Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Sage Rosenfels talks quarterback traits, upside and Malik Willis

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

From the NFL Combine, Matthew Coller and Sage Rosenfels have an in depth discussion about what teams should be looking for with the quarterback prospects. Does Kenny Pickett's hand side matter? What about Malik Willis' rushing ability? How do you evaluate upside? What did Eli Manning have that Sage says all QBs should try to copy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here inside the Indiana Convention Center at the NFL Combine, along with former Vikings quarterback Sage Rosenfels again. Appreciate all of you who have tweeted us about our shows together here at the Combine. I'm very glad that Sage could come around and even give advice to Kweisi Adafomensa last night about where he should live in Minneapolis. I think you gave him very good advice that Kweisi Adafo-Mensa, he's a young guy. He's not an old GM.

He doesn't want to be out in Eden Prairie. He doesn't want to be in the Invergrove Heights woods, no offense to anybody who lives out there. But he wants to be a Minneapolis man. He wants to be, yeah. I was asking, I also saw offensive line coach, is it Chris Cooper? Yeah.

Last night sort of talked about the same thing. They're dealing with different situations, though. You know, one has kids, one does not. But both, I think, prefer to be a little more in the city, but not like downtown in the city, but closer to the city. So I, you know, know of course sent them to the area around the lakes but odd masca and just sort of over there and I guess Southwest Minneapolis so you know what we'll see where they end up but that was

always interesting to learn different things about people and for me talking to Kweisi is I really can't believe how ease and I know I'm not like an official member of the much hated Minneapolis sports media that he has to be extra reserved around, but he's very open with me about what he was looking for and what he was all about. And very, very easy guy to talk to, of course. And he looks like he could have played receiver or whatever.

I mean, the guy is tall and he's an athletic build. But, yeah, really, really easy guy to talk to. And I think he's really going to enjoy getting to Minneapolis. It feels like to me just getting to know him, it's his type of city. It's so funny how you assess people's, like, physical traits. It's like we're at the combine and you're like, oh, he's lanky, big hands. When you talk to other quarterbacks sometimes, we will forget players' names, but we will know if they were good at running slants or corner routes

or like a 50-50 ball fade type. Yeah, he's only 5'11", but, man, he was actually pretty good on those 50-50 balls if you just gave him a shot, but I have no idea what his name was. There was a weird thing when you're a quarterback, when you play with so many players, you start looking at guys as their physical traits and physical capabilities and less of actually what their name is sometimes. Yeah, and you also get a lot of respect around here

because every every prospect that's running around in shorts and just behind us there's some guys stretching out and they're running in the hallway and stuff every one of them hopes to have an nfl career as long as you did you know and so when kevin o'connell sees you or kevin stefanski or whatever it's like there's a there's a guy who all these guys hope to be for most of them. I mean, there's top five picks who think, well, I'm going to be the $100 million player and everything else. But to have the career that you had, I think that there's a lot of respect for that.

So when Kweisi or Kevin O'Connell is talking with you, it's like this is another guy who is the 1% of the 1%. And that's what I think always makes your perspective so unique for our show is just that there's so few people that were able to do this. And this is why we're going to talk more about quarterbacks, of course. Well, I was doing a podcast earlier today and we sort of went through what my career was. And I said at the end, you know, if you, uh, when I describe myself to people, sometimes the easiest thing to say is I was a journeyman backup quarterback.

We got into the aspect that I am the GOAT of the preseason. I statistically have the greatest preseason stats in the history of any NFL quarterback. So I thought, you know, Tom Brady is the GOAT of probably the regular season and postseason. So basically Tom Brady and I are the GOATs of all the seasons in the NFL. It's probably, I mean, Peyton Manning might be the regular season because he only has the two Super Bowls. That's true, and the five MVPs, which is more than Rodgers. His statistics were better than Brady. That used to be a debate, like, well, do you want Manning

or Brady's better in the clutch? So it's Brady postseason, Manning regular season, and myself preseason. But then you've got offseason goats. Well, no, offseason goats, which is what's going on right now. This is the offseason goats, right? The guys who test extremely well, the greatest tested quarterback of all time at the Combine, probably didn't have a great career.

That's probably the least of the four seasons. That's the least important is the goat of the offseason. I thought you meant as in business-wise that he gets the offseason and then he gets a huge contract. The Andrew Brandt Hall of Fame of sports income or whatever he calls that thing. Well, the other thing is, too, that a lot of people, they spend their offseasons defending him, too. And so it's like Kirk somehow becomes better when the season

is over where the like people sort of have amnesia about what just happened in December and they're like well you know they start looking at his stats and start forgetting so I that's that was all I I think it is interesting in football and in sports in general people love talking about stats and I think that's fine um I think stats are important it's it's your best way to try to describe how good a player or coach is all right and some of those stats are passing yards or quarterback rating or wins and losses but they're all in one way another various amounts of stats but at the end of the, I think I feel like I've been just around long enough that, for example, Carmel Anthony, great NBA stats. If you just looked at his stats when he was really in his prime in particular, you would think that is one of the best players,

like an all-decade NBA guy. Always on losing teams, though. And so as a guy who was in a lot of sports in high school and of course around this, this, this great sport football for a long time, to me, I try to, to trust my eyes, uh, and my brain more than just what the stats try to tell me. Cause I think somebody once said, uh, stats lie, which is why liars use stats, right? Cause you can, you know, know uh politicians use stats all the time uh and and to try to try to uh change the the narrative of something in their favor and they just forget about the stats that aren't in their favor right so yeah um and uh you know like a huge stat and and for for quarterbacks is is third downs gary kubiak one time said to me know, I can get any quarterback pretty much to be pretty good on first and second down. I need guys who are really good on third down and great in the red zone.

