Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Eric Eager talks about why the whole is less than the sum of the Vikings' parts

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Matthew Coller gets together with Pro Football Focus's Eric Eager to talk about why the Vikings have so much talent and yet can't seem to put it all together on a weekly basis. Should we be looking at the overall coaching philosophy and lack of aggressiveness or is Kirk Cousins's style not jell with that type of offense? What roster issues have the Vikings created for themselves that have led to an offensive line that still can't protect Cousins against good defensive line. Since Cousins has played well but he hasn't received great support, does that suggest he could end up here long term? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reminder before we start the show that TickPick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. TickPick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. Alright, let's get to the show. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar, along with Eric Eager. Eric, your return comes at a very interesting time in Minnesota Vikings history. They are three and four coming off a loss to Cooper Rush. I feel like we were uniquely built for such a time as this in history. Well, you have been watching disappointing Vikings season since you were a tyke.

So this is not anything that's particularly new to you as a native Minnesotan. But here's where I want to begin with you, because you are PFF's data scientist. People know you from the forecast podcast. They know you as maybe the person who helps them make money on sports gambling. And if I understood how any sports gambling worked outside of listening to your show, then maybe I would, too. But you look into the numbers. It's what you do. Explain to me why it feels like the sum of the parts has not added go through the starting lineup, you go, okay, well, these guys are pretty good.

Defensive line, pretty good players across D line. They've got some corners and safeties. Maybe this guy or that guy is suspect, but a solid unit. One of the best linebackers in the league. You have a very expensive quarterback who has consistently put up really good PFF grades as a Viking, better than he did even in Washington. You have one of the best running backs in the national football league, and you have two of the best wide receivers. One of them has the case for being the best receiver in the league. And the other one is a two-time pro bowler. You have an emerging number three receiver and a tight end

who can moss a guy, apparently Tyler Conkle. And that went left out of the conversation the last two days um daniel hunter was too good of a play they didn't they couldn't go back to it it was a yeah it was a great play uh daniel hunter now and we'll discuss this um looks like he could be out for the year which would be a crushing blow but that's not really fundamental to the question they're three and four they've got all those players i just named for you. Why hasn't it added up to better football? Yeah, I think a lot of ways, like to me, you know, when I try to look at coaching and how coaching affects the team, that's really what I do.

A lot of my coaching metrics are I take the individual grades and I use coaching and maybe some of this is quarterback play too and we're sort of going to talk about that but like coaching to me is is how you take a plus b and get more than a plus b like that's how you know Belichick would have guys like Patrick Chung and then he'd have dudes like uh Landon Roberts and guys like who could not play on other teams in the league. You look at Jamie Collins' career war outside of New England, it's like half a win at most. He's been worth like three times as much as that in New England.

When I look at this team, and this was very foreseeable. I look back, and this was a tweet that I had from the middle of the week. I also talked about it. So Sunday morning we do a pregame show, the PFF NFL live show. But here going into the game, and it did not change much, here are the early down average depth of target leaders in the NFL in the first three quarters of games. And I'll talk to you why three quarters of games matters.

Lamar Jackson, Justin Fields, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, and Matthew Stafford. Now, Justin Fields is interesting. Obviously, we know that Bears offense isn't optimized to make great things happen. Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Matthew Stafford, those teams are playing for one seeds in their respective conferences. And you have to, you know, again, they're being aggressive when the game is not on the line. They're being aggressive on purpose. And, oh, funny, look, the Bills win by multiple scores yesterday, even after kind of not playing that great.

And the Rams have won a number of games by multiple scores this year. Those games don't even get to the Kirk territory where you're like, oh my goodness, this game's on the shoulders of a kicker. This game's on the shoulders of Kirk at the end, et cetera, et cetera. This game's on the shoulder of Mike Zimmer, who I don't understand why he is in charge of timeouts for this team. And here are the lowest guys in average depth of target during the first three quarters

of the game jared goff kurt cousins is fourth worst jacoby brissett ben rothlisberger and andy dalton so two guys who are backups golf is ultimate ultimately going to be a backup and ben rothlis so guys that and cooper rush was kind of like this early in the game yesterday, guys that if they were your backup and you were, and you were playing a crappier team, you would just try to keep the game close and win it at the end. That is how the Vikings treat her cousins when they have the opportunity, when they can do whatever they want.

