Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Random questions week: Odds on JJ McCarthy making it five years

Episode Date: June 30, 2024

Matthew Coller answers random Vikings fan questions, from whether it's more likely that JJ McCarthy gets his fifth-year option picked up or the Vikings pick a new QB in three years to similarities between Nick Mullens and Sam Darnold Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. And this is the final episode of Random Questions Week. It was really fun to get all of you guys random questions and to have an episode with Manny Hill out on the porch. Make sure you go check that out. And with Mike Payton who covers the Detroit Lions. Random Lions questions was pretty fun as well. But that doesn't mean that answering your questions stops the fans only podcast will continue so feel free to continue to send your

questions to purpleinsider.com or to me on twitter at matthew collar and if i didn't get to your question i'm sorry i got a ton of these there's a new theme week next week which is going to be fantasy football week and don't run away, which is going to be fantasy football week. And don't run away screaming. If you don't like fantasy football content, it's mostly just talking about what's going to happen in the 2024 season. So I've got some fantasy guests who are good at projecting the world and the future who are coming up for next week.

That will be really fun. So send any fantasy questions that you got as well. So let's start off this epic final episode of random questions week with Oliver. A difficult question says what outcome is more likely the Vikings signing JJ McCarthy to his fifth year option or drafting another quarterback in three years. That's really tough because when we try to lean on history to figure out, well, what are your odds of a quarterback being successful? It's not all that useful. I mean, it really looks like everything is a roll of the dice, a 50-50 chance, which outcome is more likely. They both seem about equally likely that he will either become quite good and reach the threshold where the Vikings would want to pick up his fifth year option, or he will struggle and they'll end up

looking for other options in a couple of years. And there's no better demonstration of this. And I'll try to pick a side in a minute, but I'm working my way through it. There's no better demonstration of this than the 2020 class versus the 2021 class. When we look at the 2020 draft class, it's all successes in the first round. Burrow, Tua, when you're trying to decide, do we really want to pay Tua $55 million a year or not? That means he's been pretty successful. And he led the league in passing yards last year, took them to the playoffs so they've got a tough decision there but you're obviously picking up fifth year option

on a quarterback like that then you've got Herbert who signed a massive extension Jordan Love will be signing an extension very soon so that's a great draft class everybody who picked the quarterback went away very happy and the following season everybody who picked a quarterback in 2021 except for the Jaguars went away very very sad and even the Jaguars are saying yeah we're going to sign Trevor Lawrence to this unbelievably giant deal but we're still going to need him to play a little better in order to justify it and that's a guy who was talked about as a really, really excellent quarterback prospect, but Justin field, Zach Wilson, Mac Jones, they all flopped and they all are actually somewhere else now, which is remarkable to think about, but they were good

prospects. Weren't they? I mean, when you look at the resumes of the quarterbacks who failed, were they that different than the quarterbacks who succeeded the year before so when we look at jj mccarthy's resume is there anything in there where we could definitively say oh yeah well there's a more of a chance that he fails than succeeds you can go back and forth on this one because of course the supporting cast the coaching everything they're going to give him with this organization doesn't give him a good chance. But also, if you go back through history and try to find quarterbacks that had the statistical markers that he has, which is not that many passes thrown, didn't have huge numbers, his

offense did not operate around him. There's not that many comparable quarterbacks like him. I remember statistically trying to find somebody that matched up. I kind of came up with Mark Sanchez, but I don't think that that's telling of what JJ McCarthy can be considering that Mark Sanchez didn't have those weapons, didn't run an offense like the Vikings run it and has nothing to do with a quarterback many years later when I think now we're better at supporting quarterbacks than when we were when Mark Sanchez played. He probably would have been better had he came out now than when he came out. So I think it's

an incredibly difficult question to try to lean one way or the other. I suppose that I would go slightly to the side that they pick up as fifth year option, because even if you are decent, if you are quality, if you've gotten any sort of success and won any type of games, then they're going to pick up the fifth year option. And then that allows to either play through the fifth year option or let you go as a free agent or assign you to an extension. It pushes the ball down the road just a little bit to give you more time. If you get to that point where you're even having that discussion, if you're great after a couple of years, of course, like Trevor Lawrence,

you're going to sign that guy to an enormous, massive deal. And even the bar for that is only what's Trevor Lawrence over the last two years, maybe the 12th best quarterback in the league. And he's still getting that humongous extension. So the question is, can JJ McCarthy make a case for being a top half of the league quarterback within the next several seasons? It's I think a little more likely that he does than that he doesn't, but history tells us that we won't really know until he actually gets out there. What I'm basing this on is the circumstances that he has and the work ethic that we see

from him and the makeup and character that he has, that he's going to put everything into it. And JJ is going to have another JJ in Justin Jefferson that I think increases your odds of success fairly significantly. So I'm going to lean that it's more likely that they pick up his fifth year option. But we've seen quarterbacks go either way. I remember with Justin Herbert, there was a lot of skepticism. I was skeptical of Justin Herbert.

