Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Talk me into the Vikings heading in the right direction ft. Bears podcaster Lorin Cox

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Matthew Coller and Locked On Bears podcaster Lorin Cox get into a deep NFC North dive during a game of Talk Me Into, in which they discuss Justin Fields, the Vikings' direction and what could bring Lions fans down about Dan Campbell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and returning to the show, one of my favorite guests, Lauren Cox from Locked On Bears, as we approach NFL training camps starting. And I've been going through, Lauren, a lot of the positional previews and stuff and going through the big storylines and everything else. But I wanted to take a little bit of a diversion from that and talk about the NFC North. And there's only really one way to do it.

That's not to say, what do you think of the Bears, Lauren? Because, you know, that's not very exciting. That's to play a game of Talk Me Into. And I've sort of explained to you off the air what Talk Me into is, but I think you should be very excited for this. This is one of my favorite games and one of the ones that listeners like the most. Oh, I've been looking forward to this ever since you brought it up. I'm going to do my best to talk you into it, but I don't know. We tend to be pretty agreeable here. So I'll try and try and try and spark this up a little bit. That is one of the best parts is that with talk me into you're trying to talk the other person into things that

you might not even necessarily believe so that's how it works is i ask you to talk me into something and you have to do it whether you believe it or not and then we'll talk about whether you actually believe it or not and then you ask me and then we'll kind of grade each other how well we did trying to talk each other into it. And I think when it comes to the NFC North and the Bears, there's really only one place to start with. Talk me into and you can use, you know, whatever lines or Packers storylines you want here for talk me into. You could be as weird as you want. That's also a rule I don't bring up enough. It's like if you want to go way off in into left field with the talk me into absolutely feel free

but I got to go straight forward here and you got to talk me into Justin Fields being considered a top 10 NFL quarterback by the end of the 2023 season yeah I think Justin Fields being considered a top 10 quarterback by the end of the season will not come from exactly where he finishes in terms of like volume passing yards right those the exact like box score stats might not be the perfect measurement of him being that top 10 quarterback certainly it could be when things if things really go the right way but i think you know like even think back to like last year jaylen hurts this season like he did not have 4 000 yards last season he threw for 3 722 touchdowns at six interceptions which is a fine box score but not like a oh my god that's a surefire like top 10

great quarterback performance but to me justin fields can finish as that top 10 quarterback because you've got an offensive line in chicago now where for the first time in what feels like my lifetime but certainly like in the last like decade, by the start of OTAs and minicamp, they have the same five starting offensive linemen like in place, no competition, no piecing guys around. They've got that group set. There's some young guys,

but they're ascending players that are going to continue to get better. You add DJ Moore and Chase Claypool getting his first off season in the Bears kind of feels like almost like it's his first run through with the team to get on the same page with Fields and not just be thrown in halfway through the season to add with then Darnell Mooney you feel like he's got a wide receiving core that has strength at the top and a little bit of depth too you can withstand an injury there if you need to and you've got a variety of skill sets some vertical speed you got some size in Claypool you got some route running ability and some shiftiness after the catch you've've got like a little bit of everything there. You've then added another

receiver at tight end in Robert Tanyan to give you more versatility with your offensive looks. You can go with more two tight end sets and have a passing threat there in addition to the running threat. And of course, you know, you can go three wide receivers pretty easily with those guys. And you've got a nice rotation in the backfield of Khalil Herbert, Dante Foreman, and then the rookie Roshan Johnson to feel like you've got a variety of ball carriers to take the ball out of Fields' hands, and everything lines up for an offense that is primed to take a step forward. And we saw last season the Bears were 1-7 in one-score games. They were right there.

They lost the Eagles by five. They were right there against a Super Bowl team late in that season when the Bears were not a good team. They almost beat the Miami Dolphins. And a few of those games ended with, you know, a drop pass here or a sack there or an incompletion there that wasn't exactly like a purely a bad mistake by Justin Fields. It was just a reflection of so poorly the supporting cast around him.

