Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Sam Monson breaks down Kirk Cousins's high grades and where the Vikings are headed

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Matthew Coller connects with Sam Monson from Pro Football Focus to talk about why Kirk Cousins ranks so highly by PFF's grading system and what putting that grade under a microscope can tell us about Cousins's game, Monson also discusses where the Vikings would rank among smartest teams analytically speaking and what has to happen in order for them to catch up. He also previews the Vikings-Panthers game and talks about what he's enjoying about the NFL season so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and joining the show making a return for pro football focus Sam Monson what's up Sam how are you what's up how's it going um it's weird it's weird uh it has it's your team gets a win and normally you spend the next couple of days saying here's everything that everyone did right here's why they're a genius the quarterback is great the defense is great everybody's gonna go put a ring on when it comes to february uh this is one of the strangest weeks i don't remember another time where i've spent the entire week basically tearing down every part of the team and saying why don't you just put it in a rocket ship and send it past wherever william

shatner went all the way to the sun with everything you have with your franchise. That's how I've felt this week talking about the Vikings after winning 19-17 against the Lions. Yeah, they've had a weird season, to be honest, like a weird few weeks, a weird five weeks, however long you want to look at it. Dan Campbell kind of came out of that game, was in tears at the fact they'd blown that loss right at the end, and he'd done the right things. you want to look at it um you know dan campbell kind of came out of that game was in tears that

the fact they'd blown that loss right at the end and you know he'd done the right things and i think in terms of going for two playing for the win not playing for the tie on the other hand like you know it was never really yours to win in the first place it required the kind of ridiculous fumble when they were trying to run the run the clock out and end the game for you to be in a position to then throw it away at the death anyway. So, you know, you look at it one way and you say, well, the Vikings should have had that game fairly well in hand, did have that game fairly well in hand, and then put themselves in the fire again

and had to dig it out right at the death. Right. And, I mean, it definitely felt like they dominated the whole game. And I think this is where a lot of the frustration comes from is you are murdering the Lions through most of this game and yet never pulling away as the Vikings just don't seem to do over the last last week, which was just pound somebody's face into the ground and win 44 to 15 or something. Right. That does not happen with the Vikings, even in their best game against Seattle. They still couldn't finish in the red zone. A couple of times they kick field goals. They kept the other team in the game and then, okay. So we pull out of this game though, and say, all right, you you dominated them but kind of squeaked out of it let's look at what all the stats say through five weeks and you go oh look they're 16th and something they're 14th and something the overall pff grades i think have them as like 14th

or 12th or something like that and i think that there's just it feels like people are on the hamster wheel with this team where it just kind of goes round and round. And every Sunday, you can get some pretty good entertainment value out of this. And it sure has been for this season. I mean, this is the closest collection of games in this segment of time that I've ever covered, but it doesn't feel like it's going somewhere. It seems like it's just sort of spinning around and spinning around. And I think that's where a lot of fans feel like, okay, take, take me off this. Let me run somewhere with this football team. Yeah. And I think that's pretty much what we predicted going into the season, right? That this team would be too good to, you know, press the hard reset button that you get a chance to do when you pick in the top five of the draft somewhere,

but probably not good enough to contend with the best teams in the NFL. And, you know, maybe with the seventh seed, they'll squeak into the playoffs or they might make the postseason anyway. But, you know, we don't have a ton of confidence in this team being able to string together multiple wins in the postseason if they get there. And it's no guarantee that they're going to get there when you look at divisions like the NFC West. And, you know, there's a lot of divisions with some very good teams

that are going to be vying for that seventh playoff spot as well so there's a pretty good chance they don't even make it that far and just finish somewhere around 500 locked in this middle of the pack kind of purgatory um and yeah like the worst part about that is like this is what it was supposed to be like when you look at this team going into the season it wasn't a ton of scope for them to be in much either side of this. Like there's clearly too much talent on this roster for them to just be an atrocious side. And, you know, at the very depth of the NFL and vying for one of those top couple of picks in the draft. But there's too much wrong with it for them to be a genuine contender, particularly in a season where you have teams like the Buccaneers and the Rams and, you know, some really good, well put together rosters top to bottom that

