Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Sam Monson answers whether the Vikings are the closest to the Super Bowl since 2017

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

PFF's Sam Monson joins Matthew Coller to give his perspective on the rise of Josh Dobbs and the Vikings' chances at being a scary team in the NFC. Plus, what does Dobbs' play mean to the future and how defenses have taken back over in the NFL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me from PFF and one of my favorite podcasts, the PFF NFL podcast with Sam Monson and of course Steve Palazzolo. We've got the shorter half, Sam Monson. What's going on? How are you, Sam? What's up? How's it going? Oh, you know, I'm just looking at the wake of destruction that Josh Dobbs left from being traded away from teams. Just before we fired this up, the news came in that Deshaun Watson

is going to be out for the year, and if only they had a Dobbs, then, you know, maybe they'd be going to the playoffs. Instead, they're going to have to rely on PJ Walker. I don't know about that. Give me what you've been thinking as you've been watching Josh Dobbs these last two weeks. I don't know if everybody knows this from your past that you have grew up as a Vikings fan. So you saw plenty of backup quarterbacks come into games and seasons and lead teams into, you know, NFC championships and so forth. How are you feeling about Josh Dobbs mania, Sam?

Yeah, I mean, the Josh Dobbs story this year has been crazy. Like nobody expected anything from him really this season. He's the guy. I mean, it didn't even make a ton of sense when they traded for him. The Cardinals, that is when they traded for him at the start of the season. It's like, eh, I mean, there's not much point in doing that versus just starting rookie Clayton Toon all season long and seeing what he brings to the table. And then Dobbs had that team competitive in every single game. Like he had them fighting. He had them, even games where they got away from them late. You know, like the 49ers scored early.

And this is when the 49ers are blowing out teams. And you're like, oh, Arizona's done. And then Dobbs battles them back, gets them close in that game. And then eventually the 49ers ease away. But like he had them battling every single game, obviously upset Dallas. And then when he gets traded to Minnesota, you're like, OK, obviously, Josh Dobbs, Kirk Cousins is a massive difference from a passing quarterback standpoint. He's nowhere near the quarterback Cousins is. On the other hand, he brings scrambling ability and a quarterback

rushing threat to the table that simply doesn't exist with Kirk Cousins as the quarterback, right? Which means new plays are now on the table that don't exist when Kirk Cousins is the quarterback. And we saw some of those last week, you know, now that he actually has a chance to look at the playbook. There are plays in there that clearly are not in the playbook when Cousins is there, like things that are only available when Josh Dobbs is the quarterback. And that rushing threat, that scrambling ability is changing games. And the Vikings are a good enough offense that, you know, they're in these games to begin with. And then

Dobbs can win them with a couple of those big plays. Whereas in Arizona, you know, those big plays are the only thing keeping them in games in the first place well maybe they should have just had zone read in there for her cousins maybe that that was the big mistake that could have gotten them over no probably not uh but the thing about josh jobs i have to admit i didn't watch a whole lot of arizona this year and i know it's been a bit on your show that i think it's you who watches Arizona, but Steve doesn't pay much attention to Arizona for maybe good reason. There was no real reason for me to think when they traded for Josh Dobbs, oh, yeah, this will be the thing that gets them right back on track and takes them to the playoffs.

I thought that they would win some games because they have a great setup, good offensive line, and a defense that just seems to be getting stronger each week. But looking at the playoff odds today, I mean, this is partly because of the NFC, but it's like 85% chance to make the playoffs after these last couple of weeks with Josh Dobbs. So I guess my question is, does it keep rolling? Like, is there a reason to believe that this last two weeks has sort of been just an aberration and the guy has kind of just blacked out and had this incredible couple of games? We've seen this happen before in the NFL. Or do you think that the skill set is there to keep it going? I mean, the big thing is you look at Minnesota's schedule.

