge in this world to look at these quarterbacks and say malik willis is the guy or mac rail is the guy no kenny pickett is the guy i don't think i mean you know the article I wrote sort of went through all the first round picks right and like and I think like the the ordering is rarely you know it you know Trubisky by the way Trubisky won 29 of 50 starts for the Bears you know know, everybody gets after, oh, quarterback wins is not a – QB wins isn't a stat. Like hell it isn't.

Interceptions are less stable year to year, and people touch on interception ratio, right? If interceptions are a quarterback stat, wins are a quarterback stat. Like we're all adults, and we all know that more things contribute to the win than just the quarterback, but more things contribute to every single thing a quarterback produces on the stat sheet right so um but like if you look at even team success you look at individual success it's never it's hardly ever linear right like you look at 2017 it's Trubisky, Mahomes, Watson it's probably it goes three one two in terms of how good they are right 2018 it goes Mayfield uh John Mayfield

Darnold Josh Allen Josh Rosen Lamar Jackson so it probably goes what in that order it's probably you know Rosen's last Darnold but Darnold still they got a second round pick for Darnold in a trade I mean this is how valuable the position is and that's why we're Vikings fans air is not it's not it's not looking at any one of those individual quarterbacks mean like that's the guy it's looking at the decision to draft a quarterback and the decision to build around him and say that's the right decision because again like there it's very rare that a guy comes out and he's josh rosen it's very if you commit to building a good team around a a play a quarterback you can when it's a rookie deal guy you can't when it's a Kirk like that's the thing you don't you don't you aren't

even afforded the right to make the right decision around Kirk where you are around these other guys even though it's a very it's a very low probability that even two of these guys are as good of a player as Kirk, but they're going to be paid, if Kirk takes the full 45, a ninth of the cost. So he has to be a ninth of his good to be on par, plus the rest of the roster. That's such an easy gamble to make. Now, to answer your question, there are some things, some things, like, you can look at the data, but it's a low-sample event, and the league changes, too. Like, you can't, like, I think of Kenny Pickett.

Kenny Pickett's like Jim McMahon to me, right? So can that kind of quarterback win in this league? Less so than it could in the 80s, but maybe, you know, like, if you're a ready-made roster like New England was last year then Mac Jones a great fit um if you are you're shooting for the moon then Trey Lance might be a good pick for the Niners you know that kind of thing um in this draft I think it's styles make fights I think you know uh Malik Willis probably has you know the the highest ceiling um and it was very good for a bad Liberty team like i mean not record wise but that the supporting cast for liberty was horrendous last year and he was wonderful despite that so that's

a trait i like um you know i i think uh you know how he had similar things where they didn't have the receivers and but the performance wasn't quite there um the guy that i kind of like you know was a long shot is desmond ritter i think ritter's running ability gives you a floor right away um but i don't necessarily know if he has a great ceiling as a passer so i mean there there's useful there's useful quarterbacks in this draft and i and i and i think people coming in and being cocksure of like this is a bad quarterback class stay away i feel like they're making an error and quesadilla flamenco said the same thing that you know it's just so hard to project that you have to accept that it might go wrong but you know you you talk about

josh rosen and i wonder what you think the distribution is because i mean i pull up drafthistory.com and look at this all the time and I know that you can sort of twist the two well what are your odds the the you know the past history doesn't exactly tell you your odds it just tells you what happened but these are five different human beings than they were in other drafts so it's not like you know Eric Zier has anything to do with I should have picked someone else who they picked uh Brandon Whedon doesn't have anything to do with i should have picked someone else who they picked uh brandon whedon doesn't have anything to do with kenny pickett like those two aren't related your odds are probably different than history but i think the distribution i'm just going to take a shot at it and you tell

me if you agree i think you have probably a 10 chance to pick someone truly excellent that will give you a chance to win a Super Bowl. That deserves a market deal. Yes. Think Justin, like right now, Justin Herbert is the one, is like in that realm. Joe Burrow is in that realm. Right. The way I look at it, or started looking at it this last year,

was when I went through the histories of quarterbacks where the story was fully written on them, like Phillip Rivers and Matt Ryan and Eli Manning and Peyton and, you know those quarterbacks from the past couple of decades is that a truly great quarterback truly all-time great will give you 10 chances to win a super bowl in his career a very very good one will give you five and an average one to upper tier like long-term starter will give you one and matt stafford won with his one

