Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Star Tribune's Ben Goessling gets deep analyzing Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's press conference

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

Matthew Coller and Ben Goessling of the Star Tribune break down whether Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is ready to take apart some key parts of the Vikings roster and how he views the long-term quarterback situation. He talks about how he thinks they'll approach the offseason and who will stay and go. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here along with Ben Gessling, Minnesota Vikings beat reporter for the Star Tribune. We're two of three. Yeah. The only other guy here is Alec Lewis. He was already on the pod the other day, so I figured I would give him the break. And now you step in to break down Kweisi Adafo-Mentz's press conference and much more. Ben, are you enjoying your time here in Indy? I am.

The fact that I am getting old and get tired a lot faster becomes, I think, a little more apparent than the last time I was at one of these things. I think it's the first one of these I've done since 2020. And even one night of like five and a half, six hours of sleep is like, oh man, this is going to be a long week. But otherwise, yeah, it's 50 degrees must be 70 here tomorrow so hopefully a little bit of time outside it's always the worst when you come back from the combine effort it's been fairly nice in indian it's like oh yeah our hellscape

uh yeah but uh i see i see hell yes of course yes um but yeah neither one of us are big party guys but when you arrive you must go to the jw yep and see who's around so we were perusing and meeting with people last night and things like that so that's always a good time uh but then they had the 10 o'clock press conference and and quesadilla flamenco actually thanked us for being there that early it's like he knows he knows the deal with the nfl combine and how late you got to be out if you want to peruse. But I thought we learned a lot from Kweisi Adafo-Mensah. And I have to tell you, as I was on the flight here, Ben, I was like, I don't know if I'm flying here for a good reason or not.

But I really do feel like he let us inside of his headspace for a lot of decisions that they're going to make. Yeah, at least the philosophy of those things, I think, was something he was fairly candid about in terms of what will go into their decisions and probably what has gone into a lot of their decisions. One of the things he talked about was this is not new. We don't look at this and be like, oh, crap, we have $24 million of cap space to clear. What are we going to do? This has been in the works for a while. They've been talking about these things for a while so you kind of i think i'm sure they have a lot of these decisions either made or pretty close to made and you have to fill in some

of the numbers as you go but yeah i mean we heard a lot about his philosophy of you know quarterback contracts involving justin jefferson and some of the roster decisions which i thought was interesting um dalvin tomlinson he talked about pretty strongly saying he wants him back and then just kind of how he goes about the process of he wants him back and then just kind of how he goes about the process of possibly having to get rid of a lot of veterans here in the next few weeks because he's going to have a lot of decisions that are going to reshape this roster for the next couple of years and yeah I was fairly honest about a lot of the the things that go into those decisions I'm going to tell you some of my interpretations and then you could

tell me if you heard the same thing yeah yeah this is always the game at the combine this time of year yeah for sure as by the way i just saw on twitter that the bucks general manager went to the podium and said you know what we think leonard fournette's going to be in good shape for a couple more years and then they released them later in the day man so what was the time frame like what was the expiration time on those quotes? Not, I mean, couldn't have been a couple hours. Yeah, because I just saw they released them. I didn't realize he'd said that this morning.

And I will admit, last year I got got a little bit by Quacey because I remember talking about the quarterbacks with him. Now, one went in the first round, but I was like, what do you think of the quarterback class? He said, well, you know, I see a lot of good quarterbacks here. No, you didn't. Otherwise you would have picked one, but let's just play the interpretation game anyway, with Justin Jefferson and the way that he talked about him versus the way that he talked about Kirk cousins and his future so much different for how committal he wanted to be. And I thought that that was telling on both both with a

confidence level of re-signing Jefferson this offseason and a not confident level that Kirk Cousins will be here for uh the long time horizon so to speak you agree with that yeah I think that's right I mean I think that the biggest thing you look at there is Justin Jefferson's 23 Kirk Cousins going to be 35 in August I mean it's just going to have a different feel. But there has also been this sense at the Combine this week that the days of let's do a one- or two-year deal with Kirk are probably over. I mean, it doesn't seem like that's what Kirk is looking for. And Kweisi basically said as much this morning. So they, I'm sure, want certainty.

We want flexibility, I think, were the words that he used. And there are different ways to get flexibility, I suppose. But the other piece of this is Cousins has typically looked for guaranteed or practically guaranteed deals, easier to do when it's two or three years, I suppose. But there has been some of that trade-off, I think, in the past of, I'm not going to take a longer-term deal, but I want the guaranteed money. If you're going to look for, I don't know, another three years, are you going to get every dollar of that guaranteed at this point? I think that would be a tough negotiation. I don't know quite where this will go. He talked a lot about the relationship with Kevin O'Connell and wanting that relationship to be strong. And you don't want to start somebody from day one that you have just brought into the building but yeah beyond this year it left a lot of things open

and i think the negotiations between cousins agent and the vikings in the next few weeks are going to tell us a lot more about what everybody's interest is in extending this and on what terms i apologize if you can hear the background noise. They're fixing a lamp or something. Yeah, this has kind of been going on for... It has. Most of this thing, I mean, for people that don't see it, most of the Combine, at least from our perspective, is in the world's largest convention center. It's like the floor you see behind us has not changed.

