Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Reacting to Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's free agency press conference

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom are joined by The Athletic's Arif Hasan talk about Minnesota Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's free agency press conference. Did we learn anything about the direction? What is a "competitive rebuild?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a little roundtable action inside of TCO Performance Center. Matthew Collar, Sam Ekstrom, along with Arif Hasan from The Athletic as we react to Kwesi Adafo-Mentz's free agency press conference in which we got it laid out for us, boys, that this is play in the middle between a rebuild and trying to be competitive. So why don't we start off Arif just with you and your reaction to hold on let me get the quote here. He says they ask are you either all in or tearing down and rebuilding. I don't really look at the world that way. The way we look at it is we're trying to navigate both worlds. We're trying to live in today and tomorrow or the competitive rebuild however you want to phrase it or market it.

That was Kwesi's exact comment. So why don't we start out with your reaction to that, Arif? New look Vikings, same as the old. This is the exact problem that got Rick Spielman in trouble, that got Mike Zimmer in trouble. The idea that the team continuously tried to walk the tightrope between being good enough to compete for Super Bowl, which feels like a pie in the sky dream, right, with the way the roster is constructed, and, you know, maintain an ability to consistently,

you know, build young talent and develop them and have a competitive roster three years in the future. Now, there probably are ways to do that. And this front office is better positioned, maybe, or maybe there's more optimism that they'll be able to do that. But I just I don't think not committing is a very smart strategy generally. Where is the rebuild part of the competitive rebuild other than their roster is top-heavy and thin? And they might have to rely on some like— They got rid of Michael Pierce. Oh, but they signed Harrison Phillips. That's cap savings, right? Marginal, negligible cap savings, yes.

I just—I don't see the rebuild part. Like, they've amassed no assets, and they have not really done anything to get, you know, their cap in any better shape. In fact, it's probably worse. So I don't really see that part of it at all. I mean, it seems like they're kind of in more the all-in mode, even if he claims they're in both worlds. They're doing, using limited limited parameters they are trying to win

this season now that doesn't mean that every spot has been filled because it just simply can't with their cap restrictions they still have incredible secondary holes um they don't have a whole lot of depth on the defensive line they only have one tight end that you would trust and he's coming off injury so i i don't know if i even agree with his statement but if the statement were reflective of his moves it would still be as a reef said having you know kind of your hand in both cookie jars and i loved joe schmidt's question today where he's basically like teams that try this get mired in mediocrity how do you avoid that um and i'm trying to look back at what exactly he said. It was a

very diplomatic answer. He said it was a good question. And he had a lot of, you know, he used a lot of phraseology that we're not used to hearing from Rick Spielman, like time horizons. What did you make, like, what is the time horizon, Arif, in your mind? Do you know what that means? Well, okay. So first, I don't think it means a lot. I think it's one of those phrases that you can pick up in one of those business management books that seems like very forward. And you feel like once you read it, you feel like you've come away learning a lot. And then you think about how to apply the principles you've learned in that book, and you come up with nothing, right? That's what that phrase kind of feels. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe

there's something very specific in a way that they view the world that is useful for winning football games. I don't know what it is. Maybe I haven't read the same books. So there is that possibility. But for me, the issue is, and Joe Schmidt asked a good question, but the only issue I have with that question is it prevented me from asking my question because it was functionally the same but phrased differently which was if you're if you claim to

be in a competitive rebuild how is it that you can secure the future when all you're doing is kicking cap space down the road and making it really difficult to to have a 2023 and 2024 competitive roster because when i when i put out a plan for how you can keep Kirk Cousins and still maintain a competitive roster and sign a bunch of guys in free agency and have enough room to sign a draft class, you know, it wasn't an article I love to write, but it was something that kind of helped me figure out what might happen in this world where you still keep all these players like Adam Thielen and Harrison Smith, and that's exactly what they did. They followed that blueprint. The problem is when I'm playing around with it on the cap calculator at overthecap.com, which I imagine is a less

sophisticated tool than the one the Vikings use, I ended up way below the 2023 cap. Like that's the issue that I had is that I couldn't build for 2023. And then in 2023, I needed to make a bunch of tough decisions that I could no longer kick down the road because Adam Thielen's been restructured twice. Harrison Smith's been restructured twice. The Daniel Hunter thing, there's not a lot left in that. You have to extend him. You can't restructure.