So everything is in a great position for him to take that step forward, to do everything he did dynamically with his legs last season and now add like real weapons, real pass protection, and a real backfield. Well, the backfield was fine last season, but to really culminate in that big year three step forward

to where he could be considered that top 10 quarterback as, you know, a 3,500 yard passer, but you add maybe 1,000 rushing yards in it, and maybe he becomes closer to top 10 in like all purpose yards from a quarterback. I laughing yesterday about twitter you and i were talking about social media and stuff uh before we went on and i saw a comparison of kirk cousins and josh allen that left out um about 3 000 yards and 30 touchdowns uh that josh allen has on the ground um so we're

always having to kind of evaluate these things differently, as you mentioned, from just back of the baseball card when we're talking about who is top 10. And then you have lots of different metrics of QBR and PFF grade and EPA. And so who decides who the top 10 quarterbacks really a little bit vague there. But I think that you did a very effective job of talking me into all the reasons that justin fields should take the step forward but i don't know that you covered the reason he will and i think as far as he if he will it's going to depend on the man not taking the sacks and i know this from watching lots of kirk cousins a guy who takes a lot of sacks generally throughout his history,

is that we usually look at those five fat dudes up front and go like, ah, that guard. And, you know, look, a lot of times, and Akeem Hicks can testify to this, but a lot of times it is the guard that, you know, Kirk Cousins can't escape. But also I think there's been enough looking into this that quarterbacks are responsible for a lot of their sacks. And this is what concerns me about Justin Fields is getting rid of the football and and really just playing on time

football where it's hit the back foot let it go you just don't see enough of that from him and I wonder does that change just because the circumstance is better yeah I think that's a fair that's a fair criticism and a fair question that is the most unanswered at this point i think some of it can be having more faith in your wide receivers that they're going to be where you expect them to be when they're supposed to be there so that you can be a little bit more trusting in in your quick trigger and feel like okay like this is not equinemius St. Brown and Dante Pettis. And I'm not sure if the timing is going to be there on this crow route of

this quick slant. Whereas DJ Moore and Darla Mooney, you can trust a little bit more to be there when they need to be there. But legitimately, I know like some of this is just fields himself has to improve it. And there's not a good way to be like, here's why I know that he's going to develop in the personal way that I think he should develop. That's that there isn't a there isn't exactly a clear argument there other than that. You know, maybe he could just have a little bit more faith in everything around him to trust his eyes, because that's what it felt like to me sometimes last season.

It's like he would see it and he just like wouldn't quite trust it quickly enough to just pull the trigger. And maybe now another year of comfort in the offensive system, another year of better wide receivers and getting on the same page with some of these new wide receivers if that can speed things up for him but i like i've always described it for fields as like he makes the difficult things look easy you know the downfield passes outside of the pocket scrambling the stuff that's like holy crap how does he do that but he makes the easy things look difficult like the quick three-step drop theants, the curls underneath stuff that's supposed to be quick and easy. And it's always felt to me like it's easier to teach those easy stuff that he's making look difficult. Those are the easier things to like teach and fix and improve. But whether he actually does that or

not is kind of on him and the coaching staff. And that's, that's the big question. I think if you end it with, that's the big big question I can't give you a 10 out of 10 for talk me into it but uh no but I think that you I mean you laid it all you laid it all out there though if you're making the argument for Justin Fields to be great that's what you're saying it's like look the receivers are going to be on time and open and know what routes they're running because it really was a horrific receiving core not just oh well whatever and I think it's very clear from somebody like Jalen Hurts that if you have someone who is somewhat questionable at passing the football and then give them two of the best receivers on earth and then work with them a lot if there's

something there they should probably be able to make something out of it and then even though sometimes I do still feel like watching Jalen Hurts like oh that was a little bit off target or whatever else oh but then he just ran for 20 yards. And I do think there is a little bit of a regression conversation about the 20 plus yard runs for Justin Fields. He had a preposterous amount of those last year. And I think even historically, when we look at running quarterbacks year to year, it's not like, oh, they get a thousand every single year.

