Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Sam Monson breaks down what happened to the 2020 Vikings and what needs to happen this offseason

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Matthew Coller is joined by Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus to talk about the Vikings' defense, the bets that they made this year that went belly up, the pairing of Mike Zimmer and Kirk Cousins, what limits Cousins and what could make him better and the old school Vikings that could help the Vikings if they were around these days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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when you want to hit the reset button, reach for the beer that is made to chill. Get Coors Light in the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate! Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here. And now that it is all over and the dust has settled on the Minnesota Vikings season, it is time to check in with Pro Football Focus's Sam Monson. What is up, Sam?

Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me. Bye. Well, it's okay. I mean, I have to tell you the truth, that, you know, when you start a business around covering a team, you hope that you get to cover them into late January or early February. And here we are in early January instead talking about the draft and free agency, which is exciting and I love it. But, you know, I really expected to be covering playoff games at this point right now. And I guess I want to deconstruct this season with you and just get your perspective on a number of different things. I want to start with defense and just what defense sort of means

in the year 2020 because the NFL set point records. The Vikings finished 11th in points but third all-time for their point total if that sort of tells the story of how crazy scoring was this year. But the Vikings, they tried a lot of things and a lot of players that they had been developing that just did not work. And I think that they made a lot of bets that ended up going bust all at once. And I wonder if you think that, you know, Mike Zimmer said that they miscalculated on a lot of things. If you think that the process was bad to start with, with the defense, or if it did just kind of not go their way, and that happens sometimes with defense.

Yeah, I think overall, a lot of what the Minnesota Vikings did heading into the season was reliant on rookies, and not just on defense on both sides of the ball and anytime you need multiple rookies to have a significant impact on day one it's a low percentage shot you're probably aiming for a really small target and the chances of all that working out are minimal now you know while all the defensive ones almost to a man crapped out on, on the other hand, you got Justin Jefferson who literally stepped into the role vacated by

Stefan Diggs. And if anything upgraded it, I mean, that shouldn't be possible. So on the one hand, they hit like an absolute home run on that side of the ball. And then on defense, it just didn't work out. They had a stanked group of these young guys um all playing the same position and almost none of them showed much um so i i think that part of it screams bad process to me like if you are that reliant on a group of rookies playing immediately and being good it just doesn't seem like a a strong bet to be making year on year.

That being said, you know, the defensive line had nobody really of any kind of quality, but then Danelle Hunter didn't play this year. You know, we were expecting them to have an all pro in Danelle Hunter and then maybe no, no help. And they didn't even have that. Like their best player on the defensive line wasn't playing all year. And it's tough to criticize him too much for that.

They tried to sort of throw a Band-Aid on it with the Yannick Ngakwe trade, and that didn't really work out. Although, you know, maybe as much because the team found themselves in a completely different spot than they thought they would be and just cut bait rather than continued with it. I think he could have been something over the course of the year. But I think ultimately they just found themselves in a much different situation than they thought they were going to be and had too many, you know, too many bets that they needed to pay off that

just didn't. Yeah, I think the other bets too that didn't pay off were the ones that they could have known wouldn't, and that's on players that they already had a sample size on from at least the year before or a couple of years before and i made a list of all of them these are the guys that that played over 250 snaps that they had at least one year of sample size with afadi adenabo jaleel johnson jalen holmes armin Watts, Holton Hill, Chris Boyd, Hercules Mata'afa. The highest graded one of those guys by PFF has a 64, and the lowest has a 35. It's out of 100, so you usually expect that these guys that you're developing are going to give you more, and instead, 71st out of 71 defensive tackles was Jaleel Johnson. That's a guy that they had for four years.

So they had three training camps. They had game samples of him playing, and they decided, no, that's good enough. We're going to have to roll with that when Michael Pierce opted out, and they decided not to sign someone like Snacks Harrison or any other defensive tackle to move in. And this is where I say that, like you said yeah the bets on the rookies but it even sort of extends farther of you guys really thought Holton Hill was going to be the thing right or Mike Hughes who had been perpetually injured and that's where I think

along the same lines maybe Mike Zimmer believed too much in his ability to coach him up and to scheme as opposed to hey we need to just find some other bodies here who can play because we should know that these guys can. Yeah. The, the Mike Hughes one, I think it was another big one as well. It's like you had, you know, a couple of years worth of data on this guy and the two things you learned is one he'd struggled and two, he hadn't been able to stay on the field and both those things continued this