It's been a decade that I've been here, and it hasn't changed in that time. It's a lot of meeting rooms and, and convention hallways. We don't really see all that much football. And this is the best place to record a podcast as long as that's not happening. So hopefully the, our mics aren't picking that up too loudly, but, uh, we can hear it. We're not sure if you can yeah to your to your point though about kirk cousins when he said like it's you know they might want probably do and we can pretty much guarantee it uh a longer term deal yeah and i can see that from cousins perspective of looking at his own age and mortality in the nfl and being like how many more years i want to be guaranteed that I have stability. If something happens, he certainly took a lot of hits last year, or if my play declines that I know that I am locked into getting X number of dollars. And if you're the Vikings now, Kwesi said you can only really

project two years out. You're like, Oh, I mean, and I agree with him in the NFL. It's very hard to project farther out than that because there's injuries and so much changes in the landscape. But that to me was kind of a definitive comment on like, we can't sign someone like that to that type of deal when they are 35 years old, even if we like them more than anybody else in the world. Yeah. I mean, I think this question of what do we mean by the long term is probably going to

be a lot of the negotiations. We don't know that sitting here today, but in the conversations I've had with Cousins, I don't get the sense that he wants to be Tom Brady. I don't think he's sitting here saying, I'm going to play until I'm 45 years old. So in his mind, long-term, maybe three years. Are the Vikings interested in three years? I don't know. I mean, if what Kweisi said today, that you only protect a couple of years, is all that there is to it, maybe that's it.

Is Cousins interested in only signing until he's 37? I mean, these are going to be the things, when you get down to the numbers, that are probably going to determine this. We could talk philosophy all day, but it's, hey, are you comfortable with this number at this dollar figure? No, I'm not. Well, what are you comfortable with? Or are we not comfortable with anything i think is those are going to be the things that determine it and that's going to be known to them and and his agent and a few others i do think he was trying to prepare us i don't want to get too far away from the kirk conversation but prepare us and everyone

else for the idea that some veterans are not going to be here and i think that everybody knows that already but it wasn't like boy if you love the vikings this year you're going to be here and i think that everybody knows that already but it wasn't like boy if you love the vikings this year you're going to love them next no it's the same team it was very much like yeah that's going to be hard and i don't really like cutting great players but i think i might have to and things like that i felt like he was very much living in reality in his comments like there are times where you listen to some of these podium sessions and you think man if you believe what you're saying right now you got some problems and they don't often and sometimes they do and they're completely ridiculous but i thought he was very realistic with both us and maybe himself in the way that he was talking

and saying like look you might want to not not directly but you might want to prepare yourself for there might be a new quarterback here eventually or there might not be your favorite player whose jersey you own and that's that was the vibe that i got i just don't know which ones it's going to be yeah i mean the comments about like you thank them for the time and you realize that these are people and they commit a lot to it and it's not just numbers on a spreadsheet i mean he talked about that some and saying, I hope in three or four years we can look back and laugh at all the good times we had, and some of these guys might be Ring of Honor players. I think that was maybe phrased in a question, but it was to that effect of,

I want to stop and acknowledge that these guys have been great players who have done a lot for this franchise, but there have to be changes coming. There's just no way around it. I just don't see any way that they're going to be able to clear the cap space that they have to clear without cutting a lot of very popular players, whether it's Harrison Smith, whether it's Adam Thielen, Eric Kendricks, Zedarius Smith, I think Dalvin Cook. I mean, all of these names are going to be in the conversation. Not all of them necessarily, and uh it is it's hard to see a way for them to make their roster work without some of those things happening if you were just guessling

on which players are going to stay or not rob domofsky was uh did a double take at that i don't know if he thought it was funny or just surprising terrible terrible mixed reviews yeah not right well i mean quesadillaolfo mensah started his thing talking about banya from uh seinfeld yes very deep cut reference so you know i think that i could do a little joking around myself but no really i mean if if you had to if you had to put it down who do you think from that veteran realm that we've talked about on numerous occasions would be the person or people to be on their way out? Well, I mean, Dalvin Cook, I guess, is the first name that comes to mind. I mean,

$14.1 million for a running back that had his lowest number of carries per game since, I think, 2018 when he had a lot of hamstring issues. That would seem like a tough price to bring him back at. And the question of, does he want to restructure his deal to stay in Minnesota? I think that's probably going to be a little bit of a hard negotiation, given the way some of those negotiations have gone in the past with his agent. That seems like a tough sell. So I would put him on that list. I think, I mean, guys like Thielen and Harrison Smith, you know, the cap numbers are really high for both of those guys. They both have a lot of dead money associated with them.