And to me, Kirk's doing that job. Fine. He he's, he's accurate underneath. He doesn't, he's actually that job fine. He's accurate underneath. He's actually taking fewer sacks than normal. He's not throwing the ball. He's not doing that many turnover-worthy plays. He's getting lucky a little bit on fumbles.

But for the most part, he's not heeding passes all over the place like he would in some parts of his career. So Kirk Cousins is doing the job he's being asked extremely well, but the job he's being asked to do is the most damning thing I think about the Vikings' current state as a franchise, which is they pay him upper tier money at the position that is the most important in football, the most highly paid person in the organization, not head coach, GM, everybody, everybody except the Wills makes more money than Kirk or makes less money than Kirk. And they don't trust him to engineer a football game from beginning to end. And to me,

you're just never going to like, it's, that's why they're the Minnesota Vikings right now. So here, here's my question on that. Two things came to my mind. Number one was this is sort of how they handled Case Keenum to the NFC Championship game, but with the little add-on that Case did not listen to them. And it drove Mike Zimmer crazy because he did not want Case Keenum to push the ball down the field. And Case said, too bad, man. This is is my one shot we're going for it and it works look case made a ton of money off that year so it's actually a good gamble for him right kirk has made his money i think that's why kirk is going along with it well there's that but there's also if you look at the average depth of target from last year and you look at the yards per completion from last year in fact really you can go to the last two years when years when Gary Kubiak was here. Kubiak was doing his Kubiak thing, his Matt Schaub thing, his Brian Greasy thing that he always succeeded with. Jake Plummer, even, where you run bootlegs and you push the ball

down the field, you create some mismatches deep, and you take your shots. And then the rest of the time, you're kind of running the outside zone stuff to set that up they've gone backward to 2018 and a lot of their strategy it seems the play action is down and the short passes are up we've seen the bubble screen probably more times in the last two weeks than i think we saw under gary kubiak and kevin stefanski period um and i i just, you sort of had the same results though, like not statistically where it looks different in certain ways, like the average depth of target, but his PFF grade was still good. His turnover worthy plays were still fairly low. And his big time throws were also fairly low, which he's in sort of the bottom half of starting

quarterbacks and big time throws, even after several last night. Um, I guess I wonder like it, we point the finger at Zimmer, we point the finger at Kubiak, but then I kind of look at this, uh, pull out the accordion and you see a lot of different people who have tried a lot of different things and they've still ended up with this. So is this, is this a matter of, wow, Zimmer just doesn't get it because he wants to play 1994 football. And we love 94 football, but it doesn't work now. Or is this, well, the last guy tried going down the field with him. That didn't really get them a lot of wins. And so now we're going to go and try to not turn the ball over and not get him sacked or pressured,

which hasn't really worked because he was pressured last night, but not get him sacked because he was one of the highest sacked quarterbacks in the league per drop back. So I could see where the wheels would be spinning there. Like, let's try to not get him sacked. Let's get him a lot of these shorter passes, get the ball out of his hands, run successfully. Is there something that would work? Because it seems like there's a lot of different attempts that have gotten the same results.

Well, I think you've nailed it, right? You've nailed it in the sense that the answer is probably no. The answer is they're an imperfect team. And so I would grant you that if you gave that team a 2017-level defense, a 2009-level offensive line, and their current wide receivers, you're probably going to end up – you can find a way to get yourself in that 12-win range. But the gamble that they made with Cousins was, okay,

let's sign him to this big deal, and let's deal with, let's hope for the best everywhere else in the roster. And it just was unfair to assume that the roster would maintain itself once you gave that full balance to the quarterback. And so it's like they're playing whack-a-mole, right? Like, you know, in 18, it was, look, like we got this quarterback. He's making a ton of money. We're a Super Bowl team. Let's spread this thing out and hope he's Tom Brady. And, of course, that didn't work.

And I think that's what Zimmer always has to look back to to say, look, I'm vindicated for this approach because if we tried to go three wide receivers in the shotgun every down, Kirk would struggle because he struggled in 18 and it kept us from the playoffs. But then the problem is, the problem is over the last three years, they basically have done the, okay, let's, let's run this. And I think some people call it the white privilege offense, but sort of like the Ryan Tannehill, the Kirk Cousins, like let's, let's play under center.