I mean, that was one of the things we were saying when they traded for him is like, look, obviously this is a downgrade of quarterback. When you lose Kirk Cousins, it's going to be difficult to patch that up midseason. But because of that rushing ability, because of the extra dimension that Josh Dobbs does bring that can kind of offset some of that loss from a quarterback standpoint, from a passing quarterback standpoint. But then you couple that with their schedule, right? That's where I think you're looking at it and saying, you know, they have a real shot of going on a run, staying alive and making the playoffs from the NFC. And they started that with

two wins. Now you've got Denver, Chicago, Vegas, Cincinnati, and then those two games against Detroit towards the end of the season. And those are the ones that are going to determine, you know, certainly the division, but potentially even their playoff lives, depending on how the rest of the games go. But, you know, only one of those games looks on paper to be a very difficult game. And that's against a team with like a 500 record. Like we just assume Cincinnati is better than their record shows at the moment. But the rest of that schedule, you look at that and saying,

given what we've seen from Josh Dobbs so far, I mean they should make the playoffs from this point. Okay, so I want to play a little – just a little mind game with you here. I'm going to ask you a few things and make a statement, and you can tell me is it too far? That's the game is it too far? So I will intentionally step the line and you tell me if it's too far

if I were to say that I think the Vikings with Josh Dobbs if they're playing the way they have the last couple of weeks and he's running the way he is and Justin Jefferson comes back if I'm the rest of the nfc i'm a little nervous about those vikings all of a sudden because they've got a

different playmaking element in the uh at the quarterback position and they've survived being without just the jefferson and brian flores's defense has been a top five defense over this entire winning streak i'm a little scared if i'm another team in the NFC of the Minnesota Vikings. Is that too far or am I going over the line? I think if they, if Dobbs keeps playing the way he is from a passing standpoint. So one of the things that's jumped out so far is he hasn't put the ball in harm's way throwing it yet for the Vikings, right? Like the first game when he came in,

obviously there were the fumbles and that was the big problem. But what amazed me about that performance is there wasn't any play for a guy who basically didn't know the playbook where he and a wide receiver were on different pages and he threw the ball right to a linebacker, right? Because he was expecting a guy to be there that wasn't.

I couldn't believe there were none of those from that first game. And then the second game, he's been clean as well in terms of passing it. He hasn't had a particularly good turnover-worthy play rate in Arizona. Now that's Arizona. It's a bad offense. You know, you wouldn't expect it to be good. It might be better in Minnesota. But, you know, so far from his career, he hasn't been a tremendously sort of turnover averse, risk averse type of quarterback with the football. If that stays good in Minnesota, then I think this team is really dangerous. If Dobbs goes back to being likely to throw you a ball or two over the course of the game, that changes things a bit. But the other thing is like defenses hate

unpredictability from an offense right and there's nothing more unpredictable than a guy flying by the seat of his pants like scrambling just relying on raw athleticism and determination and you know some of the scrambles he's had it's like he should be done several times in this play and somehow isn't and keeps going. Defenses hate that. There's even though Kirk Cousins is better, there's a degree of comfort to knowing how he's going to beat you and just being able to focus on that. So, you know, whether or not it's actually a greater chance they win a game with him, I don't know. But I do think there will be defenses that are a lot less comfortable going up against a guy like dobbs and the fact that mixed into this run because of course there have been some fairly you know easy opponents on the way is a win against the san francisco 49ers

i know that it was with kirk cousins but that is the kind of test game for can brian flores's defense actually play against a good offense and they survived against san francisco turned the ball over a couple times on defense in a good way and then against the new orleans saints who are not a good offense but they're also not a horrendous offense and they have playmakers and before derrick car left that game with an injury looked like he didn't know what he was looking at. And they get to the ball, and they make tackles, and they stuff the run, which they've done extremely well

since that disaster in Philadelphia early in the year. Would I be going too far to say that Brian Flores has more or less locked himself up a head coaching job for next year, and this is the best assistant coach job uh that's been done all season to take a defense that we thought might be 32nd and have them playing like this i definitely buy the second part i think the first part is going to be determined by things that aren't relevant to his you know job this year right it's it's all the other stuff it's the first time around it's the lawsuit it's all this kind of thing right It's, it's all the other stuff. It's the first time around. It's the lawsuit. It's all this kind of thing, right. That that's going to have teams focusing on him as a

