Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Reaction to Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman being fired

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom are joined by Pro Football Focus's Eric Eager to break down the Minnesota Vikings firings of Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman. They talk about what went wrong, what's next and why today is refreshing for Vikings fans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hey everybody, welcome into the firstings of Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman is Pro Football Focus' Eric Eager. So I just want to start out with some thoughts, some broad thoughts, guys. I'll go first and then Sam and then Eric on the firing of Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer, and then we can get really into the conversation. And thanks, everybody, for joining us, for watching us on the live stream Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer, and then we can get really into the conversation. And thanks, everybody, for joining us. If you're watching us on the live stream for the first time, Purple Insider podcast is every day.

So yesterday we're breaking down Mike Zimmer slamming a receiver's accomplishments in his final press conference, and then today here we are talking about is firing. So I think I want to begin by just saying that Mike Zimmer over his years set the bar high for the organization and then failed to reach it. He took the organization from a very difficult spot to having the number one defense and having an NFC championship appearance and then never was able to recreate the magic of the 2017 season. And there's a lot of reasons for that, including quarterback play, including sometimes bad luck, sometimes not. And I think that overall, he will be looked at as having been a good coach for the Minnesota Vikings. But by the end of his tenure, became more or less a parody.

I mean, he was talking about two weeks ago, they need to run the ball in a game that they're down by 20 points. He's talking about, he doesn't care about records, but he played his starters in a game where he cared about his own win loss record that instead of being blunt, something that endeared him to fans, it just seemed mean and unprofessional at times toward the end. And the reality is in a production-based business, defenses that rank at the bottom of the NFL when you're a defensive head coach are just not going to get it done.

And the Vikings did the right thing in removing Rick Spielman from his job, not putting him in a football operations position or anything like that. But as we look at the totality, it's as much or more on the general manager for signing the quarterback that he did to the contract that he did, and then completely failing to build around that over the last two seasons, making moves that made no sense with where the team was at, along with some very bizarre trades that seemed desperate to try and save his job. And when people are in a position to desperately

try to save their job, they make a lot of mistakes. And that's what Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman did over the last two years. And this feels like a refresh button on the entire organization. It was very much time. And now I feel for Vikings fans that there is a weight that has been lifted off of the shoulders of Vikings fans of year after year of mediocrity with no path to get out of that mediocrity. And one of the reasons Eric is on today is because he picked eight, nine before the season to be the Vikings record. So that's my thoughts, Sam, is that I think it he picked eight, nine before the season to be the, the Vikings record.

So that's, that's my thoughts, Sam, is that I think it's a very, very exciting day for Vikings fans. And even though there was a lot of goodwill built up over the last four years, I feel that Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer undid all of that.

And there is a lot less nostalgia than there would have been because of the way that it just slowly sunk into mediocrity and stayed there for a really long period of time and now Vikings fans have a lot to be excited about for the future Sam so your thoughts yeah I think refresh button the way you put it is an apt way to put it because it got stale at the end and you can look at the Zimmer-Spielman partnership sort of pre-cousins four years of building up building up building up peaking at that four-year mark with the NFC championship game appearance and then from that point on falling down the mountain trying their hardest to climb back up, making desperation moves,

throwing the whole kitchen sink out there cap-wise. Mike Zimmer getting surlier and surlier. Rick Spielman getting more desperate and more desperate. And the fall from the peak was not very pretty. And things got a little bit tenuous here. You could sense that the end was near. Mike Zimmer, I think, even though he never admitted it, could sense that the end was near. And it just led to sort of an unsustainable, untenable situation. I always felt like Zimmer was one step from a breakthrough and one step from the edge of a cliff. He just sort of lived in that in-between where, you know, they could never make it to the playoffs consecutive years, yet they never missed the playoffs consecutive years until the very end. It was a very up and down tenure. And eight years is a really long run in the NFL and I think you you know

you've overstayed your welcome when you look at your your roster situation you see what what had been built what had been given out salary wise um two consecutive losing seasons your side of the ball isn't you know carrying its weight in the defense so I think the move absolutely was deserved and I agree with you that Spielman had to go as well. The blind spots on the offensive line were gigantic malpractice and, and some of the inefficient contracts given out to aging veterans too. So I, I like the, I like the moves. I agree with the moves. And I think the coaching search will,

will bring certainly fresh eyes and unbiased voices into the conversation again. Eric, your thoughts? Yeah, this, you know, it's with situations like this are hard to deal with because like we always think about things as sort of like the finality of everything, right? Like this is, it sounds bad, but this is the girlfriend you had in college and it was a fun time, but it's not, it's over, John. And it's been over for two years. And, you know, we sort of have everything.

And you look at the comments, you know, and I love that, you know, I've been on Twitter today and I'm on the record saying that I think that the Minnesota general manager and head coaching jobs are the best jobs that are available. And I think that, you know, and head coaching jobs are the best jobs that are available. And I think that, you know, there were a lot of people like, well, what about cousins contract? What about this? What about that?

It's like, you don't need to win next year with cousins. Like this is the whole thing that you, you built a, you put it yourself in a situation where you had to, you had to thread such a thin needle. You had to win this year with the quarterback you chose in this, like all that stuff had to happen. And it was just like a probabilistic, horrible gamble for the Vikings over the last two, three years.

And now this new person gets to come in and look, they can play. I don't know necessarily if we want to go through another Cousins season, but like they could play the Cousins contract out, $45 million. They don't have to win next year. If the Vikings fire head coach and GM after one year, they have bigger problems than we all thought. I don't think anybody as pessimistic or whatever believes they're in that bad of shape, right? They're in a much better position now because they've loosened the shackles of we decided to go all in in 2018, and we've been trying to justify our existence for four straight years,

and it was just not going to work. And now you take a step back, you look at, like, ownership group, you look across the league, you look at the Giants, for example. You know, the Gettleman's, I think, out after today. That ownership group's a freaking mess. You look at Chicago. That ownership group is a freaking mess. Minnesota, this is just a – it's a reset.