Let's do a lot of bootlegs. Let's do a lot of play actions. Let's like make Kirk look really good. And I think in 2019 that was extremely rational. Let's save face on the contract. Let's not make it look like a complete disaster. But after you extend him and after you sort of buy into him, that's the frustrating thing to me because I feel like I come down

on Kirk Cousins' side now where I'm like, there's evidence that he can make plays like he can make plays at the end of games like he's got a great arm you know he he could throw to the open guy he's got great touchdown the field and Zimmer doesn't believe in him and you know the part of me that wasn't a fan of the Cousins signing and still isn't, and we're right. I mean, you can say whatever you want on Vikings Twitter, but the people who said the Cousins signing was a mistake have been vindicated for three and a half years. They're going to be 0-4 in winning the NFC North,

despite being favored half the time. They're probably going to go under their win total for the third time in four years. Like, the signing was an abject failure. But people who are inclined to believe that total for the third time in four years like the signing was an abject failure but if you know people who are inclined to believe that are inclined to kind of believe Zimmer when he says you know I can't extend this offense that much I can't let this offense you know get too far away from this like safety net here because if I do he's going to look terrible and it's going to look bad on all of us. And my defense can't support that kind of thing anymore.

And, but then the other part of me says, well, look, what else, what's your alternative? Like we can continue to play this seven, eight and one game or, you know, eight, seven and one, seven and 10, 10 and seven. We can keep playing these games and you can keep paying this quarterback a lot of money, and that's fine, but at least I want to know if he's good or not. And that's the biggest, I think, indictment now is I think we all kind of know whether he's a franchise quarterback, but some of the numbers and some of the data

and some of what I would consider to be less than honest Twitter Vikings accounts want you to say, oh, you know, we actually look at this. Is he good? Is Kirk Cousins? I'm just asking the question. Is Cousins good? And it's like, well, I'd like the Vikings to believe that, and I'd like the Vikings to test the theory because right now they're not.

And that's something that we have talked about, and I've had the lean into the Kirk joke going on for I don't know how long and you know they have somewhat done that by trying to draft offensive linemen but I think we saw last night how Christian Derrissaw I think will be a very good player I'm confident that he'll be a good player but Randyory ate his face for the entire day he had a 37 pff grade he got destroyed because this and this is where you have siblings right you have at least one um i have a sister okay did you ever both get in trouble at the same time and then you pointed your finger at each other and you said like now i have two one older one younger so it's very easy to be like well he did

this and he did that. And, but we were all doing something wrong. And so we all got punished. Right. And I feel like this is the way we end up bouncing around with Zimmer cousins and Spielman because with cousins, you could go, man, you just, what in the world happened in that game? You know, Thielen is running wide open and you're not throwing into coverage and if there's the slightest bit where you have to move your feet it's just over in Drew Bledsoe

style where it's like if you have to shuffle even a little you just can't even throw and then you look at Zimmer and you go hey man like you got to throw on first down early in the game and get up by 14 and push the tempo here and not try to throw these short passes. You too, Clint Kubiak. Is this your first time? Oh, wait, it is. And then you look at Spielman, you go, dude, you drafted a center who weighs 270 pounds and gets picked up and thrown back into Kirk. You paid a running back who gets hurt a lot. You just signed Harrison Smith to a ludicrous contract, considering where he is in his career. Great career, but not now. And you drafted the other team, drafted a corner in the same draft who leads the league in interceptions. Yours is maybe going

to jail. And, and you know, you look at this, you drafted a sixth round tackle and moved him to guard 30 seconds before the season. You thought that he wouldn't lead the league in holding penalties. Like, it's almost like all three of you are in trouble. But the one thing I would buy into when people say it's not Kirk Cousins' fault is Kirk Cousins did not design his own offense and he didn't pay himself that they are the ones who made these choices. And if you're going to pay a quarterback that much, there is, I think a strategy for making that work. But part of it is look at last night, Michael Gallup is out and they got other people stepping up. But it's like, hey, you know what, Cooper Rush? I know you're not any good.