The guys that are throwing touchdown passes in the red zone, the guys that are finding a way, whether it's throwing the ball or buying time to run the ball or whatever it might be, to be great on third down. And that's a huge stat. Vikings not great on third down throwing the football. And huge stat. Vikings not great on third down, throwing the football. And then that matters, even though the other stats would say the quarterback's a great quarterback, right?

So there's certain stats that I think are much more valuable than others. Well, no, I think that's a great point. Everything, and this is where I agree with Kweisi Adafomensa, and what's actually getting hard already with him and Kevin O'Connell is what is sort of like coach speak, GM speak, and what is he really telling us? And when he says that everything is a data point, so what your eyes tell you is a data point and what your scouts tell you and what you're feeling on someone is a data point because you use all of these things to evaluate your culture your leadership

your connection with other people data points that all get factored in now you can't put a number a three on someone's leadership or something but it's all things that have to be factored and you know as we look at these quarterbacks I wanted to ask you this about like the makeup of a great quarterback because I mean you got to be in the same quarterback room with Brett Favre and Eli Manning, and you could talk about Eli and whether he's a Hall of Fame or not, but a great franchise quarterback. And Jeff George.

No, really? Yeah, Jeff George, my rookie year for two games. When was that, Washington? Washington. Oh, my gosh, I forgot that. In the offseason. Have we never talked about this over that? Washington? Washington. Oh my gosh, I forgot that. Of course, in the offseason. Have we never talked about this over all these years? No. Yeah, so into the offseason, of course,

and it's my rookie year. We start the first game of the year. We fly all the way from D.C. all the way out to San Diego and take on Norv Turner, who had just been fired the year before. Norv's the offensive coordinator. So you got Doug Flutie out there and LaDainian Tomlinson is a rookie.

Drew Brees is the backup. We're rookies together, and they just destroy us. Our offense is as bad as I thought it would be because it was pretty bad in the preseason. And then week two, we didn't have a week two. Week two was September 11th. It happened on that Tuesday. So we get back from that long ass uh flight to san diego and you know probably came in on monday tuesday 9 11 uh occurs they cancel

that game the following game so the really the second game of the season we go to green bay monday night football and we get destroyed in that game too. And that was the great sheriff, the great Jeff George's last football game. And so yeah, so I started my career seeing that, all the talent, right? I saw so much talent, but I saw a lack of all what you called leadership. but leadership is a lot of things. It's likability. It's getting people connecting to the players that they will follow you anywhere because they know wherever you're going is a good place. You're right. And so I saw maybe a lack of that with the sheriff. And as you move around your career, I went to Miami and Jay Fiedler's the starting quarterback and and i you know as you move around your career i went to miami and jay fiedler's the the starting quarterback and great leadership not a lot of talent uh he was a good

athlete but he didn't have a very good arm um he was okay accuracy wise didn't throw a great ball but that team really would they would do anything for jay he had an ability uh to he was a very likable guy but start off as like, was his work ethic and the way he worked and also, but the way he talked to every guy on the team. He grew up New York. His dad was a high school basketball coach, a well-known high school basketball coach in New York city. He was a basketball player growing up. Anthony Mason was one of his dad's players. Right. So I think he grew up with this ability, despite being Jewish from New York, to connect to all the guys on the team.

Right. Okay, so you see things like that. And then, yeah, as I go through my career, and obviously playing with Brett and playing with Eli, very different types of leaders, very different types of quarterbacks, types of throwers all those things but i i will say sort of like that likeability uh or the ability to connect emotionally i connect with your teammates uh you know people are asking what are the best you know what are the most important traits and i over the years i'm like you know accuracy is

really important that's a really it is important right arm strength yeah it's important it's not everything drew brees didn't have a great arm all of him quarterback right mac jones doesn't have a great arm great rookie quarterback shoot even joe burrow doesn't have some huge arm but really really good you know young quarterback um but likability is huge if you're not likable i i feel like there hasn't been very many quarterbacks in history that have been like an unlikable guy and been super successful because it does matter it sure bleeds into the rest of the football team well can we talk about just with Eli Manning and Brett Favre I feel like Brett Favre's personality and a lot of things about him would be very hard to repeat and if you tried to be like Brett Favre, I mean, it's sort of like