And Smith, do you feel good about the young safeties? Thielen, do you want to eat the dead money? You know, all of those things come into it. With those guys, I make it a little more complicated. But, you know, those are the names that have the biggest numbers. And you have to make some decisions, I think, pretty quickly. And there's a part of me that wants to say, like say like well they'll just restructure because that is literally what they've always done but at the same time they really should stop doing that all the time right

like they really they really should at some point for someone like harrison smith or adam thielen just kind of either eat it and and live with the dead money or i mean they're not renegotiating those guys at this point. They've got amazing contracts, and they're just going to stick with them. But I think that the important thing when Kweisi Adafomenta talks about having a plan beyond 2023 and having come in with a plan beyond 2023, some of this had to include stop wounding yourself with harpoons every off season when it comes to the salary cap because you can only push it down the road for so many times and at the like this is the year to not

do that i think yeah that they may not feel that way but i kind of felt that way coming away from it that there has to be some realization that they can't just push all the chips to the middle of the table for this year i didn't hear oh yeah, we're going full Rams from last year. Like he had mentioned in that article from a year ago. So I mean, I feel like, and this could be completely wrong, but just my read as you're reacting to my reads was that there is going to be a little bit of a safer approach when it comes to that stuff. And we're not just going to throw void years and ruin the cap. Again, could be completely wrong.

It's just how I felt coming away from that. Yeah. And the counter to that, if they did try to do it as well, the cap goes up every year and the TV money is going to start kicking in. And especially after we get out of this phase where they had to put money back in the salary cap in the COVID years where they lost all of it and they had to kind of make the ceiling go up a little slower to not have to tank the cap the year after COVID when the stands were empty. So all of that comes into it. But yeah, I think they realize that all of these things they've been doing, you sort of get stuck in one lane because you're not really able to remake the roster and you have to keep a lot of players around that especially as they get older it may not be worth doing the thielen one to

me is really interesting because the last time they did that deal quesio del fomento was a gm like they did this last year pushed a lot of money into this year and from what i was told at the time it was about let's see if we can get two years for Thielen and Cousins together in this current setting because Cousins was getting a new deal and then we wanted Thielen to be on the same kind of time horizon, to use Kwesi's phrase. But the Thielen number is so big, and Thielen is talked about. We've been discussing the possibility of restructuring it it's you know i my guess is he probably restructures and stays because i think he wants to but that's an interesting one to me because in some respects not completely but in some respects this front office made its bed on that deal this is not one that's left over from rick spielman yeah right you can't look back

well we didn't negotiate the contract. Like Harrison Smiths, they didn't negotiate that one. There's nothing they can do. Dalvin Cook, same thing. No, that's a really excellent point. And, I mean, if you're on Thielen's side, you're okay with that restructure that gives you the same amount of money but nothing else. I think you've got to be careful about doing the Anthony Barr thing where you push so much money into the future that, whoops's I forget what it was like eight million last year dead yes it's just crazy it was 10 it was like 9.89 or something yeah it was a lot you can't have that happen again yeah not if you're

going to have a lot of flexibility next year which is what I think they should aim for which may be very well the last year of Kirk Cousins so So you want, if you're going to do reset after that and draft a quarterback, you want to have all the flexibility to put things around him with your salary cap because right now you're still limited in what you can put around Kirk Cousins. Now with Justin Jefferson, I think one of the big comments that came out of this was talking about Justin Jefferson being in the loop. Yes. Almost in the same way that most quarterbacks would be

as part of the conversation. Right, right. Too bad Rob left. We could have gotten his take on that. Yeah, Rob Brzezinski, right, who's here as well. No, I was saying Rob Demoski from the coverage of Packers for ESPN in terms of somebody that may have some insights on quarterbacks that want to be involved in roster building decisions.

He may have some experience on that particular topic. Just a little from covering the Packers. I thought you meant Brzezinski because he walked by us after quasey was done he wants to come on i mean rob if you're listening we're live streaming if you're watching you probably are come over we're out by the sagamore ballroom we'll be on here for a little bit so if you got any insight you want to drop on here we're here ben doesn't know it's just recorded it's not actually live okay well fine forget it you listen to us later give us a call you know how to find us we'll do we'll drop all the intel in the next one we're always in the same place yeah as the vikings so um but anyway so this is kind of lebron treatment

like you are the megastar and i thought have you ever seen the movie say anything you ever seen that i don't think so i'm familiar with it you're familiar with the john cusack holding up yeah the boombox yeah yeah well that was today quacey with the John Cusack holding up the boom box. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was today. Kweisi with Justin Jefferson holding up the boom box. Anything for you? You know, I but I do think that's very aware of them.

Yeah. Like it's 2023 and this level of a superstar is going to want to be looped in. But if we're if we're playing a little bit of a game which we do on the show at times uh if you're justin jefferson what do you want to hear as you are looped in with quesia da fomenta and kevin o'connell you mean specific to the quarterback or specific to things that matter well quarterback would seem to matter quarterback and your contract yes really the two i i don't think he cares whether they wear the road white. No, I don't think that's a big concern. Yeah, I don't think that's a big concern for him, the uniform specifically. The quarterback thing is really interesting to me because he was fairly vocal about defending Kirk Cousins last year. But if you told him, hey, we're going to get somebody that's young and dynamic, and that's going to be your guy for the rest of your career,

