Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Sam Monson analyzes the Dalvin Cook cut and Vikings' bigger picture

Episode Date: June 10, 2023

PFF's Sam Monson joins Matthew Coller to discuss the Vikings' unique offseason, which strays significantly from the past, particularly in recent moves including the cut of Dalvin Cook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider is presented by Oakley. Express yourself. Build a look that's made for you. When you wear Oakley, there really is more than meets the eye. Try it for yourself. Oakley is not only the best looking, but the best quality. So head on over to oakley.com for more information today. so so welcome to another episode of purple insider matth Collar here and joining me on the show, returning for the I don't know how manyth time, Sam Monson, Pro Football Focus. Sam, we've done this many times together where we've talked about football and the Minnesota Vikings, but how many times have we talked when Delvin Cook was not a Viking?

Probably not that many. It is throughout the day kind of hitting me that most of my career covering the Vikings has always had him as the running back always had Adam Thielen as the receiver always had Eric Hendricks at linebacker and uh it is a new day in Minnesota now yeah it's the first time in a long time probably the first time we've ever done one of these where I think the general analysis is going to be something different, right? It's going to be, they're not just doing the same thing over and

over again. They're not just changing names, but realistically it's the same approach. They do appear to actually be changing direction and doing something different. And that in itself, I think is like his reason to celebrate because it's it's interesting if nothing else well there's a lot of different ways that we could go but i guess that that is a good open door to talk about how you feel about the overall direction because you're right so many times you and i have had that discussion of like what should they be doing to get over the top after signing kirk and the answer was always like, I don't know, stop the run better. There was always some get a guard.

I'm not sure. But now we have this whole new roster of all new faces, and it feels like Kweisi Adafomenta has taken the reins of this team. And so my question to you is, how should Vikings fans feel about that? Yeah. And for years, it's been a case of, you know, they just need to do something different. Like what they're doing isn't bad.

It's giving them reasonable results, but clearly it's not going to take them where they want to go. You know, they had this approach basically since, what, the 2017 NFC Championship game of we almost made it that one time. So let's try and sort of keep everything more or less where it was. And hopefully we'll get back there eventually. It's time to pull the plug on that, right? Like we,

I think we've established at this point that that is not going to be the strategy that sends you back there. So they have to do something different. And I think they acknowledge that from an ownership point of view, which is why they, you know, ship the old regime out and brought in the new regime. And I think it disappointed a lot of people when sort of year one of that first regime didn't really change anything in terms of direction and approach and, you know, how they were going about things. Obviously, it resulted in a lot of wins and that run last year but it still sort of felt like

that was just the same old story again um that was inevitably you know you just caught the high end of variance for a while in terms of in-game situations but fundamentally as long as things were the same from a personnel standpoint from a team management standpoint you know we were going to regress this year or we were going to regress this year, or we were going to end up back in a back at the same starting point. But this is really the first time where there is clear evidence of something different happening. And Dalvin Cook, I think, is just the latest example of that, but as far from the only one, obviously, they already traded away Zedaria Smith, there's talk that Danelle Hunter is on the trade block as well, albeit

there's been that talk for a long time. It looks like they are sort of working through systematically and ridding themselves of the most onerous contracts on the roster, right? And sort of trying to take this thing in a different direction and probably from a baseline cap management standpoint. So let's talk about what they could have done instead, because I think that that's important to discuss. And I've seen only a little bit of this from fans on Twitter of just like, Hey, you know, what, what is going on here? I mean, there was 13 wins last year. Shouldn't you restructure contracts? Shouldn't you take another swing at it? Shouldn't you just improve the defense, but you can't copy and paste last year onto this year and have a better defense. If you

could, wow, what a world it would be. But you can't. So if they could rerun last year with Ed Donatel fired and maybe another few defensive players, then it would be magical. But that can't happen. Things change. players get older schedules get harder uh but was there any other route like after winning 13 games is there any argument that they should have tried to keep these players around kind of at all costs to the future and try to run it back because you can still say uh and this is not what I think, but you can, that the NFC is sort of open and up for grabs. And maybe you're foregoing an opportunity to be the team that again, catches maybe the right side of variance and can beat some mediocre,

good teams in the NFC. I mean, I think each individual case, you always have to take it on its merits, right? So the Dalvin Cook conversation is a different conversation to the Zedaria Smith conversation. And I think you kind of have each one in isolation and come to that conclusion. I personally would have been fine with trying to keep Zedaria Smith around for another year and trying to make something happen with that defensive line i think dalvin cook we've just reached the inevitable conclusion of what happens when you have a running back on that kind of contract like they are always going to be one of the first names that is is just front and center for a general manager or a personnel guy of that's a number we've got to get rid of like we just we can't have that it doesn't matter and and it's it's sort of unfortunate for running backs in you know just another way that they get screwed in the nfl but it's the kind of number that let's say philadelphia was carrying that dalvin cook contract this year the eagles could talk themselves into carrying that right because they just made the super bowl that roster looks like one of the best in the nfl again the the talent that dalvin cook has and the lack of holes elsewhere

