Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Sam Monson weights risk vs. reward with Rodgers, Vikings free agency

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Matthew Coller is joined by Sam Monson of the Check the Mic Podcast to discuss the Vikings' offseason moves and the risk/reward ratio with Aaron Rodgers.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of purple insider, Matthew collar here and making his 1000th appearance on the show. Sam Monson check the mic podcast with Steve Palazzolo, formerly of pro football focus and a lifelong follower of the Minnesota Vikings franchise. I think the only appropriate place to start with you, Sam, is when you hear Aaron Rogers to the Vikings as someone who's followed them so closely as you have since childhood, how does that, uh, how does that strike you?

Well, in a couple of ways, it's like, of course, you know, it's like, here's how the story is supposed to end. Like this is, I've seen this before. This is the way it's supposed, of course, you know, it's like, here's how the story is supposed to end. Like this is, I've seen this before, this is the way it's supposed to go. There's a comfort in knowing that this is exactly the way the script was intended to end. So from that perspective, it's warming, it's comforting, it's the natural order of things.

And I feel good from the state of, you know, JJ McCarthy's supposed to take over this team now. And all of a sudden it might of, you know, JJ McCarthy's supposed to take over this team now. And all of a sudden it might get, you know, sideswiped by Aaron Rodgers trying to like the redemption tour. That doesn't feel great. But I am fascinated in the just for the story, the completion of the Brett Favre career arc, you know, the transformation of Rodgers, that that whole thing of if you live long enough, you get to become the thing you hate like Rogers has become bread far. It's too perfect to not happen. But in terms of, you know, someone who actually wants a team to do really well and for them to have a good future, it's probably not where I would want to go.

That's how I would feel as well. I mean, for the content, it would be pretty wild. But I think the reason that my sense of it is 90% or higher Vikings fans are against the idea of Heron Rogers is because we've seen him play recently and I don't know how you can project that into this team competes for a Super Bowl, but it also means that they're not ready to turn it over to JJ McCarthy who they drafted 10th overall and I was under the impression that they were letting Sam Darnold go because they were ready to go to JJ McCarthy. So then it makes you ask the question, well does that mean he's not ready physically? Does that mean that Kevin O'Connell doesn't believe as much in him as he said?

Or is this just the entrancing allure of, hey, this is one of the great quarterbacks in history. It's so hard to figure out what the logic is behind it and whether we're supposed to make this something about JJ McCarthy, because if it's about McCarthy and not feeling like he's ready, especially physically, well, that's a problem then. And if it's not McCarthy and not feeling like he's ready, especially physically, well, that's a problem then. And if it's not about him not being ready, then I think we've seen way more success from younger quarterbacks who are inexperienced stepping into great situations. Then we have totally decrepit quarterbacks who have fallen way off from

where they were finding it with their what third team or whatever since leaving Green Bay. Yeah. Um, the problem is like people always talk about players in static terms, right? Like this guy is X, Y, and Z. And the reality is it's always in flux. It's always a movable thing. And the Darnall thing is a perfect example of that. I think the last time I was on your show

Was either the week before the week 18 game the Detroit game or the week before that But it was like right on the precipice of that and we were talking about This team keeping Sam Darnold and you know It basically had reached the point now where we couldn't imagine the kind of collapse that had to happen For them to not consider doing that, right? And yet that's exactly what materialized. Like the the next two games were the type of collapse that were so extreme that we'd essentially written them off as a potential outcome by that point in the season. And I think though it was such an extreme disaster that it changed everything, number one. And number two, I think though it was such an extreme disaster,

that it changed everything, number one, and number two, I think it confused the ever living crap out of the Vikings who had no idea how to deal with that. And I get it. I don't either. Like, from a Seattle perspective, now you're looking at them, they move on from Gino Smith, they bring in Sam Darnold, the contracts are what they are. But like, I don't know if that's good or not, based off the what we've saw from Sam Darnall at the end that if they get the guy that played the first 15 games of the season, that's a great move. If they get the last two games, it's a catastrophe and you just gave good money to the guy the Vikings gave $10 million to last year based off similar history.

So it's confusing. And I think this is the problem with with JJ McCarthy is yeah theoretically he gets healthy now you turn the keys over to him and away we go but they they don't know how good he's gonna be like they have a you know they have a pretty good idea what he can do we saw training camp we saw practice we saw some preseason and then boom injured now he's on the shelf so they must have a pretty good projection of what they think but just as there's going to be uncertainty as to like how much should that darnal thing scare you there's going to be uncertainty of well hang on what if

this was a small sample size what if actually he's terrible right after a couple of weeks and now what do we do um and then the rogers thing it's like, yeah, he has definitely declined from, you know, his MVP level. On the other hand, he was also coming off Achilles injury at 40 something years old. Rogers is one of the few NFL players that is older than I am now still. And I know from personal experience that my body does not rebound the way it used to in my 20s, let alone 30s, let alone 40s. I can't even imagine how long it would take my ass to come back from an Achilles

injury if it popped randomly as I'm going up the stairs, which I'm now like living in fear of at this age. But I think it's entirely plausible that a year removed from that Rodgers is actually plausible that a year removed from that. Rogers is actually physically better in 2025 than he was in 2024. And even in 2024, the arm was still fine. Like he could still make all the throws. He couldn't move around as much as he did, earlier in his career.