you try to play an instrument like a very famous person who's very unique or sing like someone who is very unique in the way they sing. Okay, so my wife likes pop music. If you try to sing like Billie Eilish, it just won't go well. Like she's very specific in how she does it, right? And everyone will know and it will just be a cover band and not good. But I feel like Eli Manning's form of leadership is much more repeatable for people. One thing that he was great at is he just didn't ruffle feathers publicly. He carried himself in a really good way. But you've mentioned to me before that behind the scenes, he's different than his public persona and i think that there's a lot of value in that in like and also that he's very

funny and people have started to realize this with the manning cast that eli is extremely funny i i feel like that's a way to universally connect with people in general and then also being gutsy like i think that gutsy matters to people and I don't mean everything to sound like a shot at Kirk Cousins. If you take it that way, well, that tells you something about Kirk Cousins. But, like, being gutsy helped Case Keenum. You know, not a talented guy. But Manning was a very talented guy who was gutsy and also could relate to people on a sort of funny kind of way.

But he had a chance to be around him. And I guess I think that if you're like modeling your leadership after somebody, that's not a bad guy to pick. Eli, it'd be great to pick, you know, one playing in New York City and having almost no soundbites in 16 years or something like that to like sort of be used against you as evidence that you're a jerk or something. And he has like almost none of those he was very good at being politically correct in those locker room press conferences or at the podium press conferences but when he needed to he would in a final way to without me always saying the player's

name call somebody out he did that on occasion but he did that knowing 99% of the team agreed with him. So he sort of really picked his moments there. You don't want to talk about some other guy's contract when half the team's like, you know what, you shouldn't deal with another man's money. That's his business. And we're all businessmen trying to make as much money as we can here. So he would sort of pick and choose his spots. He was funny and he is funny. His funny is not like he tells funny jokes. His funny is his wit. He's quick. He's also, he is very smart. You know, the, what I always appreciated about Eli was he grew up going to a super, like the most wealthy high school in New Orleans. All right. And dad was famous. He had every reason to be one of these

like sort of spoiled, rich, entitled, uh, kids that sort of felt like he was better than everybody else because you see it all the time. It's like a, it's like an epidemic in this country. I feel like sometimes. And so, um, Eli, he, he didn't have that, uh, aura around him when he was in that locker room. He was like one of the guys. You really wouldn't have known that he grew up with a housekeeper probably 24 hours a day or whatever, however that his childhood was. You wouldn't think that if you were around him. So when you're funny or you're witty, you can sort of get along with everybody.

You tell good stories, but you're funny or you're witty you can sort of get along with everybody um you tell good stories but you're you know politically correct you don't call guys out in the press conferences you take the heat a lot um it it does tend to be likable another thing i was uh thinking about this the other day when eli had bad games he had terrible games oh yeah yeah yeah and i know this sounds weird but for like four picks. Yeah. So when you're down, when you're down, uh, 10 points in the fourth quarter and you've already thrown two interceptions. Okay. Eli wasn't scared to throw two more before the game was out because all he really cared about was trying to get back in the game. And even if you were down 21 points and he's so in two interceptions, he's not scared to throw an interception.

He's not just trying to be like, ah, I want to have good stats and try to make it look respectable. He was just trying to be aggressive all the time. And I think guys appreciated that. It sounds stupid to like, yeah, we really liked him because he threw four interceptions last game. But they like a guy who doesn't really care about his personal stats and is really just trying to do uh to a

fault sometimes what is best for the football team and that has to continue to be aggressive and push the ball down the field and not just take check down charlie's uh and run out the clock right let's take some of these skills and apply them beyond the leadership and everything else but apply them to uh the the quarterbacks in this draft. Now, I'm not asking you to have grinded all of the tape on these guys. Except I've grinded none of the tape. Because you've grinded none of the tape on these guys. I did just see Pickett's throwing motion in a hallway here,

throwing the ball with his gloves. Isn't that funny? We could get into a glove conversation and how that concerns me already about the kid. Well, Kenny does not have your hand size, so he has my hand size. And I don't know if that's a legitimate concern. Like hand size doesn't necessarily correlate to success, but there's also a baseline of that where it actually could impact you. Well, what it does is smaller hands than anyone who's ever played. You be going like okay is that going to be a

problem for him it i mean it can be it's there's a mixture of like hand size and throwing motion style you know hand size really does it's not like gripping the football but guys who have bigger hands the way the ball comes off sort of like a like a whip in a way, and your fingers are like the end of the whip, you get just more spin and rotation on the ball. And college football, you know, these guys go out there and they use these balls and they can wear them in as much as they can. NFL footballs are fairly worn into, but you're also playing more bad condition games in pro football, a lot more November, December, even January playoff games than college football. So you have to be able to spin it really well.

Drew Brees did not spin the ball really well, but he played in New Orleans for most of his career, San Diego for most of his career. New Orleans is also playing against Atlanta, playing against Tampa, right? So Drew would not have had his career, I don't think, playing in Buffalo and having to play New England, having to play at the Jets, and then getting that one game with the Dolphins. You need to have a guy who can spin it. That's my concern.

