Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Ranking the Vikings' position groups

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Where would George rank Kirk Cousins among quarterbacks? How much would Dalvin Cook's status impact the skill position group? Does Irv Smith hold the keys to maintaining a very good group of weapons? Can Mike Zimmer's defensive prowess boost the Vikings defense despite a number of new faces?  Find George's work at PFF.com and the PFF Forecast podcast Read Matthew Coller's written work at PurpleInsider.substack.com Fill out the Blue Wire survey for a chance to win air pods  https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=BugBBZdAw0aNFUvtuGkgyhnTao1hdWxOjJwTA2fwHGJUN0hUNEhaSExWN0RRRFdCV1ZOTkdHR1IwOCQlQCN0PWcu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Check it out. Subscribe. The Compound on the Blue Wire Podcast Network. All right. Welcome into another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and he is part of the PFF Forecast podcast, along with many other things content-wise for Pro Football Focus. George Shahuri, what's going on, George?

Not too much, man. I'm on a podcast without Eric Eager. It almost feels like I'm without a jacket or a shirt or something like that. It's got to be a little refreshing, though, right? I'm grieving for the first time. That's right. Well, I wanted to ask you before we get started, because what we're going to do here is go through some position groups and decide where the Vikings rank in the NFL in those position groups.

But you guys did a, I believe it was a four-round draft of all players in the NFL after ESPN did it, and believe it was four-round draft of all players in the NFL after ESPN did it, and it was very disturbing, some of the results that ESPN had with their all players. Did you end up with Vikings players? Like, how many Vikings players got drafted in the first four rounds of your all-player draft? Yeah, it's a great, so I was worried you were going to say that our draft was terrifying. The reason we did it was honestly, for what you just said, was like we saw what ESPN did.

It was a great idea. And we thought the execution was just very different from what like real intelligent team building would be. So a little group of us got together and redrafted the MFL. It was a lot of fun. I encourage people if they're bored sitting at home during quarantine to get a few friends together and do it. It was a lot of fun. I encourage people with their board sitting at home during quarantine to get a few friends together and do it. It was a very interesting experience. I was actually sitting at pick 13 with a very interesting decision. Cousins was on the board. Garoppolo,

Breeze, Tua, Goff, Brady were all people that were still on the board. And ultimately I decided to go with Garoppolo over Cousins, which is actually something that Eric and I have kind of talked about a decent amount on the forecast because they're similar. They've got the Shanahan tie, obviously. And, you know, from a statistical perspective, Cousins obviously looks a lot better last season and grading-wise as well. But I just had to go with the guy that I had the most faith in from on the field to off the field, and that was Jimmy G.

So Cousins ended up going 14th right after that. Adam Thielen, I want to say, went in round four, but it might have been round three. You can go check out the whole entire draft. It's on our website at pff.com. Daniil Hunter, I believe, was an early third-round pick. And I think that was it. I don't think Eric Hendricks went.

Oh, really? I think in today's game that Eric Hendricks actually brings more value than you would expect. Linebackers, their value, we don't put it up among the other positions, but when you are super at coverage, as he is, I think it gives you that little bit of an edge for being more valuable than maybe people think of that position. The Jimmy G versus Kirk Cousins debate is really interesting because they're thought of as being very similar types of players. Like, you plug it into the algorithm and they do what

they're supposed to do. But I have to give the edge to Garoppolo myself in part, and this is, you're going to hate this probably, but the guy has gone 21-5 as a starting quarterback in the NFL, whereas Cousins' best season is 10-6. And I look at that win-loss record as when everything goes your way, how good can you get your team to be as the quarterback? Because the quarterback has the most control over how good your team ends up being every year. Your guy wins above replacement metrics. No one is even close to the quarterback. So if a guy can consistently win under really great circumstances,

and when he has outstanding circumstances, take his team to the Super Bowl, beat Drew Brees 48-46, these are things I think he just has a little higher of a ceiling than Kirk Cousins does. You know, it ties into something that Eric and I were discussing, which is how do you value a quarterback and how much you're paying for them? And you can't just look at the quarterback. You got to look at the whole offense, right? Like what does that offense do?

A great quarterback is going to be the tide, right? That raises all the boats. And I think Jimmy G's got a little bit of that. Now, as far as executing on the field, there are some places where he's either been a little limited by scheme in terms of, look, Shanahan gets people open and then they run with the ball afterwards. And that's very effective.