And that's definitely a change from when he was, like he was never Lamar Jackson, but Rogers early in his career was pretty mobile. He could move around, he could escape, he could buy time. Can't do that as much anymore. Certainly couldn't last year. But I think there's a solid chance that he's better at that next year. And I think if you actually look at it on a throw-by-throw basis, he wasn't as bad as people are saying a year ago. Now, I think that the overall

Jets, the offense, the production was as bad as people are saying it is. But that means that the problem is not, it's not with Roger's physical ability to play quarterback anymore. It's with the scheme, the X's and O's, the decision making. And that's where I think you start to say, well, what if you paired him with a coach that's A, willing to challenge him in a way that clearly the guys he surround, like the sycophants that he surrounded himself with weren't. And B, who now has a bit of a track record of doing that, right? Kevin O'Connell has now got a couple of data points with Sam Darnold and Kirk Cousins of saying, not only can he get the best out of these guys, but he's actually able to sort of change the way they play the game, like to rewire them and to alter the way they think about

playing the game in the process. So I do think that there's a way of looking at this. Let's say you're crazy and you're evaluating, like, do you want Rogers? I think there's definitely a way of looking at that and saying, look, the tape says he can still throw the ball and still play well and still execute at a high level If we think these are the problems I think Kevin O'Connell is extremely well suited to address those problems and the last guy that got the high end of Playout of Rogers was Matt LaFleur and there's some similarities there and stuff. So

I'm not saying it's a slam dunk. I'm not saying it's a great idea I'm saying you can definitely construct an argument if you're crazy that and it all depends on the contract, right? But you can definitely build an argument that says I think Rogers could play well for this team in 2025 And if we brought him in as either the bridge to McCarthy or the insurance to McCarthy You know, I think that could make sense. I Don't think it's a matter of could he play well? I mean, they got, as you said, Sam Darnold to play well, and he can still throw the football.

It's if you're going to do this and leave JJ McCarthy sitting on the bench for an entire year and not develop him any further or find out about him at all. You better win the dang Super Bowl. I mean, you bet he better be not good. He better be great. Just getting good is what the Seattle Seahawks do with Sam Darnold because they have no other answer. It's what the Raiders do.

It's what you're not supposed to have to do anymore. It's what the Vikings have had to do for their entire career and just to go through the things that you just laid out. So Aaron Rodgers has to now acquiesce to a coach when it comes to the offense and that's interesting that hasn't happened all that much in his career. Also the last time he played for Matt LaFleur, they went nine and eight. They missed the playoffs on the last day of the season with a team that the

very next year was one drive away from the NFC championship with Jordan Love with one of the best coaches in the league and Matt LaFleur. So I think and by the way, Taurus Achilles in the middle of this, which when you tear it once, it's got a better chance of tearing again. There's just so many hurdles mentally that you have to get over to make this work to be like, well, look, if he was only an accumulation of his best games and throws last year, if he's fully completely, in fact, more healthy at 41 than he was at 40, oh, and by the way, if we just ignore the 2022 season,

everything will be fine, not to mention that the Vikings even have a harder schedule this year than they did last year. So you can't even kind of make the true comparison to Sam Darnold because he got four wins against the pathetic AFC South and this year they're playing the AFC North. So Aaron Rodgers will have to run away from you know TJ Watt, Miles Garrett, Aiden Hutchinson's coming back. No big deal for a guy who got sacked 40 times last year. I mean all these things just to me add up to it's way less risky to go

with a young quarterback who you like. I mean, we've seen Brock Purdy in year two go to the Superbowl. We've seen Jaylen Hurts in year three, go to the Superbowl. Jared Goff led the number one offense in the league in year two of his career. There's been a lot of young quarterbacks, not to mention Jayden Daniels who have taken great teams deep into the playoffs, if not even to the Super Bowl. In recent history, I feel like that's less risky than, hey, let's ignore three years of sample size of bad play in 2022 Achilles injury.

