Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Star Tribune's Ben Goessling breaks down Vikings GM candidates

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Ben Goessling of the Minnesota Star Tribune talks about Rob Brzezinski's chances of becoming the Minnesota Vikings general manager or if he could take on another road and brings in-depth analysis of the other four candidates for the GM job. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, presented by Fandul. Matthew Collar here. And on the show today, Ben Gessling, the Star Tribune. We got a GM search, and we are in full GM search mode. We have finalists. We also have a quarterback. I'm going to call it a situation rather than a competition that we need to break down. So I want to go through these candidates, what we think their chances are, what we think it would look like if the Vikings hired them to be the GM. and maybe the advice that we would give the GM. You know, I begged on the show, Ben, for them to put me on the committee.

I mean, I've been around a long time. We've seen a lot of stuff happen. We've seen mistakes and successes from previous general managers. Felt like I would have been great to help with the search. But strangely, no one called me. So what do you think of just in general how this has played out? Well, it's interesting to me that we are going to be. going to the second phase of this, and there's still a fairly large pool of candidates.

I mean, the last time they did this, they went through a search of a similar size in terms of first round interviews, eight or nine candidates. And I think that's about where we ended up here. But then they came down to two finalists, Kuezio, Opho Menza and Ryan Poles, who, of course, became the general manager of the Chicago Bears. So the fact now that they are doing second interviews with five of them is pretty interesting to me, it makes you wonder, are they settled on anybody yet? Or, you know, are you still trying to get a feel for who in this pool, other than Rob Brzezinski, who has been in the building, is going to be able to come in

and run your department? And I do think that's the big question is you have four guys in terms of the external candidates in this group that have not run a building before. They've all been assistant GMs. They've all been around a long time. They've been around the NFL a long time. but they have not shown that the ability to sit down with scouts, coaches, salary cap people, analytics people, and say, let's get all of this going the same direction and figure out a unified approach to all of these different methods of player evaluation and financial management, asset valuation, all of those things. You have to have somebody that can bring all of that together.

So I think a lot of the question with the guys that have not been in this building, or at least have not been in this building in the capacity of running the department, a lot of it will come down to what can they do, what do they bring to the table in that regard. So the fact that we are still bringing this many candidates in for a second interview, I think is a noteworthy difference from last time, and it's interesting to mean that that's where we are. And they could be doing a little idea farming from the Rams and the Seahawks. But let's start with Rob Brzezinski.

I didn't know what to think when Brzezinski took over as the interim GM. In fact, I thought, oh my gosh, these coaches are about to do some stuff like we've never seen before in free agency and that salary cap is not prepared for what Rob is going to do to mess it up. And that was not the case. It was not the case at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite the way that Rob managed this offseason. And the way that I put it was keeping the ball on the fair way, but in a very complimentary way.

Usually that means playing it's super safe. But I don't think that trading Jonathan Grenard is super safe. I think it's really asset management that we see from Rob. And that's been his expertise in this building for a long time. But how did you evaluate what Brzynski was able to do through free agency, kind of waiting it out, ending up with John Jennings, and then the way that the draft was operated. I think, I mean, hitting the ball on the fairway is a good way to put it because I think there was a lot of let's just, you know, be able to hit greens and regulation, make a birdie put

every once in a while, you know, play par golf where you have to do it and not try to go for the green and two and, you know, see if we can end up with eagles or double eagles or, you know, whatever it would happen to be, you know, probably eagles more than, and the double eagle is pretty rare. So trying to hit it into and make an eagle put is something that we have seen them do a little bit more often. And sometimes they've been forced to do it because of the salary cap situations they've been in. So course correction would maybe be the other word I'd use here. And, you know, everybody kind of talked about was this a directive from ownership to cut payroll or cut cash spending? I don't think that was it at all. I think Rob Brzezinski has been the guy for a long time,

you know, probably going back to 2018, 2019, where a lot of the off seasons have been, what kind of magic tricks is Rob Brzezinski going to have to pull this year to get them in a position where the cap works because it's been let's have high paid defenders and Kirk cousins and pieces that we need to have around Kirk cousins because he can't carry us on his own. And then it was, let's compensate for the fact that we haven't hit on draft picks by signing free agents and then keeping players and then bringing in a first year starting quarterback and put veteran players around him to try to make all of it work. I mean, there's been a lot of these approaches to make up for the lack of draft success and the lack of a quarterback who, you know, for however much money he makes,