And then he turns out to be really, really good. And Josh Allen is the same way. There were other quarterbacks that seem like safe picks at the top that have not turned out at all. There's other quarterbacks that had high ceilings and amazing tools like Zach Wilson that completely fell on their face. And then we have the Brock Purdy's of the world who are late round picks, and no one can really explain how they became as successful as they have other than of course the coaching and supporting cast so I'm going to lean a little bit toward fifth year option but the reality is we won't really know and for some quarterbacks Tua is a good example of this we don't even know for a couple

seasons sometimes whether that guy can play and even even a single season, Daniel Jones can trick you a little bit into thinking that maybe someone is better than they actually are. Or Carson Wentz. We've seen that. It is the hardest thing in sports to figure out if a quarterback who is not Patrick Mahomes or who is not a total bust is actually good. Those guys in the middle and i think that the most likely outcome is that he is that that he is somewhere between between the 10th and 15th best quarterback and what they're hoping for is that supporting cast pushes those numbers up into being even better than that so we'll see we're gonna have to find out and that starts in training camp. Taylor says, my worry is that Darnold's highest ceiling is Nick Mullins 2.0, more athleticism, just as many interceptions. How do you think a peak Darnold

compares to Nick Mullins? So there's some funny stuff when I was looking up the statistics on both of these guys. One of the things is that Nick Mullins has a much better career quarterback rating than Sam Darnold, which may tell you about how much Sam Darnold has struggled, or it also may tell you that quarterback rating is kind of a funny stat. Sometimes Nick Mullins does play a lot like Jameis Winston though. And because Mullins does not have any physical tool that makes him stand out. You almost can't envision how this man has averaged like eight yards per pass attempt and had so many big passing games through his career. But I think it's a combination of two things.

Nick Mullins is highly, highly football intelligent. I think he really understands where the ball is supposed to go. And in most offenses, if you can read the defense and throw it to the right spot, you can have success. And the other part of it is too, that he's got, uh, what did, how did Mike Zimmer describe case Keenum one time, big something, uh, only without the horseshoe around his neck when it comes to turning the ball over. So this is a comparison though. I looked up the numbers on the turnovers with Nick Mullins and Sam Darnold. And as much as Darnold has been bad with the turnovers and he has, it's really not

even close to as bad as Nick Mullins when it comes to these turnovers. Let me pop this up here. So Nick Mullins in 2020 had a turnover worthy play by PFF on 5.8% of his passes when he was starting in 2020. And then 7% of his passes last year. So seven out of every hundred is a turnover worthy play where Darnold was 4.3 at his peak. So way less. And actually in 2022, when he had that run with the Panthers, where he won a few games, he was down below 3%, which is actually where you should be. Most good quarterbacks are somewhere below 3% of their passes or their dropbacks turn into turnover worthy plays. And Darnold was on that borderline of being decent. Like that's middle of the pack and it's a smaller sample size, of course. But think about this.

I looked at this. Since Darnold left New York, he has 17 interceptions on about a full season's worth of passes. 592. Now, that's a lot. That's above average. You don't want 17 picks over a regular season. But Nick Mullins has 21 interceptions only on about three games worth fewer passes. So we're talking about Mullins being totally unplayably reckless with the football, as opposed to Darnold just being bad in comparison to his other starter peers.

And he has been when he has more than half a season of play, Sam Darnold, one of the five worst in turnover worthy plays year after year. So your concern is legitimate that he will just not stop turning the ball over, not taking sacks, not throwing bad picks, and that it won't be able to last for him having this career Renaissance because he keeps giving the ball away. And if we go back to last year, after the four interception game, Kevin O'Connell did bench Nick Mullins for Jaron Hall. I don't know if that's predictive to JJ McCarthy and when he plays, it's a delicate situation there. But if you throw four picks in a game, including one that lost the game at the end,

then your starting tenure is not going to last very long. So the Vikings need Sam Darnold to be more in the range of where he was when he played at the end of the 2022 season against Carolina, where he was not as turnover worthy prone. He still had a couple of bad interceptions. That's going to be intrinsic to who he is and how he plays, how aggressive he is. I think he's a little bit short on his ability to read defenses in the same way when they throw different looks at him post snap and stuff like that after watching the film back. But if it

reduces, then I think he can play pretty well, maybe reasonably enough to get them a number of wins, have some really good games and be helped out by the supporting cast. And he talked about this. I think he understands it because he talked about playing point guard, which I know was a term that Kirk Cousins used a lot, but it also refers to just throw the ball to the right place. Don't try to do too much and go crazy. And in this offense, you've got a really

good chance. And actually Kirk cousins mostly prove that then make a play every once in a while and Darnold, his athleticism versus Nick Mullins can't be downplayed. His arm talent, his athleticism is way, way higher. So I think the ceiling is much higher if it all clicks. But if you look at it and go, look, nobody can keep playing. And Jameis Winston is proof of this as well, that he never got the buy-in from anybody after he had all those interceptions because you just won't win in the NFL by spotting the other team, the football, two or three times before you even kick off because you know your quarterback's going to turn it over.

And that is truly what it comes down to with Sam Darnold. I think he can do everything else. I think he can make every throw that you need him to make. He can make spectacular throws down the field. He can fire the ball into tight windows. And he is very athletic. He is mobile. He can run.