don't have the kind of flaws that Minnesota has. And it feels like you and I have been having this conversation. I mean, really for quite some time outside of 2017, the entire time you've been coming on Minnesota shows with me talking about this stuff, it sort of like well uh in 2016 well they're a good football team but i'm not sure that they can go much farther with sam bradford and a defensive approach and then you know a lot of things fall their way one year but even in signing kirk cousins in 2018 there was a lot of questions of is this really the strategy with an expensive middling quarterback who's going to take you very far. And I did want to talk to you, though, about Kirk Cousins and his PFF grades and sort of the numbers and what they say, because as of right now, his PFF grade is absolutely

tremendous. I mean, he is one of the top quarterbacks in the league. I will just take a second here and pull this up for where he stands right now after the Lions game. So he's fourth in terms of PFF grade. Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, Justin Herbert are ahead of Kirk Cousins. right now after the lions game so he's fourth in terms of pff grade tom brady russell wilson justin herbert are ahead of kirk cousins so i think that people maybe fully don't still understand exactly what pff grade tells them versus like what the quarterback is in the whole

picture with all the numbers so help me there yeah and he third in, in just passing grade as well. So like on a throw by throw basis, he is playing incredibly well, which has kind of been the Kirk Cousins story. Like throughout his time in Minnesota, he has outperformed anything they could reasonably have expected from him when they were signing him from Washington. And he's probably gotten consistently better, uh, over that time as well Now, he's been helped by the fact that, you know, you find an Adam Thielen, a Stephon Diggs, and you then replace Stephon Diggs with Justin Jefferson. And, you know, they've been able to find players for him to throw the ball to, which certainly hasn't hurt. But he is playing extremely well. Obviously, PFF grades are a play-by-play analysis of what he's doing.

So they try and add context to the statistics so plays where a play might be a great game might be a really good offensive play like a screen pass with a running back breaks a couple of tackles takes it 50 yards for a touchdown looks fantastic on the box score it's a great statistical play but the quarterback obviously did basically nothing right just drop back delivered a screen pass you expect any quarterback in the nfl to do that there's also a bunch of plays where a quarterback makes an incredible play and the receiver drops it or you know somehow it's not complete at the other end or it's nullified by a holding call whatever it is and these are ways that the pff grade can kind of add that context back and differ a little bit from the

stats you know and on a play-by-play throw-by-throw basis there aren't many quarterbacks at all that are outperforming kirk cousins right now now it's not universal and if you divide it up into certain situations he starts to get worse you know pretty quickly um in particular like kirk cousins has always been a fairly bad quarterback under pressure and this year like when he's kept clean his pff grade is almost 95 and when you pressure him it drops all the way to 57 like that's one of the bigger drops you're going to find in the nfl the statistics have a similar story but it's not as severe um but i i think one of the the narratives on kirk cousins has always been that the more disadvantageous you make the position he's in you know so whether it's third down whether it's late in the game drives whether it's under pressure

whatever it is when you make his life more difficult he tends to wilt rather than thrive now it's not all the time. Like we saw this week, he delivered the drive, right? They gave him a few seconds to get in position to win that game, and he did. He made a couple of big plays when he needed to. So it's not that he isn't capable of it, but generally, when you make his life more difficult, he's going to respond by playing worse, whereas other quarterbacks can kind of rise and meet the the circumstances but just on a big picture broad strokes level like he's playing really well yeah and something interesting about um cousins and his pff grade versus the

overall performance of the offense because i think that well clearly running the football is not a vikings problem like they they are fine to good when Delvin is at his best. They're really good. And yet when you look at expected points added for the Minnesota Vikings so far this year, which I think is a good telling thing of how you performed versus the situation you were put in their 17th, right behind the New York giants. And those two things like they're, they, they don't really connect together in my brain because like, when you look at like, okay, so Tom Brady, he's playing great.