brings you back some return by the fact that he can compensate for places where you may not be as strong. I mean, there are only a few of those people on the planet at any one time, and the Vikings have not had one of those in their building. I mean, the jury would be out whether Sam Darnold is one of those guys. And he's probably sitting here saying, I can't hear you. I've got the Lombardi trophy up to one ear and my big fat ring up to the other one. So, you know, you can decide what you want about how good I am. But at any rate, the, I think a lot of this has been, Robert Brzynski for a long time has been operating out of necessity. And if you go back, probably this is getting to be when I started on the beat, you know, 14, if this will be year 15 for me on the beat, but

you go back to some of those days where the approach was pay as you go. It was front loaded contracts, cash largely matches cap and COVID had something to do with why that changed temporarily. There's a lot of those things, but it was let's draft, let's develop, let's keep the ones that we want, and then let's move on in other places. So I think it's a little bit of a return to that approach, which when it worked with Rick Spielman, it built a solid foundation. I mean, the fact that they were in the NFC title game in year three of that 2015 draft class, I don't think it's an accident.

So a lot of it, I think, is let's return to that philosophically and see if that is more sustainable because he's been the guy for a long time that has had to make up for it when a lot of these more sustainable approaches haven't been there or haven't worked. Yeah, and I think what Rob understands too is that you have a quarterback situation where Kyler Murray may prove himself to be one of those quarterbacks that has a redemption arc. You know, I think that his most comparable quarterback is probably Baker-Macon. which is, you know, somebody who had ups and downs with a really bad franchise and then sort of found his home. But if that happens, it's probably not a 50 or 60 million dollar contract,

but it's going to be sizable. And how are you going to work with that? If you have a bunch of dead cap, if you spent a bunch of free agent money this year and then kicked it all down the road, I mean, maybe there was a case for, hey, you should have traded for this guy or you should have made one more signing or whatever. But also, this has been an interesting year where a lot of free agents slip through the cracks. And we could still get past June 1st and say, well, there's like five, six, seven guys that are still out there that did not sign. And Joanne Jennings was one of them.

So patiently waiting as opposed to overpaying like crazy. Seems like a Rob type of driven thing of like we're not going to pay overmarket for a, you know, a Travis ETN or something, somebody like that who is a good running back, but gets a massive contract. Or I mentioned on the show, Quitty Pay, who is a nice, like outside linebacker defensive end, but the guys Mike Zimmer wanted in 2021. It's a good player, but he's not worth like $17 million. That's the point, right?

So I feel like they managed that pretty well to the point where free agency might not be over for the Minnesota Vikings with the way that they set up their cap and moving Jonathan Grenard. And I also thought that moving Grenard was a very like rob and kind of bold move for an interim GM where you know that the coaches wanted to keep Jonathan Granard. and Granard because he's a good player. He's a captain. And I thought it showed a little bit of like, I am the captain now for Rob Brzezinski, which I wouldn't necessarily expect for an interim GM. But do we think long term?

And this is the question that we're going to ask with every one of these candidates we go through, do we think that long term over the next decade or so that Rob in the way that he's going to manage it with a focus on draft capital and salary cap space? is that the cheat code? Is that what can get them ahead? Or is it going to be someone from the evaluation world that gives you a better chance? Yeah. I mean, that is the fundamental question that the Vikings are going to have to answer because I think there's a lot of goodwill for Rob

Brzezinski in that building. There are a lot of coaches, a lot of scouts that felt, I think, pretty strongly about how he managed everything this offseason. And that is the best thing he has going for him. The thing he has to counter, like you said, is he doesn't come from the scouting background. And every other candidate that they are bringing in for second interviews does come from that background. And I suppose there's a scenario where they elevate Rob in some capacity and you bring in a GM and you have kind of a president of football operations GM type approach. They've talked about a traditional structure. I mean, I think you could probably finesse that term however you want and make something like that happen. We'll see if it goes there. But a lot of this

question will be, do you want a GM who has to come from that background? And we've heard a lot of discussion around this, this offseason of that there's a lot more that the GM has to do than just go scout players. But I think if it is Rob Brzeinski, and that probably means a lot of the scouting staff stays, the scouting staff has to have more hits than it's had. And, you know, how all of that goes, you know, what the pie chart of blame is for these things, we're never going to have it completely accurate, how much of it was. Now, the scouts liked this player, and then I think the Lewis Seen trade, we've heard enough to think that was probably a little bit of a unilateral decision from the GM to trade back and do it and not take Jameson