I don't think he would sit here being so heartbroken about that that it would be hard for him to get over that. I mean, the guy played with Joe Burrow in college and has been around a lot of good quarterbacks and certainly has watched a lot of good quarterbacks in the league. And, you know, he's going to play with somebody else at some point. I mean, that's just reality. He's not going to be with kirk cousins the rest of his career i think in all likelihood so how you manage that transition i think is one question i don't know that he's going to want to be part of something where okay you're 25 and we have somebody in here

as a rookie and it turns out he's not very good and your numbers drop and you're not winning i don't know that he's going to be crazy about that part of things but if you tell him hey this is our plan this is our transition we're going to have kirk for another year maybe two whatever it is and then we're going to go get somebody else bring them in and develop that person underneath kirk kind of as we've seen the packers do with some of their guys i I would guess that's probably an approach he'd be comfortable with. And, you know, we'll see if they get there. It's a lot to pull that off, but I think that would probably be what they try to sell to him. Well, that was what I was thinking about.

If Justin Jefferson wants more of a playmaker, you know, if he wants somebody who's a baller and he brings up lsu all the time yep and also i mean quacey mentioned multiple times justin jefferson wants to win most which i know sounds like a cliche but if you know that whoever's playing quarterback will throw you the ball and you know you're getting loads of cash either way well what's left is just yeah to win yes and this quarterback does not have a huge sample size of winning in fact justin jefferson still after three years of his career on his rookie contract has zero playoff wins yeah that has to stick in his mind and and i agree with you i'm not putting words in his mouth to say how he feels about kirk cousins but when you watch the playoffs and you see joe burrow

on fourth down throw into double coverage or you see Jalen Hurts run or you see Mahomes make plays how if you're Justin Jefferson can you not look and be like you know the Leonardo DiCaprio yeah Jeff or whatever like I see these guys making plays uh there has to be that in the back of his mind I don't know if he wants Kirk gone necessarily because he set records with yeah with that, it's been productive for him. He's also a very aware guy. Like for someone who's happy-go-lucky, I think Justin Jefferson is very aware of not only football, but also the landscape of football.

He cannot have missed what it looks like in the playoffs with the quarterbacks who win. Well, and the fact that he comes from a family, I mean, he was around Division I, like big time SEC football from the time he was around division one like big time sec football from the time he was nine or ten years old he he has a world a worldliness i guess about him that comes from that i think where he understands the how the game is played he understands and when i say how the game is played i don't mean just on the field the whole the whole thing how the business works how all this stuff happens i think he gets that on a fairly intuitive level and i think some of that probably comes into it yeah if you said especially if you found somebody that was

able to kind of protect themselves in the sense of not just okay i can throw i've got a guy in my face and i can pick myself up a guy that can extend some plays can keep the sack rate low with his own mobility i you know that's kind of what everybody's looking for. I'm sure he sees some of those things. I'm sure he talks to Jamar Chase all the time about what it's like in Cincinnati. He obviously knows Joe Burrow well enough that he doesn't need somebody to tell him what he's like. But, yeah, I'm sure those things are in his mind, and I'm sure at whatever point it happens, that's the type of guy he would like to play with

so my question is how far does this go with justin jefferson's power within the organization because there is a limit lebron james was the general manager of every single team he played for and uh i get that because he's one of the greatest players uh i'm not going to argue about that but like he's top five of all time there's no debate about that you had an all nba all-time team he's on the he's in the starting five no question so that okay that's that's some power right there that's aaron rogers in his peak pat holmes level power how much do you want to give to a wide receiver how much do you want to make it feel like he's got that power but are just telling him what's going on or what like this is complicated i think yeah i think that's right when you tell somebody and the public us that like justin jefferson is

a part of these decisions i guess i wonder about how much of a part of the decision or is it just here's what we're going to do just so you know or is it are you comfortable with this or is it what do you want because yeah those are different gradations of that right i had this scenario pop into my brain and i'm not saying this is what will happen but like if jefferson said you know what i love kirk he's my guy but like if you guys draft anthony richardson the next day i'll write my name on the dotted line because he's a baller and that's my guy like are you going oh we better trade up? Or are you saying, well, Justin, let's be reasonable. Like, I just wonder how far that goes. That's what I was thinking about as Quasey was explaining.

Yeah, the track records of players kind of saying, sign this guy. Okay, yes, sir. Whatever you want. It's not great. I mean, you saw. Randall Cobb wasn't amazing in Green Bay. No, I mean, there's some. Yeah, that's the one that comes to mind is him.

And I mean, even Roger's talking about it this offseason with you've got to keep Mercedes Lewis, Robert Tunyon. It's like all these guys that are not able to run very effectively anymore. I mean, and you've seen that. I remember when I was covering the Nationals, they were terrible. They signed Jason Worth to a deal that nobody saw coming. He immediately – he went from the Phillies to the Nationals, went from the two-time NL champs to the bottom of the roster.

He knew immediately he had more power than anybody in the organization. And it was, I want this guy, I want this guy, I want this guy. Guys like Alex Cora, guys that went on to become managers of some notoriety. But yeah, there was a sense pretty quickly of get me this person because this is who I want. And I think when you do that, you are assuming that, well, you'd better be able to assume that the receiver or the player has a pretty good eye for talent. And that's not always the case. So, I mean, he gets it.