And Jimmy G has executed that. And he's also made kind of a high rate of turnover worthy plays. Now it's a small sample size, as you said, but like raising all of those other players and getting them to believe that they're going to be able to win this game shows up on the stat sheet. It shows up in what, you know, a player's wins above replacement are ultimately shows up in a win-loss column. So I'm with you. I think it's, I'm glad I have someone on my side because I was kind of getting derided for it a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I guess people could come back and say, well, Jared Goff and a great offense went to the Super Bowl as well,

and he probably isn't as good as Kirk Cousins. I think I would take Cousins over Jared Goff. And I think what we really see here is how many of these quarterbacks in the NFL now fall into the category of they're entirely dependent or largely dependent. They reach a certain bar, and then the rest is up to Kyle Shanahan or Gary Kubiak or Debo Samuel or Stephon Diggs or Adam Thielen, and the rest is what you have circumstantially.

With Garoppolo, this might be the worst analysis I could give, but I think it's right. He just has more of a baller mentality than Cousins. You mentioned the turnover-worthy plays, and that's going to come along with it. But with Cousins, I think it's a lot of just execute exactly what he's asked to execute. And if anything else goes wrong within that, it's usually over for Kirk Cousins. And the fact that Garoppolo can move himself within the pocket, and Cousins is unable to do that,

it allows defenses to know exactly how you can stop Kirk Cousins. If you can get interior pressure, we saw this last year against Green Bay in Chicago, it's basically over and he's not going to be able to play that night. And I don't think that's the case necessarily for Garoppolo, even though he has moments where you go, what exactly happened there? What went through the old noggin when you decided to make that decision? But I think you can make up for some of that where you can't make up for a guy who literally won't move off of his spot when he drops back into it no it's like it's it's third and ten and you know you're gonna

just drop back straight and like who do you have more faith in in that situation to me it's Jimmy he's got that ultra quick release he'll you know he has that kind of just flick of the hips, get the ball out. You're right. Sometimes it looks like he's in a different playbook than the receivers are. I wonder if part of that, I wonder if he's getting acclimated to what is happening, game speed that's happening. He came back from injury last year. He's still really young in his NFL career in terms of snaps, despite his age because he sat on the bench for so long. So I'll be very

interested this year. They don't have Emmanuel Sanders. He's got another year on his belt with Shanahan. Obviously, he's got Kittle and Samuel, but that offense took off that second half of the season. So I'll be watching, obviously, very intently this year. All right. Well, this is kind of a great jumping off point for when we rank the different position groups for the Vikings quarterback is kind of its own group and ranking quarterbacks is always super fun with Cousins I don't think he's moved since about 2015 for where he ranks in the NFL that you can usually come up with 10 guys who are better but then after that it's guys like Garoppolo, guys like Jared Goff, who are in the same exact ballpark as him.

And he did show last year what his ceiling is in the perfect offense for him with great weapons. Some improved offensive line play would probably help a little bit more, but in a favorable schedule for the large part for Cousins last year. And he ends up being one of PFF's top quarterbacks, top in quarterback rating, and has a really, really good year. But I think because of that lack of dynamic element to his game, you're still picking some other guys ahead of him.

I would have him probably somewhere between 10 and 13, maybe. Where would you have him? Yeah, I think that's fair. And look, I mean, we drafted obviously with the future in mind, so younger guys were a little more highly coveted. He ended up going 14th there. So I think that's fair. I think he's in that.

I'd be curious if you would put him in there with another guy in his division, Matthew Stafford, who we saw last year, and I think this will be interesting with Cousins. So we saw Stafford gets a new offense that allows him to do things that are just better for a quarterback. You know, more play action, throw the ball downfield, has good receivers, you're getting open. And I would be very interested to watch Cousins made a leap

from like 14th to 6th in PFF grade last year with Stefanski. And I'd be very curious to see how that changes you're not only losing stefanski but you're losing stefan diggs and a guy that can get open at every level of the field like stefan diggs they do not grow on trees right so there are a lot of pieces here i think think Cousins has a lot of variance, and maybe more of that variance is on the downside, where we could see very easily some of those younger guys in more advantageous situations jump him. You look at Kyler Murray. You look at Baker Mayfield.

Some of those guys who have had really poor situations that are getting a lot better, and this year, you know, they might make that leap. It'll be fascinating. It really will. Before we get back to the conversation, got to take a second to thank our sponsors, SodaStick. Go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. If you have not seen yet the Can't Stop the Feelin' hat,

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No code needed. Discount automatically applied at checkout. Deal ends June 20th. Well, and with Cousins, his numbers last year are really jacked up from what he did in October. And if you remember, October featured him lighting up the Giants, an Eagles defense that had no cornerbacks left at that time, and Stephon Diggs smoked them that day.

