Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Rivers McCown talks Vikings AFC South opponents
Episode Date: July 27, 2020Read Matthew Coller's written work at PurpleInsider.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
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Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and we welcome in to discuss his work in the 2020 Football Outsiders Almanac.
Rivers McCown, who has the best journeyman backup quarterback name of any person I've ever met. What's up, Rivers? Yep, we got the Philip Rivers, got the Josh McCown.
It kind of
wraps a few more too, actually.
How's it going? It's going
pretty well. We used to have a game at a radio
station I worked at called
McCown, McCown, or McNown.
It's where we would have
trivia about which McCown,
Josh, or Luke, or
Cade McNown. Now it sounds much sillier when I try to explain to somebody else.
But I guess we could have included you in there.
But you cover the Houston Texans, and you wrote about the AFC South
for the Almanac, or the Texans and the Titans.
And you were very familiar with the AFC South,
which the Vikings are playing this year.
So I want to start out with the Texans.
Are you tired of Bill O'Brien general manager jokes?
Oh, no.
I think he deserves the roasting.
So by all means, go ahead.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, I mean, it's just I saw that Allen Robinson was somebody that people are talking about
should the Bears trade him.
And it's like the first responses are Bill O'Brien will give him Deshaun Watson in three
firsts or whatever. I mean, it
is absolutely impossible,
right, to justify the DeAndre
Hopkins trade. It now feels like, since
our world has just gone
the way it's gone, it feels like a
long time ago, but that happened, and
there's just, there's no way to look at that and be
like, no, it's fine.
No, I mean, people
used to have really tried, believe me. I mean, there's been a lot of wheels spinning to try to make something out of, like, no, it's fine. No, I mean, people used to have really tried, believe me.
I mean, there's been a lot of wheels spinning to try to make something out of,
like, well, Brandon Cook is a lot faster than DeAndre Hopkins,
and Bill O'Brien would like to speed.
So if these guys can get outside and then do the Yankee routes,
it'll be all fine.
It'll be good.
And, you know, people, you know, they're trying.
Bless them. Bless them.
Bless them.
They're trying.
No, there's no way to justify that trade.
And it's kind of a big downer on what should have been a competitive year for the Texans.
Certainly.
I mean, when you look at the division as a whole, it's wide open for the Texans to take it.
And clearly they have, unless Ryan Tannehill is going to expand that
to 500 passes as opposed to 200 and something which I kind of doubt I mean it's you've got the
best quarterback you have an established roster that's been building and maybe an opportunity to
improve on defense and then you remove the best player so now you have all these receivers who
only run straight what is this offense around
Deshaun Watson going to look like, Rivers? Because I do think that Deshaun Watson is one of three to
five quarterbacks in the NFL that if you put him on the Miami Dolphins last year, he makes the
playoffs because he is that good at creating something where there isn't a whole lot. And
he's had to do that in the past. So what does the offense look like with these vertical wide receivers
that you have now?
Honestly, it probably hasn't changed all that much.
Even when everybody was healthy before,
you had Will Fuller running a lot of clear outs.
So, I mean, I think Will Fuller is going to kind of move into that Hopkins role.
I think he's going to be the main target whenever he's healthy,
which will be six games and, you know, move on from there.
After that, you've got Cooks outside kind of reinventing the Fuller role.
Randall Cobb is going to be kind of the super slot guy who –
another one of the excuses they give is kind of like, oh, well,
we might have lost Hopkins, but Cobb plus Cooks in the same role, kind of it's like those two equal him.
It'll be fine because those two equal his production,
and they certainly don't equal his salary.
But I think they're going to try to get Cobb to be there over the middle,
kind of a slot threat.
And you saw how many drops he had in Dallas last year.
That's, you know, Hopkins had no drops at all in 2019.
So I don't know if that's going to work out all that well.
But I know that the offense probably won't change that much,
as much as they kind of build it up to the might with David Johnson being
more involved in the passing game.