yeah yeah good for him by the way yeah yeah congratulations to him because he played a long time for that one chance but like jay cutler had one chance to win a super bowl and they didn't win in the nfc championship and uh anything less than that is just not good enough and you're always trying to be replaced and i think the distribution in the draft if we have you know five quarterbacks it's hard to say in this tiny sample because all five could be bad or all five could be good yeah but in odds wise i would say about 10 chance of getting someone that either that gives you five five to ten chances to win a super bowl and you probably have maybe a 40 chance or 50 chance of getting someone who gives you one chance. And then below that one chance would be like your Mitch Trubisky. It's probably another 40%. And

then it's probably 10% that it's just the worst player ever. See, I'm more, I'm more bullish on it. I actually think give it like the, the collective bargaining agreement gives NFL teams who do not have a, quote, franchise quarterback a means to compete and to compete for Super Bowls. Like this is – so I agree with you on the 10%. It might be even a little higher because you look at the league. Maybe it's like five of the 32 starters are worth it. Like it's tricky. I'm like pretty conservative when it comes to who actually

deserves that second, like I, you know, to me, a guy like Dak Prescott's right on the boundary, right? And I, and I, I think Dak, and maybe this is what we have to accept a little bit more when, when we've been flooded with Mahomes's and Breeze's and all that, like some of these elite quarterbacks might just be streakier than we're used to like Stafford and, and Dak, you know, cause I, what if Stafford's had, Stafford's had really good efficiency a bunch of times in his career, and he's been terrible a bunch of times, and Dak's had within a season, he played like the best quarterback in the league for a six-week stretch, then he got injured, and then Cooper Rush beat the Vikings,

and then he was terrible the rest of the, you know, not terrible, but he had kind of games where you couldn't win with him in the second half of the year. And that's the borderline. But that's like five or six quarterbacks. And then I think that there are, it's probably 25% of draft picks at the position are such that you just, you can't. Like, the guy just is a dud, and no matter what you build around him, you can't win. Think about, and I guess this is a borderline case, but think about like Daniel Jones.

The Giants got Kadarius Toney, Kenny Galladay. They drafted Andrew Thomas. They got Will Hernandez. You know, the question becomes, like, was Jason Garrett just so bad that, like, he hurt it? But I think about 20 to 25 percent of quarterbacks drafted in the first round have no shot, and that's the irreducibility. There's just maybe just Josh Rosen didn't have it, right? And that's okay.

That's what happens. And then I think everything left, so it ends up being about like 60 percent. I think 60 percent of those, I think 60 percent of first-round draft pick quarterbacks can take a team to the Super Bowl just by the structure of the league itself. Just by what Joe Burrow, for example, gave the Bengals in terms of now they're $58 million under the cap. You struggle at least at the beginning. You get another high draft pick. You put a guy next to him.

And that's it, right? The Chargers. The Chargers have huge cap space. draft pick you put a guy next to him and that that's it right like the the chargers the chargers have 60 like huge cap space and like that team's going to be a house if they if they do if they do with it like it's really hard and the bangles might try but it's really hard to screw up the situation that the bangles will put themselves in right uh because they have so much cap space to fill in any needs where they go wrong, like what we were talking about earlier. If you spend out the probabilities like that, Matt, then the Cousins' arguments are all stupid, right?

Because if you're saying that there's like a 60 plus 15, let's say, 75% chance that you got a shot. Think about this. In the 2015 draft, Jameis Winston won first, Marcus Mariota won second. Neither you got a shot right think about this in the 2015 draft James Winston went first Marcus Mariota went second neither guy got a fifth year option both the buck the bucks and the titans went from picking one two in 15 to nine and seven in 16 right this team would kill for nine and seven right now and and and now. And a small sliver of the fan base, the Kyrgyzstans, are so scared of becoming the Lions that they forget that in a one year's time, Jameis got Tampa to 9-7.