Right, exactly. You don't have to buy a new computer. You just have to turn it off and back on. And I think that that, you know, if you're a Vikings fan, it is comforting. This is not a disaster. This is not a joke. This is not, it just needed to stop. It needed to turn the page, right? And, you know, I think a lot of folks were holding on to something that was never going to happen. And I think today is an admission that that was true. Yeah, I think that the most frustrating thing for Vikings fans waking up today is that the last two years of their lives were spent knowing where this all was going and

just waiting for it to get there. Now, I'm sure that, you know, when it comes to the offseason, there's the draft and those things happen and you get excited and all their signing guys and there's this chance that Zimmer can get all these veteran corners to all come together and play super well. And there's a chance that maybe they unshackle Kirk Cousins or they block better with this new offensive line or whatever. There was always this, you could kind of try to talk yourself into it. But like if you're sticking with the comparison that you made, Eric,

you're sort of trying to talk yourself into like maybe she's wife material, but she isn't really. I mean, there's, there's a lot of things in life that we do this with and sort of like, Oh, you know, it'll only work if just X, Y, and Z. But last year you picked them to go, I think six and 10, Eric, and they went seven and nine. And then of course there's the meaningless game at the end. So someone like you who's not on the beat every day and is not watching it the same way as fans and trying to get excited about the season, looking at it at just a black and white numbers perspective, you came up with, yeah, this team's probably not going to make the playoffs. And that's exactly what ended up happening.

So when you can do that, they should have been able to do that as well. But it felt like when they extended Kirk Cousins, especially there was this panic to, well, we extended him. We have to be right about the Kirk Cousins decision. And now we have to try to make all these moves to save ourselves the Yannick Ngakwe signing even, Hey, how about Daniel Carlson? Good for you, kid. Daniel Carlson getting the Las Vegas Raiders into the playoffs last night but even cutting him like that showed us from week two of 2018 this team is not taking a long view everything that happens is just reactionary and then there's

a trade for a kicker there's a trade for Chris Herndon with a fourth round draft pick everything was reactionary after 2019. And I think if the Wilfs were to go back and do it again, they would just stick with what they wanted to do. Then they saw what was happening then. And the Vikings want to play off game. And I think they second guessed themselves and said, Oh, you know, maybe what we saw wasn't right because Zimmer's game plan in that game was so good against Drew Brees and Kirk cousins, a game winning drive. What a throw to Kyle Rudolph and all those things. But going into that playoffs, they were ready to move on from these people to begin with. And I think if they were to do it again, they just would have.

And they would have drafted a quarterback and they would have hired Kevin Stefanski and we would have accelerated it. So in a lot of ways, I empathize with Vikings fans who had to wait two years for reality to kick in to the ownership. I don't blame them for seeing the playoff win and saying, all right, well, maybe these guys just need one more thing, one more draft pick, one more whatever. But the writing has been on the wall for so long. And that's why it's not one of those things where like Miami is going, huh?

We fired our coach. What? Why? Like, it's not one of those things where like Miami is going, huh? We fired our coach. What? Why? Like, it's not one of those things. It's okay. Now you can take an entirely new approach and you are given a lot of pieces on the offensive side, the most important side of the ball to work with for whoever is going to come in here, Sam.

Well, it, it helps too. I think that like if your ownership and you fire a coach like Flores before people thought it was time, then you lead people to second guess you. No one is second guessing this decision, right? I think there's a whole station of people who are second guessing this decision, but no reasonable person is second guessing this decision. But yeah, no reasonable person is second guessing this decision. Yeah, I don't get the sense that they're like, even, I mean, we get the cross section of people on Twitter, right? And it seems like almost everyone is supportive of this. I'm sure there's people that aren't. But I think that in general,

this is viewed as a good decision. So the ownership has favor right now. I think people are gonna trust what they do here, assuming that they don't do something crazy. Now, it is an internal search, not a search firm deal. And this is the biggest decision they've ever had, the GM and the coach. And then the ripple effects of that will affect the roster. So this really is wholesale and probably means a quarterback change too. But you look at what is inherited

roster wise on offense sans quarterback excellent um defense needs a facelift but they were horrible anyway stadium's great practice facility's great fan base is strong ownership is stable ownership's willing to spend so there's a lot of great pieces and and I assume, Eric, that's why you say it's the most appealing job. Is that because of the stability of the organization and the roster on offense? Is that what you're looking at? It's that, but it's also both jobs are open now, and they're both going to come in at the same time. And so you're not going to get a lot of the – so, like, the, to me, like the biggest tragedy of the Zimmer era was he went from a fairly like a, a surly dude, a kind of an asshole, but like, like,

but he went from a pretty likable guy to, and Matt, you talked about this on your show on, you know, I listened to it on my drive home from the forecast, like 2 AM. So I might've recollected this a little bit. But he did so many things over the last six months that made – it's going to sully my impression of his time in Minnesota. Look, Les Frazier – look, I love Les Frazier. I don't think he's as good of a coach as Zimmer.

But none of us have a negative feeling towards Les Frazier as a guy. None of us have negative feelings towards him. Like, he literally, I mean, he was a jerk to a reporter about his job status yesterday. He was a jerk to Justin Jefferson about a record. And that was just this week. He was a jerk about Kellen Mond last week. Like, all this stuff. And I think part of it was this consternation that came from this idea that the fate of Zimmer and Spielman were not completely correlated.

Like, Zimmer would complain about the depth on the defense during training camp. You don't hear much from Spielman, but I'm assuming he's pretty mad, and you talk about this on your show too, Matthew, that Amir Smith-Marset's a draft pick that looks like a pretty decent player, and it goes all the way to week 18 until we see him actually have a role on the team. And I know in other organizations that's an attention as well. You get to start fresh and say, look, you two are hired together. This is a pair, and your fates are tied together.