It's 800. It's a thousand. It's 500. It kind of goes up and down and i think part of that is based on you know those explosive plays that you can't always guarantee them i so i would say like if you had a meter of like blue is cold and red is hot for talk me into you're probably in the like yellow as far as justin fields and and that's it is a hard task but uh what would you like me in the NFC North to talk you into? Well,

real quickly, the one, the one point I want to wrap up on that is like, to me, to me, like the way that we described it there, like, I think that's the,

how the Chicago bears are approaching it. It's like, they don't know that Justin Fields is for sure going to improve in those ways. So what they did is kind of like how we talked about, like they figured, all right, let's solve everything as well,

not everything, but let's solve pretty much everything else around him. Then there's no longer the excuse or the explanation for, as to why things might, if, if things don't get better, then at the end of the day, that's on him,

you know, for the most part that that's pretty much on him and they can go into next off season with two first round picks and a bunch of cash race. If they feel like they, if Justin doesn't take the kind of steps forward that they need to to they would be in a position if they wanted to and felt the need to to make a change at that spot so that's what they've kind of done is say like listen we're putting all our faith in him we got insurance we got an insurance policy ready in the offseason

like just in case but it's going to give him every opportunity to take that next step forward. As far as convincing me, this Minnesota Vikings team is so enigmatic for me. I feel like this is a team that like was halfway between like trying to break some stuff down and transition, but halfway between like still trying to win now and keep things rolling. So sell me on the current plan for the Minnesota Vikings working like them winning the NFC North this season and really like the quest is planned here with what they still have and how they've sort of transitioned on the fly and tweak some things and retooled. So me on that all coming together in this vision that they see. So the competitive rebuild, as it is called, which historically is a little hard to talk you into because normally teams do have to do a little Bears thing

where they go to the bottom, get your Joe Burrow or something, or have reset years. But I will look at an example for another AFC team that's had success in the Buffalo Bills for how you can have a competitive rebuild. Or we could even talk about the Kansas City Chiefs with Alex Smith as well. But I feel like anytime Mahomes comes into the conversation, it's like, I don't know, he's an alien.

It's a little different. But the Buffalo Bills, once upon a time, had Tyrod Taylor as their quarterback and a very good roster. They had a good defense when Rex Ryan was their coach. They had a lot of talent on that side of the ball. They had Sammy Watkins was a top draft pick. Robert Woods was there, the most underrated receiver in football over the last whatever number of years. They had Charles Clay that they spent money on. Their offensive line was good. LaShawn McCoy was in the backfield. And what did it get them? It got them a bunch of kind

of middling seasons. And I suppose you can say last year wasn't a middling season, as long as you don't look at anything else except for the record. But I think we know that they were more of a middling team in reality for last year. And what the Buffalo Bills did was they made the playoffs, but then moved on from Tyrod Taylor, took a lot of pieces of that team apart, drafted Josh Allen, started him as a rookie, had a real struggle season, but eventually then built the roster up around him, made a huge trade for Stefan Diggs. And the rest is kind of history for that team. They're a Superbowl contender every year. And if you're the Vikings, this is the plan. It is to play well this year, look to make the playoffs. Then it appears

anyway, and then they could extend him any day and surprise me, but it appears the way that his contract has been handled and his public comments that the idea is to move on from Kirk Cousins, trade up in the draft for whatever quarterback as the bears once did for justin fields and put that quarterback into a situation where he has the best receiver on earth a top three left tackle in the league a top two or one uh tackle combination when you combine them with brian o'neill and another you know a couple of draft picks on the offensive line and then a wide receiver that they took in the first round presumably also one of the top five tight ends in the league in TJ Hawkinson or five-ish, whatever order you want to put him in.