Williams, who I've been told they were going to take with that 12th pick if they'd stayed. So, you know, how much of it falls on Quasi, Adolfo Mensa, or Rick Spielman, or Scouts? I mean, all of these things are kind of unknowable. But if you, keep Rob Brzezinski and you keep this scouting stuff together, there's no dancing around the fact that they have not drafted very well. And if evaluation is part of the reason for that, then I think that raises some questions. So, you know, how much would a new GM bring in different scouts and how much are they going to have the latitude to do that? I think it's a fair question as well. But, you know, But the scouting success, I think, is where I would, I think that's a question for everybody,

but especially if it is Rob Resensky, I think that becomes an even more pertinent question. It kind of comes down to how you believe these things work because the draft historically is proven to be, if not completely random in terms of success, very streaky for a lot of teams. Where it's like, well, this team is the genius team for now, but also Howie Roseman took Jalen Rager over Justin Jefferson. And that wasn't the only. It wasn't like one bad pick. There were several drafts that actually set them up to have high draft picks. And you could say the same for the Seattle Seahawks who had a run there where they took what Jordan Brooks was at the linebacker. And you know, they had high draft pick running backs that didn't work out. But then it works for Ken

Walker and suddenly, wow, you're so genius. Right. So there, it's always been that way. But one thing you can't deny is that the more draft picks you have early, not Rick's four-sevenths or five-sevents, early, more top 100 picks. If you look at the Packers, they have almost twice as many top 100 picks during the Quasi Adopho-Mensa era than Quasi did because they gave them away a lot. And moving up for a Dallas Turner or making a T.J. Hawkinson trade, this has a result in the draft eventually. And so my argument for Rob would be that he is on record saying, I want to build through the draft. He was here through the build of 2015, 2016

into that, into that 2017 team that was almost exclusively built through the draft with a little Tom Johnson here and a little Terrence Newman there, but those were self-grown players in a lot of instances. So I tend to think that the same way that you need to build through the draft

because free agency is a very tough place to rely on from year to year. Sometimes you get Van Ginkle and sometimes there's no Van Ginkle there. So anyway, point being, I think asset management is a cheat code in the NFL. And if Rob is in charge, I don't look at a whole scouting staff and say, well, you guys drafted five players and only one of them was in the top 100 and the four didn't work out.

So you must be stupid when you scouted 300 or whatever players. Like, how are we supposed to know? So anyway, well, let's talk about some of the other candidates because, well, one more thing on Rob actually. I've advocated Ben trying to combine both worlds if you can, which is Rob Brzynski and a president title. I know I asked Mark Wilf about this at the owner's meetings and he kind of said, we'd like to keep our structure. But is there a world where you have something a little bit different there where Rob is in a top position, but they're bringing in a scouting evaluation per person to work hand in hand with him. Folks, you guys know that I'm a hat guy. I've always been that way because

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Prescription required, see website for details, restrictions, and important safety information. Well, this whole scenario is interesting because if you think back to January of 2022, there was this idea floating around from whoever may have been floating it to national reporters, you know, around the time of a game at Lambo Field, if I recall, and you know where I'm going with this. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. That Rick Spielman would end up in some type of a president role and they would hire a new

GM to have control over the roster, but he would stay in the building and be involved in a number different things, but kind of be that link. So how reliable was the idea that that was ever going to happen? Again, trying to go back and suss all that out is a little bit of a challenge. But I do wonder if there were at least conversations about that possibility. And then they decided, you know what? No, we've just got to make a clean break with it. And I would tend to think that when that was being floated around,

and I suspect it was probably being floated around by people very close to Rick Spielman, I would think that was at least discussed of that possibility. And I may be conjecturing a little bit here. But if it was discussed at the time and it wasn't just spun out of, it was an idea spun on a thin air, if it was actually discussed, could they go back to something like that and say, hey, Rob Rezinski, you can play that type of a role. And then we're going to have a younger GM come in here. All of the candidates they're talking about are on the younger side.