year. Like he barely played and when he played, it wasn't good wasn't good so again that was that was a lesson you could have seen coming and ultimately you just you place too much faith on what was inevitably just a long shot um to try and get quality play and you know Zimmer kind of recognizing himself you know when he said earlier in the season that these guys are in kindergarten right now and we need to get them on, you know, in the master's track like that. That's a leap that doesn't happen in a rookie season. And that's fine if that's your plan. If this is a long play that we're just going to load up

this secondary with young guys and try and, you know, make a group out of them in two, three years' time, suffer through some early growing pains, that's okay. But that's why, you know, you weren't good this year because you had a secondary that just couldn't cover and maybe that'll pay off in 2021 or 2022 but for this season it was you know one of the Achilles heels that the team had and then this is why I don't like to get on board with the oh we had a bad a lot of bad luck like okay I mean, I mean, yeah, Daniil Hunter, of course, that's bad luck. But some of the injuries that they were counting or things that went wrong are like, come on, man.

I mean, if you're counting Holton Hill's injury, that guy was playing as bad as any corner in the league when he got hurt. And the person who replaced him, you know, Jeff Gladney or Cam Dantzler or even Chris Jones who they threw in there, like it wasn't much of a difference. Mike Zimmer brought up George Iloka getting hurt this year it's like come on Mike are we really counting you know the backup safety who never had to play so here's what I want to know from you your opinion on this is how far away are they because this I think is a main point of contention

with some Vikings fans on the defensive side where I think you can look at it through the purple glasses of well you get Hunter back Pierce back and you add a couple of pieces and all of a sudden you're good again and I guess I think that you need more than that and you need other bets to click like we don't know if Gladney and Dantzler can play well over 16 games. That's not decided after one year. I think that next year they should have still realistic expectations about what this defense can be. But I also think it can reach the baseline of being good enough to get you into the playoffs and have you be a contending team,

unlike this year where it just wasn't good enough. Well, that's the thing is that you don't need to get good. You just need to get not terrible. And that's like the lesson of the NFL right now. Look at the Kansas City Chiefs, right? Their defense went from being an abomination to just being good enough to hold up its end of the bargain while the offense went to work and did its job. And that was the difference between being a good team and falling short and going on a crazy Super Bowl run. And that's what the Vikings need to shoot for,

is that this team doesn't need to go from where it was to 2017 and be a great defense. They just need to get to the point where they can stand up on their own two feet and not just capitulate every single week. They need to be able to get some kind of pressure. They need to have some kind of baseline of coverage on the back end. And a guy like Cameron Dantzler, if he continues to develop, would be a big part of that. But they need more than one corner to do it. So I don't think they're far away, but they do have significant holes and they do need a lot of turnover to make that happen.

The other thing that this team, I think, generally needs is to embrace where their strength is. Like, they have talent on offense and could light a lot of defenses on fire, particularly the way the NFL is right now, as we saw this year, where offenses are just cooking the league over. Like, embrace that. Stop running from your biggest strength

and trying to establish the run and limit your best playmakers. Stefan Diggs worked his way out of this place because he was pissed off that he was never going to have a big enough role to do what he wanted to do and to maximize what he, what his performance. And also by the way, helped the team win the most. Diggs goes over to Buffalo and immediately leaves the league and receiving like you could do that here.

If you just embraced the principles and threw the ball around a little bit more. And look, Kirk Cousins has taken a lot of cramp over the years, but that combination of Cousins, Thielen, and Jefferson or Diggs before him, it's good. It works. It can, you know, score on pretty much anybody. So put the ball in his hands more and let it happen.

Well, that leads me perfectly, Sam, into where to go this offseason because there's going to be the raging debates around draft time, and I'm excited for it, of do you draft a defensive end? Do you draft another corner, which will drive Vikings fans insane but kind of makes some sense? Do you draft a playmaking Tyron Matthews safety if there's one out there? Do you draft a wide receiver in a receiver draft that is just stacked with potential high-end talents? And, of course, as always for Vikings fans, the guard position that will just never be fixed for the rest of our entire existence.