Mariota had like four straight 9-7 years with the Titans. Obviously, people talk about Goff and Wentz as though they're failures. But both their teams are the Super Bowl like what are we what are we even doing here and and they're so afraid of giving up on the the known mediocrity that is a a good but not great quarterback on a veteran deal for what we've just described as really good odds at success. Yeah, I mean, I think that maybe the odds are, you've got them a little high in terms of would you have a chance to get there with a guy. But if the baseline is Wentz or Goff,

those to me are once-in-a-career guys. Like those are NFL starters that meet the threshold of being an NFL starter who can win games under very favorable circumstances, who under their rookie contract will give you one shot, which is very specific. But it's not impossible to find the next Carson Wentz. It might be very, very difficult to land the next Patrick Mahomes. But if you land the next Carson Wentz, you can have a lot of success in that window and then move on to the next one and hope that you end up with the Mahomes. But if you don't, you just do it again. But people just trot out the whole, oh, so it's as easy as drafting a Mahomes. It's like,

that isn't even the argument. The argument is draft. I mean, think about this. What's the Dolphins record the last two years? They have a winning record. They have their five game vikings are three games under 500 during the same stretch that the brian flores dolphins were five games over 500 with a a backup quarterback deal for ryan fitzpatrick and a and who somebody who has a like tua has not actually played well he's played well enough to get this thing on the green and like you know the vikings aren't signing byron jones know, the Vikings aren't signing Byron Jones. The Vikings aren't signing Xavier Howard to an extension.

They're not making those plays. They're not signing Will Fuller. They're not signing. They're not, they're not able to make these gambles, even though they have a much better quarterback than the Dolphins do. And the Dolphins are still winning, right? Because again, it's all about how you structure the roster and the quarterback just, the quarterback gives you again, it's all about how you structure the roster. And the quarterback gives you a chance to be intentional about how you structure your roster.

The Vikings quarterback currently does not. So what do they do if they just keep him? Keeping him is just a – keeping him for one year and you would get – so this is where I would stand. If it's true that no team will take a chance on him, Washington football team won't take a chance on him, Panthers. I don't think Washington's true if it's true that no team will take a chance on him Washington football team won't take a chance on him uh Panthers I don't think Washington's trading for him yeah not with their owner who calls all the shots there well they might but then they'll send in the the slip to the league I'll say Kurt Cousins and the trade will be voided um wait does it does

anybody know how to walk into the joke about them more than Cousins when he tweeted out that somebody gave him a coffee that said Kurt, K-I-R-T? By the way, that's a lot of dairy for him to be consuming. I just thought the coffee person must have given it to him in December. I don't know. I don't know if that joke's going to land or not. It was against Caribou across the street who had a winning record. They had a good defensive line in there. The jokes are probably ending there.

But so if they are – because the hard part is if they are convinced that a team will not trade for him. And I personally would take a second round pick for him. I think Sage believes that they're going to have to tax the money onto it. That could be the case. One of the things in the league that people have to realize is teams are getting smarter about trades. So the two trades that are classic examples were

Stephon Gilmore went to the Panthers. The Panthers only had to give up a sixth round pick because they ate his entire contract. Javon Miller goes to the Los Angeles Rams and the Rams had to pay a second and third because they were unwilling or unable to take on his money. So Denver kept it. So the compensation for Kirk Cousins is very much going to depend upon what the Vikings can do from a, or what the Vikings are willing to do from a taking on some of the cap situation sense, as you said, with getting creative about making a new deal beforehand or whatever. I would say I think a second round pick is perfectly acceptable. But let's say that they don't, or let's say that they're still unsure.

Right. So let's say they think that Cousins, there's still some uncertainty about who he is. And they go into the season, they pay him the $45 million, and ultimately it's like a turbo franchise tag, essentially. Let him go after, they get a third-round comp pick if he's signed to another team. I personally don't like that, but it's a much better alternative than signing into an extension i i do not see a a rationality to somebody like quesito famenza having a four-year contract being and like this this is kind of a touchy subject but he's different right he's an analytics gm right he's when when chip kelly became the coach of the Eagles, he had tremendous success. And the moment he started to fail, they're like, yep, that kind of thing won't work in the NFL.