That's some really bad-looking footballs you throw. But if you're going to throw them, throw them at that guy and throw them at that guy unless somebody's wide open, and they'll just make plays, and they'll win the football game for you. They'll give you a chance. And, hey, Cooper Rush, they had offensive linemen get hurt, and they had other offensive linemen. There's no other team in the league that's like ty and secky would like ty and secky would look like ron yeri on the fight that's what i mean is that like oh they paid dac i guess

they can't do anything with the rest of history right oh wait they've put all this into the offensive side to just build this in chess you You do this. You build a giant wall around your king. You don't leave him sitting in the middle wide open. And I feel like with the Vikings, they've sort of done this and that, but they haven't. They spent all this money in free agency on Patrick Peterson, Hurt. You know, Xavier Woods has been good, but Sheldon Richardson has not. Bashad Breeland has not.

Dalvin Tomlinson and Michael Pierce combined have not. No impact. No impact whatsoever versus what they could have done with a million dollars bringing in whoever. Is Snacks Harrison still around? Do you want to stand in the middle and be fat because you do the same thing as those guys? And so now, I mean, how many millions did I just add up to?

Like 15 million bucks? And Ole Udo's playing right guard. And so he can sort of point it's you, it's you, and it's you. And I, that to me is the reason why it's not some of the parts, because I think that if they had an inefficient coach, but they did a lot of the right things to surround the King, then they could overcome that. We see that with Mike McCarthy. Right. And I think that if cousins maybe had disappointed, you can,

if you build this great defense or great foundation hit on draft picks, so they're not being indicted and stuff, then you can maybe have a great defense and play the case Keenum way, but you're sort of doing none of these things. Yeah. And I don't like, I think it's hard because you get seduced by success that, you know, 2014 was a pretty good draft. 2015 was a very good, like a career changing draft. And, you know, like when you play it, like this is all, I think like a gambler, but like

if you're at the casino and you know that it's kind of like blackjack, all the, you know, craps, all these things are like they're gambles and you don't really have an edge in those games. And drafting is kind of like that, right? Like there's not a ton of evidence that the Vikings are super good at drafting, right? Like, and there's really not a ton of evidence that any team in the NFL is super good at selecting players at the particular spot. So when you do run hot like they did, you have to know that regression is coming, right? You have to know that the 2016 draft is going to have some duds. The 2017 draft is going to have some duds.

The 2018 draft is going to have some duds. And I don't think they priced that in, right? They said, okay, we have this great draft in 15. That led us to the 2017 NFC title game. We get Kirk here. You know, we'll still draft well. And we'll have this roster that can, you know, we might make some mistakes. We might have some guys fall off. And honestly, like Hunter's injury, notwithstanding,

like Harrison Smith has withstood the test of time. Now, I think he's fallen off a little bit. And obviously that contract is an eyesore at this point. You know, other players like Everson Griffin still is good. I don't know how. And so, like, and all those put together, it's just like they made a very unsound gamble. And then now it's just like they're doing what any other gambler does is when they get down, they start to get, they start to chase things.

They start to like talk themselves into things. And ultimately, and I think about this with a lot of teams that talked about like, oh, who should we trade for the trade deadline? You know, for certain teams. And I'm like, detox this thing, play out the season. Hope that, you know, hope that X gets hot because that's like the gamble you have to make your existing players.

Don't mortgage the more of the future to salvage some BS that the bills are probably going to win this year or the, or the Ravens or some team way better than he was going to win this year and teams I think just don't know when to walk away from the table and I think the Vikings unfortunately like you look at the 2019 season was classic they just didn't know when to walk away from the table last season was classic there oh I we just got had bad luck let's buy back into this and you know I think now most of the fan base is wising up to the fact that oh my goodness this is this has got to restart sometime but don't let like that was the

product of a bunch of bad decisions that compounded on each other sam extram here wondering if you're stuck on your company's injury report in an unfortunate situation like that it's good to have someone in your corner. That's where Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer Law can help you understand your rights under Minnesota's workers' compensation laws. There's enough uncertainty in our lives nowadays that the last thing you want is to feel helpless

if you wind up in a bad situation after a workplace injury. Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer will fight for you if there's been a wrongfully denied work comp claim so you can get the benefits you deserve. If your claim's been accepted, they help with rehabilitation disputes, medical disputes, help you get a second opinion, and ensure you're getting all the benefits you're entitled to on an accepted claim. Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer will provide you with dedicated and experienced disability attorneys that have secured their clients tens of millions of dollars. Our good friends Mike, Pat, and Evan will handle all that messy legalese to and from the insurance company about your claim while you focus on what's important, your recovery.