I think he has an eye for what he wants in a quarterback. But the let's make the player the de facto GM, I think you have to be awfully careful with that, especially in the NFL when there are so many moving pieces. It's not a five-man roster. A delicate dance. That's what it really is. It really is a balance between letting him know and having him feel comfortable with the plan, the long-term plan of what you're going to do,

without saying this organization belongs to you because then if you don't do what he wants yeah then he demands a trade and says there are truth to all rumors or something yeah you don't want that i the thing is though i i don't get the sense he's wired that way yeah i mean you know to whatever extent we know any of these guys i my sense has been you know probably from his parents too that he's I mean, they have not really raised him at least in the conversations I've had with them to think you are the most special person

ever. You deserve everybody bending to your every whim. I don't think that's how he comes at things because I don't think that's how they kind of told him to operate. And that's certainly not how they've done it since he's been in the NFL. There has not been this loud set of demands like you hear from some players' parents at times.

And I don't think he's going to kind of take the nuclear option there. You know, certainly could be wrong. Certainly wouldn't be the first time. But I don't think that's a huge concern with him. It should be brought up because I make the truth to all rumors joke. Yeah. But what was the problem? They didn't communicate with Stefan.

Yes. That was the problem. Pain down his leg as he put it. We're in charge. You do what we say. Yes. And we don't want to hear from you. I mean, that approach is so much smarter with Justin Jefferson than how the previous regime

handled Stefan Diggs. Now, like all's well that ends well, but that wasn't the right way you want to handle it. No. And they lucked out. You don't want to handle it history right uh another major topic on this is is brian flores and his um just him having a personnel background and all those things how do you think his presence impacts what they're going to do versus if they had stayed with that donatelle like is that is it different because i feel like it's vastly different as you're reacting it different because i feel like it's vastly different as you're reacting to my take yeah i feel like it's vastly different when you

bring him here how you approach rebuilding the defense and how fast you want it to get better because i think that answer is like now yeah well and that's tough to do when you don't have a second round pick and you aren't going to realistically have enough money to do a lot of major things in free agency not that that is always a great fix anyway just spend your way out of the problem i i do think they want it to be better quickly i think they know they need it to be better quickly because you know this is a league where i mean you won as mid as quickly as you did you raise expectations as quickly as you did pretty quick pretty soon and now it's sort of this thing of, well, okay, 13 wins was the standard. If you drop below that to eight or nine, okay, now you've stepped back

and you're heading into year three and you start to say, well, all right, when is this going to come together? So I think O'Connell knows he needed to get this one right, which I think means Flores is going to be given the ability to do a lot of what he would be doing as a head coach. Remember, too, like he had head coaching options and he chose to come here. So I think he's going to have enough influence, enough pull in these decisions that both because they need a defensive expert that's going to help turn this thing around quickly. And because he has been a head coach and may get a chance to do that again, I think he's going to help turn this thing around quickly and because he has been a head coach and may get a chance to do that again i think he's going to have a fair amount of

latitude there and i think i think they know they need it because you have to get this thing fixed awfully soon or a lot of people are going to have a lot bigger concerns than they do sitting here on february 28 2023 you've been very good in the past at picking who the vikings are going to pick it's a real talent of yours i was better i was spielman yeah i missed it last year well that's what i guess we all did right that's what i was gonna say it's like but you know unpredictable with brian flores here though i really feel like it's going to be easier to figure out cornerback has to be at the top of this list right is there any is there any i mean, maybe pass rusher, but of those two positions and it will matter.

Daniel Hunter and Zedaria Smith situation. Right. It just feels like as soon as you hire that guy, cornerback is where all lasers get set for all the mock drafts. And I think that everyone who does that is probably right. Yeah. I mean, it's it's such an obvious need because Patrick Peterson is 32 years old, and you could bring him back, but this is typically a scheme that plays more man coverage, and Patrick Peterson, by his own admission, was better last year with a zone scheme because it didn't require him to run around as much as it used to. So if he's back, that gives you one, but probably with a few asterisks on that. And then you have the other corners under contract right now are cameron dansler andrew booth and caleb evans that's it

so there is there anybody in there that you feel like okay we can just roll with this and we're completely confident that this can work in 2023 i don't think so i don't know how you could both for health reasons and i think with dansler is he going to figure it out so and i don't think so. I don't know how you could, both for health reasons and I think with Dantzler, is he going to figure it out? So, and I don't know that this group believes terribly strongly in him. Maybe Brian Flores has a different take on that. I got the sense at the end of last year that that was not a guy they were factoring into their plans in a terribly major way anymore. So that has to be a need maybe you bring the duke back i mean that could be part of it but yeah you have to address that position pretty quickly because there's just not a lot of certainty with the group you have even though they've invested in a couple of day two picks in

last year i would be almost surprised if they didn't offer duke shelly a contract yeah i think that's probably right as depth but certainly not an. He's more of just somebody who's there. And I agree on Cam Dantzler that if one coaching staff has a problem with you, maybe it was them. If two coaching staffs have a problem, then it's you. And two defensive coaches that made their bones in the league with defensive backs. Mike Zimmer and Ed Donatel, say what you want about them as head coaches or defensive play callers,

but the reason they rose to those stations is because they did great work with defensive backs. So if there's any position they know, it's that one. And if there's any reason for them to say, eh, not feeling this guy at that position, it's like, well, that may be worth listening to.