Not to say that Cousins didn't make the throws. He played really spectacular in that game and was outstanding. It was the best game I think I've seen him play, so he earned that. But also, there were cornerbacks who didn't play before and were looking at each other like, was I supposed to cover Stephon Diggs, or was that you, or what? And then Washington, who had no idea what they were doing either, and he plays pretty well in that game.

So he really boosted up his stats through one month of the season, and that's not something you'd really expect. That's like a baseball player who in May ends up hitting 430 with 18 home runs or something, and then the rest of the year they're a 250 hitter, but their numbers still look like that May or at least still impacted by that may. I think there's some of that with Kirk. You're right that after this year, it will be very interesting to find out where he is, because we have more young quarterbacks in the NFL than I

can ever remember, or teams that believe this guy's about to take the next step. The Sam Darnolds, Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, all these guys who are very interesting, who have a chance to be better than Kirk. I don't know if I can put them ahead of Kirk right now, but if you were giving me the choice, Kyler Murray or Kirk Cousins going down the road, I think I'm taking Kyler Murray. Yeah, I mean, right. He was also the number one overall pick, so you had that prior there.

Mere point, weeks five through eight, he earned a top five PFF grade in each of those weeks, and that was four of the seven top five grades he earned all season. So, you know, that really bumped him up. He obviously, you know, could have been better in the playoffs, certainly in that game against San Francisco, against Jimmy G. But you look at his overall career, he had some really talented teams in Washington, has never cracked the top 10 in in PFF grade until last season so you know it'll be very interesting um they relied heavily on play

action which was very smart um he had a lot of clean pockets from which to throw I mean and his time to throw um really increased last year which I think it says a lot, right? Like you are spending more time on those rollouts. And even if a guy gets free, you know, a pass rusher gets free, when you have that much time, when you sit there for three seconds, you don't care if a pass rusher beats his block at like 2.8. Because by that time, Stephon Diggs is wide open. And those things will need to continue.

They'll need to find a way to make those things happen. And I think this is probably a good segue. A huge bit of that will be on the new receivers and the old receivers, right? Will Adam Thielen be able to elevate his play and his health? And will Jefferson be able to come in, guy that played like 998 of a thousand snaps in the slot last year at LSU is he going to play outside and do so having not had any training camp like those are huge questions to me I did ask Gary Kubiak that on a zoom call that very question and he said that he loves the fact that he's got that and also mentioned condensed sets which you know someone might be listed as being in the slot but if everyone is condensed it's kind of you know like having

everyone in the slot in some ways and they they did that a lot last year with the Kubiak offense and I would expect that again to get Justin Jefferson some of those free releases and and also I see him as an athletic enough player to be able to throw bubble screens or reverses or, like, find ways to get him the football. But with Adam Thielen, this is really hard to project. I mean, if you look at his PFF grades, quarterback rating when you throw in his way over his career, he's one of the best receivers in the NFL, but he's always had Stephon Diggs there next to him. And our sample size of games where Diggs is not in the lineup is very small.

So it's not like we could say, well, half of his games or whatever. So when we look at the skill group all together, let's include and say that Delvin Cook signs a contract. I don't know about that for sure. And I'm getting less confident by the day. But let's just say you have Delvin Cook, who last year was a machine when it came to yards after catch. Screen game was great with him. That helped Kirk Cousins' quarterback rating quite a bit to have a running back who could gain nine yards on a screen on average. But there's just questions beyond that.

And even with Cook and his contract, Cook and Thielen are the only real sure things here. And then beyond that, we don't know how much Irv Smith is going to grow. We don't know if Kyle Rudolph is going to regress. It's a very hard position group to rank. But if you had to, where would you put it? Yeah, this is a fascinating one. An interesting Dalvin Cook nugget, and I don't want to dive into the contract necessarily, but just looking at him from a receiving perspective, the raw numbers are very impressive. But I always talk about this with running backs. It's like the further downfield a guy gets thrown the ball,

the better chance he has of just making something with it, right? Because if a guy gets thrown the ball, there's a chance he's somewhat open or, you know, you think he's got an advantage, right? And those are yards that are – you just have to make the catch and you get those yards. On screen plays, and Dalvin Cook, that's where he saw just a massive number of targets those those targets occur behind the line of scrimmage right so like how much of those is he really earning i'm not saying he's not fantastic after the catch but there are a lot of running backs in the nfl but if they catch the ball on a well