Void years for several guys. And so you don't build space for 2023 and 2024 with the way the Vikings have structured a lot of these contracts. So they actually are, at least in my view, sacrificing, not treading water, but actually sacrificing the future to win in 2022. And I don't know, you look at this roster, and I don't know that 2022, the Vikings have what it takes to, like, go all in. Like, if you're the Chiefs right it would and

they just made a huge trade so maybe this is a bad example but like you would get it right if the Chiefs were like you know what screw 2020 the Rams actually the Rams great example the Rams are just like you know screw 2023 and 2024 we're gonna win the Super Bowl now and you got it right they had an amazing roster they had an all-world player in Aaron. They had another all-world player in Jalen Ramsey. They just needed a good enough quarterback to get it to one of the best receivers in the league in Cooper Cup and hopefully pair him with Robert Woods. That didn't work. They brought in Odell Beckham.

Fine. Whatever. They sacrificed the future for a credible chance at winning now. I don't see that for this Vikings team. It's almost like, and sorry, McCullough, I know you want to jump in here. It's almost like they kept the, is Matthew on the podcast? They kept the, like the window is basically closed, but let's say it's, you know, open a crack. They kept it open a crack for this year

and for next year as well, because they gave Kirk the extra year, Daniil's under contract next year. And like, they can roll with this core now in 2023. Maybe the time horizon he's speaking of is, well, we think that we can be baseline competitive. It's 2022. The time horizon is this year.

Yeah, we're at the horizon. But I just found the answer to that Joe Schmidt question that we were waffling about how he answered it. He answered it with the Sam Hinckley anecdote, the process, right? And he basically said, well, in basketball, you don't want to be mired in mediocrity because you need to get a transcendent player. And that's not the case in football. And I would argue that, you know, having a transcendent quarterback is pretty darn important and getting a high draft pick to find that player.

I made a face. Like when he said it, I don't know if he saw me make a face, but I made a face. Because it's just been the history of the entire league is that you need a transcending quarterback to be consistently good for a long time. And the only way not to be is if you have a quarterback on a rookie contract and you can trade for Tyreek Hill and sign Teron Armstead in the same week.

That's the only way you can do it. And Arif, you don't need to look outside the building for examples of times in which you should have gone all in. 2018, 2019 were that time here and i wouldn't have criticized and never did them signing someone like sheldon richardson for example and paying him a good chunk of cash and even with the kirk cousins thing there were folks certain people were sitting in this room who wondered if a expensive quarterback contract for someone like kirk was a good idea in 2018.

But we always understood it. We always understood, like, the framework. Right. I see what you're doing and why you're doing it. And I get it. And that is not now. Like, this is, I mean, Zedarius Smith is a really, really good player at his absolute best. But age, price, injury injury history like all these things

they sort of red flag to that's a move that a team that could really win makes to get Zedarius Smith and I guess you guys think that that's the case and I think that if it was a one-year Sheldon Richardson deal for Zedarius Smith you go like okay he came here to get himself some money basically and like he'll help you for this year and then you can decide down the road, but it's a three-year deal. And then if you want to get out of it in year three, because it didn't work out or he's not as productive as you wanted him to be, then it's going to hurt you long-term. And like here, we're just doing these same things over again. And then when he was asked about the ceiling of this team,

which I thought was another good question. Yeah. Great question from Reggie. And he said that, you know, we're all about the joyful pursuit of excellence was what he said. It's like, okay, well, the fans aren't about the joyful pursuit of excellence. They're about a team that can actually compete for the playoffs, man. I mean, what? Like to not even say that our goal is to go deep in the playoffs and that's what we're

building this team for and instead say it's the joyful pursuit of what? Like, yeah, man, I came here with the joyful pursuit of getting quotes from this press conference and doing a podcast, but there's no like people expect me to go win a Super Bowl, right? Like what are we talking about here? Like there's, we're gonna have to create a bit around Kwesi of just like where platitudes go wrong, you know? Like where corporate speak goes wrong,

where like corporate speak is designed to not say anything, so you sort of get away with not answering questions, but in a lot of cases, it just makes you sound way worse and not even saying we're chasing a Super Bowl or we're because you've done moves to chase the Super Bowl. So not even saying we're here to chase the playoffs or chase the Super Bowl and saying we're about the joyful pursuit of excellence. It's like, oh man, this is just, this is not what anybody wants to hear considering the moves that you've made. Well, let me ask you guys an obvious question. Does a GM need to have a wide-angle lens with the way they view their team?