And then even if you say like PFF had him as maybe 14th last year. Okay, what's 14? What does that sound like to me? That sounds like if they had signed Kirk Cousins, I just I just think it's way more risky to go with someone who's this old and hasn't been good in a really long time versus someone who would be on the Ascension. Artie knows your offense. And by the way, we're sure we'll listen to the coach,

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That is tempolemeals.com slash purple insider. That is temple meals.com slash purple insider 60% off your first box temple meals.com slash purple insider rules and restrictions apply. Yeah. I mean, that's the, like, that's the question. And that's the, but that's one of the variables that you need answered right before you do a deal like this is like, okay, if we're like, I think you can paint a picture where the like the high end of the range of outcomes for Aaron Rodgers, I think it's still very high, right? Very high. I mean, he effectively, this is more of a Darnold data point than it is a Rodgers one,

but like Darnold's collapse was so extreme that they actually ended up with very similar PFF passing grades in the season, right? Rodgers and Darnold by the end of it. Um, but like if we, if we say that he can get there with the army of sycophants in terms of everyone he wanted coaching and receiving in the building and a scheme that wasn't working particularly well and all these things, like what, what if we take that away and replace it with, you know, Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and Kevin O'Connell as the coach, and he actually is willing to work in that environment.

What does that do to last year's version of Rodgers? And I think it's an equally reasonable argument to make that at 41, he's unlikely to be getting physically better ever, from now until death. It's also, I think, an equally reasonable argument to make that a year removed from an Achilles injury, even at 41 or at 41, you're probably gonna be healthier than you were the year you came back from it, essentially.

So I think you can talk to yourself either way on that one, that he could be at a better environment and he could be physically better. So I think you can basically construct a very cogent argument that the range of items for the high end is still very good. But that is contingent on is he willing to do any of this, right? Like is he willing to play on a team that isn't giving Alan Lazar 10 million dollars a year just to be there? Is he willing to put to go into a meeting room

with a coach who's like this is what you need to do in order to be the best version of you. And if you're not willing to do that, we're, you're not playing like this is not, we're not doing this the way you want to do it. We're doing it the way I, I'm telling you it needs to be done. It can be collaborative, but it's not just going to be, this is Aaron's offense that he likes to run. So those are conversations you have to have, but you'd be crazy not to have them at all, I think, because I do think you can paint the picture where the high end is still good. So let's call him up, you know, wherever he is the darkness retreat, you know,

let's get send somebody in there with a phone. Let's find out is he willing to play ball under these circumstances. Let's find out what his asking price is that alone might take you out of the market completely. Let's find out the answer to all these questions, any of which, if it's a no on his end, might immediately rule you out of the running and then it's J.J. McCarthy's team and no harm, no foul, I think. But I feel like it's fair or just due diligence to say, let's at least find out the answer to all of these pieces of information before we immediately write off the idea that Rogers could be better than the guy we have right now. I think if there was a sample size of Aaron Rodgers, and I guess if you want to use 2020 and 2021, but there those as you know,

those were different passing environments in 2020 and 2021. We saw 2020 was the easiest passing environment in NFL history, probably because there were no fans in the stands for the entire season and teams hadn't figured out that the play actions and deep crossers and all that were just crushing and now they play two deep safeties all the time and he really hasn't been good since the league figured that out, not to mention missing the whole year with an injury. It just, and if there were any sample size of him, just acquiescing to a coach and say, I'm the most coachable guy. I'm going to come in and do whatever you want.

I'm going to run this your way. Then maybe I would say it made some sense, but really that just doesn't happen with Aaron Rodgers, not to mention all the other stuff where your franchise becomes the Minnesota Aaron Rodgers is. And I just, if Kevin O'Connell wins coach of the year and 14 games and creates this culture out of his own vision, and then he's going to bring someone in that is completely different and is going to bring in his own entire, whether it's his army of people that he needs around him, or whether it's

just his army of his most ardent fans who are quite noisy or all the political people that come with him or whatever else. I mean, it just doesn't seem to me to fit very well. But to your point, I imagine this very conversation is what's happening inside the Vikings front office because this continues to be not resolved from the Vikings, which and the reporting continues to say that they are talking it over and maybe these debates are going on nonstop. And I just, I think from Kevin O'Connell's perspective, coaches are always afraid of

the unknown. We know this and I like the story that the 49ers tried to get Brady and then Brock Purdy took them to the Super Bowl like they're always going to be afraid of what they don't know and what's next and Sometimes and you know this through Vikings history when you get so close and you win so many games I think it messes with people's brains I think if the Vikings had won eight games with Sam Darnold and missed the playoffs in the last day We would have all said oh, that was a good season. They kind of overachieved

Yeah, I think we were talking about in Vegas last year last summer about hey, you know It's kind of a mulligan year. You called it like whatever happens happens But when you win 14 and you get the awards and all that stuff There's the well now I have to do it again like I just got this big contract and there's so much uncertainty with this veteran team and everything. But eventually JJ McCarthy is going to be your quarterback. And if I hadn't seen him in training camp, I would be maybe a little more like, yeah,

there's uncertainty. But he looked like an NFL starting quarterback to me and he's got the best receiver in the world who almost won games with Nick Mullins. So I'm leaning very heavily toward this is not a really good idea. Now how about we talk about the thing that's being left untalked about by anyone because Rogers as always takes the whole spotlight even when he's not here. That's the rest of the Vikings off season. I was listening to you and Steve talk about it.