Even Carolina used him for some design run plays. But if you fumble, if you take bad sacks, if you don't understand situational football, if you force the ball in, if you panic and freak out and just huck it like all of us would, if we were quarterbacks, not going to last. That's pretty much the bottom line with Sam Darnold. Chris says, would you rather see Louis seen or Jamal Adams make the team? If they added Adams on a veteran minimum deal, I have absolutely 0.0% interest in Jamal Adams. No, thank you. I'm good. I don't think he's good, but I'm good. I'm good with where they are. How about neither? Can I answer neither? if lewis scene

makes the team that means he'll have taken a step forward and that would be nice for him because these first two years have been so miserable for lewis scene he has not been able to carve out any type of role he has watched everybody pass him by from cam bynum to Theo Jackson. Jay Ward might actually be ahead of him on the depth chart right now. I don't really know. It just appears that he has not clicked in a Donna tells defense and in Brian Flores, his defense and the injury in the middle. Well, I don't think it caused this. It did not it easier for lewis scene and there is nothing more difficult for somebody than getting drafted and realizing you're in over your head after you're a high first round pick and everybody's going to talk about you as a first round pick i remember

laquan treadwell going through it and how miserable it was for laquan Treadwell. And he just wasn't good enough to be on the field, making a difference out there with Adam Thielen and Stefan Diggs. It was a totally, he was so far behind them and it was obvious. So everyone wants to know what's going on with the first round pick. Why isn't he out there? Some people just aren't good enough. Some people's minds don't work fast enough. Some players are not dedicated enough. Sometimes the skill that you saw in college on tape, it just doesn't translate. Here was the thing they did best in college. Well, it doesn't really work here. But I think that the fact that Flores didn't even try to carve out a role for him was a pretty good sign that it's going to be an uphill battle for Louis scene to win a spot out of training camp this year. That's not going to be easy for him.

I just, why, what Jamal Adams? Well, what, what, what is he going to do on this team? That's better than Harrison Smith, Cam Bynum, Josh Metellus. They have the best safety group in the entire NFL. I would take this group over anyone because of the versatility, the amount of things you can do. You can line them up anywhere. Two out of the three of them can blitz like crazy. The other one's a playmaker and a good tackler. You got super high intelligence. I don't need any of Jamal Adams. And the last time that he was in the news, I think was for insulting a reporter's girlfriend or something or wife. So I don't really want that in the locker room with myself either.

I'm good. I don't need that in my life. So I think that most teams are probably completely done with Jamal Adams. And he becomes also one of the biggest busts in comparison to early career hype. And what Seattle gave up for him after that just fell off the face of the earth. So if you're giving me the choice of the two, I prefer to just see Louis seen on the team. That means he will have gotten it together. Something will have clicked, taken a step forward, and he could be a member of your team for a long time with Adams. Even in the best case scenario, you're still talking about

somebody that would be a one year type of thing. I don't want any veterans by the way. I think the team is fine where it is. If they add somebody else. Okay. But every day I get these questions. This actually was part of the inspiration of random questions week was every day. People are asking who's wide receiver three. Why aren't they picking up Hunter Renfro? Hunter Renfro is probably awful. Now he was good a couple of years ago. That's how football works. But if you look up the recent performance of any of the guys who are free agents right now, it's all bad. There's no good. I looked up every single free agent. I couldn't find, you know, Kareem hunt. No, thank you.

Emmanuel Ogba. And I'm good. Like just none of these guys have any, any recent showing. Maybe you go back two years or three years. Well, you know, a couple of years ago, but we know how football works. So I think just stick with what you have, try to develop these current players and then go into next year's free agency and see what you really need to spend on when you have the cap space. Hey, US cellular customers, I've got some good news. So do not hit that skip forward button just yet. I'm talking about their special customer

event, Us Days. What's Us Days? It means exclusive offers just for their customers just to say thanks like twelve hundred dollars off any phone plus three hundred dollars off any tablet no i did not misread that they must really like you all us days at us cellular exclusive offers just for you just to say thanks right now us cellular U.S. cellular customers get $1,200 off any phone, plus $300 off any tablet. Terms apply. All right, next question is from Shogun on Twitter, at Shogun. Let's see.

Who has taken over the spot for the most superhuman-looking body now that Daniil Hunter is gone? Yeah, a couple of years ago, it must have been last year, I was doing a story about Daniil and what makes him special that is not involved with his physical play. So I went and asked a bunch of people, what is it that makes Daniil, Daniil that is not his body? And the first thing I think Harrison Smith said to me was, it is his body. Have you seen him? You know, like, okay, I get it. I get it. And then we talked about, you know, his mentality, his work ethic, his dedication to getting better, all those things

that go into somebody's success. But I thought it was funny that the answer was still just look at him. He was built in a lab to play that position. There's nobody like that. That is a top five. Look at this dude was built to play football type of person. But I did come up with a couple more. One is Nikhil Harry, who is now a tight end, previously a wide receiver, could absolutely play at Drusher. Any position on the field, fullback, edge rusher, linebacker, safety, whatever. If you looked at him, you'd go, wait, what position is he? Tight end makes more sense now. But when he was a wide receiver and he was out there running routes with the receivers,

it's like, what is somebody messing around? Is what one of the, one of the outside linebackers screwing around out there. That's how big Nikhil Harry is. And he's jacked too. He's in the NFL. But he's particularly next level type of jacked. Another tight end, Josh Oliver, incredibly enormous human being. Just massive.