So could that be the answer to it? You know, I think you could still say that's a traditional structure in the sense that if gave the GM control of the roster and you had Rob Brzezinski in some type of other role that had more of a 30,000 foot view and less of a, hey, we're just trying to fill out the 53 as best we can. You could still call that a traditional structure, I think. I mean, a lot of this comes down to what say does the GM have over the roster? And I think the other thing about the idea of a traditional structure, a lot of times a traditional

structure has the GM making the decision to hire and fire the coach. I don't think that's going to happen here, no matter how this goes. I mean, it hasn't been that way. The Wilts, I think, made the decision to fire Leslie Frazier. They certainly made the decision to fire Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman. They made the decision to fire Quasi Adolfo Menza. So the coaches and the GM talk to ownership independently. The GM is not the go between Kevin O'Connell and the Wills.

I know that for a fact. So I think this idea of a traditional structure, if ownership is ultimately the one making the decision about is this person keeping their job if we're not successful, that's little more like triangle of authority stuff than the idea that a GM picks the coach, a GM fires the coach. You know, I think there's some nuance to this

and it's worth pointing that out because a lot of times we assume it just is this hierarchical thing of ownership, GM, coach. I don't think even with the idea that they have a traditional structure, that that's going to be how this works here. So defining what that means, I think it's probably a helpful exercise as we go through this. What I would like to see is just a system of checks and balances, which is you have someone who is evaluating the GM and the head coach that is a connection to ownership that ownership can trust. why like Rob for this where it's instead of you're hearing his story, you're hearing his story, and then you get to the end of the season and you hear everybody else's story and you know, wait a minute, I guess we're going to need a change.

Well, that's not really how this should go down. And the same thing happened with Rick and Zim where they got to the end of the road and then they found out about stuff that was going on. Well, you want Rob Brzezinski managing those people. I'd also like to see someone that would have a veto power of your GM comes to you. and says, and look, I like Dallas Turner. I think he's good. I think he's going to be continued to ascend.

And it says a lot that they're putting this on him. But someone who comes to you and says, this is what we're giving up to move up to get Dallas Turner. And Rob Brzezinski in this position would say, I love the player, but that is just too much. Like we are not winning that trade and it's going to set us back and we can't do it. Or, you know, okay, yeah, that's right. Put the pedal down.

Like you want that sort of check to where the GM, maybe the GM comes to you. This is a totally made up scenario and not anything that may have happened and says, look, our defensive coordinator is dying for this veteran defensive tackle. Yeah. A totally hypothetical scenario. And you say, well, how much?

Oh, 20 million per year? Made up number off the top of my head. And this person who is the checks and balances says, I love the player, but that's just not something we should do salary cap wise, right? I think you need that person in an NFL building to kind of play, you know, a little bit of judge and jury on some of these decisions. Well, I mean, let's think about a couple others over the years. And I think of two that when they

went down, we all kind of thought, really? And I know that there are a couple, I've had conversations with people in the building and there were some of those same questions about both of these scenarios. It was signing Dalvin Cook to a second contract. Like, are you going to pay a running back a second deal for the amount of money that he was making. Some of that happened because you had a head coach that said, I want the Belkow running back. I want to run the ball. I don't trust my quarterback.

I don't like my quarterback. And I like an old school approach. So we need to pay this running back. The other one is Kyle Rudolph. When they signed Kyle Rudolph to an extension, it was one of those that's like, okay. Some of this was salary cap management, but they did it by doing.

a longer term deal that I think left some dead money on the cap later. And those were a couple of those that I think it was you had players you liked, you had players you trusted, players who had been in the building, players that you felt like were part of your overall ethos and approach. Somebody else might have said, you know what? I get it. I understand we like this player. I understand we like a lot of what this player brings to the building or what we can do with this player, whatever it happens to be. But it's just too expensive to do it. And you're, you're you're going to regret this in year two or year three, even if it feels like it's good now. So to that point, I mean, I think if they're, if they'd had checks and balances like we're

talking about where you had, you know, probably Rob Brzecki, able to say, you know what, I don't know that this makes a ton of financial sense rather than, you know, I'm sure he was able to have those conversations. But if people say, I don't care, we're doing it, then it becomes his job to be like, yeah, okay, I'll go get it done. I've said my piece and you disagree and now I've got to go do my job. But if you change that role, maybe that could work. It's an interesting idea.