And they fired him halfway through the Sam Bradford season. He is going to be under extreme scrutiny by people who want to see this game stay in the hands of scouts, stay in the hands of football people. Right. And again, those characterizations of Questy are not fair because he is a football person. He's been in the league for a decade but like to me knowing that there is zero percent chance i would waste 75 of my possibly only chance at this job paying kirk cousins 40 million dollars right it's almost like when you talk about not playing a quarterback when he's a rookie you're sort of wasting a year of his rookie contract which i don't agree with by the way because i think that usually quarterbacks are so unsuccessful in their first years that you might as well just

have them on the bench and play somebody else but there's that theory of well we don't want to bench him because it's only one year it's one year of your contract as a general manager. It's one sample size year that you're not going to be able to start doing the things that you want to do because you're so restricted. So you can't I mean, you can draft a quarterback for sure, but you can't sign the free agents that you want to sign. You can't pay them what other teams are willing to pay them. And the number of times is very twins-like. I know that you used to really follow the twins closely, so you'll really appreciate this,

is that when the twins would get to free agency, they'd end up signing somebody that was like third tier, but they were always, quote, in on the guys who were first tier. And it's like, this has been the Vikings. Well, you know, the Vikings were in on Carl Lawson, or the Vikings were in on, I think it first here and it's like this has been the vikings well you know the vikings were in on carl lawson or the vikings were in on i think it was brandon marshall a few years ago i don't know maybe they were but you're not ever really in unless you can win that guy unless you can have the price to pay play poker and they haven't had that and i know you pointed out that michael pierce is the most cash that they've given out to an outside free agent. If you're Kweisi Adafo Mensah, you have to have a list of dudes that you want on your football team

that are free agents that you can't afford because of this $45 million. And you're going to spend a year when the script is already written. If Kirk Cousins is the quarterback for 2022 and the roster is what it looks like right now, which is going to be very hard to improve otherwise the script is written you're going nine and eight or you're going eight nine like that's what you're going to do and look you might hit and get 10 and seven but you're not gonna be competitive in the playoffs like i mean the the whole the whole issue that the funniest thing the funniest thing about the cousins like you know defenders is like we're not even to like the second stage of the video game yet like you know we're we're we're not even make like i i he did have a win against new orleans and then he what lost as a seven and a half point underdog to a team that didn't throw the ball you know like so like we're not even to

the point of like competing for a super bowl here in this discussion, which I think like they got to, you know, again, like you said, I think that they have to think about how do how do we enhance this roster? And I think it's I think it's pretty much it's pretty plain that they can't if they're carrying him. And, you know, a lot of people will point to the over the cap stuff and i i actually do want to like plug this the jason mitchell had a fantastic over the cap podcast uh earlier this week where he talks about what restructures really mean and like you know the the point of the the point of being a of making good decisions in football is not to get cap compliant it's to get cap healthy so the vikings can get cap compliant by doing a bunch of these moves. But the more you restructure, the more it's a lock that you either have to extend Harrison Smith when he's like 40, or you've got to keep him on the roster.

And that's the point that no one comes by with. It's like, do you really want the price of you know of this whole thing being in three years you have guys who have clearly fallen off who have to be on the team because their their their stuff is guaranteed because you needed this extra little cap space now because you wanted to patch a hole um due to cousins and it's just no more evident than the fact that sheldon richardson and anthony barr will cost them money on the salary cap and not play for the vikings i mean it's just that those things make it so difficult for you to win because those are players that you can the cap goes up for everybody it goes up for everybody like the deals get bigger so just

because the cap's going up or whatever, the cap goes up for everybody. So the other teams can spend on Carl Lawson, and you can't. The other teams can spend on Trey Henderson, and you can't. So again, we're not going to hang a banner for the Vikings to be cap-compliant. Every team in the history of the NFL in every season has been cap-compliant. That's right. What else has caught your ear here in Indy? Because it just seems like everything is about the quarterback situations.

I did a little recap just for the site yesterday. I was like, wow, there's a lot. There was a lot of things being said and teams making statements about certain guys and everything else. And I feel like because as we speak right now, the players haven't gotten on the field, they haven't done their 40s and things like that, which is a little bit of an odd quirk of the fact that I'm flying out before anyone does any workouts. But that's how it always works.

Like you come for the teams to talk and to do lots of interviews with people like yourself. And then those other things we don't get to watch anyway. We don't get to cheer on the bench press. Right. So, but the first part of the week is about the buzz and just about, like, what's going on in the league. And I was wondering what else you've sort of come across just in talking to people that's going on here.

Well, a couple of things. And this is kind of niche. You and I started becoming friends in 2016 and it's like the analytics community was a lot smaller i went to a couple of socials yesterday and you can imagine how fun these are without with analytics people in the league and we're talking about like the number of people at these things has doubled every year for like you know so these teams are staffing up in that way i think you're going to continue to see smarter and smarter decisions on the field. I think it makes the on-field product better.