So not just with the draft, but where do you start? I mean, if you're making out the list and you're the Vikings, where do you begin for this is the must-happen thing for this roster to get back on track? I think they're one of those teams that's in a reasonably good position in terms of they have a lot of needs to fill, and they're going to be sitting at a point in the draft you know the middle of the first round where something's going to be there you

know what i mean you don't need to you don't need to lock yourself into like right if we don't come out of this with a first round cornerback we're screwed right you've already taken that shot it didn't work out anyway so what the hell like just sit you've got plenty of needs you can sit where you are and you can take the best player essentially that slides to your available draft deck you don't need to box yourself into this corner and go chasing something that that is a desperation move so I kind of like that as a concept for a team even though you know the flip side of that obviously is it means that you know you've got you've got enough problems that need to be filled. But I think the middle of the first round is going to be a good spot for that.

As you say, it's a great receiver draft. On the other hand, this team does not like opening it up with three wide receivers and airing it out. I don't know if that makes sense to spend a first-round pick on that position given that. But, you know, you've got to keep swinging on that offensive line because you haven't got it right yet. As painful as it is to keep missing, it's not going to fix itself. So you have to keep throwing resources at it. Anywhere on defense would be a good spot.

I think pass rusher is the obvious thing. You know, Danell Hunter will be coming back. Even Hunter, I think, is far from a sure thing in terms of the kind of impact that he brings on a yearly basis. But an interior presence to go alongside with him, a bookend to rush the passer from the other side, that would be, I think, a perfect spot for the first round, particularly because I don't think it's a great pass rushing free agency group. I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. There are many great designs.

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Now, here's my case for wide receiver, just while we're down this road, is you are one ankle tweak away from B.C. Johnson or Chad Beebe being your guy, and that worked for one year with Stephon Diggs, but I don't want to test it over a long period of time. I mean, if Justin Jefferson, you know, breaks a finger or something, then all of a sudden you're in a really, really weak position when that's your player that's going to drive the success of your offense long term. And the other thing is, too, that, you know, having those extra playmakers,

they just make life a little easier for Cousins. And I don't know how you feel about this, but I think that they make things harder on Cousins in some ways that play to his strengths, like throwing down the field. But he's pressured a lot, and he's in third down a lot, and he's always got to throw it down the field is sort of like what their strategy is to run the play actions and be working the ball down the field is sort of like what their strategy is to run the play actions and be working the ball down the field and he never has a third wide receiver that runs a jet sweep and you hand him

the ball and he runs for 20 yards this just like doesn't happen it's like if delvin cook is not helping you with the run game then hey buddy you're on your own and i just feel like a bubble screen to a fast guy who runs for 20 yards every once in a while would be, I don't know, maybe helpful to Cousins. I agree with you, but I just don't think that, I don't think it's a talent thing that's preventing that from happening. So I don't think swapping out a BC Johnson or a Chad Beebe for, you know, anybody in the draft is going to change that philosophy. I think that's just not what they do. So consequently, you're right. The best thing that one of those guys would give you is this inbuilt depth and a contingency that if something

happens to one of your two starters, you're still fine. But the times where that isn't the case, I think you probably just waste that guy sitting on the bench or running pointless pass patterns that are never going to get targeted. So I'm not saying it's a bad move. Anytime you add anytime you add a serious talent to the wide receiver room, it's in theory, it's a good thing. It should make you significantly better. But the Vikings just seem like a team that is not going to take advantage of the potential upgrade that offers them, even if they had one land in their laps. Maybe I'm still just sour about the Cordero Patterson thing and not using him correctly, which Mike Zimmer admitted, by the way, that they could have used him in better ways. But I've always thought that's a great thing to have, somebody who just put the ball in their hands and they can do something. And the Vikings are severely lacking that.

It doesn't need to be a first-round wide receiver, but somebody who is fast fast who can make a play with the ball they were missing that outside of Justin Jefferson because really I mean Adam Thielen is still somewhat of a deep threat Irv Smith can go down the field a little but if you're not talking about anyone outside of Jefferson who's fast and dangerous with the ball in their hands I think that's like the next step because here's the thing Mike Zimmer's talking about how much he loves the offense, and I get that. But you finish 11th. Like, okay, 11th is fine. That's good.