blocked screen play you're going to make something of it. His average depth of target last year was 1.7 yards behind the line of scrimmage. The only guy with a more negative average depth of target was Derrick Henry, who I would not qualify as a particularly valuable receiving weapon, right? He's the guy you get him in space and do some things. So I'm not going to overrate Cook a ton here in terms of where I would rank the receivers. He's not like going into slot or anything like that. Last year, the Vikings, as a group of pass catchers, ranked sixth in PFF grade in receiving. But I would say this year, I would put them very much in the 15 to 18 range.

And it is so much, we talked aboutfferson irv smith the guy you highlighted look if you can get a tight end if you're gonna run i mean i don't know who their third receiver is right but like you're probably going to be running a lot of heavy sets a lot of two tight end stuff if irv smith can continue to improve that's enormous right because tight ends can have such a huge advantage over linebackers. That would be what I think could push them into the top half of the league. But right now, man, there's so many question marks. I don't know how you can expect a rookie in Justin Jefferson to just come in and be great right away. Like even if he does have a good season, you know, it probably takes him a little while to get going. So that's where I'd have them. And

maybe that's a little low. I'm curious what what you'd say before we get back to the conversation i want to remind you that there is no shortage of action going on right now at our exclusive partners at bet online.ag sports are slowly making their way back and bet online is leading the way with the best odds and lines for all ufc nascar boxing and soccer matches. And if you need more, they have simulated NFL, NBA, and UFC simulations all day, every day, live on their website. Looking for something else other than sports? BetOnline has hundreds of casino games, poker tournaments, and prop bets to check out. Visit BetOnline.ag, use the promo code BLUEWIRE for a free welcome bonus.

That's one word, BLUEWIRE. BetOnline, your online wagering experts. Now, I think middle of the league is fair because replacing Stephon Diggs is no easy task. And remember, I mean, they had Adam Thielen more often than they didn't have Adam Thielen. It was just that run of games where he was hurt and then, you know, slowed a little bit. But for the most part, you had Adam Thielen and Stephon Diggs with each other, as you've had for a very, very long time. And just putting someone else into that role and expecting them to be Stephon Diggs, I still think around the league, they don't realize how good Diggs was because he was always splitting targets with Adam Thielen. For those

old school football fans, maybe they would remember Jimmy Smith and Keenan McCardell. I think that Jimmy Smith was a far better wide receiver than Keenan McCardell, with all love to McCardell and the old Jags who had super fun teams. But Jimmy Smith is a Hall of Fame level player, and Keenan McCardell was very, very good. I think that you've got the same sort of situation here with Stephon Diggs and Adam Thielen, that even when Thielen was out, Diggs is dominating and setting team records and things like that. And, you know, that now puts a lot of pressure on Adam Thielen and on Gary Kubiak and the system to make that work. The number three receiver is BC Johnson at this point. And BC showed some nice things last year, but this has

been a position that the Vikings have really struggled with. They tried Josh Doxson, they tried Michael Floyd a couple of years ago, Kendall Wright they signed for a horrific preseason, and then he was gone. So, I mean, we've seen them really struggle to fill out that position, but yeah, no, I think it's fair, and especially with Delvin Cook, if he's not playing. I do think that he is special in his talent and his ability to break tackles, his bursts, how quick he is, how tough he is, all those things. But you can never, even if you sign him to a contract extension, write him in for 16 games anyway.

And so, yeah, I do think that that's fair. Now, the offensive line, they're not made better by their quarterback. Let's also put this out there. But really no improvement from last year. The only improvement that they're going to have to hope for is that Brian O'Neal continues to get better, and I'm very impressed with him. And that Garrett Bradbury takes a huge leap forward in his ability to pass block. That's just hard because he only weighs four pounds more than you do, George.

Yeah, I mean, that's being generous after all the ice cream that I've eaten over this quarantine here. But that's some very wishful thinking. But I think you're on the right track. And this ties into what you were just talking about. The screen game is effective when you can run that boot action and people are terrified of Stephon Diggs being open 30 yards outfield. And that's what we saw last year.

I mean, Stephon Diggs was just torching people. You give him 2.5 seconds to get open, he's open. And when that's working, you can throw it to Dalvin Cook or you can throw it to Mike Boone or you can throw it to me, and we're going to run for positive yardage. Even if it's Dalvin Cook there, if people aren't afraid of the play-action pass, they're going to be much closer to Dalvin Cook. And even if he breaks a couple of tackles, it's going to be less successful. And I would say similarly for the offensive line, they need to have a successful play-action game.