you could kind of convince yourself that you know what it's worth it it's it's expensive in an ideal world we're not dealing with this contract but it's not worth cutting him we're not going to get traded to anybody let's let's keep them for another year and figure it out in the offseason i think the vikings are demonstrating a pretty good level of self-awareness with this whole approach not just with dalvin cook but with everything so far that they've done this offseason it it sort of speaks to what what a couple of teams have done in recent years which is probably overachieved and clearly recognized that and gone about things you know that offseason in a way that doesn't do what you were talking about which is let's just try and you know we're we're a player away let's just run it back and add that player and we're good the Bengals did this a couple of years ago where they you know

they went on that run with a terrible offensive line with Joe Burrow, the best quarterback in the NFL, under pressure. And instead of thinking, well, if we can do that every year, we're fine. We don't need to invest in the offensive line. It's good. They spent that entire offseason overhauling the offensive line, acutely aware that you can't do that year after year. The Chargers did it the season before that. Justin Herbert played

out of his mind under pressure. And instead of saying, well, we've got a quarterback that can play amazingly under pressure, they overhauled their offensive line. So I think the Vikings have done a good job of understanding that, look, last season was great, but you don't win 11 straight one score games every year. It's not you know it's not feasible it's completely unrealistic so they kind of recognize that this was probably not as good as the team as the record last season so let's approach it as if that never really happened and let's actually move this in the direction that we would have moved it if we'd won you know nine or ten games and been relatively disappointing and kind of you know bombed out the way that potentially the talent said they should have yeah i think that what makes it so interesting is that in this case

it's a team that won not just you know 10 games or nine games even though that's probably who they really were but 13 to put you in the division win and right up there going into the last couple weeks where they have a chance to win the entire conference. And then you turn around and tear so many pieces apart. I also think that this is the type of thinking that they were looking for. They were looking to move on from kind of the old scout who was going to say, well, we just need a run defense and then we'll do it to project forward. And that's the real sort of thing that you're always trying to do is look into your crystal ball as a general manager and see what's coming next and then act accordingly. And what's coming next,

maybe in some other alternate universe could have been the Superbowl for the Vikings, but you know what? No one really thinks that. And Vegas doesn't think that. And there's an eight and a half win team before, you know, they cut Delvin cook and they are what the 15th best Superbowl odds or something. And they would have projections that are probably even sharper than Vegas about where other teams are, where they are and where they are expected to go from here. But my question is now that it's kind of over with Cook and we've kind of hit this real,

real rebuild the type of mode and if they move on from hunter then that's like all the way gas pedal all the way down on rebuild mode uh how do you get back from where they are because that's the big question like going down is always the easy part it's always coming back up that that is the issue so if you're quasi da fomenta like what has to be next from taking apart a lot of this roster and also they still do have some very important key really good players so this can't be a thing that lasts for a really long time no and obviously you know if this is the time where they're kind of putting a stop date on the kirk cousinsins run, it begins and ends realistically with quarterback. And that's the problem is that that is not necessarily easy

to identify that next quarterback and to even get yourself in a position to get the next quarterback. I mean, look at the Houston Texans this offseason, right? Like we say, it's really easy to take it apart and to tank essentially and to collapse and to go for that and put yourself in a position where you're the worst team in the NFL, the Texans did it

and still screwed it up. They won a game and took themselves out of the first overall pick. And if you believe the reports, that cost them their number one guy. It sounds like they wanted Bryce Young first and foremost and then they didn't have a shot at Bryce Young. So C.J.

Stroud was their next guy, their backup option. But, you know, for all the tanking that they did over the course of like two years, they still somehow managed to screw up getting the shot at the one guy that it sounds like they wanted the most. So it's not going to be easy to get yourself back on track because the quarterback is the thing you're going to be finding. And that's what everybody is chasing in the NFL as well, particularly in this era where, you know,

with the greatest respect, Kirk Cousins isn't going to cut it. You know, and if you find a guy like Kirk Cousins in the draft, number one, you've done well. That's not easy in itself, but it's also not enough. Like, you need something better than that. And that's why, you know, the Colts this year swung for Anthony Richardson because they think, look, he's, he's a project. He's, there's a lot wrong with him.