But there's not many. There's probably only six or seven who can really play, and he's definitely one of them. So you drop this guy in, as opposed to what we're talking about with Justin Fields, where it's like, hey, your offense is garbage. Have fun. Go figure it out. No, this is the complete opposite of that. This is much more like a Jalen Hurts dropping in to a great situation

or with Josh Allen being able to get Stephon Diggs eventually. And if you draft a quarterback who is even decent, that should work because you're then moving on eventually from the Kirk Cousins contract. There's a dead cap thing for next year, but then after that, you're kind of home free. You can spend the money you've drafted a ton of dudes on defense. Some will eventually work out and then you rebuild that defense and not maybe next year, but the year after, if you've got year two of a young quarterback. And again,

he doesn't even have to be a mega star like Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes. He just has to be good. And you could build a pretty beastly team from that and have a chance to have the competitive rebuild work. That's Alia. So why, why is, why still try and win this season? So, so vigorously, are they not setting themselves up for having to have a pretty expensive not only not only cap space expensive in terms of moving on from from Kirk Cousins but then also draft capital expensive quarterback transition to have to move up presumably you

know I don't know exactly where you expect them to finish but you know around 500 plus or minus one or two games perhaps not not the point of the argument here but like you're setting yourself up to have to trade up from then somewhere maybe outside of the top 10 of the draft into the very top of the draft which is going to take a lot of future draft capital to get that future quarterback to then not have as much to then support said young quarterback and continue to build around all well a lot of your talented players you you know, you're wasting a couple of years of Justin Jefferson's young primary.

He's not going to be the old by then, but you still, you know, depending on how long you think it's going to take this rookie quarterback to get up to speed, you're wasting some of that time. You're wasting some of the rookie contracts of your young offensive line that you were talking about. Hawkinson will start to get older. A lot of these guys will start to then cost you more and more, which you can afford with the rookie quarterback at first,

but eventually that starts to hit the fan. Why are they still trying to win games this year? Not that you're going to completely full-on tank, and not that the tanking is the only way to do it, but it just feels like they're wasting their time then with this season. I think that you are very sharp in your comments about that because I think there's been a lot of fans who have that same question, and I have that same question.

If you're going to get rid of 60% of your snaps last year from the starting lineup, why keep the one guy who will win games for you because he's good and Kirk Cousins, but of course not good enough to do what the Chiefs did, which was get rid of talent last year and still win the Super Bowl. So you're not anywhere close to being a Super Bowl favorite going into the season.

And I guess I would say there's a couple different fronts that this works on. I mean, one, if I owned the Minnesota Vikings and I had Justin Jefferson on my team, would I be like, you know, we should do is win four games and just have Nick Mullins throwing Justin Jefferson the ball and waste everyone's life for a year because I want Caleb Williams. That's a pretty hard sell for anybody. And I think Justin

Jefferson is a huge part of this because you talk about wasting a year of his prime. Well, you're really wasting it if you win four games. I mean, and then the other part is, too, you're asking Justin Jefferson to sign a contract extension to stay here for a long period of time. And what sells someone better on signing an extension than winning four games and being horrible? And here's the other thing, too. There is a little bit of unintended consequences because when we are playing this game from the outside, we can say, look, just tank. What are you doing? Just lose a bunch. You ever been in a building that's tanking? I have. I covered a hockey team when I was in Buffalo, the Buffalo Sabres, who pretty much announced they were tanking and it was miserable. It was horrible. People got fired. People lost their jobs. It was,

it was gross. And now now look they ended up drafting great players because of it and eventually they will be good i'm certain of that but um you know it's a really hard thing to do it's much harder in practice than it is i think the bear than it is in theory and the bears kind of lucked into it with a new gm where you were in a position where there was no real other option than to be at that point. So expectations were set. But if you go from 13 wins to four, do you think that first take is going to understand that? Do you think NFL Network is going to understand that? The writers who are going to trash Kevin O'Connell, call them frauds and everything else.

It gets real ugly. So I think that they have probably too much talent and too much young talent to say, we're just going to be horrific for a year and then try to draft a quarterback. Also, the other thing is too, I mean, you are a Jalen Hurts tweaked ankle away from saying the Vikings could be right there with anybody in the NFC. I mean, yeah, San Francisco is stronger, but I don't know if Brock Purdy is actually good. I mean, Dallas is definitely a stronger overall football team, but Mike McCarthy coaches them. So, I mean, and then everybody else you go, I don't know, can you really tell me that all these teams are that

much stronger? So if you were to win 10 games and go into the playoffs and you know, there's an injury or it was a good favorable matchup or something, can you go deep in the playoffs with an offense that's this good? And so I think that they wouldn't want to completely forego some chance of having something crazy happen and having it work out to try to go all the way to the bottom I mean I am a big tank believer but I think that that is that is that is the best I could do as far as talking you into not just getting rid of Kirk Cousins and winning four games. Yeah, I think two separate points I want to respond to there. I started to feel like I'm channeling like a reef vibes from like debate club.