It is their job. It is their job. So when he says, quote, focus on five feet in front of your face and just take it on faith that that's going to end up where you want to be, with the confetti coming down, the document moved on me. I lost it. With the confetti coming down with the conference championship or the Super Bowl, whatever it is, I feel like those two things aren't aligned. You need to have such a wide view to get to that point. You can't just focus five feet in front. You got to focus like five miles in front. Well, so this I think gets to Matthew's point about getting comfortable with corporate speak because you can end up contradicting yourself a lot with phrases that you're deploying that are essentially meaningless. But when evaluated, if we treated every phrase in this presser as serious, we end up with a lot of contradictions in the way he's saying he views the world, right? Because there are other parts of this presser where he is talking about a macro level

view, a long-term view, a view for how is it that you win in this league? How is it that you end up in the Super Bowl? And then on this question, instead of committing to saying that he thinks the Vikings have the ability to win, which would not be a controversial statement for him to make given the moves that they made and what he said at the beginning of the presser. I'm kind of curious as to why he didn't commit to, hey, if we continue building this roster the way we have been building it, we think we can compete for a Super Bowl. Super easy phrase for anybody to say, but it sounds like a commitment, so maybe he walked away from that. But he says you have to look five feet in front of your face, you have to get a little bit better every day.

But then he also says you need to make sure that – and I don't know if there's a specific phrasing that we can point to here. But you need to make sure that you've got a vision or a plan, that you've got a long-term solution, right? And the phrase of the day was finding solutions or something like that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. solutions or something like that yeah yeah yeah um so that that that feels like it's a contradiction of the way that he spoke at the combine and spoke at other points in this presser yeah no this is a great point because the way he spoke at the combine it sounded like he was setting everyone up for there might be some steps back and there might be some changes and things like that. And then now you sort of have to say that we're going to be competitive. But also you use the phrase competitive rebuild, which sounds like rebuild.

And yet you just gave a bunch of money to a 30 year old player and actually a ton of money to a bunch of other 30 year old players. And a quarterback who's very expensive and can dictate to you what his future wants to be. And this is where the rubber meets the road for me with everything is like, even if you did all of this other stuff to keep them competitive this year, and you said, look, we're going to hang on to Kirk for this year. And then the future is who knows about what we do at quarterback draft or the next Russell Wilson, who just shockingly becomes on the trade market. We want to be ready for that. If there was not a no trade clause for next year or even just if they left him at the 45 mil, I think we'd be sitting here going like, yeah, I don't really get a lot of this other stuff. stuff, but the fact that you're not locked into that particular player or that he doesn't get to dictate to you what his future is here. Okay. That still leaves the door open for competitive

rebuild where you go, let's see what we can do with it this year. And then after this, then we'll go forth. But when Kirk can tell you, Oh no, no, uh, daddy's not selling the house quasi cause you put a no trade clause in there. So I get to do what I want for 2023. I mean, that just makes it so much harder to justify all of this other stuff that we're talking about, because I think we can get just like really caught up in the corporate speak and trying to even parse through what it's supposed to mean is pretty difficult. And I think its intention is to just be confusing and not mean anything. But, you know, at the same time, everyone wants to know how this makes sense. And that's what I keep coming back to.

It's the make it make sense off season. And when you're not making it make sense at the podium, that's where we have to say, dude, what are you talking about? Like, what are we supposed to say on the show to react to what you just said when we can't really understand it? And that's kind of where I am today. Right. And it is entirely possible that they have a good plan in place, that he has a really good vision for what the future is, that he's building a team in the right way. But there's no way that we could know that based off of what they've done so far, and particularly what he said. Like, it's great that there's been

a lot more media availability for Adolfo Mensah than there has been for Spielman, I think, in the first couple of months of Adolfo Mensah than the first two years of Spielman. So, like, maybe three, right? And that's great, but it is, like, difficult to react to a lot of this stuff when it can be contradictory, when it comes up with either empty phrases or phrases that are references to concepts that are just not easily familiar to sports writers, right? Like I don't know kind of what direction we're going in. And what I really like is that how many ways different teams can come up with the idea of competitive rebuild, right? Because competitive rebuild is like one phrase you could use. You could say reload, not rebuild.

I think the Vikings have used that before. Retool? Retool is a good one. My favorite, I think. Revamp is a good one. My favorite, I think, is actually from the Seahawks. Of course it is. Pete Carroll's win forever.