And I think it's one that if you had him in that role, you could do it. And the other thing there is he is a guy that the Wilf's have known since they bought the team. He outdates them in Minnesota. And there are a few people that I believe they trust more than him. I mean, this has been something they've worked with him the entire time. he's been in, you know, whether the top front office executive, I guess that would have been more of the Red McCombes era, but he was one of the three legs of the triangle of authority.

He's been the salary cap guy that they trust quite a bit. He talks with the Wilfs a lot, has a very strong relationship with the Wilfs. He could be that person on the ground because some of what we do see, and what happened at the end of the Zimmer Spielman era, was there was all this stuff going on, but if you're not around every day,

and the Wolfs obviously don't live in Minnesota, and they come in on game days, they have regular conversations with the people who are there, but being in that building every day, and I don't know how realistic it is for an NFL owner to be in the building every day and how much you'd even want that.

But those points of contact are important when you're in another part of the country. Having a set of eyes and ears in your football department, I mean, they certainly trust Andrew Miller to do this on the business side of things, but having somebody like that in your football department, I do think makes some sense, and you have a guy in Robert,

Zensky that has the trust of a lot of people. And I don't think would be approaching this job with any level of let me get mine. Let me kind of get my fingerprints on it. I think they would trust him to steward the franchise and steward their money well. And as we talk this out, I think that scenario makes a lot of sense. I mean, you know, I don't know if this is how they will do it. And not that anybody is, you know, asking us for our. opinions or analysis of what should happen.

But as we talk about it, it's like, yeah, I could get on board with that. I think that could actually be a logical way to go about this. This is why I was trying to get on the committee. It does make a lot of logical sense. But let's get into the other candidates here. Reed Burkart, it's funny, Ben, you know this. If you're around long enough, you'll bump into certain people along the way and you get to know them a little bit.

And then, you know, later it's like, wait, a GM candidate? really wow like okay um right this is kind of like uh was it todd downing who was a PR intern and then he's like an offensive coordinator well when did that happen uh right monins came from that world it's the same sort of like they grow up so fast um so but one thing that you and i both know with reed is that when uh reed burkhart now working for the Denver broncos is their a gm a finalist here is uh reeds very sharp a very smart guy and i think think one of the things that I've just, I've seen said that I agree with is like someone who has a strong conviction in his evaluation and stood out in the Vikings building as a top evaluator.

And there's a reason why George Payton when he was going to Denver said, let me take this guy with me over to the Denver Broncos. So if they are looking for the evaluation person who really understands scouting and team building, I think though he is inexperienced and is only been an AGM for a year. Reed would be right up there among the top candidates for someone whose focus is going to be nailing the NFL draft. Yeah, I agree. I think he's a guy that climbed fairly quickly because I think the strength of his evaluations

showed up and people said, no, this guy is deserving of more and deserving of larger responsibilities because of that. And there were a number of scouts that George Payton could have taken with him. The fact that he took Reed and Kelly, I think, speaks to what he thought of the work those two did. And George Peyton was a big part of those drafts. He was a big part of the success of evaluating players and turning over rocks for guys over those years, whether it's in the draft or even a couple times with a guy like Tom Johnson. I think that was a George Payton find. So it's not just hitting on the top picks. It's sometimes

finding the 43rd guy on the roster that plays 15 snaps a game and makes a play in week 16 that is the difference between we win the division or we're on the road in the first round of the playoffs as a wild card. So those types of things where you turn over rocks are a fundamental part of this job as well. And I think Reid Burkhart would bring some of that to the building. I mean, whether it's him or Terrence Gray, these are two guys that have history in this building, have relationships with someone like Rob Brzezinski already. and I think that makes them particularly interesting candidates because if we're, you know, I don't want to filter everything we talk about through this lens of the idea we just discussed.

But those two would make sense in this type of a scenario because there's probably already a relationship or at least a history of being in meetings together and doing this type of work already in conjunction with one another. So you at least can get an idea of how would these people all fund? in the same place. And that is probably to their benefit both of those two as candidates. Right. I mean, if you were talking about sort of trying to put together the stars of the 2017 build, if you will, I mean, Terrence Gray and Reed and Rob Brasinski would be right there, some of the top people working under Rick Spielman when they did that. I tend to think that you'll never repeat the 2015 draft because that is so insane. A Hall of Famer, several, you know, multi-time pro bowl type players and not even in the first round the first rounder turns out to be a

pretty good solid corner i mean fine right this is the whole thing is just insane like that draft but yeah the whole runs were like the second round the third round the fifth round and but the the overall build though oh was over multiple years and it really kind of starts in 2012 with getting harrison smith and then the next year you're getting Xavier roads and then you're starting to fill it out that way and i think that having that sort of mindset 14 yeah right having that mindset of building over multiple years through the draft and it's a year after year progression to try to reach a peak rather than, oh my gosh, we just won. I have like 300 million to just go crazy.