And there's no cost involved for reaching out to Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer. In fact, you don't pay a dime unless they successfully obtain your benefits. You get paid, then they get paid. It's that simple. The website is yourminnesotaworkcomplawyer.com, where you can find a phone number to get a free consultation. This is an attorney advertisement from Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer, yourminnesotaworknesota work comp lawyer.com

well and think about the yanni kingakwe trade and we heard i mean some people oh it's fine if you don't have a second round pick if you've got four thirds well they were all inactive last night um so i think it did make a difference but that's a good example of just not understanding where you were as a franchise to trade for Yannick Ngakwe. And then this is how the parents would blame all of them and send them all to their rooms. So you trade for Yannick Ngakwe and all of us think who are covering the team. OK, this is a long term thing. You want to have Hunter and Ngakwe for like the next seven years. OK, fine.

But then your coaches don't like Ngakwe and then you trade him. And now he's really good with the Raiders. Like what happened here? Like what was the plan here? There wasn't one. And so then even going into this year, you lose Irv Smith, which looked good player, but I think everybody knew that Tyler Conklin could play a little bit and you trade for the jets fourth tight end with a fourth round pick,

which is not an insignificant amount of trade capital. And it's again, where it's like, uh, this is a little bit of a misread, sort of a desperate play right before the season, which they've made, you know,

a dozen times here. And, and so it's like the coaches didn't, with Ngakwe, the coaches didn't use the guy correctly. So you could point at them and say, well, what was your problem? But also why did you trade for him when you couldn't have thought you were going to compete for a Super Bowl if you were only going to keep him for one year, if you weren't locked into the idea of keeping him long-term and then you kind of just continue. And also that cap space that they

used to get in Gawkway here, it reduced Riley Reif's contract, which made Riley Reif mad. So he didn't sign here. So you had to draft a left tackle. You just see like these things just kind of not having this clear, here is where we are, here is our direction, here's where we're traveling, has cost them, I think, even though they have very good players. And what I can't help but think about too, at the same time is, because this is my next question for you is what is the right path forward? I mean, the number of tweets that want people fired is just my entire mentions for two days, want people fired. I'll tell you though,

when we have that conversation, who I think of and it's Stefan digs and it's Justin Jefferson. If I'm Justin Jefferson's agent last night, I am losing my mind at what is, what is happening here and wondering how can we get out of this as fast as possible. And if that's the thought that things have to change like right now, because this is a guy who can guide your franchise, especially I think number one receivers are more valuable than they've ever been. I mean, I think this guy can guide your franchise for a long time, but you got to get him to stay here. Right. And the way that it's going right now, convince Justin Jefferson that this is a great place for him. I couldn't do it. Yeah, and frankly, the Vikings are lucky that he is not more outspoken, right? Because people always talk, and I tweeted last night that Stefan Diggs is right. He's always been right.

And everybody called him a diva and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, no, Stefan Diggs knew and knows. And you look at every offense in the league, especially offenses that don't have – what happened to A.J. Brown yesterday? The Titans have a very Kirkian quarterback in Ryan Tannehill. Derrick Henry broke his foot during the game yesterday. It was the second straight game. He had like 28 carries for like 70 yards. And they threw to A.J. Brown 11 times, 10 catches, 150 yards, and a touchdown. They came back from a two-score deficit on the

road to basically clinch their division yesterday it's not illegal by the way to do that it's not illegal to like win your division with months to spare and everybody in the everybody in the in the in the stadium knew they were going aj brown it got open he's the most valuable player on that team and i know henry's great and all this stuff but like having a guy that can break a game open and if just and and Stefan Diggs knows that he's that player for Buffalo he knew that he was that player for Minnesota and and he voiced that opinion and it got him removed and And it was, again, because he knew better than everybody else, and he voiced his displeasure. And, like, we're just lucky.