Like Jimmy Garoppolo, he doesn't spin the ball very well either. So people talk about him going to the Steelers as a destination. I don't know how well he'll do in a place like that. I think he would be better off on a team that has better throwing conditions. And hand size does matter with that. Folks, we've got an even better offer to tell you about from SodaStick. If you use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER, one word, you can get 15% off your purchase. That's right.

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and use the code PURPLEINSIDER for 15% off. Well, the other thing about Kenny pickett is it just seems like when we talk about the ceiling for a player maybe we can discuss that a little bit like some of the language that gets used that we just sort of say and like what does that even mean but pickett has been sort of dubbed mac jonesy a little bit like not a unbelievable athlete as we're talking they haven't tested yet i don't suspect he's going to run a four three you know and also kind of a one-year guy where this year he really emerged and had this great season with good wide receivers and a lot around him and you know i'll always stick with i don't know which guys are going to succeed or not

pickett to me does have some things where you wonder what some red flags yeah some red flags like what what is the ceiling for the guy what can he really be can he really throw the ball and this was a senior bowl thing can you really throw the ball like the other guys and that means accurate enough and that means with velocity because i know you said that you know accuracy is number one but it's got to have a baseline of velo, or you're talking about like you could be a major league pitcher at 92, you can't be one at 87. And Pickett, I wonder if he sort of rests on that spectrum, and if he struggles this week to throw the ball hard and accurate,

I think any one of these prospect quarterbacks has the chance to be a second-round pick if they don't play really well here yeah and you know kevin stefanski uh this press comment earlier today he talked about the importance of coming to the combine because he really does like to see the quarterbacks throw at the same time he likes you know you go to a private workout you just see one quarterback throw so you don't have that next guy who walks up and the ball just zooms out of his hand faster and you start going, okay, you start comparing them. When you have all these guys throwing at the same time,

you can actually compare how you see that ball come out of their hands and the velocity. So, yeah, he definitely has his red flags. I haven't done much research on these college guys, nor do I even watch that much college football anymore other than my beloved Cyclones. We do a Brockck purdy here gotta throw his name uh you know three and a half year starter at iowa state um shorter guy squattier sort of body threw for a ton of yards there uh broke all my records probably like in this you know middle of the second season as a starter or something i didn't have very many

uh very many but um well if he got to double-digit touchdowns. I think he'll be a – I'm hoping he's like sort of a late draft pick, you know, sixth rounder, seventh rounder, fifth rounder or something. He is very accurate. He doesn't miss very many throws. And he's – those offense where sort of like one of those air raid offenses where you have to – they're not super detailed in their protections and their pass patterns. It's a lot of, like, deeper stuff where guys are running around all over.

And so he has a lot of reps at it. I actually have a belief that the college guys that play in these systems that are, like, super, like, air raid style offenses, though those offenses aren't conducive to winning the NFL, I a lot of times would rather draft one of those guys. They may know very little about like normal football, normal passing game football because they don't talk coverages and all these things all that much in those Mike Leach style offenses.

But you know the guy that comes in has like 3 million reps of throwing the ball in college you go draft the Iowa quarterback he's thrown the ball 18 times a game their their meetings are based off of like what's the best way to run our our outside zone play do you run to the right or run to the left and you know so even though even though it's more pro-style system, if that makes sense. So there's an aspect of taking these very unpolished guys, Patrick Mahomes, of course, being the main one of these types of players because he had so many crazy reps in college and made so many throws. Then you just sort of have to, like, harness it and bring it in a little bit

and sort of put parameters around what you're doing. But at least the kid had a million throws at the college level yeah that's interesting is that it seems like and this was a major compliment for kellen mond was well he played in this nfl style offense like yeah and wasn't all that good i mean right like you sort of have a more of an idea of what the guy is it's used as a compliment but i think you could see the limitations and the strengths and weaknesses of someone like Kellen Mond when he's playing in an offense that is more NFL-ish as opposed to it's wide open it's seven on seven and now you have to try to harness it which I wanted to ask you in this way about Malik Willis because Malik Willis has some very weird things

about him like statistically he got sacked a ridiculous amount but then when you watch it you're like well they didn't really have offensive linemen but it's also a qb stat which we have talked about and established and he's a plate stats are definitely a qb stat right yeah does pff uh consider that as part of their evaluation of yes quarterback quarterback sacks which which is odd because Burrow got sacked, led the NFL in sacks this year, and they still somehow made it to the Super Bowl, which is pretty surprising. There are certain quarterbacks who do and overcome it. I mean, Burrow is still young.

He can improve it. Russell Wilson always got sacked a lot, and this is the Malik Willis question that I was going to ask, is just these playmaking quarterbacks will get sacked because they're trying to extend plays and things like that. I don't know how much of that is Malik Willis. I'd have to watch every sack to try and figure out how much was a lineman getting beat, how much was a pass protection breakdown, how much was him trying to extend a play. But when you think about the traits that Malik Willis has, a rocket arm, probably going to run a 4-4 here if he runs. To me, that's very hard to ignore and say, oh, okay, give me Kenny Pickett.