I don't know that that's always the best way for sustained success. So that makes a lot of sense to me. So I think we can kind of bucket, read and Terrence Gray of like, this is why you would do it. But some of the other candidates do come from different places. and I'm a little intrigued, Ben, by the idea of just new ideas, fresh or something different. So that John McKay, what do we make of that? I mean, someone with a rich history of the football and the National Football League, his grandfather was a coach for USC and then in the NFL with Tampa Bay.

And then his dad was the president of the Falcons, the GM of the Falcons. And now he's here in this position about a decade with the premier franchise, really, in the NFL, the Los Angeles Rams. If there's any like new ideas, and I don't want to make him sound like a tech bro, but I mean, Los Angeles is always at the forefront of this stuff, right? They always want to be front of line when it comes to being advanced, whether it's schematically, scouting-wise, team building, whatever it might be, every tool is what they want to use.

I'm not opposed to the idea of someone who is coming in from a fresh perspective of a team that truly competes for Super Bowls rather than sort of compete. for wild card births. Yeah, yeah. I think all of that is astute, and I think it makes a lot of sense because you have a guy from a franchise that the Vikings very much want to emulate.

It doesn't just come down to the coaching staff. I think there's a lot of things that that franchise does that is worth copying or at least worth learning from. I mean, and John McKay comes from a place where you learn that. He's got a history with Kevin O'Connell, at least they cross paths a little bit. Rich McKay, his dad, is on the NFL competition committee now, as is Kevin O'Connell, as is Sean McVeigh. So as some of these networks get built out, you do have familiarity between all

of these people that may come to play here as well. So I think he is one of those candidates that probably comes with a little more of a background because you mentioned the history in the NFL, but I think also some of these relationships that people who would be in this building and would be working with him have familiarity with him already. So, you know, and we've, I think, talked about, a lot of us have talked about this through this process, that this is not being done in a vacuum. You don't have a GM who's helping pick the coach or say, this is what I would want in a head coach. You have a GM who will come in with a head coach who is already here. He's not an idea. He is a person with preferences, with beliefs about the right ways to do things, a person with a long-term contract,

a person who's had a voice in personnel decisions, and I think we'll continue to have a voice in personnel decisions, you have to have somebody that can work well with that person. And probably people, because Brian Flores is going to have a role in these things as well. So I think a guy that has at least some background, and I don't know enough about their relationship to know, you know, how close they are or anything like that. But the fact that they do have some history together, I think is probably worth keeping in mind and maybe a useful thing as we go through this process for John McKay. I will say if he has his grandfather's penchant for one-liners, that will be very useful for us. So if that is the case, the famous John McKay quote, I mean, there's a lot of famous ones, but the one when he's the coach of the expansion, windless buccaneers of what did you think of your team's execution?

I'm in favor of it. That, I think, may be apocryphal. That may not have actually happened, but there are a lot of brilliant John McKay one-liners. So if he passed that down to his grandson, you know, that would be fine for us. That would, it's a different era, but I wouldn't mind something like that in the pension for a good quotable zinger every once in a while. Yeah, we sort of got them accidentally from Quasi,

where he sort of backed his way into competitive rebuild and the different things that sort of stuck with us. Then we got things like Minnessecond and soothsayer and. Yes. Yeah. In the history of people we have known. Certain words that former general managers struggled to understand the pronunciation of and so forth.

Nolan Teasley is the outlier here, though, because he has no connection to the Vikings and he has no connection to Kevin O'Connell. I don't believe I think he came up entirely in Seattle. And if you're going to go that direction, I can totally see it. But that to me is much more of a, I am the captain now type of situation or it's Nolan's show.