No one wants to see chargers, kickers kick field goals. Sorry, Nate Kading. Yeah, you're just catching a stray here. So that's one thing where I'm really thrilled about, where the league is going in that direction um you know akina kwano the the tackle for north carolina state he was you know pretty much like 10 to 1 to go first overall like last week um evan neal was the was you know had overtaken aiden hutchinson as the the first overall pick uh favorite uh i think uh neil is still the favorite but i think Neal is still the favorite, but I think Aquanu is somebody who might end up

being that pick. But, yeah, it's a, you know, that's the steam here. I think, you know, as far as, you know, interestingly, on our website, we haven't had as much draft interest. Like, it's starting to rev up a little bit, but

the lack of perceived talent at the quarterback position is really making the draft unpredictable. This time last year, we sort of knew it was going to be Lawrence and Wilson, and then we were all kind of wondering if it was... We all sort of thought Fields would go three, and then it was Chase, Sewell. They stacked up pretty well at the beginning of the draft, and there's a lot of uncertainty here which i think early on that the uncertainty was going was going to make um you know uh interest wane a little bit but i think what it's going to do is it's going to rev up as we sort of try to predict how these dominoes are going to fall uh you know uh moving you know the next month and a half the

the cousins and vikings quarterback situation is so interesting to discuss and get everyone's perspective on it that i have not talked to anyone about almost anything else yes will raggetts and i had a conversation about defensive ends and we were both like yeah draft one okay back to the quarterback situation i mean and that's that that's how it feels with everything it feels like the the number one story in the nfl is everyone quarterback situation. And then everything else is secondary. And until these guys throw, and then maybe some people see Malik Willis let loose and throw a football and get excited about him and start debating a little more based on the

workouts and what everyone says. And I think just, just the prediction would be that Malik Willis is suddenly a top five or seven draft pick. I'm actually just looking at the market right now because it's moved a lot of different places, but it has not moved in this one place, and it's kind of interesting how slow they're being. But, yeah, the Malik Willis thing, the trophy stuff happened yesterday, right? Oh, he's a lot smarter than we thought he was and all this kind of nonsense. But there's clear talent there there's clear oh and the and there you know and

again i want i want people to stop sort of thinking about um you know drafting the next franchise quarterback and thinking more about drafting a guy that can be competitive early on you know um but i think willis has the best potential of being that you know hey he's going to get the 50 million dollar contract right um and you know like i sort of said his athleticism reminded me of like kind of a cross between dante culpepper and vince young like i think he has i think he's got the speed that vince young had but dante he could also run people over like dante did isn't it funny though like vince young was bad and still won a ton of games on his rookie contract. Yeah, yeah, Vince Young, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, even back then. And that was even – In a different era with the CBA. He was paid a little bit more, yeah, but still like – and that also speaks to, by the way, what I said about Ritter, but also it speaks to Willis is if your quarterback has mobility, it increases the floor early on. And Willis certainly has that.

I think Liberty's kind of a weird institution, so we sort of don't have experience with that. And maybe that's why he's fallen a little bit. But, yeah, I think coming out now, if you look at FanDuel's odds, Willis is the favorite to go be first quarterback, followed by Pickett, and then Howell. And I think after that you're looking more at the Ritters and guys like that. It'll be interesting.

I mean, if he falls to the Vikings at 12, it's going to be hard for them to pass up, I would say. Especially after last year they had a quarterback fall to them and decided that's not our guy and moved on. And it wouldn't have – I mean, imagine if they had picked Mac Jones, how different life would be at this moment. It would be almost a foregone conclusion that they would be trading cousins and stacking the entire team around Jones.

They just basically, you know, foregoed a year because they decided not to make that decision. So maybe ultimately it will play out better because they decided not to make that decision yeah so maybe ultimately it will play out better because they moved on to a much more progressive and i think honestly intelligent way of doing things intentional right like i i think that the thing about quesito famenza like also i mean we we laugh about the relationship he's having with the head coach and stuff it's like it's just an intentional thing right like the the reason that the reason that cousins and zimmer didn't get along is because neither neither well neither made the effort right there was not an intentionality you know i'm imagining

zimmer and spielman got along at the beginning of the tenure there but if you're not intentional about making the relationship work it goes away like that again i think that the the biggest thing that you can sort of uh take from the from the current vikings regime is that there's an intentionality there hopefully it stays yeah you know like i think that it's big um as far as other draft stuff just to wrap up i i was gonna ask your opinion on like positional value stuff because we hear like quacey didn't want to talk about it, as he shouldn't. Like, oh, guys, here's how I rank them.