Kenny Pickett might turn out to be the better quarterback, but the ceiling, as we talk about it, usually is based on what physical traits that you have and if everything aligns properly what could you become so you might become jordan love who i get the sense isn't any good uh otherwise they might be handling this different and he was the traits guy but you also could be the josh allen where you become a force it's hard for mac jones to become a force because there's limitations there it's possible for someone like Malik Willis that's why of all the quarterbacks if you said take one I probably would end up taking him well a lot of times people talk about the draft as a it's it's like you know get ready all these the GMs the scouts even you know the head coaches quarterbacks

coaches it's CYA all the time. It's cover your ass all the time. So when you have a player and say, I'm going to draft this guy, the GM has to tell the owner as to why we're drafting this guy. So if you've got 10 positives, rocket arm, he ran a 4-4-40, he did really well on all the mental tests, had a ton of stats in college. Those all point to he should be successful. But if he's not successful, you can still point to those and say,

well, all the meters said, yeah, he should be successful, and sometimes you're just wrong. But very rarely do all the things point to, well, he's not going to be successful, then all of a sudden he ends up being successful. It does happen, but not often. By the way, I want to finish up the sack question. Oh, sure, yeah. One thing I used to think of was, you know,

a burrow got sacked 51 times or whatever it was this year. Sacks on first and second down are way different than sacks on third down. Yeah. Sacks on third down don't matter all that much, right? It's third and eight, I get a sack. It's fourth and 12, we're punting either way. Who cares, right? But a sack on first down creates a third and 15.

Third and 15s create fumbles, create, you know, there's no good plays there. So to me it's not just the number of sacks, but like actually when you get sacked. Again, like one of those sats that can lie. I see Tom Brady all the time on the 10-yard line going in to score. Third down, he's going to hold on to the football until he's got something because he knows if he gets sacked, it just turns in from a 32-yard field goal to a 40-yard field goal. His guy guy should make it 90 of the time either way so it's it's like not a bad sack to take and the numbers have bared this out that by expected points added a

sack is many times even worse than throwing an interception because at least with throwing a pick you're throwing it 20 or 30 yards down the field i mean if you throw a pick to somebody who runs it for a touchdown of course that's not good but you know when matt stafford threw that pick in the super bowl on a bomb like well does that really hurt you yeah not really not the same but if you get if you get at the 25 your own 25 and you take a sack on first down i mean you are now talking about being at the 14 yardyard line with second and long. Now you are losing that battle right there and talking about giving the ball to the other team at potentially the 50-yard line if you can't convert a second and 20-something or second and 17 into a first down.

That's where you worry about someone like Malik Willis taking so many sacks. I'm sure they went on third down. It becomes an awareness game. Yeah. Because I'm sure they went on third down. It becomes an awareness game. Yeah. Because really sacks in some ways are about awareness, awareness of what down it is, awareness of the guys around you, whether you should take a sack or whether you should try to throw the ball away.

You'll see quarterbacks run a bootleg and take a sack, which is like the no-brainer. You should never run a bootleg and take a sack because you always have the ability to throw the ball in the dirt at someone's feet but then you'll see good quarterbacks occasionally like take a 10-yard sack on a bootleg and now you're again now you're in second 20 rather than being on second 10 if you just throw the ball away so that's like an awareness which isn't really a stat either right there's not a PFF or there's not some breakdown of like, oh, this quarterback is just, there's a number here.

He's a 32.8 awareness meter. You know, it's like Madden might have that, but football doesn't currently have that. I mean, that to me is one of the sort of likeability for a quarterback. It's one of the attributes of the great ones is great awareness and awareness there's a there's a physical awareness like in the pocket and how you move a little bit but stay on rhythm with your hitches and your reads but there's also like an awareness at a press conference awareness in the locker room awareness in your community of what you know if you're a quarterback

of the green bay packers versus a quarterback of the green bay packers versus a quarterback of the los angeles chargers or las la rams or the new york giants you're dealing with a different fan base so having like the awareness of who you're talking to every single day and uh that overall awareness thing uh also a big attribute of course you know you don't know about any of those things with these young quarterbacks that are coming out. Yeah, right. And that's the hardest thing to figure out is how will you handle yourself in an NFL situation? I think that someone like Dwayne Haskins had the ability to be a very good NFL quarterback, but no awareness.

No awareness. And instantly went out and hurt his team and they decided to cut him because he just didn't seem to understand the magnitude of being an NFL quarterback and what that means. On Malik Willis, where does the run game fit in with a quarterback right now? Because it always seems to fluctuate based on who is just winning. When the mobile quarterback is winning, then it's winning, then you've got to have that. But this year, Stafford and Burrow get to the Super Bowl with a combined, what, less than 200 yards rushing between them?