I find that hard to believe based on Bill O'Brien's past.
That's if there's anything left of David Johnson, which is a question here.
It's like, you know, I mean, you go out and get a guy who looks more
and more like a one-year wonder as we get farther away from it,
and another one of those running back contracts that gets discussed as,
what were they thinking,
signing a running back to a big contract?
So, you know, it's interesting, though, because if there is a world
that if, like, David Johnson suddenly snaps back into it
and Randall Cobb does catch the football and Will Fuller does stay healthy
and the offensive line is at least halfway decent,
and Deshaun Watson continues to get rid of the ball a little quicker,
as he did last year.
I noticed his time from snap to release improved,
which I think is probably maybe the offensive line,
but maybe just his knowledge of the game is better,
getting quicker reads and things like that.
It still points to you've got a pretty darn good team on offense.
Yeah, and the offensive line now in second year for Titus Howard,
second year for Matt Sharping,
both of those guys showed some flashes of what they can be last season.
Nick Barnes finally got paid.
He came around pretty well last season.
He had kind of a rough start to his career.
I mean, he kind of got paid before he was actually earned the money,
so to speak, but finally played pretty well last year.
So, I mean, offensive line is one thing that I think Texans fans are very optimistic about, which is a very weird thing to say
after being a Texans fan for so many years and, you know,
watching them trot out the Seth Wands of the world.
Gosh, who was there before me?
I forget his name even.
Ephraim Salah, maybe.
But, like, it's night and day there.
And, I mean, it better be.
You spend roughly, what, five first round picks on it.
If you've got Deshaun Watson,
it makes sense to build up everything you can around him.
The big issue last year was more of the defensive side for the Texans.
And as the Vikings will take a pretty good offense, presumably, down to Houston,
I mean, are we looking at a big improvement,
or are we looking at Kirk Cousins is going to throw for 350 yards?
Well, I mean, that is a big question.
Anthony Weaver is the new defensive coordinator, first-time coordinator,
never did it on any level before. Texans have kind of a habit of bringing these guys in like this. Mike Raybould was kind of hinted at around the edges in his interviews that I'm going to give some Rex Ryan proceedings to everything,
which not really something that comforts a lot of Texans fans considering how Rex Ryan was sort of dismissed in Buffalo.
So I'm not sure.
There's a lot of people who are pinning their hopes on Lonnie Johnson
growing in his second year, the cornerback out of Kentucky.
And there's also a number of people kind of pinning their hopes on Jacob Martin
being a real fast rusher.
Even those things I could see happening,
I don't know that they're guaranteed to happen.
And the fact of the matter is they have no good cornerbacks as far as, like,
coming into the season established, snap, snap, snap, this is going to work.
So that's going to be trial by fire.
Yeah, the Vikings can relate to you there, that's for sure.
I mean, this is one of those games where it could actually be stupendously fun
with both quarterbacks throwing the ball all over the field on corners
who are inexperienced and getting smoked.
Now, I wanted to ask you about something.
I ran across a really surprising stat that I think that most people would not have expected.
But over the last five seasons,
the Houston Texans actually have the best point differential at home of anyone in the NFL.
You would have thought it'd be like New Orleans or it would be Seattle,
but those teams actually are not as good as the Houston Texans.
There might not be fans also, or maybe only 25%,
so that could change the potential dynamic.
But is there something to that?
Is that kind of random, or is there something to the Reliant –
is it still Reliant Stadium?
Maybe it was Reliant Stadium.
Oh, NRG Stadium.
It was once Reliant Stadium.
Okay, so NRG Stadium.
Is there something to the legitimate home field advantage?
Like, should the Vikings be looking at this like going down to Texas?
That's actually pretty tough.
I mean, any game in the NFL is tough if you think about it hard enough.
But I think most of those point differential swings were kind of built on a bad AFC South.