I mean, the Vikings observers are just lucky Jefferson has not taken to the mic and said, this is ridiculous. I don't understand how we're going. And Dalvin Cook's a great football player, but 20 opportunities yesterday for 78 yards. You do not win offense getting 3.9 yards per play. You win offense going down the field, the guys at Justin Jefferson. And did he drop one? Yeah.

That doesn't exclude him from – like T.O. used to drop all these balls. Like T.O. was the best player on the 49ers for a bunch of years. Like, again, they need to go to him. And to me, that's part of the solution and honestly moving forward like firing an offense coordinator is not going to work because Zimmer is just going to put the shackles on the next guy that comes in and it's going to be a career killer for that guy um it's honestly amazing that Stefanski made it out of here with a head coaching job given all his restrictions so like firing the offense coordinator is not going to do anything firing the head coach obviously is probably going to happen like and you know whether it happens now

or after the season is probably immaterial there is like a little bit of a rule change the NFL that you can interview other teams assistants during weeks 17 and 18, if I'm not mistaken. So there might be an incentive to have a head coach removal in this season. But for purposes of actually making this season entertaining, I don't know what good it does. I mean, the easy one is to just throw the football downfield more. No, you're not that good of a team. And if you lose a game you were supposed to win to a team like the Lions, who gives a crap?

You almost did that anyway. So let me ask you this. I've been watching the Rams, and I'm not going to suggest that the Vikings trade for Von Miller or anything. I think the Broncos are being smart by trading Von Miller away, and they should be looking for that kind of thing. Now that Daniil Hunter is out, it's just so hard to see this working. Daniil Hunter was their entire pass rush. Everson Griffin is still very, very good, but Daniil Hunter was kind of a main reason

for that. I guess when I watch the Rams, I think about what Matt Stafford has done. You and I have both been extremely skeptical of Matt Stafford. I remain skeptical of Matt Stafford and whether the Rams can go farther than he took some good Lions teams with decent schemes with good receivers. But I think this is, this is totally on a different level of scheme that Stafford is throwing to so many open receivers downfield. And I guess my question is, and this will be talked about for many months with us as we go forward here, if this season goes sideways in the next few weeks, but would you keep Cousins? Because he is a good quarterback and good quarterbacks are hard to find and the next draft is not really super exciting and i also don't think the vikings

are finishing with a high enough pick to take the best guy whomever that might be yeah um so as you look as you look forward is it you'd like to see him with somebody who wants to go all in on him or would you say we kind of saw that in was and you still ended up with seven, eight, nine wins? Or is it, look, in order to go somewhere, this thing probably has to completely change. And then I'll get to the next question, which is how they can get it back on the rails in the next few weeks. But where we stand right now, it looks like we're having this conversation. Yeah. I mean, like, let's, let's take a look at the league for a second with cousins. Right. Because like, I've seen it, like remembering Gary, Gary Kubiak took over the Texans. They went with our guy Sage and David Carr for a year before going my Matt job. And like, so there was a year where they kind of said, Oh, let's, let's think about

this for a little bit. And it didn't work. Now, obviously Kirk's a much better player than David Carr was, but that's a thing. His contract is $45 million. Kirk has never been somebody who has done anything but net zero the Vikings. He's not taking a pay cut. He's not going to do anything that doesn't benefit him long term, and that has to be taken into consideration right

like i think kirk for one year perfectly fine i think kirk you know as you continue to pile up the years um i think ultimately is not fine i think like it's sort of that arrested development thing where it's like sure we can do this exact same thing that hasn't worked for years but maybe it's different you know like we don't want to same thing that hasn't worked for years, but maybe it's different. We don't want to do that, right? But you look at the league, the Eagles are a team, long-term quarterback situation, not resolved. The Broncos are a team, long-term quarterback situation, not resolved.

The Panthers are a team, long-term quarterback situation, not resolved. Washington football team, long-term quarterback situation, not resolved. Pittsburgh Steelers, long-term quarterback situation, not resolved. Pittsburgh Steelers, long-term quarterback situation, not resolved. The Browns could be a team, long-term quarterback situation. Texans, let me just rattle these off here. Texans. Did you say Steelers? Yeah, Steelers.