He wasn't even a particularly good college player, but he's the most athletic quarterback to enter the league ever. And we're now in a conference with Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow and Josh Allen and Justin Herbert and Trevor Lawrence. And we need somebody whose range of outcomes includes knocking off two or three of those guys sequentially in the playoffs. And if that isn't the case, then the quarterback we get doesn't do us any good. So they're in a tough spot, but I think part of the project or part of the process is building up the kind of ammunition to do a couple of things. Number one, potentially put yourself in a position that isn't where you started off with in terms of win-loss record and where

that puts you in the pecking order. And then there's where you can get to based off the capital that you've accumulated. And then the other thing is having the kind of cap space and money to deploy resources if and when you find that guy, right? And it might not be the draft. You know, there are sometimes a situation arises where all of a sudden a quarterback emerges as a veteran option that you hadn't even considered before and if you don't have the ammunition ready to pull the trigger you can't get that guy but you know we're we may be focusing on the draft but next year something could happen and all you know and a veteran quarterback that they hadn't even considered actually turns out to be an option but if and when you get that guy you now need to be able

to flip the switch and start spending money and build a team around that guy like in an off season as opposed to well we got the quarterback now but it's going to take two more years before we can put anything around him because we just traded away everything yeah and that's why this seems like and i hate to put it this way only because it feels like it's so far off and if you're a vikings fan i don't know if you know this sam it's been a while you know it's been a long time since this team's made the super bowl there's been some close calls and uh these folks are impatient in fact they've also had to watch the twins lose every time they get in the playoffs.

The Wilds lose. The Timberwolves lose. I mean, it's an angsty fan base that wants to win. So when you tell them, hey, I could see this three-year plan. Like, what? Three-year plan? What? You just won 13 games.

I totally understand that reaction. But if you're Kweisi Adafomensa and you have your contract and your timeline that you probably presented to ownership from the time you took the job, knowing that a lot of these guys were old and expensive and they were going to have to go eventually the timeline that makes sense to me, at least as of now, when they have not extended Kirk cousins would be that you go through this year, you try to draft a quarterback if you can in the first round and probably are prepared to trade a lot of draft capital because you've been spending it at all the other positions receiver all the

draft picks on defense and everything else and ideally you draft the quarterback he starts you develop from for a year and then you go buck wild in free agency the next year to build around him and you kind of have a three-year timeline here. That does not sound like the most fun thing ever. You're still going to have Justin Jefferson, presumably, if he doesn't force his way out, which he can't really. So I'm not too worried about that. But I think that these years could be a little rocky over the next couple of seasons, but it's almost like you got to ask people to kind of look down the road quite a ways for a fan base that doesn't really want to i think yeah i think last year in a funny way just kind of put off the inevitable like they probably came in with this plan that what you just described is sort of

what they would want to do to this roster but it was too good to do that right away and then became even harder to do that once they started winning all these games and all of a sudden it's a 13 win team and now you're like that's it's a little difficult to sell anybody on the idea of just tear the whole thing down right now so as as good as last season was and as fun as the run was it probably just postponed what needs to actually happen to this team but the other thing is like we've been we've been saying similar things like this for a long time I think if anything it's only getting harder because of the influx of quarterbacks you know into the league

we we had a period where the Tom Brady's and the Peyton Manning's and and those guys were kind of fading fading out of the league reaching the end of their careers, and they hadn't yet been replaced by the next wave. And it was maybe we were going to go through another lean period where if you just get yourself a good quarterback, you're immediately in the top five contenders in the NFL. And then in the matter of a couple of years, you get all those guys that we talked about, the Mahomes, Burrow, all of them coming to the league in a space of three or four years.

And now it might be tougher than it's ever been to get that kind of contending team. The good news for Minnesota, though, is that they're in the NFC, and that's a fraction of the kind of loaded status of the AFC where you would have to – I mean, that's – like I said, the Colts looked at that landscape and said, if we pick a quarterback and he's a top 10 guy that's useless to us you know because all like eight of the other guys in the top 10 are ahead of him so and they're in the same conference and we're gonna have to beat three of those at minimum to get through to a Super Bowl

so if you're Minnesota, at least getting that, look at San Francisco last year. I mean, Brock Purdy played really well at the end of the season, but the totality of their quarterback situation, it was not exactly a massive plus, and yet they got to the NFC Championship game before completely running out of quarterbacks because the rest of the roster was really good.

So Minnesota, if they can find some kind of Kirk Cousins successor successor or heir immediately can become an NFC contender even if that's still a long way from you know being able to go toe-to-toe with the Kansas City Chiefs or whoever the true best teams in the NFL are at that point folks I've been wearing Oakley's now for a few weeks. And let me tell you, there is a reason that Justin Jefferson and a bunch of other football players wear these things because they are awesome. I've got the matte black prism Sapphire polar sunglasses on, and I've been doing all sorts of summer things with them. I've been hitting golf balls in the water, jogging, playing basketball, getting sunburned, but my eyes are in good shape.