You know, the Jaguars have been relative pushovers for a long time outside of the one year.
The Titans have been relative pushovers for a long time outside of the one year.
The Titans have been relative pushovers for a long time.
The Colts have been good and bad, I mean,
but I think you still get some Andrew Luck is injured year in that sample.
So, yeah, I mean, I'm not totally surprised by that.
Bill O'Brien loves to run the ball, and when he's got an advantage,
I mean, it works out really well for him.
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I want to ask you before we move on to the Titans, the team of regression,
I do shows with Sage Rosenfels all the time, former Texan.
Who are you familiar with?
The copter.
Yes, I know.
You know what is unfortunate about that is he played great in that game
all the way until like four minutes left
and uh he was beating Peyton Manning at that point and out playing him and then you know but uh I
want you to tell me where Sage Rosenfels ranks in all-time Houston Texans quarterbacks oh man I mean
it's it's probably top five right I mean you got, you got Shaub, and then after that it's kind of a black hole.
So, I mean, Sage is up there.
Ryan Hutt's had us one year, probably up there as well.
But, yeah, probably three or four.
Sage was actually a pretty good player for a couple years there.
And, yeah, I mean, it is kind of a shame that Copter kind of loses meaning in the fact that they were hanging out with the Colts for a little bit.
You know who else would kind of like that?
One year, Ron Dane ran for enough yards to beat the Colts at Christmas.
I always remember that game as, you know, as somebody who grew up watching the Texans get their ass kicked by the Colts constantly, constantly, every year.
Those are like two little moments where I'm like, oh, man, that was actually a pretty good game.
And even more unfortunate, too, about that particular game with the Texans and Colts is that I believe it was the first game that was being played at home for Houston after Hurricane had shut things down.
I forget exactly the context,
but it would have been such an amazing win for the Texans,
and then he gets a bad break, I would say,
and maybe a regrettable decision, but played really well.
Well, I mean, it's not his fault that the defense gave all those points,
is it?
Well, yeah, I mean, right.
That is definitely another part of it, is after that happens, like, they could have gotten a stop.
Also, you know, they could have run the ball on the next drive
where he also got strip-sacked and fumbled
and probably should have just run the clock out,
punted it away, and so forth.
But anyway, we're going back to whatever that was, 2008.
I did want to ask you about Koobz, though.
I mean, nobody's more familiar than Houston Texans fans with Gary Kubiak.
The Matt Schaub years, the Andre Johnson years,
that was specifically what I want to ask you about because we're here now
in a situation for the first time in a long time with only one wide receiver
who is elite on the roster.
I mean, it hasn't been that way since 2016, now that Stephon Diggs is in
Buffalo. How did Koobz do it? I mean, how did he continue to scheme Andre Johnson the ball,
aside from Andre Johnson's freakishness, and rely so heavily on one receiver? Because the next
receiver every year is like Owen Daniels with 60 catches and Andre Johnson with 110 or something like that every year.
It's kind of amazing when you look back at it,
and I think they'll have to do it again with Adam Thielen.
Well, let's throw some respect on Kevin Walter's name there.
Yeah, true, true.
That's a great blocker.
There's a Jones mixed in, a slot receiver.
Who was that?
Jacoby Jones.
Jacoby Jones, that's right.
Jacoby Jones could fly, man.
I actually remember,
very early in Twitter, I actually
wound up taking a bunch of Jacoby Jones
posts and making them
like a found poem on
Battle Red Blog back in the day.
Just, you know, stuff like,
I ain't gonna eat that.
That guy just set his mind.
I love that guy.
But yeah.
Right. So the question.
How did he do it?
The question at hand is basically at that
time, Kyle Shanahan
was the offensive coordinator for a couple years there.
And I mean, what they did together was
create the beginnings of the
Shanahan offense where a
lot of play action came in.
I mean, I think they ran – I did the study for the Titans chapter, actually.