It seems that you are a little less maybe on board with everything. Maybe I'm reading your, uh, your takes wrong with the Vikings approach. Then Steve was, and maybe a lot of Vikings fans, how are you feeling about their spending spree? Uh, no, I'm just simply like, you know, it was in a world of like winners and losers of free agency and everyone's like, well, the Vikings won free agency because they spent the most money.

It's like, well, that's, that's not really how you know, that's not how it works. Like that's, that doesn't determine who got the who did the best in free agency that determines who who just bought the most things in free agency. That's not the same thing. I like what they've done. Look, I think they came out of that season, I think, shocked by the way it ended. Not just with the darnal collapse, but with the offensive line getting wrecked by the Rams in particular. It felt like the Kansas City game,

the Super Bowl against Tampa Bay, right? Where they came out of that Super Bowl and they're like, okay, the only thing that matters for the next nine months is repairing the offensive line. Like I know that wasn't actually our offensive line, that was essentially the backup offensive line. Still, that's never happening again. So we're gonna make Joe Tooney the best paid guard in NFL history, like we're gonna go nuts.

And that was their off season. This felt like the same kind of thing for the Vikings where it was like, Oh, the interior that we thought was actually okay for a while and we've been sort of hiding and papering over turns out it's terrible and we need to fix it immediately if we ever want to win another game again. Um, and that was basically how they approached the off season. They went out there and they, you know,

spend big money on Will Fry's They brought in Ryan Kelly. Um, I think each one of those guys, and this is, this is why it's not simply like, did you spend the most money? Did you bring in the most people? Because it's like how much risk was in is involved in this as well. And each one of those guys, I think has some risk attached to them for different reasons. Ryan Kelly, who's got a fairly extensive injury history at this point, at his best, Ryan Kelly was a top three center in the NFL. That's a great upgrade over Garrett Bradbury. But is he going to be that guy going forward? Is he going to be injured?

All those things. And then Will Fries, I think he's just working from a much smaller volume of sample size to be getting that kind of money. And the money isn't as bad as I think, as it looked in the headline figure. And that's always another thing that you're battling. And then the defensive additions are kind of interesting as well because again each like Jonathan Allen at his peak was one of the best interior disruptive pass rushes in the game hasn't been at that level for a while now. And then neither him nor De'von Hargrave are even remotely interested in defending the run. Like they just literally don't care. Like they're just through

the gap. If the run is there through that gap all good. If it's not we might have a problem when it comes to some gap integrity. And it's interesting because they are two of the most like sometimes guys are bad against the run because they're bad at the most, like sometimes guys are bad against the run because they're bad at defending the run. Those guys are bad against the run because they don't care about the run. Like they are bad against the run as a conscious choice. They just don't seem to care about the run.

And in Hargrave's case, I think it's actually, it's a coach thing because when he was with the Steelers, he was good against the run. And then I think when he got to the next team, Philadelphia, they were just like, don't worry about it. Just cook, go after the pass. We'll deal with the run. Forget about it.

San Francisco seemed to keep that going or he kept it going in San Francisco. Either way, since playing for the Steelers, he has not given a crap against the, about the run. And I think Alan is a similar player. The Vikings with Fllaurs have the kind of defense where that might be good like it might actually work even if they don't like simply just the way he deploys his defenders the way he kind of wins with with scheme and with confusion. I think that might actually be fine to have two guys that don't really care about the run as long

as they're occupying their gap and shooting that all the time. But it does, it sort of adds to the, you know, what did they buy with all this money? Well, they bought four guys who could easily be massive upgrades over what they've had, but each one of them has got at least something that makes you go with Ryan Kelly, it's injuries with, you know, Jonathan Allen, he got injured last year and it's been a while since we've seen him be a consistently effective pass rusher. Hargrave less of an issue, it's just, it doesn't play the run.

And then Wilfrey's sort of lack of sample size. So, you can definitely look at that and say, well, those are four massive upgrades along the trenches that should really help this team. But you can also say, well, paid a lot of money for four guys that all have a red flag of some kind. And that that is the reason why it's not necessarily just did you bring in four guys? Like it's who are the guys?

What exactly are you bringing in? What are the, you know, the issues with each one of them? But I think, you know, you can see the I like teams that show a coherent thought process, right? Like a strategy, a design behind it. I like that. And this might be a, like a personal toxic trait. It might not actually be the smartest way of looking at this, but I like it when you can see what a team is trying to do, right?