But that's not going to get you where you need to go, even if you have an average defense for next year, even if it improves or even if it gets a little better than average. This is a thing that I wanted to talk with you next about, is just you have followed the Minnesota Vikings for a really long long time and I think the biggest frustration of their fan base right now is that it feels like you have slumped yourself into the when it's good you win 10 when it's not good you win 7 I think the Vikings fans in the 90s probably felt this way where it's like okay Rich Gannon's our quarterback and maybe we'll make the playoffs or whatever until Randyandy moss gets there and changes everything and i want to know from you if you see a path out of that existence i i mean i think a huge amount of it is embracing

change and not just settling with this is the way we do it. And like, so 11th is fine. It's not bad. On the other hand, it's an underachievement versus like the individual grades of all the components that make up your offense, right? Kirk Cousins was a top 10 quarterback this year. Justin Jefferson, I think, finished second in PFF grades. Dalvin Cook finished second in PFF grades. I think Adam Thielen was also top 10 as well. So like everything that makes up this offense,

other than the offensive line is a top 10 caliber unit. So 11th is like a failure. It's a, it's, you've, you've added a drag factor to the sum of the parts that you have there, but which point stop celebrating that. That isn't a good thing. That means you have reigned them back from what they should be capable of. And when, you know, the analytics guys post these charts of like the most aggressive play callers in the NFL in terms of just calling passes on the first and 10, which is a better play. The Vikings are always buried at the bottom of that chart. And these are simple free wins. It's low hanging fruit that you should be able to just pick up off the ground and add a percentage to your chance of winning games that the Vikings aren't doing. And I don't know that they show any real inclination or desire to do that. You know, Mike Zimmer is a talented coach.

He does a lot of good things, but he is, you know, classically old school and brings with it all of the negatives that are associated with that. That guy is not going to embrace the cutting edge of anything. That guy is going to do it the way he thinks it should be done. And the way he thinks it should be done is to run the ball on first and 10 as much as possible. Dalvin Cook is one of your best weapons, so load him up with carries. And it just means that you're capped at this level. While the Kansas City Chiefs and all these teams are just, you know,

pushing the boundaries on how good, how explosive, and how productive an offense can be, the Vikings are sitting there going, well, you know, we've got some weapons, but we're going to roll with Dalvin Cook, and if the run game doesn't function too much, we're not in a great place. I think that there's also the question of with Cousins, when you look at the body of work, and I was going through this for an article I'm writing about the future of the quarterback position for the Vikings, and 2019 he's the fifth best by PFF grades.

I mean, he had a fantastic 2019 season. This year he's 10th. You know, he was 10th or something in 2018 and 20th in 2017 and 10th in 2016 something like this right it's it's always in that same like sort of right around the top third of the league and that's good but he also has his falcons games or his week 16 in 2019 game against the packers where he just makes too many mistakes for you to win. The pressure rates remain the same every single year. The sack rates remain high. It seems every single year.

And I guess there's a part of me that wonders like, are you capped there as well? Even though he has a lot to be happy about and a lot that he does really well that the shortcomings are going to be the shortcomings and he just is always what he's going to be yeah i think kirk cousins is a good quarterback a very good technical quarterback um and i think he's probably proved to be better in minnesota than i thought he was going to be um in that he's threatened that top five range more than the top 10 to 15. He's, I think, taken steps forward and gone even further ahead of where I thought he would

be as a baseline. And he's done that despite the limitations we just talked about in terms of the offense, right? He's not a guy that's being helped out by the system to a dramatic degree. They're not giving him cheap, easy, free yards and points and touchdowns the way the best offenses in the league are for their quarterbacks. As spectacular as Patrick Mahomes is, he leads the league in touchdowns on screens and pop passes and all those kinds of things as well. So he's incredible. He's doing all those special things. He's also got a bunch of plays where he doesn't even have to think.

He just has to pop the ball forward and Tyree Kill scores a touchdown for him. There's no reason Kirk Cousins couldn't have those as well right it doesn't always need to be Kirk Cousins making something happen you could give a free cheap easy pass pop pass to Justin Jefferson then Cousins just becomes a spectator on the play and generates some yardage so I think Cousins has done well and has not necessarily been helped out by his offense um and i think he's probably been better at that than i gave him credit for on the other hand he is limited right he's never going to be mahomes or rogers or he's never going to be a top top quarterback in the nfl but he is getting paid like one so at some point you should always have your eye out on what the

potential alternative options are it's not to say you'll always have your eye out on what the potential alternative options are. It's not to say you'll ever take one. You might come to the realization every single year that, you know what, it's not as much as painful as the price tag is. This is the best option for us this year. And it'll be the best option for us next year and the year after that. On the other hand, if you happen to be sitting at 14 in the draft and, you know, Zach Wilson somehow falls into your lap at 14 or whatever something weird happens and you suddenly get presented with an alternative