head coach, the coordinator part though. Like, I, I don't know that there's a better job being done right now by a coordinator. You know, there's other candidates obviously, but Brian Flaher is what he's doing to that defense. I think it's phenomenal because the talent still isn't good, right? It's not like he's discovered a whole bunch of guys and like, oh, this group was way better than we thought it was. Like he's, this is schematic what he's doing. And what you said in terms of didn't know what he was looking at, like that's the secret. I mean, the solution to the 49ers was that offense dominates people by knowing what the rules are on defense and forcing you into doing something that's wrong, right? And basically taking advantage of your

defensive rules and moving defenders away so that in behind them or, you know, in front of them or into that space that they've left, there's a wide open receiver. And there's no offense in the NFL better at doing that. And Kyle Shanahan, I don't think there's any coach better at doing that than he is they ran into that Vikings defense and there's three safeties on the field and you don't know what the hell the rules are they're appearing in places that they're not supposed to be so you have Brock Purdy throwing these passes and it's like how did he not see that safety he did he just didn't think he was going to be there he thought the rule was something different and the safety ends up being right where he's throwing the ball that's the the magic of this defense right now is that nobody knows what the rules are and they're changing week to week

like they're mixing up the personnel they're using they're not using the same static thing for every single team so that you can learn the rules over the course of the season and that is just causing everybody problems because it's it might be the most difficult defense in the NFL to read for an opposing offense. I mean, this is a great point because there's, from week to week, completely different game plans, which kind of takes you back to the Belichick peak, and Belichick probably still does it, but Mac Jones is so bad it doesn't matter.

But, I mean, when Belichick is at his absolute best, you go into the game against the Patriots not knowing how they're going to play. And one week, Brian Flores just didn't blitz all that much. It was like, oh, okay, I guess we're not doing that. And then other weeks he's blitzing 80%. That's been the main focus, but also, like you said, the coverage, but the personnel. There was one game where they played 19 different players on defense.

19! I mean, how do you prepare for the entire defensive roster to show up on the other side of the field? And what he's doing, and I asked him about this, about player development. I said, like, what's kind of your theory or your key to player development? He basically said, I know every one of these guys could do something well, and I'm just going to use them in those ways. But everybody says that, and the way that he has been able to put the puzzle pieces together, and it's really, Sam, changed the way I've thought about defense

and the defensive coordinator's impact. Because I've always very much been a, like, look, personnel. It's just personnel. If you've got great players, that's it. But I think where we see it is, can you take a player who is a C minus and make him a B as a defensive coordinator? And if you do that with like five or six guys and they go from, then this is the Vikings defense, a C minus player that is kind of fringe starter

to an average player, then you've got one heck of a defense. And I think that's what he's been able to do here. Yeah. I mean, I think this is showing the power that scheme still has in today's NFL. Like obviously personnel is, is huge. Personnel is always going to be the most important thing to whether or not

you're going to win games or not on both sides of the ball. But, you know, and in this year more than any other, when defense is sort of fighting back, I think you're seeing just how powerful a good defensive scheme can be on what still looks like a pretty average group

of personnel top to bottom. Like this group, if they were just running another random defense out there, you would expect them to be closer to last year's defense than they are this year's defense. The fact that he's able to do that and do it against good offenses is really impressive. I mean, genuinely, he should be, I would say, the frontrunner, but certainly one of the frontrunners for Assistant Coach of the Year.

Is there an Assistant Coach of the Year award? I think there is one. Okay, well, if there is, then he's the nomination. I should probably know that as somebody with an AP vote. Oh, okay. Well, you're a voter, so I don't know. Am I going too far to say that this today is the closest the Minnesota Vikings have been to a Super Bowl since they walked off the field against Philadelphia in a 38-7 loss in 2017.

Am I going too far to say that? I mean, the only other rival would be last year, right? So it's like, is this team actually better than they were a year ago when their record looked an awful lot healthier and everybody thought they were better than they were a year ago when their record looked an awful lot healthier and everybody thought they were better than they were. No, I think if Cousins was the quarterback, you could make that case. I think without Cousins and Dobbs, as exciting as he is and as, you know, he introduces that element of variance that isn't there, otherwise I still think he's worse.

I think the offense is worse with, with him in there versus cousins, certainly over the long haul and against better teams. Like when you run into the, I don't know if, you know, even though he ran them close relatively for a while in Arizona and it's better.