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oakley.com for more information today. Oakley, express your style and build a look that's made for you. But I think that what we did learn from last year though, in seeing Philadelphia and who they were is just, I mean, so much is about the quarterback. Of course it is. It's always going to be the homes won the super bowl and it's Tom Brady winning every super bowl and Manning and Roethlisberger dominating the AFC always will be. But if you're in the conference that doesn't have that like the AFC and I mean, my gosh, whoever goes to the Super Bowl is going to be saying,

see, we had an elite quarterback, everyone in the AFC, because they all do, all the contenders. But if you're in the NFC, it truly is going to come down to who has the best top-to-bottom roster, at least for a few years. If Bryce Young becomes great, I don't know. But even Stroud and Richardson went to the AFC, so that becomes more loaded, potentially potentially if those guys work out and the NFC is still kind of fluttering around with a handful of very good quarterbacks. But if San Francisco can dominate the conference

and Philadelphia, who clearly had a great team top to bottom, but there's always going to be somebody on their timeline that's building up a stacked roster. This is how the Rams end up with Jared Goff in the super bowl or Nick Foles in the super bowl or Jalen hurts. So I think is very, very good, but look what is around him. It's fantastic. Or Brock Purdy one step away. It's always these, these completely stacked rosters. Those don't happen by signing Michael Pierce. And I like Michael Pierce. I do. And I like, you know, a lot of the guys that they've signed like Harrison Phillips and so forth, but that's not how you get there. I mean, you got to get there with great players across

the board. It can't just be, well, let's bring in one guy to stuff the run a little bit better because we weren't that good at that last year. we need to improve on that small part it's like if you're going to increase the odds that you hit on that quarterback you draft what's around him has to be a great supporting cast and i think we really saw that with both of those nfc championship quarterbacks last year yeah and i think the eagles are a great example of how you don't need to do anything crazy you know you don't need to have this revolutionary strategy or, you know, crazy money ball technique to make this happen. You just need to not screw up for a period of time. Right. And admittedly, like the Eagles have done a good job of generally focusing in the smart areas or where you would say are smart areas.

They've always invested in that defensive line you know they try and run seven deep if they can and get guys that can get pressure across the board and just keep reloading and reloading and reloading um and then they try and make sure they have a good offensive line and when that team is really good they get it they sort of stumble into a good secondary as well right and that hasn't always been the case and when the eagles aren't as good it tends to be when the secondary isn't great. But the other thing they've done well is they don't let a mistake put them off trying again. They made for as good a job as they've done.

And every offseason, it's like, wow, Howie Roseman, how does he do it? They drafted Jalen Rager over Justin Jefferson. That's one of the biggest single screw-ups that any team has made in the last five years. And they came back the next year, and they went, all right, we screwed that up. Let's get Devontae Smith. And then the Devontae Smith thing, you know, year one was good, but he wasn't, like, blow the doors off.

So screw it. Let's go trade a first-round pick for A.J. Brown and really fix this day. Like, they could have gone completely in the tank after the Jalen Rager mess up and gone, wow, we just, we made a complete mess of that. Let's stay away from wide receiver. Let's throw the resources somewhere else.

But they went, no, we need, we still need it. We didn't get it right. We need to keep going again and made it happen. And the Jalen hurts thing. It was another, like he was, he's not supposed to be their quarterback. Carson Wentz was supposed to be the guy ushering in this era of philadelphia dominance and they drafted jalen hurts you know in the second round basically just as a contingency plan and even when they got him and wentz sort of blew up and they had to get rid of him they didn't commit to jalen hurts right away they traded

for future first round picks as a hedge it's like all, all right, we'll give Jalen Hurts a shot. But if he goes south, we've got multiple first round picks ready to jump up in the draft and go get another quarterback if that goes to hell as well. So I think the Eagles really are a great template or a great example for Minnesota of what you can do if you just don't make mistakes. If you just generally speaking, keep it on the fairway and quickly address the mistakes that you do make. If you do a Jalen Rager, if you grab a guy in the first round

and he's obviously a disaster right away, go and fix it. Go find another guy because you got it wrong. You got to get that. There was a reason you picked that guy in the first round. In the first place, he probably needed him to come in and do something, and if he doesn't, you got to take another shot and be in financial position to make the a.j brown trade and to pay a.j brown and this is something i've been thinking about a lot that is one of the i think things i've never seen the vikings do since covering them is actually not hurt

themselves for the future with their salary cap by moving on from Adam Thielen when they did and taking kind of the hit and not June 1st thing, that thing, they made it better for the future, but not for the immediate. And they could have restructured Brian O'Neill to keep Delvin cook, but they decided, no,

we're not going to do that. We are not going to harm ourselves. They could have put more money in the pocket of Zedaria Smith because that's what he was looking for at the end of the day. He was looking for more cash. Do not blame him. Same. But they weren't willing to do that.