That rules. Like, that rules. But it is the same concept as all the other ones. It just sounds cooler. Very few teams can do that. And the teams that can do that have Tom Brady on a $15 million contract. So it's not really the same thing. So just as an aside, but like the other thing that really and you know the shine is kind of worn off i'm i'm really fascinated with process oriented approaches to general managing and so i've been pretty light in terms of the way that i've covered a dofamensa and i might be turning a corner soon uh because one of the things that i i that struck me and i've had this conversation i think with both of you um but certainly other people at the Combine,

is I was never a huge fan of Sam Hinckley, the guy who ran the 76ers. And his resignation letter, I thought, was full of the kind of pop psychology, corporate speak, Steven Pinker, Malcolm Gladwell. In fact, I think there are references to both of those books in his resignation letter, of the kind of books that you read when you think you're smart, right? Yes.

It's his fault that we hear the word collaboration so much. That must be it. And so I was like, okay, well, the thing about the way Adolfo Mensah speaks right now is that there seems to be a commitment to a style of thinking that has a deeper understanding of the concepts that are useful in building an organization

than what Sam Hinckley did when he was talking about building an organization and had surface level references to some of these pop psychology books. And so I think there's a difference between the two, and I really like that about Adolfo Mensa. And then, of course, in this presser, and I specifically referenced Sam Hinckley in these conversations when I said, you know, here's kind of an analytics for GM that I think is faking it, and here's an Analytics 4 GM that I think is faking it,

and here's an Analytics 4 GM that I think has it. And then, of course, in this presser, he brings up Sam Hinckley as somebody he works with and admires. And it's just like, well, I guess I can't win. I guess I'm wrong. Hey, everybody, I've been making my meals from HelloFresh, and I have to tell you, I cannot make enough of these things and if i can make them literally anyone can with hello fresh you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep skip the trips to the grocery store count on hello fresh to make home cooking easy and affordable that's why it's america's number one meal kit one of the nice things for me as i'm grinding the football tape is that Hello

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figure out things after that but they didn't do do nothing. They did stuff though. They did stuff and it wasn't good stuff. Like it wasn't good stuff for the future. That's when you say we did nothing. And that struck me too. It was just like, wait, no, no, you did. You reworked contracts and you hurt yourself long-term to keep this group together. That's not doing nothing. That's not changing faces, but it is changing contracts no that's good okay so here's here's kind of the interesting question is then how much of this is actually on adolfo mensa right like how much of this comes from ownership because and the reason i bring this up is because there were rumors that and i think really well sourced rumors that the vikings were

going to trade like four different players this offseason, maybe five, right? Like Kirk Cousins was on the table. Daniil Hunter was on the table. Eric Hendricks was on the table. Maybe Adam Thielen was on the table. The way he mentioned like they were happy to get a new deal for Thielen as if there was a real threat to lose him. Right.

The way he talked about that. Right. And I think we all heard some rumors that some of these high contract players might be moved the only the only high contract player that i didn't hear a rumor about was like harrison smith and i think that's right oh brian o'neill right um and i i think that's just because well a brian o'neill signed a contract very recently but i think for harrison smith is you know kevin o'connell called him out right away in his opening presence like well i probably can't move him. But it felt like every one of these players was on the market, that they were maybe close to trading them.

And then suddenly they weren't. And there's a couple of different ways that can happen. The two that I can think of are that, one, someone with more authority than Kweisi Dofumensa, which can only mean ownership in this context, said, no, we should probably attempt to win now. Or two, the Kirk Cousins contract was the linchpin of everything. And so they made a decision based on whether or not they could work something with Cousins, right? And so they decided that we will move the franchise in whatever direction these negotiations go. And so if they say we can't get an extension for Kirk Cousins, then we'll move everybody. And if we can, then we'll keep everybody. And maybe that was the philosophy going in. But I think those are your two options.

Right. But that's not how they acted either, because they still tried to trade everybody else after. Like, right. I mean, they still. We continue hearing rumors. So the question then is if those rumors are sourced from moves or calls that were made. And I think maybe they were. I think you're right. Moves or calls that were made after the deal was announced with Cousins or if they were just extensions of stuff we heard before. That's the problem with like building off of reporting, right, is that sometimes the reporting occurs prior to an important event. Right.

But there was so much smoke even this week about Daniil Hunter. Yes. And if you move Hunter but keep Cousins, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. What do you do? And so we even talked about this. Like if they were bringing in Zedarius Smith to move Hunter, that also wouldn't make sense either. And so, I mean, where they are now, it all kind of comes together of we have to win this year.