They ran in 2011 more play action than any team that ever has been recharted
in football outsiders.
So, I mean, that was a big part of it.
Obviously, the running game was humming at that time with Aaron Foster,
or a little bit later with Aaron Foster.
But they didn't have to do a whole lot of worrying about that outside of one year.
I think 2009 was the year that Steve Slayton totally fell off the planet.
And, yeah, I mean, they did target him a lot for sure.
He was a part of everything that they did.
But the targets of the other players actually weren't that hard.
I mean, you know, Kevin Walter was catching slants, you know,
with five yards of
space between them pretty much all the time. And Owen Daniels, good player, you know, much the same
actually. Yeah, and I think that they have potentially more in Irv Smith in terms of talent
than Owen Daniels, who was a catch the ball if you throw it to him guy um so let's talk about the the the titans here because
they are the most obvious this team's not going to be as good they spent a bunch of money on a
running back and the ryan tanhill numbers last year are hilarious like i think about this actually
for baseball playing 60 games it's like that's that's kind of like what ryan tanhill did last
year he threw 60 baseball games worth of passes last season.
And even though he had a good number of starts,
it was still like not that many throws.
I think it was short of even 300 passes last year.
And if you only took Kirk Cousins' first 300 passes,
he probably would have had a quarterback rating about the same last year.
We see that all the time.
But how much regression is going to happen when they do have a very good
roster and someone like A.J. Brown, who is an emerging, I think,
superstar maybe in the league?
Yeah, actually, that's kind of what I wrestled with doing the Titans chapter
the entire time was just, okay, we know it's going to fall off at some point.
How much is it going to fall off and how much does that matter?
And the thing is that division plus three wildcard spots,
it's wide open for teams in the AFC if they're even remotely good.
So if Tannehill can regress to somewhere between what he was in Miami and what he did last year, I mean, that's still a playoff team to me.
I think they're still a really tough team.
Derrick Henry kind of has, you know, what's the word I'm looking for here?
He's kind of got that magic pixie that's on him right now.
Like there's nothing you can do to stop him.
And until that kind of gets knocked off its blocks a little bit, you know,
you're going to have to worry about it every down.
They run the play action really well.
Arvo Smith has done a great job of converting that offense into something that's, you know,
new age as compared to exotic smash mouth back in the day.
And, yeah, I think that there's still a really good chance of ties in the playoffs, honestly.
You know, I think similarly to the Vikings, when we look at the distribution of runs versus passes, a lot of times we just assume that a team that runs a lot is just old school.
Like, oh, they must be old school because they run a lot.
And I think that maybe Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco is changing that.
But what Kubiak does so well, what they do in Houston, I'm sorry,
in Tennessee, Houston Oilers, what they do in Tennessee is work so brilliantly off of that play action.
And the fact that Derrick Henry is terrifying people at this moment,
it almost doesn't matter whether it's real or not.
As long as teams and defenses think it's real, that Derrick Henry can win the game by himself,
then it matters to how they're going to game plan.
And I think that we see that in the way that Ryan Tannehill played last year
with all of the play actions off of the run game.
I think it's hard to really quantify the effects of kind of the zig versus zag
if you zig really well.
And, you know, Derrick Henry is one of the few bats I can think of
in the past, like, ten years, maybe him and Adrian Peterson,
who would be superstars in, like, 1960 if you just drop them there.
Like, he's, you know, powerful.
He bowls over people.
And I think he's just, you know, at the right time right now
where defenses are trying to get smaller.
And all of a sudden you've got like a 230-pound linebacker
trying to tackle a 250-pound Derrick Henry.
And it doesn't work out very well for defenses a lot of the time.
So, I mean, I think there is definitely something to both kind of the strategic idea
of spread to run and kind of making the run work.
And then I think there's also something about just Derrick Henry personally
and how he makes things a little bit different than you'd expect.
There is a little bit of Ironhead Hayward in Derrick Henry,
where it's just carrying human beings down the field,
getting four extra yards after you run into someone.