I wrote a story on him last year and shook his hand. And I messed up the first handshake because his hand was so giant. I was like, let's try that again. Let's get a real handshake there because your hand is triple the size of mine. And the, the, the definition, he was going to be a pass rusher at first. And then he ended up sticking at tight end at, I believe San Jose state kind of went from there and learned the tight end position. Josh Oliver, one of the best blockers in the league for a reason, because he is super strong. And the other one was Jerry Tillery, a new guy, but one that when he walks by,

Oh, who's this new guy? Oh, that's Jerry Tillery. The first round pick for a reason hasn't really worked out first round pick for a reason because that is 300 pounds of totally ripped. Uh, when you think defensive tackles, you usually think more, more beef on the man. There's not a lot of beef on that man. He is just completely jacked. So I don't think anybody is going to take the crown, uh, just yet for sure as the Neil Hunter was by far number one, but yeah, it's the NFL. There's a lot of dudes who are pretty big. This is a funny one. Ball of America. Tell me what the heck was going on with Danny White and Tom Tupa. Now, if you are under the age of 40, you're like who and who and why? Both of these men have something in common, old school players who were quarterbacks and

punted. Now, Tom Tupo was much more of a punter, but did play as a starting quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals and came in relief for the New York Jets and actually played pretty well once upon a time as a quarterback, despite having a long career as a punter. And Danny White was a good starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys who also was their punter. And I don't know, I guess the team thought that they could save a roster spot for the Cowboys, or maybe he was just better than everybody else. And punting was a non-threatening type of play. So just have him go back there and punt. The only thing I could think of is that he was just so good at it that they said, why not?

I guess we'll just do that. No, we would never see that today because you don't want people flying in. It might be more dangerous to be a punter now than it was back then. I don't know. Although they could block you, they could block the heck out of you. So maybe,

maybe it was dangerous for him. That's it's, it's crazy that they would have a starting quarterback who was punting the ball. Tupo was much more of a, Oh, well you can actually play this if you have to, but you're not good at it. You're just capable of coming in as a backup quarterback. That was a different time in the NFL of specialization was not quite the same as it is now. But Danny White, I mean, one of the most unique players ever because of that. And it wasn't, it wasn't like a freak thing. He would punt 70 times in a year or something, if that's what it required. And then just run out there and play quarterback. Yeah. The NFL had some, some strange quirks. We talked about barefoot kickers.

Same thing. Quarterback slash punters. It used to happen. Stamthony Edwards says, which former Viking do you think would have the best chance to become a champion sumo wrestler? My two guesses would be Kevin Williams or big old David Dixon. Came up with a few for this one. Number one would be Pat Williams. I'm just the

most enormous, strongest person that you have ever seen in your entire existence. Linval Joseph, the strongest man in Florida at one point, I believe, capable of returning an interception for a touchdown or stuffing every single third and short run. I remember in 2017 with Linval Joseph, where talk about sumo wrestling, those third and one situations where teams would try to hand off and they would just hit a brick wall. And the Vikings were far and away that year, the best team in the NFL at stopping second and third and short or fourth and short because of Linval Joseph, his strength and size combination and technique. Totally insane. And then when I think about a built in a lab type of guy, we're talking about player bodies and who has the most, who's the most jacked, who's the most ripped and that kind of thing. Well, the biggest is

Brian McKinney. I mean, just first round pick, crazy athletic ability, crazy size. That's somebody who could be an effective sumo wrestler. I think there's likely a lot of them. Maybe some guys who didn't make the team like Roman Reigns or Brock Lesnar. Maybe they'd be good at different types of wrestling. I know sumo is a little different, but most huge, those tackle defensive tackle types, Delvin Tomlinson, another one just crazy, crazy strong in the middle of the defensive line. That's a fun question though. David Dixon was a mountain of a human being

at skull doc says reports out of green Bay said they were practicing a squib kick with the new kickoff rules. How would the squib kick with the new kickoff rules. How would the squib kick work logistically? Does it need to carry a certain distance? Yes, it does. It has to land in the, quote, landing area. But the thing about the landing area is that it doesn't have to go a certain height. It just has to get into the landing area. So if you have a kickoff returner who is back near the end zone, and what you're going to have is the players are lined up 10

yards or five yards near each other. You can have so many that are lined up forward and back, but they're going to be lined up across from each other. The kick goes, the guy catches it, then all the players block and try to make a tackle. That's how the new kickoff is going to look. If you kick the ball as the kicker, just into the landing area, but in front of where the kickoff return is going to be about, it's going to bounce all over the place. And it's going to be kind of ridiculous. Actually, this is my biggest concern about the new kickoff as excited as i am and i want to see kenny wong will get 50 kick returns because it's a great play and it gives opportunities

for teams to get creative but if the opposition is just going to turn this into who's the best at being rocky chasing around the chicken or something which is what it's going to be like if the ball's skipping around everywhere and the best kick returners are going to be the guys who can track it down. Now, maybe the answer is to have one man back and another man up. If you can do that, then, but still, if there's a guy up, you could kick it to the left. You kick it to the right. Hope that it stays in bounds.