Like, all right, let me let me get to your points here. I guess two things. One, it feels like a little bit of a false dichotomy of like either you go, you try and win a bunch of games this year with Kirk Cousins or you have Nick Mullins throwing and getting four wins, maybe with Nick Mullins. Like I wonder if there's a third alternative here where you be more proactive about getting rid of Kirk Cousins. Like it's not just remove Kirk Cousins and not replace him with any, it's not just like take him off the roster, done,

but maybe get some sort of compensation for him in that process. And then maybe even go with a truer bridge quarterback instead of making Kirk Cousins, like essentially, I think the way you're, you're structuring it is like, there is no bridge quarterback. It's, it's Kirk Cousins until he's gone and then rookie. And then maybe you could sign a veteran at that point to be more of a bridge or just a better experience backup that you could maybe start first. But like to have more of a structured bridge where there's somewhere between like maybe you're not winning four games and getting the number one overall pick, but you're winning six or seven. You're a little bit more competitive and you've got. And again, there's not like a perfect quarterback option out there. But is there a way for a guy like on a short term deal?

I don't know. Like I don't want to say Andy Dalton, but like, or even like, I don't know, Jimmy G and Derek Carr were available this off season. They're not perfect examples, but there've been like some, some amount of quarterbacking that maybe could have been a shorter term transition than the amount of cap space and that the Kirk Cousins is going to take up to try and do that transition. And I think the other thing too, is you mentioned the, like this last season,

if a Jalen hurts tweaked ankle away from the vikings really maybe getting a little farther and making some noise would that have changed how they approached this off season you know i know there were financial a lot of it seemed like a lot of the the changes they made were salary cap based and just other like time for roster transition where guys were some of these moves felt a little bit more like inevitable like they hit a certain wall of of contracts lining up to where like could they have run it back if they had wanted to like if they had gotten a little farther in the playoffs how much could they have run it back versus this was just sort of a necessary transition had to come in some way shape or form and and they were going to lose guys either way yeah the second part

of that is i think that this whole thing was really inevitable from the time Kwesi Adafo-Mensah came in because there wasn't a whole lot of answers with every player who left. It was like, well, the Vikings sort of tried to keep him, but didn't have any money. So, you know, and I think they probably sandbagged some of those things like with Delvin Cook. I think they wanted to move on from some of these players who underperformed their histories. Adam Thielen is another one, but could they have really moved heaven and earth to push as much money down the road? There is evidence that they could have. I mean, they didn't restructure Brian

O'Neill. And if they had done that, they would have created a lot of cap space and they actually could have signed Kirk Cousins, I think to a, to a deal that he wanted and they could have lowered his cap hit probably even farther, but it would have been only to a deal that he wanted. And they could have lowered his cap hit probably even farther, but it would have been only to the deal that he wanted, and they decided not to do that. So I think that this was kind of a predetermined route that they were going to take almost no matter what after this team or after last year with this team,

because even the players talked about it last year going into the playoff game. Even they were saying, we all know there's a lot of guys who aren't going to be here next year. So they, everybody understood kind of the deal. This is our big shot. Had they won a playoff game, it is possible. Ownership might've said, okay, we were, we were a left guard away or something. And yeah, I don't know because that kind of has happened before, but the first part of that, Oh yeah.