It's just when you mention the future, that's where I balk at it. Because you've done nothing to help yourself in the future. As Sam kind of started out his comments with, and we're going to have to see that. And then I thought there were very reasonable questions about the cornerback group in particular, where you have nothing to work with.

I mean, cam Dantzler was okay. And 600 snaps last year at times. You have to hope for cam answer Cam Dancer is your best scenario. You're penciling him in as one starter, and that's all you have. Right, and usually teams that have good secondaries have to have, and this is where Mike Zimmer is right, like you can never have too many corners,

but you have to have depth at that position. They get hurt a lot. Players have big ups and downs in their careers, as we saw from Bashad Breeland happened to hit a down when he came here, a very severe down. But that's how it goes with cornerback careers, right? And there's questions about, would you bring back Patrick Peterson? It's like, with what money and why would you do that, right? And here's the thing, just I'm going to let you go back in a second. But here's the thing with Patrick Peterson is that that is probably going to be another one-year deal.

And with three- or four-year deals, you can do a lot to kind of hide that contract and move it down the road. With a one-year deal, you can't. That cap, it hits right away. And they could, in theory, sign a three-year deal where the final two years are void. That would be nuts to me because then you're absolutely punting on 2023. But there's just not a lot of movement with a Patrick Peterson re-signing as there is with a Zedaria Smith signing because that is legitimately a multi-year deal. Whereas with Peterson, it's going to be short-term deals. And with short-term deals, you cannot move that

cap around all that much. So I wanted to get your guys' reaction. I asked Kweisi directly about ownership and their role in all of this. And the answer was long. And the answer was fast. And the fastest answer out of any of the questions we heard today. There's no question. It was the fastest answer, even though there were a lot of words. And it just seems like the preponderance of the evidence here tells us the story as it relates to ownership, where Kweisi

at the combine had a lot of answers that made a lot of sense. And then all of a sudden doesn't after all this happens. And there's a lot of reporting that people could get moved and offers were made. And then none of those things come to fruition. And then as he's talking, he's sort of dropping in like, oh, I'm getting texts and emails from them all the time and things like that, which is fine. And, of course, you should communicate with the people whose money you're spending. just feeling like we have taken a huge turn from, oh, this ownership must not have anything to do with anything because we never hear from them to there. There's directives here and there's only limitations on what Kweisi Adafo Mensah can do. And I thought that his answer did absolutely nothing to dispel that notion that we've sort of all been putting together recently. Why don't you

guys both sort of react to that? Because maybe you guys took it differently than I did. Well, he definitely didn't say, yeah, they really empower us. They're hands off. They let us do our work. And they're very respectful of our... I mean, that wasn't the answer. The answer started out with, I'll get a call from Mark. I'll get a call from Ziggy. Get an email from Lenny. That sounds horrible. All three of them, from Ziggy. Get an email from Lenny. That sounds horrible. All three of them, from all angles, you have to answer their calls. They couldn't even consolidate their messages to you. When he says they're so passionate, they're curious, this is their baby. Okay. They've left an impression on you. You clearly pretty early that they really care about

this team. No one doubts that. But, you know, when it says this is their baby, I've had a couple of those recently, and they require a lot of attention and a lot of hands-on work. And I got the feeling that that was closer to what he was describing with ownership. Yeah, and then when you pair it with – not that Spielman is not going to do his level best to make himself look good

right before he interviews with the Steelers, but when you compare it to the stuff that Spielman has said about the not my fault stuff on his tour around, where he talks about, hey, maybe ownership wants a guy in there that, what was the phrase? Brings seats in?

Yeah, brings seats in. But puts butts in seats, right? Yeah, I'm sure you meant that. When you bring that in, when you kind of hear some rumors about how often ownership wants to be, you know, kept up to date on quarterback moves, which is pretty normal for ownership,

but like, and then you hear, oh, hey, and I had to let them know about the Zedaria Smith signing. It's like, well, okay, I guess, you know, it makes sense to send a note that, hey, I'm about to spend a big chunk of the money that you've given me, but it is weird that, you know, that they would need to be kept this in the loop on that kind of thing. And then you think back well you know why did Childress get fired it's not because he was a bad coach which he was it was because he traded away Randy Moss without consulting Spielman or ownership yeah right yeah uh or was it cut him was it trading it was cut him right because the Titans picked him up off of waivers and and that's where now it feels very difficult. And I mean, it may be for some time until we see all the things that they do.