Whether or not they execute it is a different matter, but I think there's value in, you can see what they were trying to do this off season. Like you can see why they did it and you can see what they were trying to do this off season. Like you can see why they did it and you can see what they're trying to do to fix it. I think that alone has some value to it. Then you can, you know, analyze the actual players. They tried to fix it with, I would make a comparison of if you're shopping at a store that's been ransacked

and there's only so much left on the shelf. That's free agency, right? Trey Smith comes off quick. T Higgins signs a deal. Usually the best of the best do not make it to free agency. What's left on the shelf is some dented cans. Now with dented cans, you might get dysentery, but you also might just be totally fine, right? I actually don't know how one gets dysentery, but it's more,

it's more that, you know, when you get the dented can you expect it to be discounted, right? But because in free agency, right? Right. Good point. There's so much, the money has to go somewhere. It doesn't. So it just feels wrong, right? To be this thing is clearly not perfect. And yet you're expecting me to pay full price for it. That's why I think sometimes free agency doesn't feel, you know, as good, even though you spend all the money, you've brought in all the things, you've got the stuff, but it's like, but they're all dented. It's like, it doesn't feel the way you think it should because you're expecting some kind of discount, but that's just not the way it works. Because like you said, Trace Smith's gone, like the money's got to go

somewhere and it goes to just whoever's next up on the list. Right. And when it comes to the Vikings, they walked in the store to buy vegetables with a hundred dollars in their hands. And so they had so much money that you could buy a lot of dented cans. We're really going far down this road on it. But I do like it because each player has either had some regression, has some age or has some age,

or has some injury. Even Will Fries, who's only 27 years old, he missed everything from week five on last year with an injury and then Kelly has not played a thousand snaps in two seasons. So you are coming out of the store with imperfect items. However, if you have, as you said, you have to spend the money. Someone gave you that money to only go into that store and buy cans from that store and you come out and maybe half of the food that you got turns out to be really good. Then I think you're in good shape because the Vikings are not relying on these players to save their franchise. And when I see people go into free agency and they are going in to try to cure their hunger and not just

maybe get snacks. I think the Vikings are trying to fill out around these pillars that they have. They did not let Christian Derrassaw become a free agent. They did not let Justin Jefferson. These are their pillars. And I would even throw, they love Byron Murphy this much. I'd throw him in there with the big contract and Jonathan Grenard and Blake Cashman. So they have these players that you are having in your prime and that are

playing extremely well coming off great seasons, guys that we would all bet on for the future and filling them in with, hey, if two out of four of these things work out really well and one of them goes bust and the other one is just kind of okay, then you've gotten a lot out of this without having to spend a ton. Like we could go bargain shopping and go, Hey, you know, that other right guard signed for cheaper. Would he have been a better deal? But you got the best one on the shelf, even if it's got some of it's warts, I guess.

Yeah. And because of the way they've already done a lot of their business, um, and the fact that they decided not to pay Sam Darnall, like they let him walk suddenly, you do have quite a lot of spending power without a lot of places that, you know, future earmarked money, you know, they're not like, they're not keeping a war chest to give Justin Jefferson his contract, right? That's already done. Like they're not preparing for any one monster contract coming down the pipe in the immediate term. So they can kind of spend, overspend if you like, on a few guys that as you say, have some concerns,

maybe are overpays and are not necessarily worth that. But you kind of needed to get it done if you want to get better. Otherwise, you know, like this is always the problem with free agency and why I think you're right. You need to use it as a way of just patching holes with guys that you're comfortable playing next year. They don't need to be great. They just need to like, it just needs to, you need to not go into the draft needing to draft this guy in the first round, right? Because if you don't get him now, what the hell you

do, you're screwed. So that's what free agency is to me. It's like, let's just patch up these gaps to stop us having to do anything crazy in the draft. And that's even assuming you have a full slate of draft picks, let alone if you're where Minnesota is and you've already traded away a couple. So yeah, like I think they did what they had to do in free agency. It's just that that always comes with an inherent sort of lack of ideal value or a bit of overspending. Yeah.

And the biggest thing to me was that these issues were so glaring and so harmful when they got to the playoffs. I mean, including the fact that they couldn't rush the pair passer from the interior. As we see the advantage, I think that you guys at PFF back in the day looked at this about what pressure is worth what and there's more strip sacks that come from the edge and there's more sacks that come from the edge. But having talked to some quarterbacks about this, they hate interior pressure.

They always feel like they can step up away from the edge rushers or the tackle can make a last second or you put Josh Oliver out there and you can help a little bit but when you got if Jonathan Allen is even close to his peak ability to get after the quarterback and he gets 40 pressures up the middle over a season that's 40 plays where the quarterback hated life and so that's something that they have just not had nowhere close especially on early downs and I think shoring up those weaknesses, also getting a friend for Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason in the backfield. Like they had so many other things solid that they just needed

to be better in these places. And I think they did get a lot better in a lot of these places. But here's the question is how much better and what's hard to ask you about how good they really are now is we're not sure if Aaron Rodgers is playing quarterback for the Vikings. Let's assume it's not just for now that it is a JJ McCarthy. How good is the roster in your eyes in comparison to the rest of the top NFC teams? Yeah.