option that's either a hell of a lot cheaper or a hell of a lot better you would be crazy not to at least consider it and i think that's where the vikings are it's where a team like the 49ers are there's a lot of teams in the nfl that are in that similar kind of boat where you're not bad at quarterback. In fact, you're actually pretty good. A lot of teams would be very keen to swap places with you. On the other hand, you haven't hit the jackpot. You're not maximizing that great quarterback either on a rookie deal or even a guy that's so good we're happy to pay him the top price tag in the NFL,

and you don't need to think about it again. You're at least in this boat where you shouldn't think that that position is permanently settled until Kirk Cousins isn't playing with you anymore. He's not good enough for you to not have your eye out on various alternatives. Do you have a good Kirk Cousins comparison? I mean, not necessarily in the league today, because I think that you could make it with some teams, but even if you try to make the Goff or Garoppolo comparison, like those guys made the Super Bowl,

so that's not something that Cousins has done. I mean, maybe even when I try to think about like Matt Stafford or something, his organization is so dysfunctional and so bad. I'm probably more critical of Stafford than maybe the outside perspective, but at the same time locked into the same type of limited quarterback in some ways and needs this, this, this, this, and this, but makes a ton of money. And I don't know. I guess I think of like Derek Carr even kind of being this way where it's really hard to put all those pieces together and he's good and you take them.

But at the price, it makes it tough. I don't know. I feel like it's just always I'm trying to think of different ways to think of Kirk Cousins and his contract without just saying like, yeah, I guess you're kind of stuck because you're never going to be able to work around it. I think Cousins and Derek Carr share a lot of things in common. They're very similar in terms of they are both technically excellent quarterbacks who understand the game. They're very smart. They can articulate what's going on. But the more disadvantageous a passing situation you put them in, the more their flaws start to show up.

And they, you know, that notion of the thing that's hard to quantify for quarterbacks, the intangibles or the ability to be clutch or the ability to just make the right play at the right time and adjust your game with the situation and all the stuff that's probably not even conscious for the most part but the great quarterbacks have and the other guys don't i don't think either of those quarterbacks are good at that stuff and they're they're they're so good at the basics and the technical aspect that it kind of it doesn't matter most of the time um you know they're able to

overcome the fact that they're not as naturally gifted at that stuff as a Peyton Manning. But it is what limits them. And, you know, when you put those guys in a hole, whether it's with pressure, whether it's chasing a game, whether it's, you know, third and long, whatever the situation is, when you just make their life more difficult, it's when that starts to sort of seep through the cracks. In a way that it didn't with Peyton Manning. You know, there's a chart that I've seen where effectively your aggressiveness down the field should change according to the situation, right?

If you're in a hole, you should be more aggressive. If you have a big lead, typically you scale it back and let the run game take care of it. And the great quarterbacks, it's like an S curve. And the great quarterbacks, their play almost exactly matches the S that it's supposed to have. It's a perfect match for the curve. Brady, Peyton Manning. And there's no way that that is, like, conscious.

They just know intrinsically that this is what we should be doing. Kirk Cousins is like a flat line. And Derek Carr is like a flat line. It never seeps in and permeates their brain that, like, this situation causes an adjustment in what I'm doing here, so that on a given play that we might call, you know, you could call the same play down 10 or up 10, and it might change how willing you are to look at a certain read

or how long you stay with the deeper option before you take a shorter secondary read or the check down. And clearly Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, either consciously or otherwise, understand that. Cousins and Carr don't. It doesn't compute. They're running that play and they'll run that play the same, whether they're down 10 points or up 10 points.

And I guess you can make the case or something laudable about that. But I think it is what separates them from those best quarterbacks. And it's why, you know, no matter how good Kirk Cousins plays, and as I say, I think he's been better than most people expected him to be. There's always be that limiting factor. And particularly when you talk about, you know, what separates just being good and making the playoffs and then super bowl team right the difference between just making the postseason and being good enough to win several games once you get there and take home a championship

like you need a quarterback that's capable of doing those things otherwise that is going to be your limiting factor uh you maybe you would call it with kirk like the old facebook thing like dance like no one's watching is what he does he just just does it the same way right like play like you're on the practice field kirk i think that's the best description of it i mean you go back to the game against tampa bay and they're down a couple of scores three scores in the third quarter and they have a nine minute drive and then cousins is asked about it after the game, and he says, well, yeah, I mean, but we had plenty of time. No, you didn't.