It's very difficult to evaluate what Kweisi Adafomensa and Kevin O'Connell are doing, because we don't know how many hands are in the cookie jar in terms of telling them what to do. It is the case that if you are to say, if you run a corporation and you're the manager of the corporation, you are answering to the owners, the board, the CEO, whoever is ahead of you and all of your decisions, if this, if we're going to look at this like a corporate thing have to be based on what those people want. And so if you own the team and you want certain things, there is no choice for the general manager or they will fire you and find

somebody else. Like if, if they're saying we're not taking a third round pick for Kirk cousins, which I think kind of now feels like that's what it was going to be. Now that Matt Ryan's been traded there, uh, if it was a third-round pick for Cousins and they said, no way, Russell Wilson just got traded for a couple of firsts, that's what we want, well, there is not a whole lot your GM can do. But at the same time, we also have to look at, if there are certain parameters laid out and it's competitive rebuild, you have to work within those and you have to competitive rebuild in the right way.

And I don't know that the right way is giving an older receiver more years. And I don't know if the right way is adding void years or restructuring deals or things like that. Even if you are not allowed to do certain things, I don't think we could just give a free pass to, is it the right thing? And I really respect the Darius Smith. Okay.

I don't want him to hear this and be angry at me. He might hug you. He even gave me a look yesterday on a question where I was like, are you going to tackle me? He's a great player, but the age, all those other things, they don't quite match up to what this team really needs, which is players who are 20. That's what they really need. So, you know, even within

the parameters, they still have to do the right things. And that's why I feel a little bit of cop-out-ish to just keep coming back to like, ah, well, ownership told them to do it. No, no, that's a good point because there are ways that you can handle some of this stuff. The Thielen thing, in order to get out from under his contract, if you trade Thielen and a pick for a younger receiver that's maybe not quite as good as Thielen at his peak, that is a competitive rebuild, right? Where, yeah, you're losing a future asset, but you're getting a younger player that you know, based off of their time in the league, can compete now, right? Where you're straddling the line between building for the future and winning now, where you maybe sacrifice a pick, but you get a younger player, you can build for a little bit longer, and you don't

commit to an older receiver like Thielen, who has now had multiple injuries, including, I think, one or two back injuries and at least two lower body injuries, who's on, what, he's about to be 32? 32, yeah. I think he's going to be 32 by next season. Yeah. So a player that you commit to long-term with multiple injuries that's older is a way to win now, but it is not a way to straddle the line between those two things. And I don't know, trade market's going kind of crazy right now. It seems like anybody's up to be traded. Robert Woods was just traded. Tyreek Hill was just traded. Not that the Vikings would be able to absorb those contracts, but if you trade Thielen for a

younger receiver and you trade away a pick to do that, that I think can straddle the line. There are ways to fulfill that directive, if there is a directive from ownership, that look a lot better. But then you also have to ask the question, well, if ownership wants a competitive rebuild, and I'm going to push back a little bit, I am going to give him a little bit of a cop-out here. If ownership wants a competitive rebuild and gives that directive and then also says, here's some of my favorite players.

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rudolph just dominated them in that negotiation considering the rumor that he was about to be traded for a second-round pick, which if that's a – they should have done it to me. I remember advocating for it, and then Rudolph didn't do very much after that. The Cook contract, too. Yeah. I mean, the Cook contract was like all summer long they're playing hardball. But if you're in a position of negotiation where you have to end up with Delvin Cook

on your team long term. You lose that negotiation. And so suddenly after 2018, all of Rick Spielman's moves start to not make sense. Before that, they did. Before that, it was draft a quarterback on the rookie contract, make good signings like Captain Munderland, Linval Joseph, Terrence Newman, guys who are sort of savvy signings, but don't lock you in long term. And then it really changed. And I am not letting Spielman off the hook by saying this and say like, oh, well, he said it was their fault. But if we're looking for sort of like what the tea leaves say and when they started to be bizarre and trading for kicker slash punters and so forth and. Yeah. And drafting a center and right right right drafting

a center because you need a zone system and things like that the first time spielman has drafted an interior offensive lineman in the first two rounds ever ever and in fact the only time before that that he drafted someone in the third round i think was uh was that uh was pat elfline right and so like he really went outside of his philosophy of interior offensive because they drafted a bunch of fifth and sixth rounders hoping they'd find the next fusco or sullivan or whatever right and then suddenly you have to win now and he drafts the center round one the next fusco is my band name um so here are my thoughts on the last um five minutes of discourse and i feel like creed in the office i'm like two great minds battling it out i've got a front row seat so where spielman overpaid for everything like the last few years right draft capital finances however on occasion once they had to have