And just jumping back to the pressure thing, like the superpowers and having both at the same time, right? The edge rusher and the interior guy, if you can get pressure coming from the inside and the edge, even if it's only one side, that's, that's what starts to supercharge things and really give you that potency. Even if you've got bookend edge rushers, if there's nothing in the middle, quarterback can just step up. You know, there's, there's usually a reasonably clean pocket, the tank hook and watch that guy

past the arc, and it doesn't have the same effect that it should have. So I again, you can see why the Vikings did it. I think top to bottom, you look at this roster, it's in pretty good shape. I mean, I don't love the cornerback position still, you're that's still one where like, again, the risk is pretty significant. McKay Blackman, reasonably low sample size of play and coming off the injury. Byron Murphy Jr., I think is good, not great.

And that's potentially an overpay though. Again, it's another one where the contract in reality is not quite as bad as it looked with the agent published tweets that you get from the insiders Isaiah Rogers solid pickup but I'm not I'm not in love with him starting for me if I'm if I'm the Vikings on the other hand make up that front seven is as good as it looks like it might be it might not matter that much who the corners are like if they're able to just hold up for a

second or two the front seven might be able to cause enough havoc that actually those guys look you know perfectlyable. So I think the defense could be really, really good again and hold up throughout the season. The pieces are there for the offense, obviously, the receiving weapons. I like that pairing in the backfield now with Aaron Jones, Jordan Mason, TJ Hawkinson obviously should be full strength. And then the repaired offensive line, like the tackles are really good. If we get anything like the high end level of play from those two interior guys that they upgraded upon, then all you got to do is find you know a left guard or be comfortable with your left guard being the weaker spot on your offensive

line, which is kind of okay. And you've got the draft to still come. So yeah, if JJ McCarthy is, I mean, look, he was seen, I think, in the middle of that group from a year ago, right? There were six guys and he was seen as like QB4 generally. So people put him pretty much slap bang in the middle. Almost everybody had him as like QB4 in that draft class. Well, the five that we've seen so far look good, all of them to varying degrees. If he belonged in the middle class. Well, the five that we've seen so far look good, all of them to varying

degrees. Um, if he belonged in the middle of that group, then he should be good. Logically, he should be good right out of the gate. If he's anything like, you know, let's say the median performance of those five guys last year, this team will be really good next year. And that's the hard thing to project versus some of the other teams, because we know what the Lions have at quarterback. We know what the Eagles have. We know what Washington has. We know what Green Bay has. And this is really a wild card. And so when we're trying to even, you know, the Rams, when we're trying to power rank or something where they belong, that one is less predictable, I think, than the other teams in the NFC. The way i would put it though is because you know power rankings one of my issues with power rankings not that i care really but is that we act like the standard deviation is the same

that's a quarterback rankings to the difference between number two and number three is not maybe the same between fourteen and fifteen or what you know what I'm saying. And I think there's, I'd like to kind of bundle or tier with teams where clearly the Eagles are the guys in the NFC, they're running back so much of it. They've added some pieces and then you bring, you know, the Lions back with Aiden Hutchinson. They deserve to be in that conversation. What Washington has done has been phenomenal this off season. I think bringing in Laramie Tunsel and Deebo Samuel.

So I put those three teams there and then the next tier down is the Vikings and they have to prove it that they belong with the other group. But I think if you're in that mix going into your season, you're in a pretty good shape. Like that's what you're trying to do in year two of a rookie quarterback is you're trying to be in that top four top five teams in the NFC and then chips fall where they may with injuries and schedules and all the different things that can impact them.

I'm curious about what you think the lessons from this year's free agency should be because I was thinking about this for an article and I want you to help me write the article because I was thinking about, okay, clearly the league has taken notice of the interior and Milton Williams getting, and I know it's a fake 26 per year, but nonetheless, that guy played 500 snaps and just gets the biggest freaking contract

and celebration and free agency. And Will Fries, I think you could look at it the same way. I like the move, but I also think and Aaron Banks I also think these are not guys that we would have previously Connected to near 20 million dollars a year for guards I think that's the starting point for me and the other part is that maybe this has always been true But I feel like it was more true this year that all the players we talked about being available kind of stayed with their teams Oh, so dig a zoo. I was another one who was very high on my list.

Uh, what, what do you think of those? What do you think the lessons are that we should have learned from this year's free agency? Yeah. I mean, so I think that that last part, like teams are getting just so good at generally managing their roster. Like, you know, you, you go back to the start of free agency and the start of the salary cap here and all those kinds of things, Nobody had any idea what they were doing, right?