I don't know that they're winning that game against San Francisco with Dobbs, a quarterback. Folks. I hope you've enjoyed listening to us talk about prize picks this year, but if you've missed it, here's how it works. You go to prizepicks.com and it is simple. You pick either more or less between two and six players stat projections, and that's it. Now you're playing. So if it's X number of yards for a quarterback, you just decide, are they going to throw for more

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You can turn $10 into $250 by nailing just a couple of picks. So go to prizepix.com slash purple. The code purple. Daily Fantasy Sports made easy. Okay. Let me put it from a global perspective. yes kirk cousins had them rolling they were also like 500 still at that point i know not all his fault i know uh but i don't know that you can win the super bowl or compete for the super bowl with cousins if you were to ask me what was going to

happen for this season, I would have told you they'd win a few of these games, we'd get all excited, and then they would run into the harder teams later. They'd lose those games, and maybe they'd lose the Saints game because they have a good defense and a good defensive line, and he's not running away. And then they'd get to the first round of the playoffs, they'd travel to somebody else's house,

and they would come home with their season over and and i'm not saying that jobs won't do that because that's probably what ends up happening here is we all talk about a magical season and then they lose in the playoffs so we go like oh that was fun i mean they'll bid the bigger picture because the way that it is gone for josh dobbs has sort of showed them something new of you can survive and thrive without Kirk Cousins and also mobility matters. And Hey, there's a draft with a bunch of potential first round quarterbacks. And then we know the whole thing about the cheat code, but also the young players emerging on this roster jordan addison becoming a star the way that the offensive line has come together and for the first time

we're not talking about the guards it's amazing i i think from the roster up and coming strength it feels a little bit like 2015 ish vikings where you could you could start to see it that and then with the potential of drafting a quarterback and building around that quarterback we know that's the way to reach the Super Bowl or to build a strong Eagles like roster what about what about from that perspective no I mean certain even if you just look at it and say look last team's last year's team won 13 games and this year could like they might win nine this year and look they're no less uh likely to win a playoff game than they were a year ago with the vastly different records if that's the way

they end up being um so from that perspective i think it's true i yeah i agree i think that the foundations are better now than they were there then as well and the quarterback thing is going to be a really interesting offseason discussion, like whether Dobbs keeps playing the way he is, whether he can force himself into the conversation. The fact that Cousins tore an Achilles at his age makes that an interesting discussion. Like I assume the plan was to kind of put a stop on the Kirk Cousins thing, but his price may have just gone way down because of his, you know, his age and the injury. Like he's no longer likely walking over into you know a big well-paying job somewhere else he might actually be a reasonable cost to bring back and do it all over again um and then you have the draft and what that could be and

you know a month or so ago that was like wow the vikings are finally going to have a top five draft pick and have a shot at a quarterback that they never get. Now it's like, no, they're making the playoffs instead. Forget about that. So it's going to be a wild off season for Minnesota without the, the most important position in the game, you know, solidified and sorted, but you're right. There's a lot of other pieces that are in a better situation than they've been for a long time.

So the cousins decision, see, that's interesting because I look at it a little bit differently in the way that the rest of the NFL's quarterback play this year has been horrible. And there's so many teams that you could make an argument for even coming off an Achilles that Cousins has this really good, as you say, track record of having great health, right? And you could talk yourself into, if you're the Pittsburgh Steelers, we won all these games with Kenny Pickett. But if we just get a Kirk, which we've heard before, if we just get a Kirk, how many teams are Atlanta if we just get a Kirk? I think that desperation is a hell of a drug when it comes to the quarterback situation.

And there will be other teams who say, all right, we know he's going to be a risk, but here's $42 million. And if you're the Vikings with Jefferson going to sign his contract, Darisaw is going to sign a contract. I think they should bring back Daniel Hunter by any means, because, I mean, he's leading the league at sacks and he's just showing no signs of slowing down. Use the money to buy other things. I think this is it. I think that this is it for Kirk Cousins. And not that they won't consider it, but that the price is just not going to be where they would go back to it.