But now it's funny. Now it's funny because talking to you and Brad Spielberger and other PFF people is like, in a way, Kweisi might think this because he knows the things that you know. But I was going to ask you, if you were to rank them, let's say that they decide that this quarterback class is not for them that they think like let's play this out and then we'll have total flexibility there might be somebody that they think is going to be available who's in the

nfl now a year down the road let's say russell wilson let's say they think russell wilson's not available this year but he will be next year and that that's our guy. Let's just say, I'm not like starting a rumor. I'm just saying like, so they don't draft one. What position should they draft on a roster that literally needs everything? I mean, you could draft any position, what position, if, if all prospects are equal at the 12th overall pick at all positions, punter is obviously number one and then long snapper and then kicker slash punter in the cory vedvik model well yeah so it's tricky because depth so some some positions are weak link systems and some positions are strong link systems so for a team that needs everything which

is where the vikings are at i'm more likely to try to draft an edge player and the vikings have never used a first you know in the in the spielman when's the last time the jared allen was probably the last time they used a first round pick on an edge player um and you know because because the issue is is like if i'm building a defense i i'm generally speaking going to draft an edge and then i'm going to take six defensive backs and and pray five of the six work out or four of the six like coverage is more important than pass rushing but coverage is a unit and that and it's more variable whereas edge is pretty much a solved problem. Draft a guy who is athletic who had college production.

Donnell Hunter, athletic, not college production. Those are very rare that they'll actually work out. So at 12, I mean, if George Karloftis or somebody like that falls to the Vikings, I think it would be very hard for them to – and when you look at how the Browns operated, the last first overall pick that wasn't a quarterback was Mylesrett that's exactly sort of how the browns you know with quessy did it you know he miles garrett was before quessy but the team building standpoint edge build the secondary right and then then then pack in and this is you know quessy was here

pack in the rest of the defensive line with values like jadavion clowny on a one-year deal things like that yeah um also easier to evaluate corners when they have pass rush help i think yeah exactly and and it's right so same thing with offensive line so the garrett bradbury pick was bad because it put so many eggs in one basket, right? Like the goal should not be to draft great offensive linemen. The goal should be to draft a great offensive line, which is a little bit different, right? And, you know, so offensive line is important, secondary is important, but to me they're a little lower because I'm throwing more numbers at them later in the draft than I am early on so I'd probably go quarterback um wide receiver edge and then secondary offensive line tight ends kind of it depends upon the tight end but then tight end like tight tight end linebacker and then running back and linebackers

and running backs to me should not like i know there are some difference makers and we remember the devin whites but most linebackers who are drafted in the first round cannot offer the kind of value that's necessary for the pick to be made what is jordan brooks up to these days yeah no one knows patrick queen yeah right uh okay well anyway this great. I'm glad that we could get together and do this. Oh, I was going to say that I remember that meme that people were putting out there about the Penny Sewell versus Jamar Chase. And the problem with the meme was it was like, oh, basically you can't throw it to your receivers if you don't have time to throw. The problem is if you draft Penny Sewell, he's one of five. He's not five of five. If you could draft the whole offensive line with one pick,

everyone would do it because of the value. But it doesn't fix your entire offensive line where a Jamar Chase actually does transform your offense single-handedly. That's the difference between those two. Randy Moss. I mean, Randy Moss is the same thing. I mean, we've seen it in Minnesota too. So anyway, well, the PFF forecast is my favorite show,

and you've had a chance to meet with all the teams and everything else. I've had a chance to hang out with a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long time. And the funny thing about the Zoom era is there's so many people that I never met in person. We're like, is that you? Are you you? And it's fun. I'm glad that this event and everything aside, everybody here is double vaxxed, and so we don't have to wear masks and stuff.

At the Super Bowl, it was sort of like trying to infer somebody you've only ever met on Zoom while they're wearing a mask. Oh, gosh, yeah. That was an underrated challenge there. It certainly was. So great to see you again, and we will talk again very soon, maybe after a trade. Yeah, fly safe, man.

We'll see.