They were making up on the fly. They were half asking this thing. They were guessing. It was all ridiculous, right? So you did have teams genuinely going through like salary cap hell every couple of years because they hadn't like figured out how to manage it so that that happened. And like nobody was thinking three years in advance. They're just like, Oh, look, look who's available. Look at the shiny thing. We could buy that right now. Let's go, what happens if you buy five of those in a row and then in a couple years time, all the money is due. Nobody had gotten that far. Now, generally speaking, everybody is very good at that. Even the teams that that are bad at it relatively are good at it compared

with where they were 20 years ago. So we're not in this world now where the very best players hit free agency. They just don't, nobody lets them get that far. And if they ever get to the point where it's like, oh, we might have to let that guy go. It's a trade, right? It's like we trade this guy away to get the contract off the books, like the Tyreek Hill thing. They were never going to let him hit free agency because they could trade him away a year or two before that and cash in with a bunch of picks and rebuild and reload through the draft where all the contracts are cheaper.

So generally, I think you're just seeing this reflect and now it seems to understand that if you do to get a guy locked up before he hits the market, it's way cheaper. So you're just seeing this massive explosion of number one, the talent isn't getting to free agency the way it used to. And number two, even the one that gets close to free agency is getting snipe before they get there because it seems to understand how powerful that saving is, right? Like the Odiggy Zua, like the Odiggy Zua is not as good a player as Milton Williams. They were, however, in the same ballpark and they're like $6 million a year off in

terms of APY largely because he signed before free agency not because he's you know because he got the market. So I think you're seeing a lot of that that free agency now is it's not that you should never dip into it like the lesson is not what Dallas have taken from it right right? We just don't, the key teams have figured out how to manage your roster. So evidently the takeaway is just don't ever do anything in free agency, right? That's the learning here.

That's the way, that's what Dallas have taken from this. That's not actually the correct learning. The correct learning I think is you can't expect to rework things like you're not gonna find, I need to come up with a better example of this because it was such a disaster of a free agent. But like Albert Hainsworth is not coming along, right? Like the great, arguably the best defense tackle in the game at the time, hitting free agency at his peak and getting the market, you know, the market resetting money.

You're not getting that guy probably ever anymore. He's just not going to hit the open market again. But you can get guys who can come in, fill one, two, three, four of your starting 22 players and just not be a problem anymore. It's a way to fix problem areas, not a way to completely catapult or transform units, you know, into a completely different place. If you want to do that, it's got to be through the draft or it's got to be via trade because teams just are not going to let those guys hit the open market. So I think you can definitely still rework a team in free agency, but you're not going to do it

with like the superstar player. Those guys generally are just not getting let get that far. I think another part of it, too, for a big takeaway for me is when the salary cap went up by as much as it did, there was a lot of well, you know, that means everybody's going to get paid more. All the prices will rise with the salary cap. And we've definitely seen that. But what is maybe not factored into that is that every contract you signed previously now looks great.

And that's the case for the Vikings where, you know, that whole the salary cap is fake. And of course, if you were here for the Kirk Cousins era, you know, the salary cap is very not fake. But it's more fake now than it was when every year it's going up by this much. And you can kick out your cap hits two years down the road and then when you sign it, you go, oh well, in two years that guy's gonna be a problem. You get to two years from now, you're like,

oh wait, that went down by like 10%. I think it was, maybe it was Barnwell, somebody tweeted out what a $6 million contract like four years ago would be worth now and it's at least double. So it's like, all right. So paying will fry $17 million a year, which as you said, is not really 17 million a year, but it paying will fry 17 million would have been like

giving him 10 million a couple of years ago. And I think that that changes how teams will operate and will plan going forward when you sign Jamar chase to this deal, you go, Oh man, how are they going to build any rest of their team? But the way they're scheduling it and also the way that the cap continues to go up as Amazon buys the NFL, it just seems like nothing is going to really make teams pay a whole lot for these big deals. And this is what this is what frustrates me about this world of the agent fed insider tweet is we are all collectively

being done a disservice because now what we are being fed is just an agent propaganda information arm instead of somebody because you're right all of this stuff is really important the cap is going up massively year on year so the structure of the contract has never been more important. I don't know anything if you tell me this guy signed on a four year seventy seven million dollar deal. I don't know what that means right because the structure of it is so important because it's where is the money is it upfront is it later like it completely changes the entire complexion of the deal so what we need

collectively as a society is the insiders tapping up contracts and finding out what these contracts actually look like so that we know what this means instead of literally copying and pasting whatever the agent told him to say so that they get the credit for the tweet. Like that does nobody any good. Nobody knows anything from that other than player X is now on team Y. But you don't know how good that is because all you've heard is the headline figure,

like the largest number that the agent can reasonably construct from the contract that's just been done, which is not helpful to anybody. Like in this world where what we need to know is where the money is, how much of it is guaranteed, when is it guaranteed. These are the things that matter in order to determine are these moves good or bad. And nobody gets that for like a week and a half until somebody else goes and does the digging and finds that information out. That's what's frustrating in this world of instant, like insider news, because

they, they are abdicating their role as journalists. They're no longer journalists. They are simply broadcasting mechanisms for agents. Yeah. It's a, it's a press release basically from the agency at this point, especially when you tag the agency, but I think that, uh, that's why the services of Jason Fitzgerald and over the cap.com are so valuable to us because now we can go in and look and see how much different it is than it was really originally reported.