It's a finite amount of time, and if you use nine minutes of it, you're really going to have to thread the needle going forward. And there is something with this team. And this is why I think that the Zimmer-Cousins pairing is just – it's always been wonky, and it just gets wonkier as we go along. So you have a coach who's not good at game management and a quarterback who doesn't really understand game situations either or really play to them who just executes the play the right way. And this is why I think there's a thing with this with all 22 film,

where when you watch all 22 film, it's sort of in a bubble, and you don't really pay attention to the score, and you can watch it back and be like, I don't know, Kirk seemed to play great in that game. But if you're there and you watch it and you watch the game flow, then you go, oh, I see why they lost by six points, right, because this happened and this happened and he wasn't aggressive or whatever. So I've always found that kind of funny.

It's like the head coach doesn't make up for the quarterback's shortcomings. The quarterback doesn't make up for the head coach's shortcomings. Yeah, if any, I mean, they both essentially feed into each other's weakness. You know, they both share the same flaw in that regard, and therefore it becomes like a spiral, and neither one of the guys can pull each other out of it. They almost need like, I mean, in theory it should be Kubiak. They need another voice, a guy that's actually good at that stuff,

to take control and steer them both on the right course during those situations, and right now there's nobody doing that. All right. I've got a fun question for you here, but I want to ask one more thing, which is just the 2021 outlook. As much as we've spent this entire time saying, well, they need this, they need this, they need this. And, hey, the quarterback and coach don't match up,

and the quarterback's limited. Okay, okay, okay. Put all that aside, though. The outlook for the future, if they handle the offseason correctly, and if they can bring the offense up a level, I think is still where we're going to set the bar at competing for the NFC North. I'm going to go on the assumption Aaron Rodgers returns to the Green Bay Packers now. The Jordan Love will not be their quarterback.

They're still going to be very, very good next year. I don't think they're going to to set the bar because you have offensive weapons because they're good in the right areas. You know, quarterback is good. It's not great. It's good. The wide receivers, at least too deep, are great. Not even good. They are legitimately great.

They've got other weapons, Irv Smith, Dalvin Cook. They've got an incredible amount of talent on that side of the ball, which is the more important side of the ball in today's NFL. So this team has an immediately really high floor. Then if they can just get a little bit better on defense, creep back towards average as opposed to terrible, things can get better in a hurry. And as I say, the low-hanging fruit of how they could get even better on offense

is there at all times. That is a really easy switch to make. Now, I don't actually anticipate them making it but right doesn't mean to say they can't right and if they ever did that it would be an immediate jump as well I mean if Green Bay has actually figured out this Matt LaFleur Aaron Rodgers dynamic and this is what they are now they are going to take some catching next year like that Rodgers playing at this level is Mahomes-y, and it puts them like contending for a Super Bowl every single year,

almost regardless of what happens at random. So in terms of setting the immediate target as winning the NFC North, I think it's dependent on that. Like if Aaron Rodgers and Matt LaFleur are this from now on, you're probably not catching them unless you assemble a pretty absurd roster. But if they do regress and if Rodgers goes back to being the guy he was the previous few years, then absolutely, this team should immediately be setting their sights on winning back the division

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Check out the description box to find out more. That's bwhustle.com slash join. And I think that initially I believed going into this season that 2021 was going to be like, okay, back to setting the Super Bowl as the bar. That might actually be 2022, but it'll be interesting to see where Cousins' contract goes at that point, how he plays, and that's way down the road. So here's the fun game for you, because I know that you've always followed the Vikings closely.

I want to remove Randy Moss and Adrian Peterson from the equation. Give me, from the last 30 years, Vikings, three Vikings that you could bring back and put on this current roster that would make them instantly a Super Bowl contender next year. So I'll just, I'll just give you one from my perspective. I'll give you Antoine Winfield. I'll bring him back senior, of course. And then you're set at cornerback. You've got the rookies, and then he's locking it down, and he's your superstar. So that's what I mean.