The Indianapolis Colts are a real debatable one.
Now, you may have some Rivers bias here, but it's hard to see after the way he played last year,
just snapping your fingers, going to a new team,
even if it's indoors and even if the offensive line is better,
and just saying, okay, well, now he's going to be back
to where he was a couple of years ago.
We're talking about a guy who throws the ball probably as slow and now at this point
as anybody else, but still has a gunslinger mentality. And even though I like a lot of
things that the Colts organization did, I just have a tough time with this one saying,
yeah, Colts, they're going to win 11 or 12 games with Phillip Rivers because he used to be good.
I don't know. I don't think this is Fav of in Minnesota. I think the way you look at that if you're an optimist is you kind of
think about how many of Phillip and Rivers' interceptions thrown last year
were kind of fourth quarter desperation time. He didn't really have a whole lot
around him outside of Keenan Allen. I mean, Hunter Henry made it back at the end of the
year. Mike Williams is good. Austin Eckler is
pretty good. But offensive line-wise,
that's kind of a rough
shape. They haven't had
a real offensive coordinator in a while, I think,
since Frank Reich left and then kind of gets reunited
here. So
that helps out a little bit as well.
The FOA is actually really high
on the Colts this year.
I think they win
the division most of the time.
Really?
The Titans and Texans are kind of like trailing behind pretty close.
So that's kind of a surprise to me, even as somebody who writes for the book,
just, you know, what does the computer spit out?
But, yeah, I think that they've got a chance.
I think that maybe Rivers' struggle was kind of a little overblown last year.
And I think, you know, not to say that he's going to be a world leader or anything, but
as long as, you know, you give him that kind of her cousin's control offense where, you
know, you're running the ball and you've got threats everywhere on every level and all
you have to do is deliver and distribute, then I think he'll be fine.
And it does matter that they have one heck of a backfield.
Minnesota fans know exactly what Jonathan Taylor can do
because he demolished them last year for Wisconsin.
But also, Mack is a really good running back too.
I think that that is going to make a big difference for them
to be able to run the ball as effectively as they can
with their beastly offensive line.
Yeah, and I would even give that credit to their Titans as well,
Mo'Lowie Cox.
I don't know if anybody's watched that guy really,
but he can block his behind off.
And you've got Jack Doyle there who's still, you know,
a pretty good two-way player.
They're a really hard team to stop when they're running the ball.
Even last year, you know, playing the Texans on like a rando, you know,
we've got Jacoby Preset.
It's a rando Thursday night game on the road.
And, you know, they're bringing out Jonathan Williams or somebody.
And just, you know, he's running for 120 yards, 130 yards easy.
I mean, they've got a good system there for running the ball.
And once you plug Taylor in,
you could definitely see some shades of Titans in that one.
So what do you have as the order?
I know you just said that it was a little surprising to see the Colts there. But those first three teams of the division, and then we'll chat about the Jaguars if we have to.
But, like, the teams that matter in this division, what's your order?
Okay.
Well, I would start with the Titans.
I think that the drop-off on Tannehill's stats will not be that bad.
And like you said, A.J. Brown kind of takes a little bit of worry off that.
I really like Corey Davis, actually.
But don't tell anybody because he's supposed to suck.
So after that, I've got Titans, I I got Texans, I got Colts.
And I think Texans and Colts can be interchanged pretty easily.
I wouldn't be bothered if you said any of those teams should finish three.
Is this like division winner goes 10-6 and third team is 8-8,
that kind of thing?
Well, it could be more than that, actually.
You know, all these teams have pretty weak schedules.
I don't know if you've read the Almanac yet,
but they're not real big fans of the NFC North either.
Yeah, well, and I can see that.
I mean, that's totally reasonable.
If you're looking at the NFC North as not the toughest division,
because I agree.