Yet at the same time, you would not say that rushing is bad or that it's something you don't want. Willis, it's a huge part of it. And here's a reference you'll love, that PFF, their comparison for Mal malik willis was cordell stewart because he's just a marvelous runner and he'll be an elite runner in the league but he might not be an elite passer in the league even though he has uh this this arm strength and i guess i wonder how valuable you think it is uh or if that's going to change or if that's something like as you compare

okay it's willis and matt corral one of them could run for 500 or 600 yards a year but one's a little bit better of a passer one has a stronger arm one's a little more precise like how do you weigh all those things i think you weigh it's throwing the football first uh that i think that the sport is and forever will be a throwing the ball with the quarterback sport, in particular long term. If you're talking about one year and we've got a quarterback that can run around a lot and make plays or for a couple years, but I just believe over time those guys will get hurt as well as that the NFL defenses are simply too fast and too physical. And in a sense, the football field in NFL games, I always say, is like a little bit

smaller than the college field, even though it's obviously the same size. But with the hashes being so wide in college, you go to like the wide side, like what I call like the trip side, there is like 10 more yards of grass over there. There's more space. And so there's just more sort of space in the college game for guys that can run. And again, the defenders aren't quite as fast. Defenders don't react quite as well. And in the pro game, you've got like grown men out there who are 28 years old

and the greatest physical condition of their lives who no longer have to go to class uh they've been like they just lift weights for you know the entire off season and run and they're in peak peak condition at all the times they have all the trainers and all the access to all the tools to make them the basically the the strongest weapon possible those guys are coming after you and um and they know that if they hurt you their chances of winning the game go way up that's like a that's like a real thing yes much much more that in the pros than than in college and so i you know lamar jackson's an unbelievable runner right but he has a ways to go in the passing game have they gotten to a championship game yet

that i don't believe they have. They haven't gotten to the Super Bowl either. But you look at the last couple years, Tom Brady, even at his age, is still right there at the end. And just a couple years ago, of course, winning it. Pat Mahomes, he's an okay runner, but really he's a scrambler. And they don't really design very many runs for him. I do think to have a guy who's mobile enough that on third down

when someone plays man-to-man, they can scramble for 12 yards on a third and eight, that's really valuable. I think on third and twos and threes or a fourth and one, you call a zone read, the quarterback can get out there and protect themselves. In the red zone on the five-yard line, the ten-yard line. When you're willing to risk the injury of the quarterback so many times a year, that's when it's worth it. And that's when you want a guy that can do that. And even, you know, we talked about like Stafford and Burrow not being great runners, but they do that just enough.

Yeah, I know for a fact both those teams are running occasional zone read or something when it matters the most, and they are good enough athletes to run, but you've got to be a great thrower first. And really, I mean, even with Josh Allen, where he takes the next step is when he improves as a passer. And this is something with quarterbacks that's so hard to project is Malik Willis is throwing motion I'm not the expert on that you would be but uh you know it's sort of said to need some

work and his footwork and all those things but what you don't know is how hard he's going to work on that when he gets to the league where Patrick Mahomes the footwork was a big problem but then all of a sudden it wasn't and the same thing with josh allen where always throwing motion is a problem and then all of a sudden it wasn't because they worked on it and they mastered it and that's when you take willis and you think if he masters it and then you add the running and then he can make special plays with his legs then you really have something and so trying to project how far away he is from that of being a precise passer is a really difficult thing and so trying to project how far away he is from that of being a precise passer is a really difficult thing and one of the major challenges here i would be willing to take that risk of well

you know maybe the guy just ends up being a carnival axe with his you know legs and his arm strength but if he's more than that if he's more than just an nfl combine hero he can be a great quarterback i'm not sure that there's anybody else in the draft who can be a great quarterback, good enough to build around and potentially win with. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know about truly great. Well, by the way, I came out with Michael Vick, and, of course, he's one of the great runners of all time as a quarterback.

If you just watched him throw the football, he really was one of the best throwers I've ever seen. Strong arm, ball came out beautiful, never threw a wobbler, watched him throw the football he really was one of the best throwers I've ever seen strong arm ball came out beautiful never threw a wobbler just like a natural thrower but where he struggled was the inability to have a really complex offense there just wasn't their offense in Atlanta in those days and it was a more wasora was the coach, they were simple. They were like two high defenses. We're going to either run the ball or work the tight end algae crumpler down the middle to the running backs. Single high safety, we're going to throw go routes and comebacks.

They kept it very simple from, I don't know all the reasons behind that, but that when you have to run a really simple offense, it does limit sort of your ceiling there. And then, of course, as I said, that processing of information to be able to go from receiver one to two to three to four, to be able to do all the audibling stuff, to see all the coverages and see what they all might mean. He struggled in some of those aspects, but the physical things were off the charts. And he was a really good NFL quarterback and one of the best in the league for a number of years

and ended up having a long career, obviously going to jail, but didn't have all the things necessary to be one of the greatest of all time. And Vic admitted later that he didn't watch enough film and he didn't study enough with the offense. And then when he got to Philadelphia and had to take a more mature approach, that he was nearly the MVP of the league the one year when he actually did study that stuff. I think he's the most talented quarterback, raw talent of all time, in terms of his arm strength, his throwing ability, his running ability.