Right. Yeah, we all are. But they were not willing to put more cash in his pocket to hurt themselves down the road for the future cap. So when you get to next year or you get to two years from now, because the Kirk situation complicates that, and you can be the team that adds your AJ Brown or whoever it might be. That's why I think where they stand now, if you look across the offense, all the guys that are going to be here are young. I think O'Neal's going to be great for years to come. Derrissaw, and we'll see on Jordan Addison, but that's a first round pick who could be very, very good. Justin Jefferson, the other offensive linemen, they're all young. Their

running backs are now all young. So there's a couple of years potentially with those guys. So the offense is set up for a quarterback to potentially drop in there and then spend the rest to fill whatever pieces you didn't find in the draft. Like that's what I like about this off season for them is i get it there have been a lot of offseasons where i've been like i don't know man i don't really get it you're signing chan and sullivan is this really a thing you want to do to yourself you know it just is that really like a fix for you is to bring back mckenzie alexander or whatever you know and or to trade for yannick andakwe. This, it feels conducive to me.

Yeah, like so, you know, there's a lot of different ways now in the NFL of managing the salary cap. And the Vikings have always been on that kind of New Orleans Saints end of the spectrum in terms of sort of maxing out the credit card, paying it down and then recycling, blah, blah, blah. And there are teams that do it in the other direction. And honestly, I don't know that either one is necessarily dramatically better or worse than others like as long as you understand how to manage it it's fine but what the other way of doing it does give you is the flexibility to

capitalize on the unforeseen things the unforeseen opportunities that nobody sees coming and aj brown is a good one tyreek hill you know these kinds of moves were like nobody was looking at that 12 months in advance and saying aj brown's on his way out of tennessee or tyreek hill is going to be gone from kansas city those were not moves that anybody expected to happen until we got much closer and all of a sudden it's like wow that it's actually going to happen and if you didn't plan on that you weren't in a position to make it happen or if you didn't plan on that you weren't in a position to make it happen or if you didn't automatically have yourself that kind of reserve sitting there you can't be in the market so it's one and the draft capital i think is another thing as well we always focus on what

allows you to do in the draft you know move up move down all those kinds of things but having you know a surplus of fifth round picks and stuff allows you to go and trade for players like you know calais campbell or whoever it is or those kinds of things you know when veteran players that and again that that comes with the salary attached to it right or i mean the zadaria smiths of the world you know those kinds of players like be on the other side of that and be able to go you know what this is actually good value for us because we've got a the rest of our roster is in a really good spot we can take on that contract we can flip a low draft pick for this guy and bring him into the the equation instead of getting rid of him to try and tidy up the salary cap like

it just gives you so much flexibility to be able to tinker with the roster or add massive you know sea change moves because nobody saw it coming and all of a sudden the guy is available and you just don't have the resources to make it happen because you've kind of maxed out the credit card before that point right and that's why when anybody comes available and the fan base goes should we be in on that guy and it's like you can't be in on that guy you And it's like, you can't be in on that guy. You're not in on that guy. How would you ever pay that guy? And that's been where they have stood forever.

I mean, I think that what, you know, I brought up Michael Pierce. I think he's the guy that they paid out the biggest contract to free agency that was not already in house since 2017 or whatever, since Kirk got here. I mean, that's just not a major acquisition and they were never really able to get that star player who's on the market because of

that whereas you know when the Browns create all that cap space they get Amari Cooper for a fifth because somebody else has to give away you want to be on the other side of getting the Sedarius eventually when it's your time to do so which might not be next year or it might depending on you know where they stand with the quarterback situation that's where the kirk extension talk kind of comes into this like could that be a thing um but i don't know that it's going to be or not i did want to um change the subject slightly though surrounding delvin cook's exit to ask you about vikings running back history because you are an aficionado of vikings history so compare him to barry word no to terry allen no

i'm just kidding but there have been a lot of great names that have come through in vikings history so there's always the mount rushmore conversation but i feel like this mount rushmore is pretty easy so maybe it's a ranking that is required here because it's chuck foreman adrian peterson robert smith delvin cook i don't know if anyone else gets into that conversation but where do you where do you place him do you place him ahead of robert smith in the same discussion as adrian peterson way behind Adrian Peterson kind of how do you how do you weigh that yeah I think he is ahead of Robert Smith um I think he is behind Adrian Peterson but that's probably the ranking like it's your ranking probably goes Adrian Peterson is a clear number one um Dalvin might be number two but I think those three are the next group.