One of the highest graded quarterbacks. Oh, look, there's Tampa Bay with the second highest EPA. Like these two things should match up. And so I guess I, is it play calling? It's not the offensive line, not this time only for one game, but for overall, they've been fine. Uh, it's not the receivers it's not the running back like why are the some of the parts not adding up to the performances

that we see in terms of the greats it's a good question i think part of it is the stuff we just talked about that you know in those higher leverage situations kirk cousins isn't as good as he he is overall or on a down-to-down basis. And the tougher you make life, the more difficult it is. And, you know, the offensive line has definitely been fine, but it's still not good. And if you're going to have a guy who performs badly under pressure, you kind of need that to be good. He's under pressure about 33% of the time right now. You could move that seven percentage points down and put him in a better situation all of a sudden those numbers do start to look a little bit better so

Justin Herbert I think is under pressure like 26 percent of the time this season and the difference between this year and last year is about 10 percent like they've gone from one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL to a pretty good unit that's protecting him quite well all of a sudden so yeah the Vikings offensive line is not a train wreck it's not a disaster but it still certainly isn't helping Cousins and if anything it's probably contributing to the idea that this this whole thing doesn't quite function the way you think it should when you look at Cousins to Jefferson to Thielen to the receivers that they have and the running backs that they have and the ability of this offense to move the ball. And so I thought game day when I was there watching,

I thought, oh, well, this is very conservative play calling, especially on third downs. And what is Clint Kubiak's problem? And then I watched back the tape. And even though Kirk Cousins was rarely pressured against Detroit, there was a play that really popped out in my mind, a third down where there was initial pressure up the middle, but he actually dodged it. And he had all the space in the world. And Justin Jefferson came right in front of him open and he flung it two yards to D.D. Westbrook.

And I thought, that's the thing. I think that's what it is right there. It's not even that he can never move away from pressure or that he can never create some extra space for himself. And it's certainly not a trouble in throwing the football when he's like on a stable platform. It's that when another team starts to break through, even if it's not actual pressure, like by the PFF numbers,

even if it's just perceived pressure, because at the moment he threw it to Westbrook for two yards, wasn't even under pressure i don't even think you guys gave him a pressure and yet he still thought he was and it just sort of snapped in his mind quickly and i think there's just something to that it's like his kryptonite that is very hard to overcome and we've seen several play callers who are really good still end up with this same thing with him yeah i tweeted this a few weeks ago i can't remember what the actual number was but if you even just move kurt cousins off his spot like forget pressuring him just if you make him move in the pocket even if he resets in a

clean pocket and there's no pressure there his numbers fall off a cliff like they they absolutely nosedive the same way it would be for anybody else under pressure. He is, he's just bad. If you disrupt his rhythm within the pocket, um, again, like it's not every play, like he's made some plays under pressure, but overall, generally relative to other quarterbacks, if you can just move him off his spot, if you can just make him start to adjust within the pocket, even if he has time to reset and make the play anyway, it does feel like something just goes wrong. Like it disrupts his entire pattern of thought and he doesn't put the ball where he's capable of putting it when everything

is going well. And you see that so many times, whether it's plays like you talked about, or whether it's plays where, you know, a guy gets a hand on him and most quarterbacks in the NFL are able to get away from that and, you know, make something happen anyway. And Cousins just kind of hits the dirt or even there was one recently where he managed to spin out of the hand and then just kind of fell over. Like there's just something that breaks down whenever you're able to disrupt his kind of process on a play, even if you're not doing it in a major way even if you're not you know creating a ton of pressure and getting a body in his face and forcing him to sort of make an off balance off uh platform throw literally just by disrupting the kind of methodical mechanical process that he has for playing the game it short circuits whatever he's dealing with i also think for his pff grade it's sort of what i will do with a four iron which is i know that

it's not going to get me 300 yards but it's going to get me on the fairway and not ruin my hole so i i feel like it's the same way for him i was looking up at his uh big time throws this year and he's tied with taylor heineke and mac jones for big time throws this year and he's 12 big time throws away from tom brady derrick car josh allen i mean he's 12 big time throws away from Tom Brady, Derek Carr, Josh Allen. I mean, he's got seven. Derek Carr has 19. Tom Brady has 18. And it's been that way for a while with Cousins. And I think this is one of the fundamental frustrations in, like for the fans and sort of doing things the same way. But it's like wanting to be more aggressive with Kirk Cousins. Like, hey, this guy's great at throwing the football.