He's Barry Sanders except for throwing the ball and can throw at 70 yards. I mean, there was a throw. I think it was like Washington, maybe it was the first game of the year, ability he's barry sanders except for throwing the ball and can throw at 70 yards i mean there was there was a throw i was at i think it was like washington first maybe the first game of the year kickoff game or something and they ran like a deep zone outside zone play action he comes around and looks up and hits uh who there's sean jackson sean i know this throw that ball's like 75 yards in the air just In a game. Just incredible in a game. Which you never see unless it's a Hail Mary.

Yeah, you never see unless it's a Hail Mary or some player runs around and to buy all this time for some reason to randomly throw. You just don't see it very often. I saw Justin Herbert throw a ball somewhere. I don't know if it was last year or this rookie year. By the way, Justin Herbert I wasn't high on when he came out just because I watched two games, and all they ran was bubble screens and go routes.

And he wasn't really good at either one of them. Like he'd throw inaccurate. I was like, man, if they throw all these bubble screens and he's inaccurate at these, I'm assuming he's not super accurate on slants and in-breaking routes and these sort of more harder throws. And so I was like, I think he's just not going to be a super accurate on slants and in breaking routes and these sort of more harder throws and so i was like i think he's just not gonna be a super accurate quarterback and sure enough he's probably a top five uh quarterback i think almost every team in the nfl other than other

than maybe the bills and maybe the uh the chiefs would take justin herbert as their quarterback and that's why you draft for skills and don't draft for just the stats of which he had good stats or even like the tape can be really i think can could be confusing when you watch the tape on guys because i remember watching a lot of josh allen and being like what like this guy i mean it just looked horrible his last year it looked like he didn't know where to throw the football it looked like he was inaccurate a lot of times or he tried to play hero ball all the time. And the whole, there's so many things that you can't know about that,

how they're coached, what the office is supposed to do. And around here in Indianapolis, they try to figure these things out. But even then it's just going to be a, such a different universe that they get dropped into that. There's no way to project that you can only project on, Hey,

what if this works out? What is this guy's arm going to look like? What's his legs going to look like? And that kind of thing. So that's why I lean toward Willis in terms of if you were to draft one today, if you had all five on the board, go with that guy. One thing that I know that all these quarterbacks, coaches, and coordinators who are looking at all these quarterbacks and it's like a hundred for a hundred of these guys I've talked to over the years and it goes back to a story that Jason Garrett told me in a quarterback meeting years ago he's my quarterback coach in Miami in 2005 he'd come back from the combine I sort of asked how it was he tells me this story about Jimmy Chang was a Jimmy Jimmy Chang from Hawaii? I think it was. This quarterback threw for a gazillion yards in the air raid Hawaii offense of the day.

But listening to, he was telling a story about how he was describing a play that they, what's your favorite play? And here's him describing this play. But listening to a guy who set all the records in the conference and all the records that Hawaii threw for a million yards describe his favorite play was so hilarious to Jason Garrett because it was like, well, we run this guy here, we run this guy over here, and this guy, he's always open.

He just is. He's just always open, so that's usually the guy I hit and there was really no understanding of the defense there's really no understanding of like the concept of what it was causing the defense it was just that this guy's always open and so that's usually who I throw the ball to but that's pretty much what he like so these coaches anyway I said like a hundred four hundred these coaches are always sort of baffled about how little a lot of these quarterbacks know when they come in.

Some know a lot. I think Matt Jones was probably taught really well at Alabama. Very pro style. You spend four years in truly like an NFL development type of situation. And then you have guys come from other teams where there's very little talk about the details of how coverages work. Protections they may know very little talk about like the details of how coverages work protections they may know very little defensive fronts whether it's a three down front a four down front an over front an under front a bare front they haven't talked about any of those things before they just know that

this guy on this play he's open all the time when i try to throw him the ball and uh you'd be shocked because of you know all the all the the money that's in college football uh i don't want to say it's bad coaching but you know and of course they're very limited on their time compared to nfl but just the huge variety of football knowledge that these quarterback coaches are seen by all these guys that walk into it for all those interviews and you have to judge off of like are they not smart enough to know were they not coached well is it a combination of the two is he actually smart but you think his coaches might have been really really bad how does that

translate to what we're actually seeing on the film I mean there's a lot that goes into that and but I think it's always a sort of a trip for them of some of these college coaches and how little they really prepare their quarterbacks to be pro quarterbacks. That reminds me of like the 80% of the time it works every time. That's your offense. Half the time I'm 100% right. Exactly. Exactly.

Okay, one last thing before we wrap up here, and this is our last show from Indianapolis. And so let me just say that I greatly appreciate you taking the time to come here, hanging out, you know, also, you know, participating and asking questions to Kwesi Adafomensa and Kevin O'Connell. A couple of really good answers from things that you asked them. And so I thought that that was a very cool experience to have you there as well. And not just us journalists throwing questions at them. So thank you for that. I just want to ask you like who you think the most interesting team in the NFL is in these next couple of weeks, because so much can change quarterback trades, free agencies coming up. I mean,

the draft shuffling will happen. Who is the most interesting team in the NFL? That's a good question. I may have a couple answers for you. One, I do think San Francisco is, you know, they've got to find a way to get rid of Garoppolo, which they're going to do. It's the right, I mean, they've all sort of said it.