Right. I mean mike zimmer was wrong about some stuff but he's not wrong about corners not very often no not very often um what what else stuck out to you from this because i i think that on the delvin tomlinson bit it's just obvious that they want him back yeah yeah i don't think you would have done the the move the void date if that wasn't the case i mean i thought that campaigning for him to come back was kind of interesting. Yeah. Like, again, the same sort of thing. Like, Delvin, we love you.

I'll teach you how to store your shoes or something. I forget something about the shoes that. Something. I didn't quite catch it. Middle-aged white dudes probably didn't quite understand. Yeah. At least to the degree that we might otherwise. I have, like, one pair of shoes.

Yeah. You're looking at them if you're on youtube i mean that's it so yeah i've i've i would not i'm certainly not a sneaker the the collection of running shoes i i've gone a little bit off the deep end with that but like that's not what we're talking about here no we're not talking about dunks we're talking about 250 racing shoes we're talking about more stylish gentlemen than us yes but the point is being that Kwesi was kind of talking about wanting Delvin Tomlinson to return but I don't think there's a hot take to be had there it's like I probably wouldn't do that I understand

why they would it spreads out the cap he's a pretty good football player unless that's exciting to you what else you got like what else stuck out to you from our conversations with him aside from that well i'm trying to think trying to run through my head of the other stuff he talked about in his side session because that was probably a little more germane to the conversation you know he he talked a little bit about um you know kind of i guess getting used to the pace of the job which he was fairly honest about you know a year ago it was like i have you know, kind of, I guess, getting used to the pace of the job, which he was fairly honest about, you know, a year ago, it was like, I have, you know, my head is swimming and now it feels a little more doable. But he also kind of said this thing of like, I know I'm going to make some decisions that I'm not going to be terribly popular with certain players. He seemed to

understand the weight of the decisions he's going to make in the next few weeks. And he talked a little bit about the fan base, too, kind of getting a sense of of the kind of mood of the fan base of just how starved they are to win. And he said that's kind of driving how I feel about doing this job, you know, kind of understanding that people really, really, really want to see a deep playoff run and a Super Bowl appearance for the first time since Jimmy Carter was the president-elect and, above all things, want to see a Super Bowl championship. So, yeah, I mean, I think some of that stuff was interesting, just the sense of he knows that the next few weeks are – I mean, he's talking about how I want to be remembered.

I mean, how I want to do the job and all of this kind of stuff. It was weird to hear a GM that's been on the job for 12 and a half months, 13 months, whatever it is, kind of talking about legacy a little bit. That, that, that was interesting to me. And the kind of the jokes he made about if I get myself fired, I mean, you know, all of that that stuff was was a little more meta than i thought we were gonna go i i well that no you're right about that that there was like a sort of a big picture thing and i know that quasey thinks on a very deep level yes pretty much everything yes i mean when you ask him about anything yep he's gonna think deeply about it including us joking around with him about seinfeld and stuff it's just like he's he's gonna have some sort of take on that that goes beyond just like oh that was a funny joke because it's just the way that he thinks but where that did stick out to me as well is when he was introduced he had a comment that kind of made me chuckle and probably you did too where he said like oh you know what if we lose i'm not even going to be upset because i know that our process was good and i think that that tune is

very different from what we just heard because it was like this when you're the gm of a team and it's yours it becomes like part of your soul you know what i mean and i think that he's really got that and it's so hard like that's why these guys look like they've aged a lot of times yes through these jobs and i i think that's i mean that's what vikings fans would want to hear it's like he is not just the financial guy that shows up here and is like the office space consultants or something yeah what exactly is it that you do here uh although there have been players we've wondered that about in the past yeah and maybe even staff members assistant coaches as well uh but um i won't say who we mean but yeah no we could be talking about a few people but we should stop i

think we probably know exactly the same person but we'll just move on anyway so the point just being though that like it's clear that he's kind of growing up in front of our eyes as a gm that a first time gm takes on so much right away and then throughout the year it becomes truly your job and now this this is his now yeah it's not you inherited something and you're trying to work with it it's like it's like when you buy the used car and you're still trying to kind of figure out how to put it in gear yeah and after a year it smells like you like that's yeah that's what it is now for him i think that's a great observation yeah the ability to say not my problem is gone i mean it's it may be unfair especially when there's still salary cap stuff that has to get worked out some of which was here from the previous regime but

i mean you've been on the job for a year especially after you win a division title it's not this thing anymore you can say look at how much we've improved it's if you don't win well what happened and then you're three kind of like we're talking about is okay you guys better it's not this thing anymore. You can say, look at how much we've improved. It's if you don't win, well, what happened? And then you're three kind of like we're talking about is, okay, you guys better start to figure it out or else we're going to start thinking about the people that are going to replace you.