Like, open it up. Let's let it loose. But I was watching another play on tape yesterday where Justin Jefferson runs a deep post, and there is a safety over top, but there's a throw there to be made, and it's Justin Jefferson. And instead, it's a check down to the fullback.

And it's like, that's the thing. That's the thing right there is I think philosophically, I want to say, open it up. I want to say, Hey, give them the Jamis plan and see if you can throw for 5,500 yards or something, just throw it down the field, but getting him to do it. That's that's sort of the throws you didn't make. Don't show up on the pff grade i guess is the way i would think of it i think there is there's a kind of cautiousness and conservatism

to both the play calling and kirk cousins to probably work together to depress what they're capable of like i think cousins have shown in the past that if you do kind of force him to be a little bit more aggressive he can make some spectacular throws but left to his own devices i think he would skew in the other direction and typically take the check down or take the underneath play and not go for the big the kill shot that everybody that a lot of other quarterbacks would go for and then you know the the way the offense and the team generally functions like fourth down decisions and all these kinds of things like we're reaching a point now a tipping point where the smart teams teams in the NFL have a much better handle on what that opens up for you in terms of potential.

And the likes of Brandon Staley or John Harbaugh are all these smart coaches, Kevin Stefanski in Cleveland. They, these guys understand that going for more on fourth down is giving you a bunch of extra opportunities for your passing attack. It's giving you a bunch more first, second, and third downs, which is where you do the damage. It's just rolling the dice a little bit to keep a drive going and to steal an extra few percentage points. And Pete Carroll was saying today that, look, the analytics would tell you to go for it every fourth down, but it's not always the right decision. Well, the point is the analytics don't tell you to go for it in every fourth down.

They just tell you to go for it on a lot more than you're currently going for it. And the smart teams are realizing that and they're winning because of it. Like the Chargers against Kansas City, like they understood they're facing Kansas City. So you need to be more aggressive on those fourth downs. And they stole drives by doing it. Like the best teams in the NFL are doing that for their quarterbacks. And that's helping those guys. Even if their baseline doesn't change one iota, you're giving him an extra chance, right?

You're saying, okay, you didn't get it done on third down. We're going to go for it on fourth. We're going to buy you another chance to make this drive work. And if you still don't get it wrong, or if you still don't get it right okay we at least move the ball a little bit and we're going to be in the same situation anyway so i think you know cousins is definitely part of it but the team could help him more by doing those things yeah i'd be willing to find out if i were them like how does it work when you do that? And in 2018, I think they were starting down that path. And then Mike Zimmer just pulled the choker on the dog and said, nope, we're not going there. And then they've never gone back to that way. And I think it

drove him crazy. The cousins has his warts, but that's the thing, right? Like you're going to make some mistakes when you have, this is like fourth you will fail and a lot of coaches think well what if we don't get it then like well what if you don't i don't know you just score again like this is this is what a lot of teams are sort of thinking if we if we don't get it at the 50 yard line and they kick a field goal or something like they and also universe doesn't collapse into the ocean if you look at this team like what what are you protecting by being that conservative, right? Like, if you're like the Bucs, right, you can make an argument that, hey, look, we are the presumptive favorite in the NFC. We are defending Super Bowl champion.

We think we're going to be in contention for the number one seed. Like, we don't want to screw that up, right? We don't want to blow it by going front on a fourth down and not getting it and then giving a team that shouldn't have been beating us a chance to win. If you're the Vikings, we've just talked about it, you're probably getting trapped in this purgatory world of not being anything, just being stuck between being terrible and being good. The best you're going to hope for this season is to sneak into the playoffs and probably get bounced one game and done.