I do think they're going to try to get rid of him or trade him to a team that makes him happy more than, like, maximizing the value 100% for the 49ers. I think there's a mutual respect there. Obviously, what's going to happen with this quarterback as he goes into his second year, Trey Lance, but Kyle Shanahan has lost almost his entire coaching staff. All the guys on offense, except for the online coach, are gone. Wes Welker went with Mike McDaniel, the coordinator, Rich Scangarello went to Kentucky to be their offensive coordinator,

which is interesting. They're going to try to run more pro-style, like that style of offense at Kentucky. That's going to be part of almost like the recruiting to get guys to go there. You're going to get four years of real quarterback development rather than running the air raid offense at Kentucky. So the special teams coach, Hightower, he went to Chicago. So there's a lot of transition going on there. So there'll be hiring coaches. So I'm interested, that's which one of those teams. Of course, my relationship with Kyle, that intrigues me personally

of what's sort of going on there in San Francisco. You don't see coaching staff sort of fall apart after really a pretty dang good season, which they had an excellent shot at a Super Bowl. And plus they're losing their quarterback. So that's one team that I guess that intrigues me. You also don't see a team go to the NFC Championship and then trade their quarterback. That doesn't happen very often. That doesn't happen very often.

Well, there's some other teams. I would nominate Miami for this because, like, are you happy with your quarterback? You have a good roster. You got a new coach. What does he think? Chris Greer, their GM, said they're out on Deshaun Watson. But, like, we know that usually when people say they're out on something or whatever, like, the opposite is true.

So I don't know. The one thing I definitely have learned in sort of the NFL world is when a coach or a GM says something and then, and then the next day does the exact opposite, it doesn't really piss anybody off. No, it doesn't. It's just like, it's okay. We get it. You completely lied to our faces.

Judd Zolged calls it sports line. And you just expect, it's like it's okay. Sports line is fine. It's just the way it goes. I mean, hey, situations change every day. I would nominate Denver. I think Denver's very interesting. I find Denver interesting.

Obviously, George Payton has that Vikings connection. They've got a whole new thing going on there. Their quarterback situation is, of course, up in the air. Another coach from that sort of tree, Hackett, obviously coming from the Green Bay Packers. And so the Broncos have just sort of been an off an interesting off-season team the last few years I feel like they just feels like every year they have a different quarterback and sort of trying to figure it

out there so they've had a lot of turnover the last few years and the question is did George Payton get the right guy did he is Hackett the right guy for that franchise? That is also like for sale or whatever is going on there. So I know you're going to put in a bid. I'm going to put in a bid. We'll see what, you know. If we merge, we can come up with the several billion that it takes. Well, yeah.

I mean, yours is going to be a little bit more than mine, but I'm hoping that I can still, because of my experience, get a higher percentage of ownership. I'm a businessman, personally. So we've had great success here at Purple Insider. We are considering purchasing the Denver Broncos. Well, I'm a business man. Yeah.

Homer Simpson, the Denver Broncos, people will recognize that reference if they made it this far. Well, Sage, it has been an honor to spend another week here with you at the Combine. I hope this is not our last time doing it so we can find time in the future and future Combines to do it. far well sage it has been an honor to spend another week here with you at the combine i hope this is not our last time doing it so we could find time in the future and future combines to do it if the world still exists next year and uh that's a that's like a that's a deep cut reference to like what coaches say of like well i don't even know if the world's gonna be around tomorrow that's a kyle shanahan i will say i love coming to the combine. We haven't been here the last couple of years, obviously. Um, I, I think that I, I get a lot of information. One for me, it's just the,

the old relationships of people I get to talk to, uh, in these hotel lobbies and just, you know, sort of just telling old stories and laughing and of course going to dinner and into, into the sort of a couple of bars late night, uh, that they happen to stay open here for whatever reason until 3 o'clock in the morning. But that, to me, is the best part about all of this. I think the guys that are out here trying to put up the best numbers possible to give themselves a chance to be successful as NFL players, that's fine. But even talking to Kevin O'Connell last night, he hasn't studied these guys.

Right, of course. And none of these coaches have, even maybe a little bit. But anyone that made the playoffs, I mean, they've had bigger fish to fry. And so they'll get a little sort of a little taste of what these guys are. But they're really going to start doing work after the combine. This is just sort of a starting point to as we work into free agency which is you know coming up very very soon but as they study these guys and study these guys and do private workouts and then they do their uh their their 30 uh whatever is the guys that come

in uh right right before the draft and then the actual draft so really this is this is sometimes it feels like the end because as the players like you've been working out and trying to build up to this point to get all these numbers, so it's like the ending. But really, it's just like the very, very beginning of the process. And for some of these coaches, literally like the first time they probably open up some of these scouting books to even see what's going on with these players. And that's what's interesting even for us is that there's a lot more to dive into

with actual prospects and names and things that are being said and written and everything else. At the Combine, we're just basically kicking off the offseason, which is what our shows have been. And I've really enjoyed it. So thank you for your time and do not be a stranger on the show, sir. Sounds good. Have me on any time.