Similarly to how I think the Rams relied on that to protect their offensive linemen and protect Jared Goff, I see that being similar here in that it can buy you time. It allows that extra beat where the defensive line has to think and gives your offensive line who knows the play a little bit of an advantage. To me, that is the huge benefit of play action is that it just buys your quarterback a little more time. And that's, I think, the key for this line because they're not great, especially on the interior. Brian O'Neill is a guy that I think is a top half of the league tackle. And that's kind of what you're looking for. You're looking for someone who's not a catastrophe.

And at least they have that on the outside, which is important. But, man, you're going to have to drop straight back a few times a game. And if Garrett Bradbury is getting roasted on the inside, that's going to be bad news for Kirk DeStatue Cousins. So, you know, I think it's right in the same spot as where the receiving core is, like middle-ish of the league. And that can go either way, depending on how effective the play-action game is at protecting those guys. Maybe I was too harsh there with Kirk Cousins. I actually really like Kirk Cousins and hope he does well. But you are spot on when you said, man, he just stands there. And if you get a guy that gets a clean rush up the middle, it's bad news. Well, I mean, you look at last year and you mentioned how long he held the ball.

It was longer than anybody else in the NFL. Another part of it, too, was they reduced the number of raw sacks and raw pressures by running the football more often, by using play action. Maybe that helps a little. But Cousins' pressure rate was basically the same. And it kind of always has been. The only year that I think it was better was 2016 when Trent Williams was healthy for a full season and uh well that

Trent Williams thing did not go super well at the draft with the Vikings trying to work out something for him so they're still here with a left tackle that cannot handle speed rushers they have no one right now currently locked into a left guard spot, a center who's much better run blocker and screen blocker than he is a pass blocker. And again, on the right guard, I don't know who's playing there and neither does anyone else at this moment. So it's really hard to say that they're going to be great. I think they have the potential to do some things really well, but those things are not protect for straight drop backs with cousins.

And he does, he pats the ball. He kind of stands there. He takes that extra beat. And that also, by the way, in our conversation about Jimmy Garoppolo, that's a big difference too. Garoppolo does not sit there and pat the ball. Like he hits the back foot and that ball is gone. He doesn't need to bring it down very far like Cousins does.

And I just think it takes longer to get it out, which means your guy has to be more open or you have to have more anticipation to make a good throw. And that makes it a little harder for Cousins does, and I just think it takes longer to get it out, which means your guy has to be more open or you have to have more anticipation to make a good throw, and that makes it a little harder for Cousins. But he's consistently made his offensive line worse throughout his career because of that lack of mobility and lack of a quick release. So they're not going to get better for pass protection. It's can they work around it, like you said, but also maximize the skills that they do have.

They have so many good athletes on this offensive line. Last year they were an above average, I think, by PFF grade run blocking team, and they're going to have to continue to do that. But I think this is the least disastrous an offensive line has been for the Vikings, maybe since I've been covering them starting in 2016. Yeah, that's a good call. I mean, look, T.J. Clemmings is a man. God bless his heart.

We all remember how that went for them. So you bring up a great point. I mean, the release time is something that gets exacerbated when you are, first off, just in the NFL in general, and then when you are in a situation where your time to throw is cut down. I mean, the Niners had just a malady of injuries on the offensive line last year at the tackle position. You would have been like, oh, my God, they're in trouble.

But Jimmy G had one of the quickest time to throws. It was one of the quickest releases. I mean, if you just watch him throw the ball, it's a hit move and it's out. I remember talking to his quarterback coach at the Combine, and he just, like, could not stop raving about it. He was showing me videos from him in high school. Like he still had the quick release. So it matters and it will matter for an offensive line,

especially if they're a little below average. Let's just talk about the defensive side and where they'll rank is more of a whole. Now you guys say on the PFF forecast podcast, that defense does not matter, but what's interesting, what's interesting here, the Vikings just go against everything you guys say because not only do they value the running back position and the running game, and Gary Kubiak was very happy to point out that he's run the ball a lot

and has rings. But, you know, with the defensive side with Zimmer, there are only a few coaches walking around who consistently get more out of their talent than exists there, and when they have top talent, they're number one in the league in 2017, and I think for the Vikings, you would normally project losing some key players, having a lot of uncertainty at the cornerback position as a big drop-off, but I think with Zimmer, he has the ability to negate some of that impact. Do you agree with that? I do. And look, you'll never hear me slander the coaching of Mike Shanahan, who's one of my