What's the downside here like if you you screw it up and you lose a game i mean okay but what are we losing what are we what is at risk that we need to be like so conservative we can't possibly risk these fourth down decisions there's no downside to a team like minnesota being one of those teams that pushes the boundaries and like let's see how far in the other direction we can go and how much we can actually help ourselves by going for it more. And I felt that way when I was watching the game just last week. Like, I can't believe this is a game where a coach is coaching for his job. I can't believe this is the approach that you're taking. You would think that it's sort of like, all right, throw off the shackles, caution to the

wind. We got to win. uh the only time i've ever heard mike zimmer talk that way is when he's saying we've got to run delvin more like oh who cares if he's hurt we gotta run him more we gotta win games like what about the throwing i don't know so uh i was gonna ask you this more of a broad question because i've been thinking about it recently is the first iteration of mike zimmer is sort of you can sort of break it into two, right? Like the pre Kirk and post Kirk. Um, I think that a lot of people viewed the Vikings, a very smart franchise that they were doing a lot of the right things and they were built well. And, um, they had a good, you know, good coach that maybe wasn't like the most progressive, but, um, very, very good defensively.

It adapted many times defensively and still is. I feel like if you were doing all the rankings, smartest franchise in the league, that based on their contracts they give out, decisions they make in the front office, and the conservative coaching style, tell me where you think, because you cover the entire league. But I feel like they have just plummeted down that list. Yeah, I don't think they're quite that bad,

but I think they're somewhere in that middle of the pack and probably skewing towards the lower half you know and that that's the thing is it isn't it's not a level it's not a constant it's it's evolving and teams like the chargers like the browns like the you know all those teams the ravens all those teams that are pushing the boundaries of all those things like that's moving theposts now. And if you're just doing the same thing you've always done, because this is the way you do it, and this is the way you think you win games. Well, now you're giving up percentage points every time you step on the field against these teams that are doing those things. And even, even against the Lions, right? Like Dan Campbell,

they get the score late and they go for the win. They don't play for overtime. They understand that, look, we're the Detroit Lions. We are an underdog in this game. The team over there is better than we are. We don't want to start a new period, a new quarter, a new 10-minute overtime period and play it like it's a 50-50 proposition because it isn't. They're a better team than we are.

So we need to try and win it right now. And, okay, it didn't work out for them. The Vikings end up going down and scoring anyway but like that is the right call whereas can you imagine the Vikings making that call in the same situation they're kicking the point and they're going to overtime and like these are the things that are costing teams wins over a longer period of time and the Vikings aren't good enough right now to be like passing up free win percentage points in any given game. Like they're a team that they've made some mistakes

when it comes to personnel decisions. And the only way of offsetting that is to do something different, is to try and overcome that with the stuff that doesn't require an additional injection of talent or an extra player to be signed or a guy to not get hurt. Like these are things anybody can do. So if you're not doing them, you're just you're losing. You're falling behind the people that are.

I think what you want as a fan base out of your leadership is to feel like you are at the front of that race. You don't have to have the, whatever year it was, 2012 Chip Kelly necessarily, where you're lining up tackles at wide receiver. You don't have to be doing the craziest stuff, but you have to feel like, yeah, our team is the one that looks at a running back who's perpetually injured and says, you know what? Maybe we're not going to give them the biggest contract in the league would you what you want to be the one that says hey it's

it's fourth down and we've got this you know the numbers that say it's really strong go for fourth and those numbers are not always right by the way like one person or one bot tweets out your team did it wrong and everyone's like oh analytics they all agree and you're like okay that's one person's model who's not watching the game um because i think there was someone's model who said that the dan campbell shouldn't have gone for two and bleep that like that is that is the wrongest wrong thing like of course he should have gone for two there you're the freaking lions but anyway uh my point is just that like that's what you want out of your team you want to feel like yeah we're like leading the way here. We're not lagging behind in our philosophies.