You are working together. And you look across the league. The New York Giants, and as part of my role at PFF, I consult with agents, also general managers, former general managers, coaches, and stuff like that. When I'm like, hey, and again, these are the facts, but in the Giants job, you have Joe Judge probably still staying on as head coach. And then you have the general manager there.

You also have an ownership group that's not quite as strong as Minnesota. And so that general manager is coming in. And he's already got to like shoehorn himself to make that thing work in New York. In Chicago, Nagy's out. I don't know what Pace's role is going to be. He could have that like sort of role where he's, quote, promoted but not promoted. Whatever. In Minnesota, it's clean.

They're going to hire two people under ownership that gives a crap. They'll spend money in a stadium, as you said, Sam, that's a great stadium. I think that the talent on this roster is overblown, but they're not that far away from a talent standpoint. You know, especially if they're able to find a suitor for Cousins and they're able to find an offensive-minded either head coach or offensive coordinator. Because if you get like a young quarterback with a pulse in there and you look and say, oh, Jefferson, Thielen possibly, Cook, offensive line with two good tackles, and you maybe add a few pieces there. Those are where you've seen guys like Jared Goff make a Super Bowl, Carson Wentz

make a Super Bowl, and you have the freedom to do that now. And I think that that is such a, I think that's such an attractive place for somebody to go. I mean, I agree. I think that it starts with the guy that Mike Zimmer alienated last with Justin Jefferson. And when you look at the entirety of the Zimmer era, it's got these hallmarks where it's so appropriate and perfect that he alienated a receiver on his last day. I mean, it just couldn't be better that a receiver's accomplishment wouldn't matter to him. He had the defense introduced yesterday first, like this defense that's been atrocious.

Troy Dye is running out and fans are like, yeah, who, what? I guess Troy Dye's playing today. Like instead of introducing Kirk Cousins, introducing Justin Jefferson, there were just these final middle fingers from Zimmer to show us, like, I never bought into Kirk Cousins. I never bought into these draft picks from Rick Spielman. And I, and it was became very clear that he thought that Spielman was the reason that he was going to get fired. I mean, even from training camp and talking repeatedly about their depth, slamming rookies.

I mean, even with Wyatt Davis, we all could have been living in a mystery of Wyatt Davis, but instead we knew he was out of shape because Zimmer told us. And now I will accept that information as a reporter, but there were so many times where you went, Mike, this is just inappropriate to be saying these things about players

in the setting that we live in, especially when we're talking about a a plan and it's Zimmer and Spielman together and they're they're a pair but even though their contracts remain the same they started to drift the minute that they signed Kirk Cousins the initial press conference of Kirk Cousins signing Mike Zimmer looked miserable and he comes out in his press conference imagine this scene you have all the national media there nfl network espn all the all the news people this signing they're all they got their cameras and everything else this signing is so big kirk cousins biggest quarterback contract ever and the first thing mike zimmer says is yeah uh you know he's a good quarterback he's uh pretty good at at bootlegs and it's like

come on terrific in the boots was the thing that we said in the media room many many times it was just like come on mike and from the very minute he's not buying in to cousins and then when an offensive coordinator is brought in who wants to go all in on your 84 million dollar quarterback and have him be out of the shotgun and throwing the ball all over the place to digs and feeling which i think is a reasonable thing to do. I'm not saying he was a good offensive coordinator, but Zimmer ends up manipulating that guy because he didn't run the ball enough. And then as we've seen, I think part of the reason the teams get worse year after year is that Zimmer is constantly on top of his offensive coordinators, telling them they're doing their job wrong.

Like through the whole season, if someone's telling you you're doing your job wrong through the whole year by the end you're pretty tuckered why do you think Clint Kubiak sucks it's because it was this is like a somebody when I was younger when this happened but somebody I was like joke or complaining or joking about you and Mike Tice made 900k as the coach of the Vikings and I had like an adult friend who like he came to me and goes, you know why that is? And I go, why? He goes, because he sucks, and he couldn't get a better job.

And so he settles for the 900K. You know why Clint Kubiak's the offensive coordinator for the Vikings? Because no one wants to be the offensive coordinator for the Vikings. No one wants to get, like, dunked on by Zimmer in press conference. It's not worth it. Plus, you have to play with Kirk, who's like, Kirk's going to throw you under the bus at the first chance too. And, like, again, like, none of those things are, you know,

and this is the other thing that tilts me about Mike and Twitter. It's like, oh, well, Zimmer's the problem. It's like, no, this team has multiple problems. If this team had one problem, they'd be in the playoffs. If they had two problems, they'd be in the playoffs. But, like, one of the problems systematically is that Mike Zimmer went from having Norv Turner as the offensive coordinator in 2014, like a very – I remember at the time thinking this is a credible hire.

This was credibility on the side where previously Frazier had guys like Bill Musgrave and kind of bad offensive coordinator guys, and then you go, and this is Norv Turner. And Norv got run out of town like two and a half years into the whole thing. And then, you know, you had Shermer, who was a former head coach, and he got out of here as fast as he could. And then Stefanski, like Stefanski

didn't even have, like, that good of a year in 2019. He just did a lot better than people expected, and he jetted out of here, right? And, like, and it also talks, Gary retired. Like, Gary chose to leave here and put his son in that position, and his son is the candidate for that job because no one wants to work with him at a certain point.

So, again, I think Minnesota is going to be a plum job for some people. And I think it was sad that like for, you know, two, three years now, it was a kind of an island of misfit toys by their sort of own, you know, their own like designs, I guess. Didn't it seem like it was Zimmerman and Spielman as well, to some extent, that they continued making decisions based on one event happening, assuming that results were always going to be the same. Like, oh, a young kicker was bad, then all kickers are going to be bad and unreliable. We're going to get all these day three draft picks because we had a few hit one time. We're going to follow these draft philosophies because we had one really good draft. That didn't work.