I don't know. I don't know what it's going to look like, but I do think that that is a strategy teams are going to deploy, which is to try to kick it low and have it skip in front of that guy. So he's got to field it and have it bounce around with no momentum, as opposed to just kicking it up in the air, having him catch it and then take off at full speed. You could also see teams just kick it out of the back of the end zone because they don't want to deal with this. If you're a head coach, you might say, I'm not leaving this to you guys to have this much control of my game. I'm just going to give the team the ball at the 30 yard line and totally defeat the purpose. So I will be very, very

interested to see how this plays out. I was watching a Vikings game from 2002 the other day, Vikings Packers, oh two. And they showed the stats from the Vikings kicker and his kickoff stats. And he had six touchbacks on 57 kickoffs. And I was like, man, the game has changed. The game has changed because I think last year it would have been 54 out of 56 or something like that. I'm hopeful because it's a really entertaining and exciting play that has been eliminated from the game. And it took away a lot of opportunities for playmakers to show what they could do with the ball, become star players, become fan favorites. I'd love to see that happen again, but I'm starting to worry that it might not in the same way that I envisioned it. Uh, at Daniel Roman says, uh, what current illegal formation would lead to the most innovation from offensive minds today, if it were to be made legal by the NFL. I think probably the, well, something that happens in the CFL is maybe the

thing that would be the best where you can have the guy running forward from behind. So you can send somebody back in motion and have him going toward the line of scrimmage and start to get up to full speed as you snap the football. So he could be running full speed. Is this the CFL or is this indoor football? This is CFL, right? I think it's CFL that you can have him do this. Sorry to my Canadian friends if I'm thinking of a different league, but I'm pretty sure this is CFL where you can do it. That is not legal in the NFL.

You have to get set. You can't be moving forward as you're doing it. You can be moving sideways, but you can't be moving forward as you're doing it. You can be moving sideways, but you can't be moving forward. And imagine if Tyreek Hill could be going around the running back and then starting to take off already before the snap. And then at the snap, he's already reaching full speed. We would have scores in the seventies at that point. If you could get your playmakers going full speed, another one would just to be, you have to have,

I just, I don't have the rules memorized. You have to have so many players on each side of the field. What is it? Two and three, something like that. If you were allowed to just put everybody on one side of the field, all your playmakers on one side of the field,

can you do that in college? Put everybody on one side and then have them all run crazy routes on one side of the field. Can you do that in college? Put everybody on one side and then have them all run crazy routes on one side. That would be really impossible for an NFL team to guard because you could create so much space on the other side of the field where they were running to, and you could create so many, you know, legal picks and things like that. And combinations that if you have three guys on one side, it's already difficult with the bunch formations. But if you put five guys on one side of the field, uh, that would be really, really difficult. Or even if you could line up

with only your offensive line on the line of scrimmage and everybody back, and then you could send them in all sorts of different ways. And you didn't have to have people on the line of scrimmage. These rules exist for a reason because they would just break defenses if you could do all this other stuff. So you have to at least give the defense a fighting chance. Jordan asks, and I apologize for not memorizing every illegal formation thing. I am just envisioning in the comments like, wait, you don't know the rules? Not always. Okay. So I'm mostly kidding, but I'm trying to think of how many people you're supposed to have on one side of the field. Anyway, Jordan says, which coaches could be poached from the Vikings by other teams after this year. I think that the ship has sailed on Brian Flores getting a job after this year.

I don't think that the NFL is going to let it go. I don't think that the owners are going to suddenly say, you know what? You know, B flow has a point. He was right to sue us. Somebody make him the front door of your franchise. I didn't think it would happen last year. He's deserving. He's a great coach. He had a great point when it came to what he was arguing against the NFL. And I do think that Flores forced the NFL's hand in some ways for

more teams to pay attention to great black candidates and that they have made some efforts there that I'm not sure they would have made without Brian Flores. So he is significant in a movement to get the right people opportunities to coach, but I think he's going to end up not getting another chance because of how he went about it. And again, that's not to insinuate in any way that he was wrong. It's just that when you do that, you know that they're probably not giving you a head coaching job again in the future. And so when you look at the rest of the roster, though, of coaches, the natural one for me is Keenan McCardell, who has long been an excellent wide receivers coach. He was somebody that Justin Jefferson campaigned to stay and Adam Thielen as well

to stay after they fired Mike Zimmer. You don't hear of that all that often that the head coach gets a message from the best player on the team. Can you please keep our wide receivers coach? Because that is my guy. I think that says a lot about Keenan McArdle. He had some offensive coordinator interviews last year, and i don't believe that he got any for this year which is disappointing because keenan mccardle has really earned his stripes as a wide receivers coach through the years but it seems that everybody in the nfl only ever wants to reward quarterbacks coaches which does lead me to joshown. If the Vikings are great with JJ McCarthy, then Josh McCown will get a lot of attention and could be an offensive coordinator pretty quickly