Out of all the divisions, somebody asked me in my mailbag,
like, to rank the divisions.
And I think I had the NFC North maybe sixth.'t I don't think it's the toughest division either unless the
Detroit Lions really surprise us but as long as Matt Patricia's their coach I'm just gonna wait
and see on that don't gotta worry about that yeah yeah exactly so uh all right Jaguars um
I like to joke about Doug Marone because I was in Buffalo when he coached there,
and it just didn't.
He still has his job, which I think is surprising,
and he went to an AFC Championship game, which he botched,
so that's more than I expected from him.
But this team should be in full rebuild mode,
and I'm kind of surprised they're sticking with him.
It's almost like the Bears in the last year of John Fox, where they were starting Trubisky.
It's like, yeah, John Fox is still definitely coaching in the NFL for the rest of this season.
I kind of look at Marone is the same way.
And if there's one victory on the schedule that the Vikings have to get,
it's like that one against the Jaguars.
Yeah, apathy is kind of running rampant in Jacksonville right now.
I don't know if the cons have too many projects to work on.
I know that they're involved in European soccer to some extent.
I've heard rumors that they're just not really interested in cleaning office right now.
When you don't even clean office, it's kind of what you get,
this kind of team of leftovers,
where the most interesting thing is,
how do we project Leonard for Nets fantasy football totals?
Because nobody knows if he's even going to be on the team
to start the season and whether they prefer him.
And yeah, I mean, it's a mess right now.
I feel bad for them after 2017.
I really thought that was going to become a team that could buck the odds a little bit there on defense.
And instead what you got was one good year and cloud of dust, basically.
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You know what we never talk about since you have Deshaun Watson there in Houston?
We never talk about how Deshaun Watson was passed up by the Jacksonville Jaguars
and Patrick Mahomes was passed up.
But I always look at it as Watson was obvious.
Mahomes, you could have been like, I don't know, I've seen these guys before who throw for 5,000 yards in college
and whatever and make all these crazy throws,
and then they can't do it in the NFL.
But Deshaun Watson, there are very few players that I've ever watched in college
and I'm like, yep, if this guy is bad in the NFL, then I would be shocked.
And I've also got the tweet receipts to prove it, by the way.
But we never talk about how they picked Leonard freaking Fournette
as opposed to Deshaun Watson when Blake Bortles had won, I don't know,
10 out of 50 games or something over his first couple of years.
Chicago gets all the crap for that.
But I would almost say, look, you drafted a quarterback at least, Chicago.
At least you knew the right position to take.
You just picked the wrong guy.
Well, sort of.
They sort of picked the quarterback.
Up for debate a little bit.
No, the Jaguars fans are very aware, believe me.
Whenever I tweet out something to Sean, it kind of blows up,
gets a bunch of, you know, a thousand retweets or whatever. Reliably,
the two fan bases
that come out, and what was me, themselves,
are Chicago and Jacksonville.
So, I mean,
don't worry, they know.
And, you know, coming out of the Sean was actually
a little polarizing, I think, because
of his interception polls. That was the main thing
for him. And, you know,
people kind of questioned,
well, I don't know if the main thing for him. And, you know, people kind of questioned, well,
I don't know if he can keep it up.
Now, it's easy to say in retrospect that we were wrong.
Everybody can do that, play the 2020 hindsight game.
I think I was a little bit lower on him than I thought, you know,
he became, obviously.
I was very happy to get him because either way, it was an actual quarterback's dad,
which is something that after three years of rolling in the Hoyer deep or whatever,
Ryan Mallett was there. Like, give me anybody, give me anybody, please get me out of this.
So I was probably more on him coming out than you were. But, I mean, I definitely can see how this blew up.
I can see what we should have paid attention to,
which was the championship games and the accuracy.
And, yeah, I feel bad for Bears fans and Jags fans, but I don't feel that bad.
Of course not.
Of course not.