favorites. I had the pleasure of hanging out with him at the Super Bowl. Dude is just such a legend. And Gary Kubiak is right up there as well. I'll just point out those Super Bowl rings from a little while ago. And in the NFL now, you've got to not just – you've not got to just pass the ball. You've got to stop the pass. And when I look at this defense, that is where the immediate, oh, like, snap, you know, moment comes. You're looking at the depth chart and you go, okay, I've got Eric Kendricks here. He's going to be great in the middle of the field.

He can cover. He was our second-highest grade linebacker last year. Awesome. I've got Harrison Smith and Anthony Harris back deep. Anthony Harris was tremendous last year. And I got Daniil Hunter rushing the passer. That's fantastic. And you look on the outside and you go, man,

I know it's addition by subtraction with Xavier Rhodes, but, like, you've still got to get some kind of averageness in three cornerback spots right I mean Jeff Gladney um I really liked I thought that was a fantastic pick like all of those things can be true but the cornerback position is a very tough one to project it's notoriously hard to project from season to season and the reason that we talk about defense, quote, not mattering, is that you are such a – you're so vulnerable to the offense. And so the offense matters more.

It dictates a lot of how your defense ends up looking because really great offenses dictate where the ball goes. And nowhere is that more underscored than in coverage because if you have a weak spot in coverage, if your third widecored than in coverage. Because if you have a weak spot in coverage, if your third wide receiver is weak in coverage, and Eric wrote a fantastic article about this on pff.com, you should search it if you have not read it, on the continuity needed to be successful in coverage. If you have a weak third cornerback, the offense can attack that. If you have a weak second cornerback, look, the Vikings were

in the NFC hunt with the 49ers in that game because of Akella Witherspoon. Right? Because he couldn't cover and they attacked it. And they managed to plug that gap and then all of a sudden the game totally flipped. So I'm

looking at the second cornerback spot. I'm looking at the second cornerback spot. I'm looking at the slot cornerback spot. I'm looking at the first cornerback spot. And I'm saying, I don't know what those are. And that means even with Mike Zimmer, I have a hard time going anything above, anything inside the top 10. Yeah, I think that we could look at it either as they still have the superstar talent to carry them or they have

these gaping holes that are just going to be problematic and as you mentioned last year with one gaping hole Xavier Rhodes they threw at him every time and completed 80 something percent of their passes and that negated what Everson Griffin and what Daniil Hunter could do and what Eric Hendricks could do because teams would find a way to isolate that problem. And it's a part of the reason that I think the Vikings should still be looking at the free agent list and saying, hey, you know, if there's a guy, a veteran corner that you can bring in who gives you at least a chance that you know is going to be, even if he's a little below average, that still might be good. All right, let's talk about punters. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not kidding. Punters and kick. But, George, this has been great.

People should go find the PFF forecast. It is in my headphones every time I'm going for a jog, you and Eric Eager breaking it all down from a gambling perspective mostly, but then sometimes just, you know, you never really know what might come up on the podcast. Sometimes we'll talk about food. Sometimes we'll talk about trying to work out. We try to talk about things from a mathematical perspective. And oftentimes, look, that means betting a little money here or there to keep things interesting. In Eric's case,

on the WNBA, which I have gotten into more and more so because of's great. It's a much better product than baseball. So, you know, it's good. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. And I'm just so happy to have you back on the airwaves as well, man. This is fantastic. It was great to talk to you again. And thanks for having me.

Well, I really appreciate it. And you guys, PFF, usually make weekly appearances here. And I can't say how much I appreciate all the time that you give to the Purple Insider brand. I really appreciate that. So George Zahuri, follow him. You will not have to try and spell his last name to follow him on Twitter, PFF underscore George there and the PFF forecast podcast. Thanks again, George. And we will talk to you all next time on Purple Insider. Hey, before we wrap up here on the Purple Insider Podcast,

I just want to ask a quick favor to all of you loyal listeners. If you could go to the description of this podcast and go to the link to the survey that I posted there, it takes you about 60 seconds, and you'll be automatically entered to win a chance to win some AirPods or BlueWire merchandise real quick. It would be a big help. Just fill out the 60-second survey and send it in.

We'll be good to go. Plus, rate and review this podcast if you get a chance. Thanks very much for listening.