And Robert Smith is probably the bottom one of that group, even though I think Smith could have maybe been a better player than he ended up being if he'd had the right run. But Dalvin Cook, at his best, is one of those genuinely transcendent running backs who does make everything around him better. There were a ton of plays where you turn on and he gets 10 yards when he only had any business getting four you know and he like there's a big there's a significant difference between him and alexander madison as much as they've done a good job of ensuring they have a solid backup and a transition plan even in the last couple of years there's madison breaks more tackles on average but there's a

notable difference in production between when dalvin Cook carries the ball and when Madison carries the ball. And, you know, he's extremely good at maximizing the space that kind of a product of the way that the position is now which is you're like you're one and a half contracts and then you're out you know or you're we're on to the next guy or try to get cheaper or younger or a combination of both it's very very difficult now i think for a guy to have an adrian peterson like career where you you're around that long and at that level because as soon as that contract gets that high, you're immediately looking for ways to get rid of the guy. Yeah, and I think, I mean, Adrian is just in a different air from almost anyone to ever play the game, right?

I think if you start talking about who are the best running backs of all time, Adrian's name comes up pretty quickly into that conversation. Whereas I think there's been a lot of Delvin Cooks who at their best are lightning. I mean, think about like the Larry Johnsons, the Sean Alexanders, the Chris Johnsons. I mean, who had these bursts on the scene, unbelievable seasons, people buy their jerseys.

They end up on madden covers everyone loves them and then three years from now you're like hey what happened to that guy who was really good a couple years ago and i think you know the other part is when it comes to robert smith versus delvin cook the stops and starts with delvin cook i think made it tricky for me to put him ahead of robert smith i mean in part because it was like 2017, he comes out on the scene and whoa, oh my gosh, this is the next great franchise quarterback, ACL tear. 2018 is very uneven for him kind of coming back from that injury. 2019 first half, MVP, oh my gosh, second half, oh, he's kind of banged up. 2020, oh my gosh, MVP, second half, oh, he's kind of banged up 2020 oh my gosh MVP second half he's kind of banged up and then

2021 and 2020 and the PFF grades would show you this and a number of other stats it's very average as far as what he did for them if not a little below at times and so I feel like it was like this really sort of brief when it was great oh my goodness it was great and every team every team's defense spent their whole week scared of the delvin cook home run it was something to behold but it was almost percy harvin like where it just didn't last very long yeah but one thing i think that does not necessarily separate him from robert smith but give him a big advantage is robert smith was typically running behind a really good offensive line and then for a while was also the kind of beneficiary of that insane passing attack that opened up a ton of space for that dominant offensive line to then pave the way for him to

have a ton of production so you know dalvin cook generally was running behind some pretty rough offensive lines and not always you know as part as part of a, an overwhelming offense or anything. So I think Robert Smith tended to have a much better situation around him than Dalvin did. I can buy that. I can buy that. And as far as career numbers go, it's fairly even, uh, Robert Smith has about a thousand more rushing yards, but Dalvin has 15 more touchdowns. They average almost the same amount of yards per attempt. Delvin averaged more yards. Neither one of them set the world on fire as a receiving back.

Maybe Robert Smith was a little bit better at that. Both of them very exciting to watch. I mean, Robert Smith is one of the fastest players, maybe in NFL history. So it's incredible with this team. They're running back and wide receiver lineage. And Delvin Cook is with no doubt a part of that. I just,

before we wrap up, I want to ask for some, for some quick takes here, because it's as funny as it is to talk about the rebuild and all this, the different things that they're doing and roster reset. They could win the division. Yeah. It's possible. So I need,

I just want, I just want to take on each one of these division teams uh because i i think all of them are really up in the air so give me uh give me lions like you've spent your whole life watching the lions be bad are you uh are you biting kneecaps and uh drinking giant coffees and i don't know running running through walls. Like what's your feeling on the lines? I do think they're moving in the right direction pretty well, pretty steadily. They're another team that's had this kind of multi-year project. It was pretty clear that there was a,

an obvious step-by-step process here and another team that they didn't get everything right. You know, that some of the players that they drafted along this process that were supposed to be kind of key cornerstones of this whole thing didn't work out and they've had to go in a different direction and that's part of i think doing this good job of roster management is understanding when you made a mess and fixing it so that doesn't like throw the entire project sideways but overall i think they've done a really good job and ben johnson in particular as offensive coordinator i think he was the like the assistant coach of the year last year.