Yeah, I guess it just depends what the offers look like. I agree. There will be plenty of teams interested in Kirk Cousins, but before the injury, you know, he could have been looking at repeating the Viking contract over with somebody new, you know, three year fully guaranteed maximum kind of money. Let's go now. I don't know how many teams are going to want to give him that length and that guarantee of a guy of his age coming off an Achilles, right? So the best offer may end up being for him, all right, maybe it's less money. On the other hand, it's Minnesota where we're

settled, where everything's good, right? Rather than let's risk going somewhere completely new for a bit more money, but not the money I thought I was going to get before I got injured. So I don't know, maybe nobody will care and the offer will still be exactly the same as we thought it was going to be, you know, a month or so ago before you got hurt. But maybe it fundamentally changes the whole dynamic. And if the cost changes significantly, you know, it's a different mathematical equation for Minnesota. It's a different cost benefit analysis because the cost is changing. So I just think, you know, that's something we're not going to know about until the offseason. But it will be interesting to see if it does dramatically change what the outlook is for him. I'm not going to go with the going too far bit for the entire show.

So I'm just going to pivot away from that. But you did a great job. Kweisi Adafomensi. When he gets hired, I know everyone at PFF is excited because this is the analytics GM. And to just give a little bit more pub of my book, because I haven't mentioned it at all throughout, and you are in it, actually, of your story of how you arrived at PFF

and helped build PFF is in the book as well. Football is a numbers game. Go to Amazon, get it there. But I talked to Kweisi Adafomensa for the book as well. Football is a numbers game. Go to Amazon, get it there. But I talked to Kweisi D'Affomento for the book and he talked about how he used PFF, especially college data, to set himself apart in San Francisco's

front office. And this is just such an interesting and unique story. And anytime you have that, somebody who's not like, I was a football scout, now I'm going to build a football team. Like anytime it's not that guy, that person is under the microscope, I think, more for Kweisi.

And then he talks a little different at the podium than most former scouts who become GMs. He lays it out for you. I think maybe more than they want him to sometimes. And he said, competitive rebuild. And I think everybody went like, now, what in the world are you talking about? Because usually in sports today, it's your tanking or you're, you know, trying to chase the Super Bowl and you're going all Rams, you know,

like where they traded for Vaughn Miller and Odell Beckham and all that. Full Rams is what he said in an interview. And I think there's a reason for skepticism of that. Can this really work? Shouldn't you really just tear it apart, rip it apart, send everybody out of here? And yet, here we are, the second year in playoff position with a team and a coaching staff and an organization strong enough

to be in that spot even after losing their quarterback. What are we feeling about the way that Kweisi Adafo-Mensah has handled from the starting position where he took over to transitioning, I would say like 80%, 90% of the roster out of here, to now feeling like they have a young roster that can compete for years to come? Yeah, it's interesting because the first year of him being there, you're like, I don't really see what's different. We're making sort of individual different personnel moves,

but the focus seems to be the same. We've basically just got rid of the captain and stayed on the same course. And that was the sort of big problem of the Vikings for years that we're doing the same thing over and over again, getting the same results and nothing's changing. So you change the guy in charge, but the things were still saying the same. And this year is going to be strange because it's obviously been a really weird year where you have all the losses at the start. You climb out of the hole.

Cousins goes down you bring josh dobbs in that's this like weird like incredible story exciting player to watch and we might actually end up okay things there are some things that are different the roster's turned over it's younger um but we might actually end up being basically in the same place again which is it's a reasonable team they're gonna win to win enough games, sneak into the playoffs, make the playoffs, whatever, probably either win one game or lose immediately and get bounced out and start all over. Right. And you look at, OK, now that now it's what do we do next year to build on that? And that's the big question. Like we still have a massive quarterback problem. One of the biggest sort of positive changes has been what we talked about before.

It's the coach. Right. It's schematic. Right. We didn't fundamentally overhaul a defensive roster. We just brought in a guy who knew what he was doing and everything looks better. So on the one hand, you kind of look at it and say, yeah, this is it feels better now than it did previously. But is it actually just the same with like a new, like a facelift? Have we just, have we done anything different here? Or is this just the same thing dressed up slightly differently and we're being suckered again? So I think it will be a big offseason for them. I think it will be a good, a feel good type of vibe given the way the season went.