Saints? 49ers even. Giants, Daniel Jones possibly. Lions, Dolphins, Saints, and Colts. There's a lot of teams for which I could be convinced that Kirk Cousins would be an option for them. So what does that mean? Does that mean like a bridge quarterback? Does that mean something?

I don't know. But I do think if the Vikings want to get out from under Cousins this year, they'll be a taker. You know what I mean? And so to me, I think that that's probably the option to go with. And again, I know like of the three, like most important people in this franchise, Spielman, Zimmer, and Cousins.

Cousins is the third least culpable of all of them, in my opinion, right now. Easily. I think going into the season, it was Spielman, Cousins, Zimmer. I think Zimmer has really had a rough go. I don't think anybody's fallen from grace in the league more than him during his vaccination discussions in August to now, where he's very clearly, I think, the person that's holding the Vikings back most.

So then, but that doesn't mean that you should keep Kirk around because I ultimately think of the goal of this franchise is to win the Super Bowl. I just don't think Kirk Cousins can do that for them, except in the very thinnest of circumstances. Yeah, I think that's always a point that gets maybe misconstrued by the universe. Although, you know, it's hard to say what anybody thinks about anything because there's just opinions everywhere.

But maybe misconstrued when we talk about criticisms of Cousins is that, does it work? Has it worked? Is a little different than has he played well? Because the answer to has he played well overall in a very big sample of games is yeah. Yeah, he's played pretty well. But has it worked? The answer is, of course it has not. And then you can only go back and say, well, you know, if they had moved on after 2019 and made Stefanski their coach, would it be different? And maybe it would if there was more of an approach to, as I said, build around the king.

Would it be different? Maybe it would. But now, I mean, you're talking about with the numbers Cousins has put up, you're not talking about any deals for a future contract. You're talking about this only getting more expensive. And as you said, I mean, it's not like they can just flip a switch and all of a sudden move that $45 million cap hit. And, you know, we'll have Brad Spielberg around to talk about it at some point, but you can't just flip a switch and then all of a sudden it's 20 million. Like it doesn't work that way. No matter how many people say the cap isn't real. I think the Vikings are the absolute answer to the cap is real because otherwise they might've had Joe Tooney playing right guard last night,

as opposed to only Udo. And we can go through a lot of other positions. Now I want you just to end this by taking me through a scenario because I do see it. When I look at the standings, I do see it where they're in the playoffs and it's so it's weird to say and with daniel hunter this might change this formula before last night i might have said before hunter was hurt i might have said weirdly they could get in the playoffs as the seven seed and beat the two

seed because they did that in 2019 and this team is sort of similar without hunter i have a tougher time saying that last year when hunter got hurt, I changed my whole, I had them at like 10 wins and I changed it to like seven after Daniel Hunter got hurt. You just can't pressure the quarterback. Um, but it like, give me the path. If I told you that the Vikings, I looked into my crystal ball that Zimmer has into the future. And I said, dude, the Vikings just won a playoff game. As I was looking forward into my crystal ball, that's what I see. How would that happen?

Well, I actually think if the Vikings would get out of their own way, the playoffs for them in the NFC is really easy. I mean, they went into last night with the seventh seed in there. Well, yes, right? Because they were tied with Carolina. Carolina – they have tiebreaker with Carolina. Like, Atlanta stepped on their own junk against the Panthers. You know, they have – it's basically Panthers, Falcons, Niners, Seahawks,

them, Bears kind of right there. We've seen the Bears. We've underestimated the bears before and they've come up and made the playoffs over minnesota twice um during the kirk cousins era so but like yeah i mean look the hard part is is they're just the fact matter is they're simply not a good football team and they're playing a bunch of teams that are good football teams and so they're gonna have to steal a few games. I do think getting to eight wins probably gets them up. Cause can you see the,

can you see the Falcons Panthers Niners Seahawks, like one of those teams winning nine games. And then I could see San Francisco. That's the only team out of the ones you just, plus you have. And the Seahawks actually have a really easy schedule now. And they get Russell Wilson back soon. Geno Smith went 1-2 without him.