if that ends up happening. As far as the other coaches, I'm not really sure. I've wondered about Durante Jones for a long time, potentially getting a defensive coordinator opportunity. Very bright secondary coach, did a great job last year. So this is a good coordinator opportunity. Very bright secondary coach did a great job last year. So this is a good coaching staff. There's a lot of people on this coaching staff who could potentially move up in the world as we go forward. Tim Irwin says, do a what if during the draft, if the Vikings drafted the next player actually drafted at the same position as the one they actually picked. So when we're talking about JJ McCarthy, the answer would be Bo Nix, for example.

So I did go back and took a look at the next guy drafted for first and second rounders only going back to 2016, because I wasn't going to go through every single draft and look at this, but just the guys that have formed this team in particular. And the results are mixed as you would expect. The next receiver drafted after Laquan Treadwell was Sterling Shepard. And if Sterling Shepard had been combined with Adam Thielen and Stefan Diggs, it would have been pretty darn good. So he was the next receiver. The next defensive back after Mackenzie Alexander was someone named TJ Green, who I am not familiar

with. So that wouldn't have worked out. The next running back after Delvin Cook in 2017 was Joe Mixon. I mean, probably 50 cents or a half dollar there. Delvin Cook's peak is a little higher than Joe Mixon. Maybe Mixon was more of a receiving back than Delvin was at his absolute best, both really good running backs. Mixon a tad more healthy, I think, than Delvin Cook. Neither of them have had the longest stretch ever, and they probably would have been moving on the same time they did with Delvin Cook from Joe Mixon. The next defensive back after Mike Hughes was Josh Jackson. So, and the next offensive lineman after Brian O'Neill was Brandon Parker, who I don't know either off the top of my head. So that was a good one, picking Brian O'Neill.

And I even remember on draft night, that was a draft that was supposed to have a ton of offensive linemen. And when they waited and waited and waited and took Brian O'Neill all the way at the back end of the second round, my reaction was, why did you wait so long? Why didn't you take Will Hernandez in the first round? Why did you take this developmental prospect when you're in win now mode? That was a bad opinion because Brian brian o'neill was pretty good right away and then great by the next season so uh a very very good draft pick there from rick

spielman taking him and not whoever brandon parker is the next offensive lineman after garrett bradbury was andre dillard the next center was eric mccoy who's a good player so yeah he was a pretty good player right away for the Saints. It wasn't until the second round that he was taking. Andre Dillard hasn't worked out. They could have made a good argument for taking a tackle in 2019, but they needed the zone center. And then Bradbury needed a few years to improve his pass protection

to the point of being adequate. And here we are now in the year 2024, Bradbury's still here. McCoy has had the better career by PFF metrics and maybe would have here as well. I don't know because they felt like Bradbury was a better fit, but McCoy has been a better pass protector, which they could have used in a few of those seasons. Now the next tight end after Irv Smith Jr. is Drew Sample, who's a player, but the next weapon after Irv Smith is A.J. Brown. So they could have drafted A.J. Brown and they could have put him in knowing that Stefan Diggs was unhappy with Adam Thielen, could have been Diggs Brown Thielen going into 2019. And it wasn't, it wasn't Diggs Brown

Thielen, although they probably never end up with Justin Jefferson. Maybe they do, but probably not. And, uh, AJ Brown would still be awesome and they would still have great receivers. So I don't know, but that 2019 offense would have been a tad different with the wide receiver three being AJ Brown. Uh, not that Herb actually had a good year that year, but I think they would have been a tad different with the wide receiver three being AJ Brown. Not that Herb actually had a good year that year, but I think they would have leaned into the past maybe a little bit more than they actually did that season. The next receiver after Justin Jefferson was Brandon Ayuk. Pretty good.

Here's one that will sting the nostrils when you get a sniff of this one. Jeff Gladney. The next corner was Jalen Johnson, who is amazing and is maybe the best corner in the league not named Sauce Gardner. That one's tough. That one is tough. The next tackle after Christian Derusaw wasn't taken for a long time. That was Tevin Jenkins. The next safety after Louis seen also, this one stings a little bit. Jaquan Brisker, who looks like a pretty good player.