Give me three Vikings that if you could bring them back that are not Randy Moss, because that's too obvious, that would make this team immediately great. I like Antoine Winfield. I think that's a good one. I'm going to leave you to that one so I can steal a fourth. Kevin Williams, right? One of the best three techniques of his generation, an absolute monster up the middle,

a guy that will generate as much pressure as pretty much anybody that isn't Aaron Donald up the middle, and the guy could defend the run as well. So he answers all of your interior pressure problems, makes you stouter against the run as well. Perfect addition to that defensive front um assuming danelle hunter comes back i would avoid adding jared allen to that but he would be an alternative as well like you could just double up on the edge instead of getting the guy up the middle um i'd bring back chris carter uh is that going back too far as 30 years is that pushing it I don't think so um

like and I know I go three deep again yeah and I know that I spent you know 10 minutes saying that it would basically be a waste of time because they're not featuring that third receiver but they harder does give you something different from those guys you know the best hands arguably of all time and a guy that even late in his career transitioned to being something different you know became that slot receiver that they have they run patterns with that guy they just don't seem to ever target him so maybe if chris carter was the option you would go there on third and five or whatever the option was um as for a third one you got to get something on the offensive line right you got to try and fix that um who would be

the best offensive lineman to bring back what about like a jeff christie or uh no random daniel let's go there you go yeah i was going for a 14 time all pro whatever it was yes uh and the stance the you need somebody with something unique which became more absurd down the years by the way like early it wasn't that bad and then suddenly it became something unique. Which became more absurd down the years, by the way. Like early it wasn't that bad, and then suddenly it became something absolutely ridiculous. I was talking with Olin Krutz about this, and he was like, you know, nobody else could have gotten away with that. The only reason he was able to do it was because he was an absolute freak. And then whatever makes you comfortable as a freak, then you just do it. But no one should try that at home.

I would have gone Steve Hutchinson here. I mean, you know, it's got to be a guard. And I think that the difference between Dakota Dozier and Steve Hutchinson, normally guards aren't, right? Like normally guards, we wouldn't say it's, you know, you need to have an all pro there, but that would get you a win or two above replacement. I think the difference

between those two guys and uh the other one I might go with would be like Chris Dolman I mean I think if you had Chris Dolman and Daniil Hunter on opposite sides that even if you were or you know what I mean to your point you could go somebody like Pat Williams who just absolutely beat up gaps and I think is really that would have been important in Zimmer's defense. But also, he could get after the passer a little. He was quick. You know, I would also love to see in today's NFL, I would love to see what a prime John Randall looks like in 2020's NFL, a guy that could play inside, could play outside, can rush the passer,

can defend the run with penetration. I don't know what John Randall would be today. I don't even know. People talk about him. I think people generally mislabel what he was in the first place. I think he played different positions than a lot of people say he did regularly. So I'm kind of curious that in today's NFL with a bit more creativity and a bit more license to use guys like that,

how John Randall would be deployed now and how it would, how successful it would be because, you know, Aaron Donald has changed the game in terms of what people look for, for undersized, quick, disruptive defensive players. Like that was John Randall 30 years ago against guys who were twice his size I'd be all for seeing what that looked like right they could move him all over the place like Jadavion Clowney style where he was sometimes a defensive end sometimes an outside linebacker I'll give you one one low-key underrated one would be David Palmer because they can't punt return for bleep

this year since Marcus Sherrill left. And you could put them at running back. You could put them at wide receiver. That that's my, my Joker player would be David Palmer. I did when I was, when we did that Randy Moss episode for our podcast and I was watching all

these old games from 98. I did repeatedly look at David Palmer and think, dude, that guy now would be so much better. I know. He was wasted in 1998 when nobody did anything creative. Nobody did anything remotely creative. It was just cookie-cutter offense. You take that guy to now and pair him with Andy Reid or something,

that guy would be amazing. I know. He would be like Christian McCaffrey, basically, would be David Palmer. So, Sam like uh christian mccaffrey basically would be david palmer so uh sam monson you guys are doing daily podcasts now where you take a single subject and you just kind of break it down for a few minutes um as opposed to well you're still doing the marathons right you're still mixing yeah okay so you know the two hour podcast we felt so we needed the avenue to be able to go on 10-minute rents on a daily basis. Yes, that's perfect.

Although, yeah, never stop with the marathons because those will cover my jogging for like a week oftentimes. That's our demographic, I'm sure. It's like people with monster commutes, people stuck in a chair for hours on end. Just throw it on, and that's where we get our money. Well, make sure you check it out with you and Steve Palazzolo, as always. Although I think Vikings fans by now know where to find you, Sam Monson. You're the best, man. Great to check in with you, and you guys have a happy new year.

We'll do it again. Thank you, sir. You too. Take it easy.