I think there will be a lot of reasons for optimism. There's a lot of encouragement with the young players that they have and then it becomes a huge off season to figure out number one what the quarterback plan is and number two how you build on that next year and honestly next year i think becomes the year where you judge him on right because that's where like this season will set you up with a platform to show that you can actually take that next step and if they can actually take that next step. And if they can't take that next step, then we've just done the same thing all over again, which is spun the wheels. So when I think about Kweisi, I think about what a lot of, you know, general managers who are of the modern era talk about where it's like their process and they don't judge short term results.

And I mean, that should be maybe what we looked at last year. Like don't judge sort of the short-term, Hey, we're trying to prove that it was Zimmer's fault. And then we definitely did last year by winning 13 games and they made short-term moves that I thought, I don't know, like why you're making short-term moves when the answer is going to be the same at the end. And mostly was uh in losing to the new york giants in the playoffs but having seen then another off season and a larger sample and starting to get the idea of what the process was going to be like i don't like process over results because results get you hired or fired or right put a ring on your face right like results matter a lot. They're everything.

But I think that what we saw was a smarter draft that they had this year. Really, really smart to not extend Kirk Cousins. Imagine a 36-year-old coming off an Achilles injury on a three-year deal who is going to be paid $45 million next year. That would have been a total calamity. I don't even know what would be the reason to believe in this team going forward at all if that was the case, right? I mean, because they haven't done anything before

and then he's supposed to be better after an Achilles injury? I don't know, man. Kendricks, Thielen, Delvin Cook looks horrendous with the New York Jets. I mean, all these things to me are, I don't know if it's going to work out. Sometimes Jake DeLome takes a team to the Super Bowl. Football's weird. But I think that if you make decisions this way, that in the long run it's going to work out.

That's how I look at this, as opposed to when Spielman and Zimmer are at the helm and they're panicking to try to get back to the NFC Championship. And it's just like, ah, Breland, like Sheldon Richardson. Is he still around? Bring him in. He'll save the season. Let's sign a nose tackle because Michael Pierce is the reason that we're going to go somewhere different. Like that, that is where to me it separates from what they had done before when they were a middling team. Yeah, I think process versus results is a really interesting thing in all of sports. I think it's the most difficult thing that everybody is trying to master.

And I think in football, it's the hardest to do because the sample size is just so much smaller, right? Like, I don't know how many stupid games do they play playing baseball, like a million over the course of a season. It's really easy to see if the process is working because you have such a huge sample size that you can just figure it out immediately. Right. Just simple numbers will tell you basketball, a ton of games over a season, even soccer, like the Premier League, 38 games over a season. You can see pretty easily whether or not the process is working over any extended period of time football you have 17 games and you're almost never starting the same people every single game because half of them are hurt every week and you know that in any given game some random ass thing can happen like the arizona cardinals going beat dallas for no good reason at all other than it happens every week in the nfl it makes no. So when you're trying to judge process versus results, you're like, particularly when you get down to the sharp end, right,

you get into the playoffs. If you consistently fail in the championship game or in the divisional round, does that mean your process is flawed or you just ran into like three consecutive games where weird stuff happened and they all bounce in the same direction? It's impossible to tell. So I think you're right. You have to start judging it by like almost philosophical situations and how does that work out over time. And, you know, jettisoning running backs on giant bloated contracts that probably aren't making a big difference is a good process move in the right direction. And theoretically, if we stack enough of these on top of each other, that will move us in the right direction. And then hope you just have to hope that, you know, the, the fluky things, the random bounce of a ball and individual games go in your direction.