Some of the stuff that he was doing play-calling-wise, he was just consistently a step ahead of the guy trying to call defenses against him. I think he's basically the reason why Lions fans think Jared Goff is a top-five quarterback, and anyone that watches him that isn't wearing Lions colors is like, come on, let's style it back a little bit. But they're good.

I mean, they should be the favorite, I think, for this division now with Aaron Rodgers out of Green Bay. Are you buying a Justin Fields big jump forward? A little bit, yeah. I mean, Justin Fields was set up to fail last year, and the fact that he didn't fail I, is a pretty strong feather in his cap. He won that job with zero help around him. In fact, they had systematically removed all the help from him.

And he still went out there and showed enough, admittedly, mostly as a runner, as an athlete, more than a quarterback. But did enough to say, say all right now give me some help and let's see what we can do um and you know we've now seen a few quarterbacks in recent years where they came in they had tools they were raw but in particular they were really athletic and bought themselves time to develop and that's another like jalen hertz is the perfect example his pff grades i forgot the exact numbers are but like year one it was 55 year two it was sort of 67 70 and then year three was the big jump to 85 but if he couldn't run he never would have made it to year three they would have had him out of there he wouldn't have made

it past year you know maybe not past year one but certainly not past year two same thing would feel it's like he's bought himself the next year and now he has dj more and that offensive line was improving and you know he's got some chance now and we we saw in college that he's got the arm he's got the accuracy he can deliver passes anywhere in the field he just needs to get comfortable as a passer as a pocket player and develop that part of his game so i would expect some kind of pretty big jump this year yeah i'm on the fence i'm on the fence the one thing is hanging out of the ball too long and getting sacked always concerns me because i just don't know if it goes away right you know so it's like the one thing josh allen always had going for him is he just didn't take those sacks so when you

try to like make those comparisons he was always good at getting rid of the football i'm still worried about that with justin fields and i think he can make big time throws but sometimes they're just because he's hanging on and hanging on hanging on and then getting sad but it's also i mean there are players that that are really good players that skew towards that end of the spectrum i mean aaron rogers always took more sacks than he should have given his ability, but that's part of his game, right? He's always preferred holding onto the ball, taking a few sacks that he shouldn't

at the expense of I'm going to throw like less interceptions than anybody else in NFL history. You know what I mean? So there's a give and take there. And I think you're probably right that fields will always skew towards that end of things.

And even stripping out the kind of scramble stuff, you you know all those guys are going to have longer average time to throws and guys that don't leave the pocket but even if you kind of control for those things i think he will probably hold on to the ball longer than he should most of the time but if he can you know develop as a passer it's a it's like a kind of flaw to his game that you might think is fine like it's a it's a you know it's just a weakness to what he does but the rest of it is what's going to determine whether he succeeds or fails pff's monson says fields the next rogers is actually going to be the headline here for this episode speaking of which how many years have you watching football in your life have

you watched where the green bay packers did not have brett farve or aaron rogers and is it zero yeah really i mean certainly crazy is that any kind of serious watching it would be zero like it that's i mean look at the run your early 90s to now has been one of those two guys effectively for the entirety of of the whole thing and what's so wild is that rogers then went and completely replicated the entire brett farve career loop like he did the the great play you know didn't get as many championships as you think you should have um kind of wore out his welcome like just got fed up of how everything went wore out his welcome to the point where eventually the team not him decided you know what it's now i don't we're done we're not doing this dance again we've decided you're going this

year and then he goes to the jets like the whole thing is insane it's bizarre what a in fact we've talked about how hard it is to find the next vikings quarterback we forgot that it's going to happen next year and it's just going to be aaron rogers after the jets thing goes south um but yeah it's wild and then 10 years from now instead of a volleyball arena it'll be some like health wellness scam that he gets in trouble for with the government right sorry did you want to say things about the actual packers i don't know no i just i'm still sort of blown away by how completely they've completed the time is a flat circle thing but yeah you're right now now we get to see a new quarterback for the first time and you know jordan love has kind of been set off on a weird footing where okay the packers decide right

we're getting rid of rogers it's time jordan loves your team and then immediately like undermine him by saying you know what we're not going to pick up your fifth year option you're going to have to sign this weird like small money contract extension because we don't even have any faith in you that you're going to be good and by the way good luck this year you know it's a it's kind of a bizarre way of approaching that. Well, and also, I mean, they didn't really go get him any receivers of significance either. And so it's just like, do you guys realize that Rogers was the reason that everyone became, I mean, Devante Adams is amazing, but you know what I mean? Like anybody can become the best version of themselves with an all-time great quarterback.