You know, Zimmer having a bad experience with John DeFilippo. Oh, well, that means we can't have a pass-oriented offense around here. Just things like that that sort of like followed him around and got so stuck in his craw that he wasn't really able to sort of come off of that or adapt. And I know he thought of himself as a very adaptive defensive coach, which is a great irony because I think his defenses did evolve, and he did bring in consultants to help him come up with blitzes, and he seemed open to feedback on that side of things.

But then you hear about everything on the offensive side, and he's not in the meetings, and he's not meeting with his quarterback until this year. And the quarterback, I mean, we haven't talked enough about Mike Zimmer and Kirk Cousins could not agree on the day of the week this year. I mean, even though they were meeting every week, to me it seemed worse. I thought it got worse this year, even though they claim claim it was better so take their word versus what we saw but they were they were so not on the same page it was so evident I thought Kirk looked checked out like more so in 2021 than 2020

because in 2020 if you watch a lot of those games Kirk was kirk was like had real fire to him he was yelling at teammates when they weren't in the right position and and even though that was a bad team i thought kirk was the most invested he'd been this year i thought it was a complete disconnect from from week one with the vaccination stuff all the way through um it just seems so unnatural and then yeah the the clint stuff too didn't really you know clint wasn't the one to come in and galvanize everybody in in a tough situation the crazy thing was is kirk played probably his best football this year like and it it shows you sort of how much the buy-in matters because like I think Kirk probably secured another contract

with somebody this year and at the same time like Zimmer just hated his gut so much that like it just wasn't going to work and it's certainly not going to work in Minnesota I it's sort of interesting as to like sort of what they do with him coming in I there I would hope that the Vikings don't hire a head coach who sort of thinks like he can fix any quarterback, like a Shanahan, McVay kind of guy. I think if he was sort of like McVay, for example, he kind of got lucky in L.A. where he shows up and Jared Goff's year two of a rookie deal is like, okay, I can do something with this guy. But the costs are so much lower.

If the next guy that comes in is like, oh, I think Kirk's a great quarterback. I'm going to make him into X, Y, and Z. The problem is Kirk is not going to accept anything less than the market rate and the position, which we know they just can't win with him on that rate. So that's, I think, a big test as well. And it could be something like, I know when Gary Kubiak took over houston our our friend saves is the backup but like they let david carr play a year and kind of suck and then like reset the batteries with matt shob there's a little bit of a different time because of the cba but they sort of they they allowed the one year and i do think that that's

like the the nice part about this which which is Kirk's up one year left. Worst case scenario, the next guy comes in and says, look, we can't find a suitor for Kirk. We don't want to extend him because we know that that's a bad idea. Can't cut him because that's not going to, you know, the money's kind of crappy if you cut him. So let's just play through this season with him. Let's find out something.

A la you look at some of these teams, you know, like the Colts as bad as Carson Wentz is, they found out a lot about Michael Pittman, Mo Alleycox, a bunch of players. Like you can get information out of a team, even though the quarterback that you're playing is somebody you're trying to jettison in the following year. For all of your Minnesota sports-inspired goods, use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER when you go to SodaStick.com.

That is S-O-T-A-s-t-i-c-k.com you can get their north state beanie their adam thielen autograph shirts marcus felino fan club design for all of you hockey fans out there and the one i always mention because it's the best one the randy moss disgusting act you can put that on a hoodie shirt or almost anything else. And plus anything you want with skull on it. Soda stick has it again. That's S O T A S T I C K.com. Perfect for gifts. And you can get that shipping free by using the code purple insider. Right. And in a lot of ways, if they stuck with with cousins which i'm not convinced that they do i think that the wilfs are business people first and they're going to look at the dollars spent

versus production that they were given and the issues that were caused and say look it's just the math doesn't add up and the teams that are succeeding either have unbelievable quarterbacks like aaron rogers who are expensive or they have cheap quarterbacks like even Jalen Hurts has got his team into the playoffs and Hurts was just okay but the rest of the team is good and that's the situation you're describing with Los Angeles that I think gives you a chance to have your draft pick work out better and then hey if you get to the Baker Mayfield situation eventually down the road where you've got to make a tough decision on a guy, well then, okay, that's fine. The Rams just traded Jared Goff for somebody else.

And that's what you could do. But, you know, circling back to the Zimmer relationship with cousins that Sam talked about, I think that when you start from day one and you look at a guy and say, I don't want you here, you're going to ruin my defense. And then he did. I mean, he just did. The contract did. It took so much space away from them that they couldn't sign expensive defensive players.

They couldn't keep defensive players. Linval Joseph is not what he used to be, but they had to just straight up cut him. And the same thing with Xavier Rhodes, who had a good year, not so much this year, but last year with Indianapolis, where you just have to straight up cut him. And then everyone goes, oh, well, you know, they found those players the first time. They'll find them again. And it's harder to do that than you think. And Zimmer was so aware of this from day one, even at the combine before they signed

Kirk Cousins. He was saying, yeah, if you sign that guy to an expensive contract, we won't be able to keep our defense together. And so it was like you said, Sam, he got fixated on certain things and could not let them go. And I think a big part of it was just resenting Kirk Cousins for ruining his defense. And after 2019, that was especially the case where you're looking at it going, okay, you're going to start rookie corners and you think you're going to make the playoffs. But there's another part of this that has to be said about Cousins is that if Cousins is Patrick Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers or one of the great quarterbacks in the league, everyone has their job right now still.