So yeah, it seems like he has grasped the gravity of the job and, uh, kind of all that goes into that pretty quickly. Yeah, he even talked about talking with other GMs about his problems and being like, oh, okay, now you actually get it. And speaking of which, I brought this up because I was listening to a podcast with Thomas Dimitroff

on with Eric Eager and their show, and Thomas was talking about the franchise tag and how in the past he had been criticized. He brought up Mike Florio and all the criticized for certain franchise tags and he talked about how complicated everything is yeah like there's the locker room element but one thing he brought up was ownership so i mentioned that to quacey that i had been listening to that like the ownership element and i just asked him like i didn't want to say are they telling you what to do yeah because that would not have gone very far no but i just asked him like how is that communication grown and he went into a lot

of detail i mean talked about talking with them on a daily basis and building his relationship and understanding how they see the world and how like they view things in longer time horizons which keeps on coming up what did you make of that answer about the wilfs and i wonder like are are we seeing just based on that answer yeah like a more connectedness between him and them as opposed to you're doing what we want because we just hired you yeah which was last year i think that is in an ideal world that's what you want yeah is quacey influencing their thinking yes on how they should view the long term of this but i don't know if that's going to be the case it just sounded like maybe but you're never going to say oh yeah i don't know we haven't talked in months about your

owners right i just wonder what you made of that answer well it was interesting because he kind of told this story about ziggy looking up at the roof of the ceiling of u.s bank stadium and and i thought and i asked him he kind of trailed off and went down a different kind of anecdote so i asked him what was he looking at in the roof i said he's already thinking about improvements to the stadium because it's already seven eight years old are we are we going there he said no it was kind of how they built the thing and he was kind of almost appealing to them as he's like i like being around creatives i like being around kind of people with vision it almost felt like i grabbed a quarterback that ability to see a long-term process through.

And why wouldn't you think that way about your football team? It almost felt like if you want to read it that way, in terms of if that was an example of managing up or at least trying to, and he talked a lot about setting expectations and I need to be, a lot of it is I will always be honest. I'm not going to mislead anybody about what I think we can be. If there's a problem, let's look at it and address it and fix it together. But I'm not going to pretend there's not a problem. That felt maybe a little bit to me of, guys, we need to take a longer view of where this can go rather than trying to do patch jobs a year at a time, because that has been the story with the Wilfs.

There's never been a long-term commitment to saying, let's build a young foundation without kind of, I mean, they did it with Rick Spielman. They drafted a lot of guys in the first round, 2012, 2013, 2014, et cetera, but it was still signing a lot of free agents. It was signing guys like Greg Jennings. It was signing veteran quarterbacks at times in the midst of all of those things, Donovan McNabb, Matt Castle, and you kind of go back and some of those are stop gaps but you were not ever fully committed to let's just let the kids grow and play and kind of go from there so you know maybe there was a little bit of that maybe i'm projecting and there wasn't anything there but if you want to take a comment like that and try to peel back

some layers that might have been where it was going i like that interpretation a lot actually i really do i like that because that was the main thing it's sort of like um that seems like a thing that psychologists would do someone is why don't you compliment ben and then i'll uh evaluate what you're saying about yourself by complimenting ben the thing the things that i value yeah i mean it's like you hear about love languages and marriage it's like the things that i value are not. The things that I value, yeah, I mean, it's like you hear about love languages in marriage. It's like the things that I value are not necessarily the things that my spouse values. So I tend to bring out the things

that I would appreciate somebody doing for me. So, yeah, maybe there was a little bit of that. I don't know. It's a projection, really. Maybe we're in, I mean, he did his side session on the couch. Maybe we're making him get on the couch a little too much here. I don't know some projection really maybe we're uh in i mean he was he did his side session on the couch maybe we're making him get on the couch a little too much here i don't know but i don't think there's any level too deep i say this about training camp too you know i say there's no rules of training yeah yeah if you want to write a feature on the fourth string center and talk

about how he's the next guy you do it we've all got space to fill because there is a lot of training camp practices so you write about that, and you have no regrets. That's the Chad Graff rule when he wrote the big feature on Jordan Taylor. And we're like, Chad, Jordan Taylor's not making the team. It's like, well, it's training camp. What do you want from me? So we've all been there. But I think the same thing goes for speculation at the NFL Combine,

that anything is on the table. But I think that I like that interpretation of a little bit of projection to like they see the bigger picture here of what we're talking about of it's not just a next year can we win but the how are we going to win over the next three four years maybe there is something like that it's kind of like how people think that their pets sort of have same personalities as themselves like describe your pet yeah maybe the same thing of like we all see the bigger vision here right yeah yeah but that that could be that could be wrong but i like that interpretation uh overall now were you thinking as a journalist of your over dramatic can we make fun of alec for this i work for the

athletic lead quesia da fomensa stood next to Ziggy Wilf and they looked up at the roof and they saw the long-term roster of what it could be together. Will that get you a subscription? Maybe. I mean, yeah, I see what you're going with. Two in the weeds.