I don't know if Romeoomeo dobbs i like some of the stuff i saw from christian watson but does that mean he's going to be an elite receiver or something i don't know i'm not willing to say that i would have thought that they would have put all their effort into just sticking it to rogers and trying to make him the most happy by spending every dollar they had i mean they drafted a receiver but from that, they didn't really go all in on that position. Yeah. They've, um, they drafted a few, they, they took an interesting approach to it. They've, they've got a really young receiving core kind of top to bottom. Um, and I, I think there's some merit to the idea of look, Christian Watson showed some stuff last year. I think there was substance to the Romeo Dobbs hype as much as it kind of got out of control and you

know it's like oh he's going to be the next Devante Adams forget Christian Watson there's probably something to the idea that he's going to emerge as a pretty useful starting receiver for them it was just you know he was a fourth round pick it's going to take more than like training camp for him to get it together but then the entire approach of the draft this year they kind of went well if we've got a need we're going to draft two or three guys at that position and maximize the chances that somebody is going to emerge and take that gig. So they drafted multiple tight ends.

They drafted, they ended up drafting, I think, three wide receivers, certainly two, I think three. So if one of those guys sticks, you know, and becomes their slot option or their third receiver, then it's a win. If one of the tight ends emerges, you know i think they did it to um the defensive line as well like they they had sort of three or four spots where they're like we need an impact player or somebody from the draft to contribute we're just going to keep swinging at all these spots

and hope that you know maximize the chances so yeah i think you would like to have seen them add like a clear, obvious veteran upgrade at receiver and not doing so. I mean, it's at least another piece of evidence in the direction of, you know what, we're not 100 percent sure you're the guy. So we're not going to go and get you, you know, a stud wide receiver, even if there were any this offseason, which, to be fair, there weren't like the options were available to them were jacoby myers you know so if you didn't think jacoby myers was going to move the needle up for your wide receiver core they're probably fine just keeping the powder dry and hoping that the young guys take a step forward but it is it's an unusual situation he's stepping into of not just replacing a legend you know and trying to continue this run of quarterbacks but you're doing it without a ton of help and with the team immediately sort of saying, you know, it would be nice if you were great,

but we don't have a ton of faith in it. So we're not even going to pick up your fifth year option. And I always wonder where the bar is. I mean, you mentioned like fields. Clearly the bar was show us that you're pretty great at running and then enough to where we think you can improve and enough leadership that our guys believe in you and we will forego bryce young for that okay wow clearly he got over that bar by winning like three games uh but is it wins for jordan love is it

stats for jordan love is it vibes is it like how are you grading this and evaluating it to decide and and your point is completely valid i'm not going out and getting a free agent receiver there has to be someone although you know you had your like odell beckham and now deandre hopkins or something i guess they could have gone all in on something like that but most for the most part absolutely true that free agent wide receivers are costing a ton so you might as well just keep drafting a bunch of them i i'm just really fascinated by both fields and love this year and what it is that they have to do for their teams to keep them because Chicago didn't do it this year,

but they certainly could do it next year and move on from fields. And so I don't know how they're evaluating. Do we have our guy or not? I think it really comes. I mean, you termed it vibes. I think it's a little bit more sophisticated than that, but it's that idea, right?

It's like, do you actually buy into the idea that this guy can become something really good down the line? And, you know, for Chicago last year, it was never going to be about wins. It was never necessarily going to be about stats, but Fields showed a dynamism, a playmaking ability, and the capacity to overcome the dross around him even if it wasn't enough to drag them to wins but you know to outperform his situation and love this

year i think it's probably going to have a similar kind of bar it's like look rogers just left we're not expecting you to make the playoffs or anything but you got to show us that you can be something going forward you've had you know enough time you can be something going forward. You've had, you know, enough time sitting on the bench. If you come out here and you look like a lost rookie, we're, we're probably out, you know,

but so that's, that's kind of his bar is look, you have to at least look like you can be a starting quarterback. Doesn't necessarily need to be right now, but we need to be confident at the end of the year that 2024, you know, you can be a high level player. Scrappy Vikings win 11 games extend kirk cousins for four more years and then we uh round the circles of

hell uh we'll see what happens but it's i think it's an interesting division even though it's not one that will lead the nfl and wins i think at the end of the day uh great conversation sam monson glad to get back together with you. And I've just been observing. How about middle of summer where we're talking about moves and decisions and exciting things. How about that? I think the Vikings are going to keep us on the edges of our seat, at least for another week with the Neil Hunter.

So we'll see how that goes, but I really appreciate you jumping on and we will definitely talk again very soon. Sounds good. Take it easy.