I mean, that's the reality is they made this bet and the Zimmer relationship with him was always bad. Outside of maybe the moment after they won the playoff game in New Orleans. It was always uncomfortable. It, as you mentioned, Sam got more and more uncomfortable this year. And I don't think that Zimmer ever got the most out of Kirk Cousins. However, in Washington, they were in the same position at the end. They were seven and nine and Jay Gruden's job was in trouble. And like, this is what Kirk Cousins and him being as expensive as he is does to you. Great quarterbacks save your job and average quarterbacks get you fired because they set a bar that you think, oh, well, all we need is this, that,

and the other thing. Cause we've got a good quarterback, right? But good quarterbacks don't often win in the NFL, great quarterbacks win in the NFL or cheap quarterbacks win in the NFL. There's no, there's really no in-between. If you go through the, even the history of the league by the late seventies, Terry Bradshaw and Roger Staubach are going to the Superbowl every year because that's football. And so there is a part of me that will always look at this and say, you know, Zimmer really should have tried harder to lean into Kirk Cousins, even despite his flaws and been like, I'm going to support you,

man. And we're going down with this ship forever, as opposed to pushing back and pushing back. That just, it just didn't, it wasn't the right approach, but I think that the decision they made to sign Kirk cousins is what got everyone fired that decision that day in 2018,

the minute it was signed. That's why they were fired eventually. Cause your quarterback didn't play well enough Aaron Rodgers was able to keep Mike McCarthy in his job for a long time and now Aaron Rodgers makes Matt LaFleur who's a little more competent than McCarthy look like a genius heck Dak Prescott's playing really well with a great offensive coordinator all of a sudden Mike McCarthy looks great it's it's the quarterback it always has been the quarterback and so there's a part of me that thinks, you know, Mike, you were right. You were right. So many times about so many things. He's right about Kellen Mond. Kellen Mond's no good. Like you're

right about so many things, but could you have tried, you know, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's like a, it is like a relationship with, you know, a friend or a partner or something where it's like, you know, just because she does that annoying thing when she laughs doesn't mean you need to like hate her for it. Like maybe you could just find a way to not get so upset about it. And I think that that's in a lot of ways defining of Mike Zimmer is that he just could not get over stuff and in part could never get over that Cousins was signed to such a big contract but I'm not sure even if he did if he did everything he could have possibly done for Cousins that we're not still having this conversation today well it's the it's the gravity of football like it like since like and this is where the people that don't want to have this discussion are just simply behind.

I mean, since 2011, with very, very rare exceptions, I don't even think there's like a – I mean, if Stafford wins the Super Bowl this year, that might be like the rare exception. With very rare exceptions, if you sign a quarterback on a market deal who is not a Hall of Fame player, you will not win. And people are like, oh, what's the alternative? The alternative is pretty freaking easy. The alternative is Jared Goff and the Rams. It's Carson Wentz and the Eagles.

It's Russell Wilson ended up being a Hall of Fame player, but he wasn't in 13 when they won the Super Bowl with him on a rookie deal. It's Teddy Bridgewater taking the Vikings to 11-5, even though he wasn't playing the when they won the Super Bowl with him on a rookie deal. It's Teddy Bridgewater taking the Vikings to 11-5, even though he wasn't playing the greatest football in the world. And, like, the hardest thing – and to me, I can see what Zimmer's – like, we saw the Dean Pease press conference when he was, like, said a bunch of, like, somewhat insightful things and then just decided to shout at clouds for the last, like, 30 seconds of it. Like, defensive-minded fuddies like Zimmer

hate the fact that their contribution to football is ultimately in the limit minuscule compared to what the quarterback does. I know where he's sitting. I had this perfect life. I had a defense that I had a ton of resources

in. I cared about a lot. I had a quarterback that just didn't bother me. And he knew that Kirk was going to bother the hell out of him. And it was going to have an outsized effect on all the stuff that Zimmer wanted to do. And I know that that made him upset, but, like, that's football nowadays. Right? And that's why, you know, defense – like, you even think about, you know,

Vic Fangio. You look at, like, these defensive-minded coaches, like, I just think long-term they're losers because ultimately that's always how they're going to feel. And the reality of football is you can pull a Superbowl out of your hat one time with that kind of play, but you know, it's the offensive minded guys are going to be around forever. Yeah. I mean, the more I think it through the more i i think that if you're not trying as hard as you can to trade cousins um you're going about it the wrong way i i just

think that the appeal of having 35 extra million dollars of cap space probably a first round pick to add to the number 12 and the ability to to get a bridge quarterback for cheap who can easily get you seven or eight wins like you had this year that to me is the path and and if you hit on a Mac Jones or something and you win double-digit games well then you're golden right but get the ball rolling this year while you still have the offensive talent to surround that quarterback with you don't need I mean other than I would say going after like a good interior lineman, they don't need to add that much on offense to give this new quarterback all they need. And you've got two first round picks in this scenario.

So I think that's the path you go. I think that the second, whenever you have the highly paid quarterback, and we've talked about this already the last 10 minutes, it creates these expectations that are unwieldy. They burden the organization, especially when the quarterback isn't capable of exceeding them. And that was, I mean, the Vikings were lovable in 15 and 17 because it was sort of unexpected success. The quarterbacks weren't great, but they were carried along by the defense and just this really cohesive team. And when you introduce expectations and you limit the talent you can have around him, I mean, it just gets messy. So if you go back to

the cheap quarterback model for a year, I think that can only enhance what you do as a team. And it'll just buy you a lot of leash with the fans, with ownership. I mean, it sort of extends your timeline if you do that reset. But I think it'd be a reset where you have the upside of a Patriots this year. You know, I think this is a really good point, because when you signed Cousins, you set the bar at Superbowl or bust. And I remember cousins got asked about it so many times, Superbowl or bust that eventually he just requested that people stopped asking him about that. He was like, after a preseason game, he was like, guys, can you just stop asking me about Superbowl or bust? Because I don't have any other