And the next corner after Andrew Booth Jr. is El, Elante Taylor. And he's not that good. He's had some struggles at the beginning of his career. And after Ingram, it was Luke Fortner who was also not good and has struggled early of his career. And after Ingram, it was Luke Fortner, who was also not good and has struggled early in his career. So anybody at those positions that they picked,

were not going to work out. And the next receiver after Jordan Addison was Jonathan Mingo. So be very pleased that it was Jordan Addison and not Jonathan Mingo, because that guy I don't think can play. And there you go. So fun question, fun exercise. They would, some of those would be massive hits. If you swap them out, you would have Brandon Iuke and AJ Brown, I guess, as a wide receiver

combination. And Jonathan Mingo, I guess also would have been a failure and there would have been some other good players mixed in there. The one that is probably the toughest is Gladney as opposed to Jalen Johnson and, of course, Antoine Winfield Jr. if we include the safety position as well. That's a forgettable one. Yep. At MN Vikings tweet says,

WWE is licensed for entertainment purposes only. The NFL is also licensed this way. Is this significant in any way? I don't think so. But are you suggesting that the NFL is rigged? Because there are a very large amount of people who think the NFL is rigged. And I just don't see how that's possible. I see how if you get deep in the weeds and you're really looking for it, maybe you could find a few things with certain calls on national TV games that are meant to make sure the game is a little more entertaining or not over. So people turn off

their TVs. That's about as far as I would ever go is sometimes if you watch, you will see, let's just say, for example, a team is about to go up three scores in the third quarter and whoops, they got a holding call or an illegal formation or something that is somebody didn't line up right. And it's a little weird of a call and you go, I don't know if I see that. I don't know if I see that. Oh, the other team has its chance to come back. Maybe that's just the psychology. I'm not saying the refs are in on it. They're just

sometimes where I kind of roll my eyes like, Oh, okay, we're on national TV. So we're going to give the other team another shot. Uh, but that may just be human nature. There was a study in hockey about, uh, calls from referees and how rare it was that one team got three penalties in a row. And if they did get three penalties in a row, it was a lock that the other team was getting the next penalty, an absolute guaranteed lock. Like nobody was ever getting four penalties called in a row. And that's just, again, the human nature of, all right, we've called a ton of penalties on this other team. We got to make sure it's even now. I think this happens with fouls all the time that there, there are usually pretty equal foul numbers in basketball, which also seems odd. Like wouldn't pretty often one

team foul more than the other. If they're losing, if they're getting manhandled, just randomly reaching for the ball, but it usually ends up turning out fairly equal with the free throws. So there's little things like that that maybe go to inside the minds of referees because they're human. But as far as the way that they're licensed being for entertainment purposes only the same as WWE, that just sounds like some kind of crackpot theory about the NFL being rigged that maybe is attractive to you. But I've been this close inside the locker rooms, post games, every game I've been to, watched. I don't know how you could rig it. I just don't know the number of crazy improbable just bounces of the football that happen on a weekly basis. How would you make that happen? How would you weigh the odds for something

to go that way? The only, the only thing is just the idea that the refs are in on it, which I'm tongue in cheek saying that on national TV games, they try to keep it close, but truly, I mean, even if you look at the penalties last year, everyone was saying that the league was rigged for Kansas city and they were like the most penalized team in the league last year or way up there versus some of their contenders. I don't know. I don't know. To me, it just seems like there's nothing I can really say about that because what do you, what do you want? Yeah, man, it's rigged. Like it's, I don't know.

I don't know how you would do it. I don't know how you would try to push the odds in one way or another. The reason that the chiefs went to the super bowl, people thought because of Taylor Swift or something as if the super bowl would need ratings, always gets ratings. But Lamar Jackson just didn't play well. Baltimore just didn't play well baltimore just didn't play well that did they do that were they hey hey lamar we'll get you later why don't you just throw this game like i don't know that roger goodell comes down and whispers in uh lamar's ear hey man i'm not gonna

go on about this any longer but i see this every week all over the place. Yeah, this is how Roger wants it. What? I don't know, man. I think that they'd want to mix it up a little bit with more fan bases getting in on the Super Bowl party. From MuskyAngler98, is it possible to even have an extremely good fullback anymore, or could a good heavier power running back smaller tight end be turned into a legitimate weapon in short yardage and run blocking i think with um the the fullback position the problem is so few people want to do it it's really really hard to just put your head down and slam into linebackers there's also not a lot of plays that do that anymore a lot of the running is the zone you're kind of looking for gaps and you're trying to create

creases and things like that. It's very rarely this fullback gets in front of the running back, plows the linebacker and the running back comes in behind him. That's just not how running games work anymore. And it probably wasn't the most efficient overall. If you had a great fullback, it was. But if you had an average fullback, is that really the best way to run the football? Because if that guy even stalemates, you're just running into the back of him. This is not saying I don't love a great fullback, but there were a lot of fullbacks back in the day that were just sort of a guy and not a difference maker at all.

So if you don't have a difference maker, it's probably not that effective, but who's going to be smart enough to handle all the different things that are required of a fullback, multiple positions, pass blocking, lead blocking, running the football, special teams, all those things. And then also tough enough. This is where it's just hard to convince someone to do it. It's like, if you're a kid and you're really athletic, like, do you want to play receiver or running back receiver? Why would you play running back when they don't get paid and they get beat up at same deal? You want to play fullback and destroy your body and also get no money and have it be thankless. Sure. Uh, versatility though.