And he's going to run it the way he wants to run it. And he's going to revamp the building, which again, I'm not against. I wouldn't say, oh, they have to keep it together. They have to do it like they did it, you know, to build the 2017 team. I don't think that. The thing about Seattle is John Schneider has built two,

completely different Super Bowl teams with different quarterbacks. Every single player on the roster was gone for the second team. There is something that they understand about team building that this is a person who became a right-hand man to what is the premier team builder in the NFL in John Schneider. That is intriguing to me, Ben, because when we talk about methodical builds through the draft with sharp free agent decisions, with a trade when all of a sudden Leonard Williams becomes available

and you make that move. They've been incredibly smart over the years in building their teams. And even when it wasn't working out, they still had hard teams to play against as the Minnesota Vikings very well know. So I think if you're going that direction, then you go all to that direction,

not, well, you should answer to this person and you have to be restricted to that person. like it's his show and everybody better get on board or else. Yeah, I think that's right because you have had, I mean, that franchise, it's been this run. It's the Legion of Boom. And this, I think predates John Schneider, but they had a team that went to a Super Bowl in, I think, 2005 and lost to the Steelers too. So just organizationally, they have reinvented themselves twice. I mean, it's the first one and then you reinvent for the Legion of Boom.

and now what do we call it? The dark side defense now. So it has been two or three different teams with three different characters and three different identities and the ones that John Schneider has overseen where you do go through, okay, these guys get old,

they get expensive, you got to tear it down. They never really, the interesting thing, though, is that they did it without ever really bottoming out. They would still have kind of the competitive years, which we know the Wilts like to see, I don't think they ever, like how many times have they picked in the top 10?

I wouldn't imagine it's been, I'd have to go back and look at it. But they have not done this like the lions did, where it's all of these top five picks that you have years of being bad or the bears have kind of taken this approach. They have managed to do this type of a rebuild without completely bottoming out. And I would think that's a guy you want to talk to. I mean, John Schneider goes back to the Green Bay tree with Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson. and that tree has sort of branched out around the NFL.

I mean, you had John Dorsey in different places. Elliot Wolf obviously comes from there. So that Super Bowl matchup this year was two different guys who grew up under Ron Wolf and Ted Thompson, who were both, Ron Wolf's in the Hall of Fame, Ted Thompson, I don't know if he'll end up there or not. But in terms of evaluators, both of those guys have resumes that are very tough to match. So if you have people that have learned from there and then Nolan Teasley has learned from there, it's, I think, at least worth talking to somebody like that. Nolan Teasley is an interesting story.

He actually, I think had gotten out of, he played, I think for Central Washington and got out of football. Actually was like went into the corporate world for six years, I believe, and then decided I'm not loving that. I want to go back to the football thing. And then kind of came up as an intern at like age 30. So kind of an interesting story where. where he had gone out of football and said,

you know, I want to come back to this because there are a lot of these people. I mean, read Burkhart's this way a little bit too, where you start as an area scout, you're just toiling in anonymity, you're in hotel, you're in two-star hotels, you've been on the road too much, you're drinking bad coffee and eating fast food at 10 o'clock at night, all of this stuff. And then you go through this long tail and then all of a sudden it spikes.

And oh, I have a chance to be a GM. So he's got one of those stories that I think makes him somewhat interesting. The other piece of this that I want, wonder about, given how long he's been in Seattle, how much is Matt Thomas, who the Vikings brought in to help with the cap this offseason, how much did they lean on him to say, hey, what do you think of this guy and would he be good to work with? I think when you have somebody like that who Rob Brzezinski trusts, and not that Rob Brzezinski is necessarily trying to advocate for his competitors for the job, but if there is a

scenario where they were to say, Rob, we're going to put you in this type of role and we're going to have a younger GM come in. Matt Thomas's voice and saying, yeah, I've worked with this guy and I like him. I think he'd be worth talking to could be something that's played into this process too. Now, if I tell you, you can't use more than 10 words with this answer when I ask you, who do you think it will be? What would you say? I will say Rob Brzeinski with young GM pairing. Nine words, okay. I didn't give you a name when I said that, though.

Did you want a name? You got one more word left. Gray. Wait, what was the word? Gray. Oh, Gray. Oh, Terrence Gray. Okay. All right. Okay.

I mean, I just think the familiarity in Minnesota. That was it. Your 10 words is up. Your 10 words is up. It's over. Subtext. All right. All right.