answers for you, but that's what happens when you pay out the contract and this was the i mean look at kind of the ravens with the joe flacco thing he gets hot in the playoffs they win the super bowl and super random kind of year that is rarely repeated and then they're forced to just give him a gajillion dollars and then the expectation is that he'll just do that again he has one of those one playoffs right the rest of his tenure there right Right. Right. And he's the same sort of ballpark as a Kirk cousins, uh, except for he was willing to, you know, heave it up a little more often. Again, another great irony of the season is the first time cousins just heaves it up to Jefferson. It's a 45 yard touchdown in a game that doesn't matter. Like, of course, of course that would happen when there's nothing on the

line. But, uh, you know, I think that that's a, that's a big part of it is that the bar was set by signing cousins, not because it was super reasonable to think that that team would just repeat everything that happened in 2017. Rogers got hurt in 2017. They had everyone stay healthy, everyone, except for Dalvin cook and Sam Bradford, but their entire defense that led them as the number one defense they were fully healthy through the whole season I think every person who started game one started in the playoffs when does this ever happen and then these last couple of years they're saying well you know we had this injury or that injury you're like yeah welcome

to the NFL usually except for that one random year where everybody played and you were the number one defense and that you know and then that became the expectation is sam you said it perfectly if like oh well everything will stay the same that worked we'll just add this other thing that's better than case keenum and that logic does not apply in the nfl because things are always changing players who reach their peak go down they didn't you know they didn't just have to sign cousins they had to sign eric kendrick stefan diggs daniel hunter this is the other part about rick spielman is there's a model to build around a quarterback that's expensive and they sure as heck didn't do it they did not do it the right way that model does not say pay all of your players that no matter even if their value is overrated anthony bar i have great respect

for anthony bar but nobody can objectively look at that contract and say it's a good idea and on the day that it happened we all knew it wasn't a good idea bringing back a linebacker whose impact is so so at 67 million dollars is just not gonna work you have to let some people go that are going to be overpaid. You sign a running back contract. Hey, Spielman's gift to the next general manager is this preposterous Harrison Smith deal, like paying the market rate for a 32 year old safety who is now on a team that why does he even want to stay like a team that's going to need, you know, complete rebuilding on the defensive side. And so you wasted two years of a really good player um and then now you're going to pay him more when he's going to be on the decline there were there were so many

inefficient moves around cousins and this is why i mean eric you said it like it's not one person's fault it's everyone's fault the quarterback could have saved everyone he didn't the coach could have leaned into the quarterback he didn't the general manager could have built way better around the quarterback. He didn't. Get the guy a guard, for goodness sake. I mean, how is it, how is it that you go into a season, and I promise I'll stop ranting and we'll get to like what's next as our last thing, but how is it that you go into four straight seasons with somebody starting on the offensive line who's never played before as a starter? How has that happened? Tom Compton had been a fill-in guy. Dakota Dozier, a fill-in guy.

Garrett Bradbury, we're going to draft a run-blocking offensive lineman. That'll make Kirk Cousins better. What? And then this year, Ole Udo, one of the most ridiculous and unfair things that's ever been done to a player was to say, hey, man, I know that you've been practicing a tackle for two straight years, but like the guard we drafted is terrible. Can you just like be good at guard? Like what the hell kind of decision is that? What kind of decision making is to sign an expensive quarterback and then say, yeah, let's pay Bashad Breeland instead.

Let's pay Patrick Peterson instead. I mean, what are these decisions? So I think that that can't be overlooked as we talk about all this, Sam, is that there is a model for building around an expensive quarterback where it can work and they just did not do it. Yeah, they did the opposite.

I mean, I've joked about this before, but I'll reiterate it because it's topical. The general manager who gets in the building and maybe shakes hands with Rob Brzezinski and says, Hey, Rob, let me get a look at the books. And Rob brings them out and says, Yeah, people really like the way I did things around here. Got a lot of big contracts in. And he turns the page and sees the salaries and he sees two nose tackles, a running back safety. What, what exactly were you doing here?

So they, they gave the money to all the wrong positions, two linebackers. I guess that probably becomes one linebacker. Now that bars is voided. The Kyle Rudolph deal could be the Kyle Rudolph deal. Yeah. It's you know they had paid two safeties last year with anthony harris just crazy crazy stuff um so the next person that comes in i assume will have some kind of cap expertise and uh probably scratch their head

at what was designed for them and it's going to, this is the one con is that when you do re-sign guys to three deals that are aging, the fans get attached, right? So the fans love these guys and you're probably going to have to say goodbye to a couple of them prematurely, right? Like you might not want to attach yourself to Harrison Smith forever. Even Adam Thielen might be a little vulnerable. Eric Hendricks declined a little bit this year. I don't know what his status would be, but unfortunately, some of those inefficient deals are going to come around to roost, and you probably won't be able to play those out with those players at that number. Well, and that's the thing. The other part is yeah so they're trophies right like hey look

harrison smith's a viking for life hey hang a banner that's a trophy we're gonna get because we haven't won the nfc north in five years or whatever like all the like and you said like the fans get attached the fans get the the positive you know feelings about it and then you know like they can slide a few like the fact is the 2017 draft there were no premium positions taken there it was doubt it was a running back uh ben gideon was a third linebacker was taking a round for like there was the other draft i think 2019 where it was like center tight end uh and a few other running back running Yeah. Running back Madison in the last pick of the third round. And it's like,

you can't do that all the time and then be like, well, why aren't we good? Like it's sort of, I had this discussion on the PFF forecast about the Colts. It's like, well, Chris Ballard's really good at picking players,

but like they're at low impact positions. So it's like, well, cool. But that's where you're nine and eight and you lose to the Jags in week 18. You're not in the playoffs. And some Vegas Raiders team who has some guy named Basaccia as their head coach

midway through the year makes the playoffs over you because they have better players in impact positions than you do. And the Vikings are there not only in their free agent signings. By the way, during the Cousins era, Michael Pierce's three-year $27 million deal was the most lucrative deal they gave to an outside free agent. That's it. A nose tackle. That's it.