Because if you're lagging behind, and other teams have Justin Herbert and Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady, and there is a clear 10 great quarterbacks in the league that can win a Super Bowl every year, I don't think necessarily that you have one. You have one that needs a lot of things to go right. So if you get all those things to go right by doing everything the most statistically smart way or logically smart way, then you give yourself a chance. And I feel like they've sort of earned being this two and three type of team by not being necessarily cutting edge. Yeah. And there's a ton of different ways now that you need to be smart, right? You need to apply all the information you have when it comes to personnel decisions. You need to do

it in terms of contract and roster management. You need to do it in game in terms of, you know, fourth down decisions or time clock management, all these kinds of things. And the smartest teams, again, the league are making sure that they have smart people involved in each one of these areas so that it isn't one guy trying to juggle it all right like the head coach isn't trying to manage the clock and figure out whether he should go for it on fourth down and you know run all these numbers and and figure out like what the like what the play call looks like here given our our down and distance and given the what we've been doing in terms of run plays, all this kind of stuff. There's people in their ears, right? There are people dedicated to each one of these

areas so that the coach is becoming more and more like the CEO and the guy who's just making the call based off having all the information presented to him. But if you're not doing that as a team, if you're just relying on a guy being good at the job, again, you're just not maximizing your efficiency. You're falling behind the teams that are doing that, who also have a smart football guy and Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay and whoever it is you want to name. But on top of all that, they have people in the rear about fourth down decisions and everything like that. Like, so you're just it's an advantage. Like it just is. And if you're not doing all that, and particularly if you're not doing it, if there's no evidence of it happening, like in any area, which is, I think, Minnesota's problem right now.

It's not that they're sharp in one area, but fourth downs, they're way behind everybody in fourth downs. There's just very little evidence of them incorporating this anywhere, which means you're just falling a half a step behind across the board. And the only way of offsetting that is talent right is basically having an incredible draft out of nowhere that vaults you back ahead of everybody else because you stumble upon five guys and the vikings haven't done that they've they've found some great players justin jefferson you know they've found some fantastic players in the draft but not enough to offset all those things. Yeah. And I was, I guess I was just thinking about too, you know, like where all this,

where maybe the ownership or whoever, you know, thinks this is going right. Like where, where would you see if you're doing this process that you've been doing for a while, like where would you see it changing in terms of the results? And I can't really come up with anything, but I wanted to ask you about the path going forward and just, just like how you think this plays out. I mean, they've got this game against Carolina who I don't think is very good. They can put three and two in their standings, but I'm not convinced. So they should be able to beat Carolina, but it's kind of a pick them game in Vegas.

So I don't know. Either way, though, like win or lose. It's hard for me to see anything different than sort of what it's been. But how do you kind of view the path through the rest of the season for the Vikings? It's a tough spot. I think we're going to see it very similar to what we've seen before. They're good enough that they're going to be they're going to be able to hang with most teams in the NFL. There are going to be very few teams that just annihilate the Vikings in a given week. But equally, they struggle to put away teams that they should be much better than. So you're going to see a bunch of games like that Detroit game where the Vikings should have it comfortably won. And it's a struggle and it's

a grind. And they're going to have to get out of those games like that. And ultimately, it's a struggle and it's a grind and they're going to have to get out of those games like that and ultimately it's going to you know spit its way out to that that end result that we've been anticipating this middle of the road team for the vikings like they need to figure out how do we get out of this because right now we're just in this cycle of pretty good pretty good pretty good pretty good re-up car cousins pretty good pretty good like we're just trapped here so what's the way forward like how do we get out of this this system and you know I think the ownership one of the things they should be doing is like sitting down in the off season and saying okay here are all these different ways that data and analytics are impacting and franchises what are we planning on doing because again like we're trapped in this cycle right now so if you're telling me there's no again like we're trapped in this cycle right now

so if you're telling me there's no hard reset we're not kicking cousins to the curb we're not drafting a guy at the top five we're just not in position to do any of those things you need to show me what is changing like what are we doing to incrementally move this thing on even if it takes a couple of years um but like is the situation that the Vikings are in right now is that the rest of the season is pretty much written in stone already. We don't know quite which games are going to go and which in the win column or the loss column. But we know pretty much it's going to be seven to nine in the win column

and seven to nine in the loss column. And that's your season. Now you've got to figure out like how we get better than that. Right. And then this is what I enjoy about my own audience, Sam, is that I think there are a huge number of fans that don't think about the team all week and flip on the TV and they root for their team to win and we'll see what happens. And that is a cool way to watch the NFL for sure.