Byron Murphy's contract is exactly the same as chervarious ward. It's really three years, 54 with something like 35 guaranteed, totally manageable for, for Byron Murphy, not, whoa, and I'm guilty of it, you're guilty of it, and saying, wow, this guy's contract is crazy, and then all of a sudden it actually isn't. And so I guess that speaks to my bigger point, which is that every single team in the league

seems to have brought in cap experts who can design contracts where it's never really hurting you as much as it might look like it is. And so when your team does go out and spend that type of money, then it's not that type of money. And even with like a Will Fries, they can restructure it in a year and it ends up being worth an $11 million cap hit. So I remember this for the TJ Hawkinson deal. Hawkinson had something like the highest paid tight end in history. And it was just go with me 18 million or something. He never had a cap hit of 18 million in his entire contract. It's like, so that's what really matters.

The cap number and not so much otherwise. But I just think that this, this was the year to me where all of a sudden none of that really mattered like all that team is going to be so cap strapped in the future because the cap is going up so much and making all those other contracts so much smaller. So now it becomes about, can you get the most cash in a guy's pocket with your ownership? And also can you create the place people want to be? And I think that's what the Minnesota Vikings have done the absolute best here

with their coach, their facilities, their ownership is say, Hey, Jonathan Allen, like, yeah, we'll give you that cash that maybe is going to be a little bit more than someone else, but don't you want to play here? Like they bring guys in for visits and they don't leave because they look around and go, yeah, that cryo chamber is pretty cool, right? You know, so I think they've done a great job at that and did the best they could in free agency with the available players. So, uh, we will, we'll see how it goes from here and what comes next, whether it's a quarterback or whatever else before you go,

who was the biggest loser of free agency and why was it the Packers? Well, you know, they're just taken after the Dallas Cowboys playbook of we don't, free agency is not where we do business here. Biggest loser free agency, other than, you know, journalistic integrity, which I think is still still a pretty big one. Hmm. I mean, I guess the Giants because well, either theants or the Steelers right because they're now both sitting there I mean the Vikings could potentially voluntarily opt into this Rogers circus right there, but they don't need it

They've got JJ McCarthy. They're good to go and they're like debating whether hey Do we want to jump into this thing the Steelers and the Giants are like we need him like? Just we may have wanted Justin Fields. He went and played for the Jets. That's how bad we are right now that this guy voluntarily abandoned us for the Jets. So if we don't get Rodgers, what the hell are we doing? Drafting Jackson Dart at 20 or 21 or wherever they pick. The Giants, I mean, they're even worse.

It's like, if we don't get Rodgers, right now the only quarterback on the roster, I think, is Cutlets again. It's like we have, and we pick three and the only quarterback on the roster. I think is cutlets again It's like we have and we pick three and QB's might go one two, right? so either we've got to make the trade whatever that costs and now the cost goes up because they know we have to make the Trade or we have to have QB three at three and that nobody wants to do that so I feel like the Giants and or the Steelers are the biggest losers because they have they're in the spot that the Raiders have been in the last few years where the music stopped and you don't have a chair and you need a quarterback and there's no easy answer to that right now. Rogers is the answer and if it's not Rogers, you're in real trouble.

answer and if it's not Rogers, you're in real trouble. Maybe Danny Cannell, maybe Dave Brown, Kent Graham. You know, Kent Graham is the uncle of a Vikings player, Bo Richter. So that's a cool connection. You know, maybe Kent Graham could be available. You had a big arm back in the day. Yeah, I mean, there's you're right about the Raiders comparison. You just got nothing. And the Browns, the Browns got nothing.

They just don't have quarterbacks and there's not enough guys to fill those spots. Yeah. They at least pick number two overall. Like the, if you think of this draft is two QBs deep and look, there are people who think it's one QB, whatever. Generally the consensus has both Cam Ward and Chidor Sanders in the top five somewhere. Right? So if you're the Browns, you are guaranteed to get one of those guys if you want one, right? That's, that's the difference between them and the giants of the Steelers where at least theoretically they control their destiny to getting a quarterback. The,

the, the Steelers and the giants don't, they have to make something happen to get a guy if they don't get iron Rogers. Well, that should be a very interesting to see how it plays out and my life will be able to continue normally. If a if one of those teams does get Aaron Rodgers Sam Monson, check the mic podcast. I bought a rowing machine. So now I'm rowing.

I'm listening to check the mic because I got my knees got tired of running. So I need to do something else. You know, it's almost almost basketball season. I'll have you in the headphones, but for my money, as good as it gets in the football podcasting world, and you are a great sport for always coming on the show. Really appreciate you, my friend, and we'll talk soon. Thanks for having me.