Right? You had the one-year deal with Sheldon Richardson. You had the one-year deal with Patrick Peterson. You had the two-year deal with Tomlinson. Michael Pierce, three years, 27, is the top. Like, that's as much as spendy as they got on their cousins for outside free agents. That's bananas, right? That should drop the mic there for that.

And, again, it's just they haven't spent above a third-round pick on an edge, right? This is sort of like backwards thinking, you know, hey, and to your point, Sam, oh, if this didn't work once, it's never going to work again. Danell Hunter worked. So every other like Denarius Robinson that we draft is going to end up being this like high value edge. It's like, no, there's actually a blueprint for getting high value players at those important positions is to draft them high. And the Vikings just have sort of like pissed in the face of that entire sort of idea.

And, you know, now they are where they are and the final the final blow i think to spielman is not drafting mac jones because on draft day sam and i discussed it minutes after it happened that passing on mac jones was a desperation we need to fill left tackle right now because we manipulated riley reef and he doesn't want to stay here anymore if we're being realistic about what happened with Riley reef, making him take a pay cut to sign Yanni Gingokwe is the reason that reef was not here this year. I'm sure he would have stayed otherwise, but, uh, so it was this desperation. We've got to win now.

Let's draft this big beast who can fill in at left tackle. And then he gets hurt right away and you've got to play Rashad Hill and you start one in three. Like, well, that, I mean, that's how it goes when you rely on draft picks but it was never this it was never a long view because it was just well I've got to just fill these positions we need a nose tackle let's just sign a guy like let's just bring in this nose tackle because Linval Joseph this is your point Sam Linval Joseph worked for us and was great so let's just sign another guy we'll make him great too. Like, no, you won't.

You won't make Michael Pierce any different than Michael Pierce already is. He's not going to be Linval Joseph just because he was better with the Vikings than he was with the Giants. Like that was just a good break that you got. And Linval Joseph is an unbelievable player. It was very unlikely that another guy

was just going to come in and do that. But the Mac Jones thing, he's right there. It's with your draft pick. player it was very unlikely that another guy was just going to come in and do that um and but the mac jones thing he's right there it's with your draft pick you know cousins contract situation you know that this is pretty much the last year of his deal because the 45 million dollar thing likely can't happen and he's a great prospect he's a first round talent bill belichick thought so it's right there and you're like no no we need a tackle now i know some people might say like oh well you know he might not be that great but even if he's as good as jared goff was for the rams in the future then you know off you go so

it was just never a long view it was always uh well we need to fill this position so let's just draft it i remember they talked about the Alexander Madison pick. Well, we lost Latavius Murray. We needed to fill that spot. And it was just like my skull crushing my brain with what's happening here. You needed to fill Latavius Murray's spot? Excuse me? This is not an efficient way of doing things.

So there's a lot of those that we could break down sort of play by play of how you got here. And it speaks to the totality of this, not working. And the decisions that were made were not good. And you earned this. It wasn't a, it wasn't a last second field goal against this team or this bad luck break or this. Their point differential issue was negative one. They were eight and 18.

Like they just got lucky and got the extra game and they lost that game right they're the vikings right and they would not have made the playoffs at nine and eight anyway right so anyway the the last thing i want to say is since we've gotten our kind of rants in about what went wrong is i just want both of you to tell me your your plan now general manager head coach potentially quarterback the world is your oyster um eric why don't you go first and then sam yeah i think i mean the name the actual names being thrown out there i don't really want to like yeah that's fine you know but like i to me it has to be a general manager who is sort of going to empower everybody in the building. Like, you know, and again, I'm not, Spielman had a fine career in Minnesota.

But the fact of the matter is, when you talk to people who've worked for him, multiple people, you have cap guys and analytics guys. And Spielman basically just made the decision right and to me the best general manager is a decision maker and that means that you have to hire evaluators that you trust and most most general managers because they're a scout or something like that before they still have that evaluator gene in them and to me it's such a wasteful use of resources to have a scouting department of 100 people let's, have an analytics group of three or four people, and for you to put the thumb on the scale and make the decision you always wanted to make to begin with anyway. And so that's what I sort of want, like a forward thinking person, you know,

Eric DaCosta is sort of like my, you know, what I value in a GM, which is somebody who empowers evaluators, and then becomes a decision maker i think the same thing's true about head coach i think you have to as a head coach you have to have somebody who is telling you fourth down stuff on the sideline you don't put your thumb on the scale for that you have to have coordinators that you actually care about and and like zimmer just like literally did not care about the well-being of anybody on his staff. And that was a problem thing. And you just have to have somebody who, I think, for this particular media market, and I'll say this, it's not just because you guys are my friends,

but this media market does a pretty damn good job of covering this team. And this fan base for a small market is extremely engaged. And I think if you're a head coach and you're an asshole like Zimmer was the last year, you turn that off. And I think that there's – I know Lane Kiffin's name just literally came up. He would be great for this job, in my opinion, as far as learn from previous mistakes, but would also engage in this whole thing and make this thing fun. Because I think that the biggest issue with the Vikings the last two years, especially as somebody who grew up

here, who would like the team to do okay. I'd like the team to do fine. It was just not fun watching them this year knowing that this day was coming for two years. We just knew it and it was not fun. To me, that's the biggest thing. Have two people who are on the same page and don't be a jerk like Simmer was at the end. I don't know. I mean, I got to break this news. Myron Mitchell signs a futures deal.

Oh, wow. That's very exciting. Yeah, I thought I'd cut the tension there with a big break. So I don't know every assistant GM in the league. I got to do much more digging on that. But philosophically, I want someone who's analytically driven. I want someone who is going to seek input. I mean, kind of all the things that you would want in a positive culture. And I don't know if the Vikings really had that the past couple of years. And I don't need like a row the boat kind of thing like at the, you know, the Gophers.