And then the other thing that I think helps that is getting to really smart coaches, right? The offense and the defensive side of the ball are being manned by guys are obviously elevating their side that can only help folks i cannot believe how many sports are going on right now and guess what there's a way to go to all of them with affordable tickets my friends you are going to want to check out game time it is the fast and easy way to buy tickets to any sports event that you want to attend and much, much more. One of the cool parts about GameTime is that they have flash deals on last minute tickets

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Terms apply. Again, create an account. Redeem code INSIDER for $20 off your first purchase. Download GameTime today. Last-minute tickets. Lowest price guaranteed. code insider for $20 off your first purchase download game time today last minute tickets lowest price guaranteed yeah i mean i think about like so there's 32 teams but on any given year like maybe 15 of them matter in some way if if not even like that many and so like okay the vikings are always in the 15 that matter they're always in the playoff race they're always there how can you weigh your odds a little bit just a little bit because all those franchises are smart they all have good coaches

there's a ton of good coaches around the league but how can you weigh your odds within the world of you know howie rosemans and nick sirianis and Kyle Shanahan's and John Lynch's that are doing things at the cutting edge level? And there's another thing, too, here, because, of course, all of this often comes down to the quarterback and how the quarterback plays. But there's another dynamic that's emerged in the NFC that is strange because it's like if you're in the AFC, you better be a great quarterback if you're going to win there. And yet over the NFC, it's kind of like, you know, the, the picture with the dragons and the ones kind of like twisted and goofy looking, the NFC is twisted and goofy looking when it comes to the quarterbacks, Brock Purdy, Josh Dobbs, you're like, oh yeah, playoff

teams. That's exactly what I mean. I wonder about this for going forward because it doesn't look like it's going to change in the very short term. It might be within the next couple of years where the draft picks start to go and hit in the NFC. But when it comes to the approach, because here's what I'm getting to. Kweisi Adafo-Mentz's process, I think so far through two years, has been very, very good to put themselves in this position. And when you're winning as many games as they have in the regular season, it's not just some random BS, right? But the decision of whether

they can ever get to somewhere special is going to be at that quarterback position. Everybody knows. And this is the unfortunate thing about being a GM in the the nfl is that if you land it you get to be a genius like the houston texans genius smartest team ever if they had drafted bryce young they'd probably look pretty dumb right now right but that but that that's life right uh in the nfc though it's like i feel like your odds if you just build a good team are so much better than they were. So there's like all these dynamics that, that are at play when it comes to grading the general manager. But I wonder if that will impact what they do at the quarterback position. The fact that there's just not special, special Mahomes, Allen, all of a sudden CJ Stroud's in this

conversation for great quarterbacks in the NFC. The other thing though, is that it's never a static picture. Like the league changes and evolves and shifts. And this is a really interesting year for that happening. Like we know kind of big picture defense is fighting back, right? Scoring is down. Offense generally is down. Defense are having success the way they haven't in the past few years. There's a bunch of other like really weird numbers that are way down as well and you know you've got guys like the

buffalo bills firing their offense coordinator even though when you look at the numbers like it's difficult to find a stat where they're not ranking in the top three that offense by almost any objective measure is cooking relative to everybody else and they're like this is a joke get rid of this guy. Fire him. This is not working. Right. And you've got somebody like Josh Allen, who has shown to be one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, leading the league in interceptions. And I if this current trend continues for a period of time, we might be shifting completely the type of quarterback that has more success or the type of quarterback that has more success or the type

of quarterback that struggles more like you were to a degree over the last couple of years rolling the dice on people like josh allen because the high end was the important thing right if he puts it all together that's what we want now you're looking at it saying turnovers may never have been a bigger problem than they are now because defenses are forcing quarterbacks to be more conservative and more patient and pick things up slowly over a period of 10 plays. If you turn the ball over, that's just torpedoed like a quarter of the game. So now, again, you've got the Bills. The only problem with that offense right now is turnovers, essentially, statistically. It's doing an incredible job, but they're turning the ball over at an insane rate.

And even an offense that ranks top three in basically everything can't overcome that volume of turnovers. So now you're like, well, is Josh Allen, does he just become a worse quarterback now than he was the last couple of years? Because defenses have changed and the game has changed a bit like this is stuff that gms like they've got all the other crap that they've got to do in the day-to-day and in the back room somewhere like there's a friday meeting 9 to 10 a.m dedicated to like this discussion like is the game actually changing and do we have to rework all the math on this board because none of it is applicable anymore we've just shifted what quarterbacks are supposed to look like today's nfl like that's why the job is such a nightmare like everyone you think it's just you know we decide about this player and this player