a hard negotiation with someone who was aging sometimes they won like when they got barred down to like a cheaper one-year deal when they slashed riley reef's salary when they got griffin you know back cheap i think his first time around um once in a while, they actually sort of like, you know, laid down. I think they learned a lot from the Matt Khalil contract negotiation failure that they had when they gave him the fifth year option. Yeah. Yeah. And they actually were somewhat firm and kind of got their way sometimes. And in all of these restructures that we've seen in the past couple of weeks, that's not happening. I mean, we're not seeing guys taking pay cuts at all. We're seeing guys getting more money up front

and then money kicked down the road as well. These have been pretty good for the player. So there's not a lot that's getting cleared up long-term from that standpoint. I'm not sure how much I believe in Quasito Fomento's faith in the current roster either. He's talking about how high they are on guys that are in the building, at cornerback, and how they're kind of looking at everybody. He didn't name a single corner, by the way. They've been so hesitant to name names. Any time, whether it's Donatel or O'Connell or Adolfo Menzo, they've been so hesitant to name guys that they like, which I think is curious, which tells me that—

They've named Harrison Smith and Daniil Hunter. They didn't even name— They named Anthony Barr. Yeah, that was right. Yeah. But they didn't even name Eric Kendricks, right? Like, they—you're right that they've been very careful not to name names. And I think when you ask a question about a position group that you say is struggling and they push back but they don't tell you who they like yeah and and let me let me just try to put a bow on my

point is that in these negotiations that they're losing and the cap is still extremely tight the the hunter restructure basically is canceled out by whatever salary we end up hearing from uh from azaria smith so the domino effect then is, well, okay, we've invested in these win now players. So now that we have to win now, we kind of are obligated to,

you know, draft at a certain position to fill these open holes. We can't necessarily go best player available. Um, sounds familiar. And yeah, it, it,

it affects the way that they have to approach the draft, even I think. Which is interesting because bringing back the conversation about naming names, they did name three players in the offensive line that they liked. Ezra Cleveland, which was interesting, but fine, I get it. And then of course the two tackles, which of course you would, right? Uh, and so that tells you that they have two interior offensive lines. And I don't think Austin Schlottman is, you know, doing that, right? Like, I donemen. I don't think Austin Schlottman is doing that. I don't think you could just hand him a starting draft. No, he's your doger.

Right. So they've got two interior offensive linemen and three cornerbacks to draft. There's no way that you can get five starters out of a draft. No, of course not. I mean, and they've tried to do that before. Even last year, it was like, we'll draft Wyatt Davis in the third.

And like, well, that's, you know, it might work might work and it didn't but it's a third round pick and if they're relying on that like that's just taking your life in your hands the one thing like the the sort of bottom line for me is I came out this morning thinking that Kwesi is going to try to talk us into it. He's going to say, guys, what you don't understand is blank. And Rick Spielman would take this sort of attitude sometimes where he would straight out say, well, you guys don't get, and then it would always be something that we thought of. But anyway. I would appreciate that because at least Kwesi would be being direct.

Right, right. And even indignant toward what people are saying about where they're at, like which Rick Spielman often was. He knew everything everyone was writing and there were many times where he would cite specific ideas or things that had been written and say, well, this is why that's wrong.

Which I prefer. I think that that's great. But we were not told that we're wrong like today. I mean, we weren't. He didn't come out and say, the reason you guys don't understand what's going on is blank. It's here's how we're actually doing this. And here's how we're making this better in a sort of concrete way. And instead it was, I'm looking five feet in front of me and, you know, things like that.

And so as we're trying to decide, and I'm always trying to reevaluate, like, am I giving the right opinions? Am I saying the right things that I think are correct at the time that I'm saying them? Like at the, you know, last year at this time, I thought the Rams probably were going to flame out in the first round and everyone would be disappointed. But then when they won, we talked about the reasons that they won and why that opinion didn't work out. So we're always reevaluating and this doesn't make me reevaluate anything that we've said over the last two weeks. I don't, I don't know how you guys feel, but that's, that's where I stand now

is the reality of your situation is you're doing the same thing. Will you get different results because he's smarter than the last guy? I guess we'll see. I think that the buzzword today was competitive rebuild, but my mind drifts a little bit to competitive arrogance. And maybe that's too strong of a word, but believing that, and he answered this in a direct question, believing that the offense is going to be better with the systems they have in place, believing that they can coach up guys that are on the roster, believing that they can fill holes just by drafting starters in the draft. That's where we're at today. Without full knowledge of the plan, that's where we're at today.