But I do think there needs to be a little bit of a culture change. And let me just point out, too, as an aside, because I got to thinking about this. The Vikings were basically one year away from having probably a preferable candidate at all three of these positions, right? Like if the 2020 season happens one year earlier, Stefanski might be the head coach. If 2021 happens one year earlier, George Payton might be the GM. And if they take Mac Jones or if Mac Jones had been available this coming year, they probably have Mac Jones. They have Jones, Stefanski, and Payton. And then I think you feel pretty good about your sort of triumvirate there. Head coach, you know, it's funny you mentioned Kiffin there, Eric,

because he's actually a Bloomington Jefferson guy. I didn't realize he was from the Twin Cities until recently. Yeah, so there's that local connection. Because Monty Kiffin coached for the Vikings. Yes. So that was it. Okay, I got youty Kiffin coached for the Vikings. Yes. So that was it. Okay, I got you. Yeah. Yep, yep, that's the connection.

That was another assistant coach the Vikings didn't need, by the way. Dungy, Monty Kiffin, Tomlin, Billick. I'm on team Leftwich of the, like, trendy candidates. I think Leftwich would be great, but I really don't know much about his ability to lead a whole football team or how to manage the clock. I mean, that's got to be part of it, too, right? Like, I want this GM absolutely hammering this new coach on how to deal with an end of half, end of game situation because nothing bothers me more. Like, Matthew, we get so agitated every Sunday in the press box figuring out what they're trying to do with the clock winding down.

It's so maddening. So that would be my take on it. But, you know, you don't like meddlesome owners and you don't like overly meddlesome general managers either, right? I felt like Spielman was maybe a little bit of a micromanager. Zimmer was also kind of a micromanager of the people underneath him. It all just spoke to people that were kind of hardheaded and they were going to do it their way and not get a lot of other helpful input from others. And I think that that kind of harmed them in the end. I think that the Lane Kiffin idea for our purposes covering the team would be pretty darn exciting. Your friend for PFF, Brad Spielberger, mentioned that, that that name is being bandied about.

And I don't, there are certain people who claim that they were on top of things before it comes out. I am not one of them, but Sam can confirm that I texted him, I think it was yesterday or two days ago and said, someone just brought up Lane Kiffin to me and I think there's real buzz to it. So here we are. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you have a bigger influence over that piece of, uh, you're, you're one of the tentacles, but yeah, Brad's my guy. He's really plugged in. I just said, I send him names and that apparently has, has gotten legs. So yeah, for sure. I mean, it does. So that is, uh, interesting in itself that the lane kiffin um you know thing is being bandied about and i think that some people will be very concerned about it i look at it like this for the future is the quarterback will determine the the quarterback decision will

determine how everyone is viewed uh because if they hire Lane Kiffin and everyone goes, oh, this joker from Ole Miss that somebody threw a golf ball at, yeah, I mean, he'll win the press conferences, he'll be funny, he'll be good on Twitter and everything else. And whether he's got a job in three years after that or not is based on the quarterback. I don't think Cliff Kingsbury is particularly great at his job, but I think Kyler Murray is really good. There's a, there's a.

Let that be a lesson to Vikings fans, right? You talk about like, oh, we don't want to be the Jets. We don't, but you know, all this stuff, the Cardinals literally drafted a quarterback, a 10th overall, and in one season bailed on him and got Kyler Murray at first, like failure at the position when you do it with a rookie deal is cheap right so I think that there are lots of things and I totally agree Sam with game management and stuff like that you want the you want the general manager to understand efficiency to understand positional value to understand like you said Eric that if you draft a good nose tackle and he turns out to be a good nose tackle you don't get to hang a banner for that that's just less valuable than drafting a good corner or a good wide receiver. And maybe a general manager who

doesn't stop it to good receivers and tries to get more because that's what wins is weapons and unstoppable players who have the football in their hands and always has in the entire NFL. That's always been what's been a winner. So I think that you have to bring in a head coach who is going to refresh the feeling around here, the excitement, who's going to treat people better, who is not going to manipulate people over a number of years and instead going to bring a general enthusiasm to the job that Mike Zimmer did not over the last few years. Nate Hackett also comes to mind for me because Nate Hackett is a really enthusiastic and bright, intelligent young mind. And I think that being on the same page with the quarterback is just immensely, immensely important.

Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are just locked at the hip. And so were Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre. And so were, you know, you could go down all the list of great quarterbacks and how they had relationships with their coach that was really important, whether, you know, Joe Montana and Bill Walsh or whatever, whoever you want to talk about. So that to me is the most important. And then it's being efficient in your decisions for a general manager. And the reality is we won't know until they start making decisions, whether that's going to be the case. But let me just finish by saying this, Eric, thank you so much for all of your time today. I know that your schedule is crazy and everything like everybody else's. So taking this

much time for us is greatly appreciated. Pro Football Focus, the PFF forecast podcast is your show with George Shahri. I listen to every single episode. It's great. And I learned so much about numbers from you guys. And of course, Sam sam you and i will be doing this all summer long baby there's a search there's a draft there's free agency and i just i just have to say i i don't want to dance on graves but it's it's an exciting day for vikings fans and it's it's refreshing to us to finally sort of be unshackled from the conversation of well is zimmer gonna send some different blitzes this year? Like, who's he going to trash

in postgame press conferences? I don't know. So we'll have a reflective episode where we talk about some of the stories that happened throughout the Zimmer era and things like that. But for now, it is at a very, very interesting and exciting time for Vikings fans.

And I think that's the feeling across the fan base today. So thanks, both of you guys. Thanks to everyone who listened. I saw already in my email, one of you signed up for purpleinsider.substack.com. So thank you so much for that. If you want our written work, our work is also featured on Bring Me the News. The Purple Insider podcast comes out every day and we love doing it. So we have conversations just like this and rants just like this. So thanks so much to everybody for watching. Thanks you guys again. And first day of the rest of our lives. We'll

talk to you guys later.