That was actually a fairly good showing by Geno. So they have a shot. But the Saints are also 5-2 in that sixth spot, and Trevor Simeon, former Vikings great, is probably going to be their quarterback for a while if it's not Teddy or Tyra Taylor, Cam Newton, somebody like that. So there's a shot for Minnesota. The problem is, when I look at this

game, they're going to be underdogs against the Ravens. They're going to be underdogs against the Chargers. They're going to be underdogs against the Packers. They're going to be underdogs in San Francisco against the Niners. They're going to be favorites against the Lions. But man, Matthew, I tell you what, they look like Dan Campbell's first win. Yeah, I was going to say this is how you know like dan campbell's first win

yeah i was gonna say this is how you know you actually did grow up in minnesota because you just stopped and said that's good that could happen i just remember oh one with the vikings like todd bauman was starting for an injured call pepper and uh they went they had like he started his first game ever against tenn one NFC offense player of the week. We're back baby. And then they go to Detroit, Detroit's Owen 12 or Owen 13 or something like that. And I think it was the game that got Dennis screen fired because they lost to

Mike McMahon, Steve Mariucci and the, and the lions, you know, in four, no, it was Pontiac last year in Pontiac. So it's personally, it's certainly possible.

Then they're home to Steelers. I think they'll be favored in that game, but I think the Steelers could very easily beat them in that game. Then they're at Bears. They'll probably be – the two Bears games at the end will be interesting because we don't know what Justin Fields' development is going to be, but they've got two games against the Bears. I think the best – the average outcome is a split in those games.

They go two Rams and two, no, home to Rams and at Packers. They're underdogs in both those games. So, conservatively speaking, I mean, they'll be favored in one, two, three, four games of the remaining 10. And so if you go like, and again, like let's say, you know, God variance shines on them. They win five of those games. Then they're eight, nine. It just doesn't look the greatest.

Now I think anything's possible if they put kirk in a playoff game against and like we saw that in new orleans defense plays fantastic kirk gets on the green you can win a game like that i think anything's possible once you get in yep but it's a tough road for them to get in folks minnesota football is rolling along and there's no need to exhaust yourself looking all over the internet to find Minnesota football tickets anymore. That's because TickPick, that's T-I-C-K-P-I-C-K, is the original no-fee ticket site and the only one you'll ever need for your go-to for all NFL tickets. TickPick got rid of those awful service fees that the other sites charge, which lets them guarantee the best

price on all of their NFL tickets. Don't believe it? If you could find better prices for the same those awful service fees that the other sites charge, which lets them guarantee the best price on all of their NFL tickets. Don't believe it. If you could find better prices for the same seats on another ticket site, TickPick will give you 110% of the difference on the purchase price. So we've got lots of big games going on in downtown Minneapolis and lots of road trips for Minnesota football fans to take. So you want to go to TickPick.com slash Insider to save $10 on your first order for Minnesota football tickets. Again, TickPick.com slash Insider to save $10 on your first order of Minnesota football tickets.

Yeah, and then you've got to go on the road and win. And I saw this. This is what makes i'll always have respect for eli manning you know this uh because i saw what the vikings went through to go to new orleans then to san francisco and how much that wears on you and why teams that have to go on the road a bunch of times rarely win. And I just don't think it could be done. I don't think you can run through all of these NFC teams that have one or two losses at this point on the road, game after game after game. Even if you're as strong as the other team, you have to go on the road and then on the road again. And it's just that's very hard and so that's where you get to a point where i think a lot

of people are looking at it and saying even if that happens you probably make changes anyway i mean we've almost got to the point where if this baltimore game is not the spark of a magical run that the fate is kind of sealed and now it's how does it happen that's how it feels today could feel very different next week. I guess we'll see. Because last week we went, hey, maybe they found something in the second half of that Carolina game offensively. Nope. So anyway, well, Eric, always great to get together with you.

The PFF forecast is my favorite. I listen to every single episode and people should go check that out especially if you gamble on football because you guys are talking at a higher analytical level than i think a lot of people talking gambling so if i did bet which i don't uh you'd be my go-to guy so anyway i appreciate that i appreciate all of your work and analysis looking at this football team and we know that there are only crazy things to come with the Vikings. Thanks for having me on Matthew. I just like hanging out and I like talking Vikings. And as you said, I think the best part about this is win, lose or draw the next 10 weeks are going to be entertaining. So you can't, you can't really buy that. Exactly. All right. And thanks

everybody for listening to purple inside.