we you know make a discussion about a contract or whatever but like this stuff has to happen at the same time you have to figure out what the hell is happening in the nfl during the course of a season so i i think it's a great point when it comes to the longer drives and the fewer possessions and the heightened element of turnovers, which also probably jacks up the randomness a little bit. I also think that some of the defensive numbers from the bigger picture are in part because teams have taken on the we're going to be first or last the the ricky bobby theory and if you're the quarterbacks have started that's i mean when you're looking at like hey why

is offense down that's that's relevant if we were just ranking the human beings how good they are at quarterback for all nfl players on rosters There's like five or six backup quarterbacks who are veterans, who are clearly better than people who are starting. And the teams have just sort of said, Oh, well, like we're going to, you know, move on from Josh Dobbs and play Clayton tune for a game and see what we've got. And Oh no, we lost. And I, you know, I think that there's, I mean, look at Chicago, they had pj walkers their backup i'm sure they could have gone out and gotten somebody who's a veteran and they were like you know we'll just have tyson bajan and uh if fields goes down we'll draft higher and look i'm

all for that we know that's a smart strategy if you're not gonna win then uh then that's the way to go but i think that's been somewhat at the cause of it because teams are not trying to find an Andy Dalton to start to get them to six wins anymore. It's like if we're going to be bad, we're going to be real bad. But anyway, I didn't want to keep you all morning. You already got stuck in traffic, so it's been a rough one for you. I did want to ask you, though,

what your favorite thing going on in the NFL is right now. What is your favorite story? What are you the most excited about? Other than, of course, Dobbs Mania, which has taken over. Dobbs Mania is not even good. We need something better than that. But that's what I've been going with. But what's the most exciting thing to you in the NFL right now?

I mean, I think part of it is this battle that we're talking about of defenses fighting back, how it's working, how it's impacting offenses, how it is changing. I think that is a really interesting dynamic that's happening right now. The Josh Dobbs thing is great. I wouldn't even extend it. I think so, you know, you can debate where the level of the average quarterback is now, right?

It might be the same as it's ever been. But I do think that the style of the average quarterback in today's NFL now is more exciting. Like, we have more interesting, fun-to-watch, meh quarterbacks than ever before, right? If you go back 10 years, like, your average mid-off of NFL quarterbacks could have been disgusting. Now you get like Sam Howell versus Josh Dobbs. I'm in. I don't even care what the result is. I am here to watch that because those two guys are incredible to watch play.

And there's a whole bunch of those guys. It's wild. Like these quarterbacks that might not be great, might not be terrible, are somewhere in the the middle but have all of a sudden become wildly entertaining to watch uh yeah i i agree it's uh it kind of is taking me back a little bit to the early 2000s when we had and late 90s where we had a lot of quarterbacks just sort of emerge with great teams and we went oh okay, the guy was doing groceries and now is winning the MVP. Great, awesome. Every Favre backup just became like a good NFL starter. And I like that we're seeing some quarterbacks come from other places than just the top of the draft and emerge as running elite offenses.

And there's this opportunity that feels like you can build the great roster and drop somebody into it and it's more than just oh well they have Peyton Manning so there's no other answer and there's so many good quarterbacks in the AFC that nobody has the Tom Brady even Mahomes this year I mean like long term or what we've seen before of course Mahomes was completely dominant but this year there's a lot of people who are playing great at quarterback that you can make a case for and I think that's added a new dynamic that I don't know who's coming out of the AFC I don't know if Mahomes all of a sudden flips that switch in the second half of the season and goes full MVP mode and then we're laughing at ever questioning the Chiefs, or if they continue to kind of be more up and down than we've expected in the past. And then it's, can anybody catch Philadelphia?

I think in the NFC is really the discussion as well. So an exciting time to be watching football. Who would have thought? Probably us. Probably us. Your podcast, PFF NFL podcast, and people already know it, but it is my Monday morning or Monday evening jog music because you guys go through all of Sunday's games

and break down each game. So obviously I can only cover the one that I'm covering and then catch so much. So you guys keep me caught up on everything you and Steve Palazzolo. So you know that I'm a huge fan of the show. So thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And if people have not listened to your show,

then well, what are you doing? So you should do that. So thanks, Sam. Great to talk to you again, man. You too. Thanks for having me back.