But I think if you take the time to listen to this podcast, like your perspective on the NFL is just bigger. And I've really appreciated all the people who have sent me notes and said, like, this is what I want to see from my franchise and we're not seeing it. And that's where if they lose to Carolina and make some sort of change,

it might seem like, Oh, wow. They, they made a change with really good to head coach. And I would say, I agree a really good head coach, but not a direction overall that I think is going to get you all that far. So I think that that's become a very fascinating discussion. That's much more interesting than say how old the Udo played against the lions. It was fine, let me ask you one more, one more thing. How about that? We're not discussing guards. That's an improvement.

Yeah. Um, one more thing, Sam, I want you to tell me because it has felt, it's just felt like a heavy week here on the old, uh, purple insider ship. I want you to tell me what you're excited about for the rest of the season. Like just what's got you jacked up. What are you guys on your show talking about where you're like, man, I can't talk about this enough. I mean, I think seeing so many of these young quarterbacks take giant steps forward is always fun. Like Justin Herbert, not regressing and him taking a further step forward and looking like he's on his way to being one of the next great young quarterbacks is pretty amazing. All of a sudden, Lamar Jackson is able to pass in obvious passing situations like that isn't his kryptonite anymore. He's being put in those spots and he's thriving. Kyla Murray taking that next step forward. There's so many of these guys now that we have a ton of quarterbacks like

there used to be for years. There was just those sort of four or five, right? Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees. And the list didn't go much further than that. And now we're starting to open it up. We might have like 10 guys that teams are really happy with and think they can win a Super Bowl with. That's pretty awesome to see. Yeah, I mean, I agree.

I feel like that is the number one story in the NFL. Like weirdly, when Mahomes arrives, there's almost nothing like him. And then all of a sudden there is like all of a sudden, like here's Josh Allen and here's Justin Herbert. And they've just sort of popped up like that quickly. And then the other teams that are competing, their quarterbacks might not be as good like Cleveland, but then they've got these rosters that are stacked. And I feel like the sheer number of teams that I could see winning the Super Bowl is probably like the most obvious thing to say, but I, I feel like I don't have it pinned down. I feel like there's so many different ways that this could go. Yeah. I mean, it is pretty open this year. I mean, the chiefs, the chiefs are not, they're not well right now.

Like we expect the chiefs to be the best team in the AFC, to be in the AFC championship game at a minimum. Their defense stinks. And they might not be quite as bad as they look given the schedule they've had, but they're bad. And their offense is turning the ball over in a way they haven't the last couple of years. And the thing is, if you look at the kind of turnover or luck they've had the last couple of years, you can make a pretty good case that this is just variance and this is what they've been due for the past couple of seasons. And if that's true, this sort of stumble is not going away. They're going to need to do something different to get back to beating these teams because at the moment they're too easy to score on and they're throwing away the ball too often to be the Chiefs offense that we know and have come to get used to.

So Kansas City not being this mortal lock to go back to the championship game in the Super Bowl is a hell of a story as well. Yeah, them being fallible. And I always like 90s references here. And Morton Anderson was just on the the show so i'll make one it's sort of like when the um cowboys sort of got toward the end of their run and they were still great but they weren't as great they didn't quite have the talent uh they didn't quite keep that offensive line together guys got old but they were still great and so you're like are they gonna do it they're gonna do it anyway just because they're them or are they failable is somebody gonna come get them so the that happening to kansas city the other night and how that maybe even causes them to make adjustments and changes will be uh interesting

to see sam monson it's always great to get together with you and people should listen to the pff nfl podcast with you and steve palazzolo because it's the best and uh i bounce back and forth on my jogs between uh eric and george and your guys show. And every once in a while, Austin Gale gets in there from time to time. So, but I, I appreciate your guys show and everyone should go check it out after they listen to this. So take care of Sam.

Really appreciate your time, man. Anytime. Take it easy.