Well, the thing that I liked, and maybe call me silly for this,
because we're talking about the 2020 football almanac analytics here and data and all these things, which I love.
But for Watson, it was like who he is.
I mean, somebody who went through a lot early in his life with Hurricane Katrina and everything else,
and the character that he had
to become and by the way like Clemson is not great at that point when he's there like now they're just
one of the three teams that we always talk about but my entire life until he shows up Clemson is
kind of like man I don't know you know they're just another team and he elevates them to a
national championship and then passes the Bama test,
which you're basically playing an NFL defense at that point. I just thought if this guy can
handle all those things that he's gone through his life and then elevate a program like this,
that is where I think we do see consistently. I mean, even like Dak Prescott, his program
was pretty trash for their entire existence. And then Prescott gets them to, you know, being in national contention.
I kind of look to those guys and say, well,
that's what you're going to need to do in the NFL is you're going to need to
elevate a team.
So if you can do it there, well, then you could probably do it in the NFL.
I mean, to me, coming at it from analytics
and coming at it from deep psychology or whatever, I mean, it is kind of survivorship bias to look at that stuff.
Because, you know, we think about those guys, we'll think about, you know, well, this guy led Western Kentucky to 11 wins three years in a row.
No one thinks about him anymore. I think that's Logan Woodside. I think that's Logan Woodside. Don't quote me on that.
But, yeah, it's interesting how, you know, once we're already there, we kind of use
the available facts and be like, why couldn't anybody figure that out? I mean, that was the
easiest thing I've ever seen in my life. I do think what really made Deshaun work was, you know,
he was kind of the quarterback who could play the nuke school game. And I think to this day,
even the Texans don't run him enough.
They don't really try to get him outside the pocket enough.
They don't try to work with the read option concepts as much as they did in 2017.
I mean, if it were me, I'd be running him more on that every game.
So I think that's kind of the big difference for him right now.
Yeah, well, I would say you you got to have baseline for NFL talent like you can't
I mean you're right about Logan Woodside or or um you know Danny Warfel back in the day no one has
ever been better than Danny Warfel but you know the guy couldn't throw the ball very hard and you
know so forth Tim Tebow same thing like you never bought into Tim Tebow because just didn't think
he had the NFL passing ability.
So if you pass that baseline, I kind of look at that,
but you make a fair point that none of us really know,
and that circles back to why it was actually okay for Chicago to draft one of the three quarterbacks that were supposed to be
toward the top.
They just missed really badly on the other two.
Rivers McCown, the 2020 Football Outsiders Almanac.
I'm really glad that we could get together.
People can just type in your very easy-to-spell name.
If they love journeyman quarterbacks, then they'll know how to spell McCown.
And if you don't, then you shouldn't listen to this podcast.
You shouldn't even bother.
So great to have you on, man.
Great to be here.
Actually, you'd be surprised how many people can misspell McCown.
It's an amazing name for that. Not me. great to be here um actually you'd be surprised how many people can miss dumb account it's it's
an amazing name for that not me not not the the biggest someday i will get josh mccown on this
podcast because we talk about him enough as a i mean if you've got sage rosenfels appearing then
you know you've got all sorts of love for uh for journeyman and we need to do this again to talk
entirely only warren moon for an entire podcast
because there's a connection there between houston football and of course minnesota so great to have
you on man yeah and i'll make sure to wear the josh mccown jean jacket next time for you
you have a josh mccown jean jacket no just i always remember him in that one press conference
in tampa bay right that jean jacket looking like an NSYNC member.
Oh, okay.
Yes.
Okay, right. And I can dress up as Ryan Fitzpatrick in Tampa Bay when he used Deshaun Jackson's clothes or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tampa Bay.
Tampa Bay just turns quarterback weird, doesn't it?
It most certainly does.
I'm sure nothing weird will happen with Tom Brady there now.
So, all right.
Well, this was really fun, and I always appreciate everybody listening to Purple Insider.