No, I get what you're saying. I think journalism is going to be what is're saying. I think journalism is literally journalism. I'm painting it a picture as though I was there based on quotes I got later, even though I wasn't there. You do that sometimes. But yes, that has been a tactic that some employ at times. And I've done it. I've done it at times, too. Oh, for sure. We all do it.

Yeah, you always do it. It's a good literary tactic at times. That comment was much more for you than me. or than the audience much more just for you yeah inside it was a little inside for sure but uh let me ask you this though last last thing i didn't realize how much me messing around had like how long this has gone but but andrew's coming to relieve you at some point and Andrew Kramer. So yes, we will have a day together tomorrow. Cause you know, what would the star tribunes Vikings coverage be without us flexing?

How many people we have sometimes almost to excess. Yeah, we have gophers too. We have, we have several gophers. So he is, he is coming tomorrow. We will have one day together.

And then he is, uh, in the weeds with all of the prospects. And it kind of plays the type he, you know, he's he is in the weeds with all of the prospects. He's kind of placed the type. He's going to go talk to the guards, the Gopher Center, about how he's climbing up the draft prospect list and if he's better in a zone scheme or a gap scheme. Getting wonky with the offensive lineman is more Andrew's thing. Trying to figure out the big-picture meaning of somebody staring at a ceiling.

Probably a little more mine so you know we all find our we all play to our types what do you think they're gonna do with the the big question of the offseason is what's the direction yeah yeah i think they are going to begin the process of shifting this thing in a different direction. I don't think it all happens at once. I don't think it's like trade cousins cut all the veterans, burn it down type stuff, but I think you are going to see them get rid of several

veterans. I think if they do something long-term with cousins, they will give themselves the ability to maneuver out of it in a couple of years if they decide they want to go in a different direction at quarterback i think they know that there's a lot that needs to change and it just it doesn't make a ton of sense to wait around forever because if if you add and i keep saying

it but if you add a eight and nine season to this you're already in year three and you're already sitting there saying we haven't won a playoff game. We had one at home. We lost it. We didn't make the playoffs. We don't know what our long-term future looks like in a few spots. I just don't think they have as much time. I mean, it's weird because they've been here for a year, but I think, and I think they know this, that you don't have as much time to get it right in the NFL and build the foundation that you want to build as you might think when you first get hired. I mean, everybody, when they do those first press conferences, it's, this is going to be a 10 year thing and it's going to be this beautiful marriage and everything's going to be great. We're going to win championships and everybody's going to get along forever.

That is not that common. And I think both of these guys are clear-eyed enough to know that so i i think they get it that this has to start to i mean that they run it back for five six years without any mitigating factors i just i don't think it's going to go that way uh you are a former baseball writer i'll use a baseball cliche it's getting late early yeah it sure is because yogi barrow if you have a first round out no one remembers that you won 13 games they remember that you got beat by the giants who were not that good of a team right and then you go like you said then you go eight nine and if you still have the same quarterback after that after you're right like how can you yeah and how can and also at some point you have to make it your roster yep totally a hundred percent completely and then you know just eliminating the 2021 draft

class made some progress toward this yeah but what you're looking for as a gm is like 90 of the roster is yours yeah and then you kept the good parts from before and that's where you go and it's your whole thing and it ties into what he said about like now having it in his blood to be the Minnesota Vikings general manager and what that means. Like, OK, but now make it yours. It was not yours last year. Make it yours. And I agree with you. I think they want to do that, but I don't think it's going to be radical. No, but I think it will be a, quote, process of making it to that place, which probably is 2024. Yeah. And you're going to see, I think them take more steps towards, cause they just didn't take those steps last year. I mean, really it was, let's keep it the way it was. And we all kind of thought, well, okay, how much of that is a directive from ownership of what they're being asked to do, you know, we have probably not gotten a full answer to that question. I don't know that we ever will, but you know, that was, I think a reasonable educated guess as to last year. I don't think we're going to be in that same spot when the 90 man roster for training camp

is complete. I don't think it's going to look exactly as it did last year. I think they know that. I think they understand that there's just no way around that. I agree. Ben Gessling, Star Tribune. You can read his work in the newspaper. You can.

Yeah. Or on our website. But yeah, newspaper is good too. But they'll deliver it to your home. They will. It's an amazing service. Yeah. If you want it.

Yeah. Mine, we had a Sunday paper. There was snow on the doorstep. You know, all the snow this weekend. I had to take one step outside to grab it, and all the news that's fit to print was right there for me. Remarkable stuff, but great to have you on. Yeah, always fun.

We get together and break down all these things and share a couple inside jokes. You always lead the league at Inside Jokes. I do like to make deep-cut jokes on these things. Once upon a time, you were leading the pod, and I was the side person, and you always did did that so i feel like it's kind of an homage to the old purple podcast yes days yes 2016 yeah we probably went even deeper cuts with the inside jokes back then far right so yeah it's one of those things where like nobody's gonna get this but we did so what

the heck anyway well uh enjoy uh some high velocity at the jw or whatever you're planning on tonight uh as we always do yes i'm sure we'll be there so thanks for yeah we will for sure thanks for all of your time and uh we'll get together soon man sounds good