We'll go with that. Uh, I, you know, I like there's a, just a lot of different directions that I think they could land on that would be favorable. Yeah. And the search, uh, ending up with multiple different ways you could play it out, I think is, uh, favorable for them because they have a lot to consider rather than just this guy versus this guy. Um, let me ask you about one more thing for I let you go, Ben. And I appreciate this. You're supposed to be not even working this week, but you know, I tried to take the week off, but, uh, but you wanted to talk football. Yeah. I have the same. problem. I go on vacation. I'm like, you know, I should just answer some mailbag questions.

Yeah. Well, let me ask you what's going on. And when we're covering a GM search in May, it's like the idea of being completely off the grid is probably a bit of a pipe dream. So, I'm calling it, I've just decided today that I'm calling it a quarterback situation and not a quarterback competition. Because if, put it this way, if they're on the same race track, but someone's in the pole position and someone else is starting 42nd, it's, yeah, technically they are running the same race. But it's not really a competition until somebody else proves that they can get up to the front of the path or the pack.

So I'll give you the Fandual odds. Fandle has odds on this, Ben, that Kyler Murray is the favorite to start by a mile at minus 1,000 and J.J. McCarthy is plus 600 to be the Viking starter. Every other quarterback competition, the odds are nowhere close to these. I mean, it's just like Kyler Murray by a mile. But do you agree with my framing of the quarterback situation? Yeah, I do.

I think the odds of, you know, where they go. I mean, the odds makers make their odds. And is he 42nd in the Indy 500 field or is he, well, I guess that'd be a NASCAR field. I think those are bigger. But is he 42nd or is he 21st? Whatever. We can debate that, the semantics of it, whatever. But I do think that, yes, Kyler Murray is the favorite because they signed him after a year with J.J. McCarthy that made them say, we have to look outside the building for another solution.

If it was, we've seen enough and there were enough signs of success that we think he can build on that I don't think you go about it this way. I think maybe you bring in a Carson Wentz, you bring in, you know, maybe it's somebody else of that vein. I mean, it's a little older that can be the guy for a little bit of time. But the idea of let's go look for another player who is the number one pick in the draft is signing with a team very much under the premise that Sam Darnold did of if I come in here and succeed, it can be a springboard for me for the next contract. I don't think you're doing that. And I don't think that player is signing that contract if there's not some understanding of,

hey, you're going to have a really good chance to make some noise here if everything goes well. I mean, is it possible that J.J. McCarthy goes out and outplays Kyla Murray and does so many things that they say, yeah, you know what? He's the guy again? Yeah, it is possible that that would happen. But I think it would take something like the scenario we're talking about of I have to come from way back in the field and make moves, make maneuvers, make decisions to get myself to the point where, yeah, you have to. a chance to win this race. So I think that's a pretty good read on it. That's about where I would land on it as well.

Because I just think if you sign a guy like this, you are communicating quite a bit about the urgency that you felt out of last season. And I think to say, hey, you know, they're 50-50 and everything's even like common sense. We've both done this long enough that common sense would be like, no, there's probably a little more to it than that. I also think when they get out in the field and Kyler Murray throws a football and Justin Jefferson catches it, they're going to be like, yeah. I mean, he's the most accurate quarterback they've had since San Bradford, I think. Yeah. It doesn't mean he's perfect or he won't make mistakes or whatever else.

But I think on the practice field, when you see, well, it's accuracy percentage just from a data perspective, but also I'm sure that you've watched all 22 on them as well, where it's like some of the practice field. when you see it was accuracy percentage just from a data perspective but also i'm sure that you've watched all 22 on them as well where it's like some of these anticipation throws some of these windows some of these much more much more timing and rhythm in the recent offense than people realize so yeah uh i think that they want right i mean i i i think that once that's on display and you see how far mccarthy has to go in order to get there um it could be a longer term thing where that works out. But as of right now, this is a 28-year-old multi-time pro bowler who is ready to win and prove the world wrong. So it's just two different timelines. Ben, great stuff. I appreciate

you taking the time to come on, talk a little football when you were technically taking a day off here. But I guess we'll keep our eye out. And then the next time we talk, I promise, a crystal ball will return and we'll have you look into the future a little more. But thanks for your time. Yeah, this may be the only non-crystal ball episode we've ever done. But it was good football discussion and we'll get back to the crystal ball. But yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me. All right.

Thanks, Ben. Football.