And that's what they made it sound like is that they just believe that with these new faces leading the organization that they're going to get different results. And to me, and, but also at the same time, speaking of, we're comfortable with uncertainty. It's an art, not as, or it's part art, part science. And again, contradictions, like more contradictions that I just, I can't sift through. So here, so I guess my, my, my final thought is essentially they're being seduced by like two things. One, Kevin O'Connell just came from the Rams. They made a bunch of win now moves. It worked out for them and it makes sense.

And so if you model it off of the organization that was just successful that you came from, it's very easy to think, well, we can just replicate that model even if you don't have the same pieces, right? They don't have an Aaron Donald or a Matthew Stafford or Jalen Ramsey, right? But I can see why that would be one thing. The second thing is getting seduced by how easy it is to convince yourself that, hey, this was a pretty high-level offense the last couple of years. It was just let down by the defense.

We'll make the offense a little bit better. That'll make it competitive. If we make the defense just a little bit above average, that'll make it competitive. And if you have a top seven, top five offense and a top eight defense, you are not just a playoff team, you're a competitive playoff team. And that kind of thinking makes so much sense on paper. It makes so much sense when you think about it that it's very easy to convince yourself

that that is how you build one of the best teams in the NFL when at the end of the day, you have to have the best quarterback on the field. That is the truth, right? And whether that comes from his roster for that particular year or him just being better than everyone else doesn't really matter, but you have to have the best quarterback. Right, you have to have maybe the best quarterback performance. And if you do that through a dominating defense

and make the other quarterback look bad, fine. But it is so easy to see a scenario where Matthew Stafford is the best quarterback on the field, even when he's not generally the best quarterback of the two in the game. And so hard, I think, in a playoff environment to think of that about Cousins, that you can get caught up in the, well, we have the number five offense and the number eight defense. We're a good team. And not think about this is who we have to beat to win a Super Bowl. I mean, the key with Stafford is they changed so much of his environment. And my question would be, how do you do that here?

And that's the one thing I keep coming back to is if they actually did totally bat bleep crazy stuff and somehow found a way to sign the best center or best guard and added another receiver and traded for Tyree kill and just went totally insane and ruined their cap for many years to come I would respect it I'd be like all right well this year's gonna be nuts and then if it doesn't work but it wasn't even that it was like oh we're gonna restructure Adam Thielen like if you they took a 500 roster and just doubled down on it right if you started if you trade away to Neil Hunter and then traded for Tyree Hill and then did all this other stuff, just totally Maddenized your offense and whatever else, I would do this for sure. Totally lose trades on Madden so I can get players that I want. If you did that, I would go, okay, well, I see it, and boy, this year is going to be crazy.

But that's not what they did. Instead, what they've done is essentially Kwesi Dafflomensa has come in and said to the previous era, did you guys try unplugging it and plugging it back in? Like, right. Like, yeah, cable guy. We tried that. Yep. We tried drafting corners to play right away. Trust me, we've done it. And that's what it feels like. We tried developing late round guards, okay? And I don't really see a whole lot of innovation that we expected. And it's still early, but it's also late because there's no cap space left to work with. And Kweisi was asked, are you guys done with free agency?

And it was like, well, you know. And it's like, well, we know you're done in free agency because there's nothing more you could do. This is your football team. And I don't know about you guys, but right now, I mean, I got it set at like seven wins with this roster. If it's not vastly different, it's just very hard to see it more than that. So pessimistic.

I have nine. Nine. Okay. Well, Sam went 11 last year and got burned. So rough. I stood by that 11 number, like to the death. I was, I was stuck on, even when they were like one in three, I was still sticking with 11. I'm not, I can dig my heels in with the best of them. Well, anyway, so that's it this year. I that's that like we did we were hoping for someone to tell us more answers and we didn't really get them today and uh we'll go down the stretch of free agency and into the draft and uh i will i will stay on this spot if they draft

the quarterback my opinion changes on everything if they draft a quarterback in the first round everything changes for me for how I view this offseason. It would be very fun if they did. It would. I got to run, guys. I got to go watch Matt Corral's pro day right now. Thanks, Arif. The Athletic, of course, where you can read Arif's work.

Follow him on Twitter if you dare. And, Sam, thanks for your time. We'll talk to you guys later.