I don't know if it's growing or not. We always kind of talk like it is. Well, there's more running backs who catch the ball, but there's not, uh, is there, there's more Kyle use checks on the way. The next Kyle use check, not too many Kyle use checks. Uh, I just think it's a really hard job for anyone to want to do or to train someone to do and for someone to have such a wide array of skills to be effective enough. Whereas the number of good wide receivers is only growing and you can just get another receiver and throw them on

the field. I think if you have a great fullback, it is a cheat code. There's just so few that are actually out there. It's a very tough position. That's why we give it so much credit on the show. It's not, that's not tongue in cheek. That's serious. It's a hard thing to do. Brian says, could you recommend five episodes of a football life that everyone should watch? Sure. You're talking about the documentary series by NFL network, NFL films that run regularly on NFL Network. So I did write down some of my favorites. There are 15 that I think are very watchable, if not moving sometimes.

One that I didn't include on the list that I wanted to was LaDainian Tomlinson. Very, very interesting for his personal family history that they went through really moving episode there's a lot of really good ones jerry smith is a fascinating one who i didn't know about at all uh but i picked five of my favorites number one this is the easiest pick though for me uh this one could be a 30 for 30 it could be you know an award-winning sports documentary curtis martin it was so so interesting with curtis martin's personal background his relationship with bill parcells his career i mean it's really really really good so i won't spoil that one for you but curtis martin is the one to watch uh ricky williams another one super fascinating guy a great watch 1995 cleveland if you're a history bust in a history buff in any way

the 1995 cleveland before they moved to baltimore goes into bill belichick how he turned the franchise around how they had won a playoff game the year before and then the total collapse of the organization uh bill walsh is just a must see for anyone if you've coached your little league team then you want to watch the bill walsh one fascinating dive inside one of the best coaches if not the best of all time and a little difficult to pick the last one doug williams historical player first black quarterback to win the super bowl and all that he went through to get there is a must watch. And then I threw this one out there as well. I thought it was pretty good.

Keenan McCardell, you know, a Vikings coach, Keenan McCardell and Jimmy Smith. There is a documentary about their relationship and how different they were, how different they were in getting there to being stars with the Jaguars. And so you can tell kind of the era that I focused on a lot, but it is a great, great time. I mean, you can pretty much turn everyone on and you're going to enjoy watching them.

So let me just answer one more to wrap up random questions week. This is from Taryn says, say the NFL decided that they are going to be doing a massive expansion of the league, where would be some fun potential spots to have new teams? I saw that Bill Barnwell did an enormous thing on this about if the league went to 100 teams. And I was talking with Robert Griffith, former Viking safety for an article not that long ago. And Robert said that he felt that there were maybe several hundred more players in the world who could be NFL players under the right circumstances. And that's why he loved the side leagues. And I enjoy the side leagues as well, but just felt like there's a lot

of guys who are qualified. And so maybe someday it will expand to a lot more teams. But the places I wrote down, first of all, you got to bring back teams in St. Louis and Oakland. I mean, it's just not fair. Anybody who's had their team ripped away from them deserves to have their team back. So they get the first bid. There might be an argument for a Toronto team, but I don't really care so much about the big cities. A lot of them either have their teams already or don't deserve one. But what I thought is we've got Buffalo and we've got green Bay in

the NFL. And it's a quirky thing. There aren't many situations like that in the rest of pro sports that these teams were started in these kind of odd places to have an NFL team and they stuck and they've been able to keep them there. And Roger Goodell hasn't picked them up and moved them to Los Angeles too, because he holds them hostage to build new stadiums or renovate or whatever he does. And they've been able to stick around. I would love to see if they're going to expand, not go to England or whatever. That's logistically very difficult. How about more small cities? How about Louisville, Kentucky?

How about Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sioux Falls? You deserve an NFL team, Sioux Falls. Why not? There's enough people there or they can drive snowmobiles to the games of Green Bay in the middle of freaking nowhere. And sadly, Buffalo can come off that way as well. or they can drive snowmobiles to the games of green Bay's in the middle of fricking nowhere. And, uh, you know,

sadly, uh, Buffalo can come off that way as well. Uh, but I understand even where I came from, it's not a big place in comparison to Chicago, to New York, to LA,

where they have multiple teams, but it would be very cool. Even, uh, Utah is getting their hockey team under some pretty concerning circumstances, but it would be very cool. Even Utah is getting their hockey team under some pretty concerning circumstances, but Utah, maybe they get another team as well for the NFL. So if it was going to expand by a bunch of teams, give me small cities, create the college town, like atmosphere. And I'll give you this green Bay. It's a hard atmosphere to top and the same with Buffalo

when you have the entire city, the entire state in some cases, all coming to one place and treating it like that college tailgating type of thing. It's cool. And so find more of that if you're going to expand the NFL as opposed to, oh, look, a market that's large.

No, you don't need that. You need, you need a heart. If you're going to expand the NFL. So thanks everybody for random questions week. A lot of, a lot of great stuff,

great stuff. And you can continue to be random in your questions. I will be doing more fans only episode, a lot of fantasy football next week, because this show will soon have a fantasy football sponsor. So I have to learn about fantasy football. I have never really done that here on the show, but I think we can have a lot of fun, especially with me trying to navigate the fantasy football waters.

So thanks everybody again. And we'll continue to have fun over the summer. We'll talk to y'all soon. Football.