The first part of that was something I've actually proposed on the show before going into last year. It was the Mariota plan. The Mariota plan was to get a quarterback who we all know is not that good. And, uh, but Justin Jefferson will make him good enough to be competitive and you'll have a good season and a fun season and you'll find out who can play and everything else. And then you draft your quarterback, which would have been, I been i mean look this year they might not have got their hands on any of those quarterbacks and would have still been felt you know like out left in the cold but they also might have gotten a top 10 draft pick that is really good so you could kind of redo these things or they could have been carolina and trade it up for the pick you know so there's a lot of different ways we

could go down those paths but i have liked that idea in the past it does not appear that that's possible to do at the moment so you might as well just go for it and see if you can have a top 10 offense again see if you can go into the playoffs and get a little luck and have a great season overall because Jefferson and Hawkinson are good enough in the line you know the tackles are good enough to potentially win you a playoff game. I mean, they're really one drive away from winning a playoff game last year. And I think that there is something to that to for Kevin O'Connell specifically

to come in and have consistently good seasons while you're trying to do this. It is a hard talk me into though, because we just have seen historically this be a very tough road for teams to get to true Super Bowl contention. Yeah, I do think like generally you've convinced me pretty well. I don't know how we want to scale this, but yeah, I would say slightly better than I convinced you, but not fully like, all right, I'm on board. I think there's some reason to believe there is a plan and a direction for this team.

And given the handicap, the circumstances, the house tied in, like Cressy came in with not a lot of flexibility to work with, and he's kind of had to negotiate this. Like, I see it. You know, I see it. I'm not like, yes, but I see it. You know, a good like 7 out of 10 kind of like can at first how convinced i might be there there's a there was a lot of untangling to do here with quesadilla fomenta and i think that if they had been okay

with uh our mariotta plan to have ripped it down last year ryan poles would be here and not quesadilla fomenta so you know that's it's an thing to discuss. I want you to talk me into Dan Campbell at the end of this season being called a fraud by people. Now, this is as a personal Dan Campbell enjoyer. And I like, of course, his offensive coordinator like everybody else does. And I personally think that team will be as good as people think they will. But that's not the game. The game has talked me into at the end of this year,

people say, Oh, Dan Campbell, he was just a big mouth and that's all he really was. I was worried. You were going to ask me to sell you on the lions being really good. Cause that would have been the harder, like I,

that would have been me trying to argue for something that would, it would be harder for me to dig down and find it. I am. I am not a big believer in this Lions team, at least not like taking a big step forward. I mean, maybe they finish about where they were last year, but I don't see, as open as this NFC North looks, I don't see them taking this big step and being a 12, 13 win season

to take that step forward. I think a few different reasons there. I do think some of the Campbell stuff will start to wear off a little bit like if they don't really really start consistently winning you start to look around and go like okay like this shtick is is fun but it's not it's not like it was we were already starting to get pieces of that when they were what one in one in five one in six to start last season i think there was to start to be this feeling of like okay not only the hard knocks curse but just also like this might be crumbling a little bit and good for them for going on the run that they did they certainly played a few bad teams in that stretch including the bears twice and some some

other i mean they beat the vikings like they weren't all bad teams in there by any means but they had some of the some easier stretches in there i think along with this uh you have such a big loss in the gambling issue for them as far as multiple wide receivers coming off of that team. And I feel like the fact that this was an organization where multiple players were engaging in this makes me feel like it wasn't super strong from a leadership standpoint as far as making guys understand what isn't allowed and what's clear.

Especially after these were not the first players we had we had the calvin ridley situation i think there was at least one other player right around the same time i don't remember the exact order but like it got to this point where maybe players didn't understand the full intricacies of the rules but like pretty quickly you can figure out like hey wait a minute maybe we shouldn't be gambling on these games like you would think you would have a locker room culture where guys would talk about it guys would ask questions about it and not just like do it in the team facility and kind of like try and get away with it or feel like certainly everyone claimed that they didn't know the rules or whatever but you know they teach you and i've never been to law school but lawyer friends tell me they teach you in law school the first rule

law school is not knowing the law it's not an excuse for violating the law and i just feel like they're to have like so many players involved in that locker room right it's not just like one player who went off and kind of on his own made a mistake but to me it feels like when there's three or four of them there's clearly like a collaboration there and it's something that players are talking about and like not to like i don't want to equate by any means what's happening at northwestern with what's happening at detroit but this idea like the head coach knows what's going on in their locker room. They can claim that they don't, but like a head coach or at least the wide receivers coach, like coaching staffs know what their players are up to, especially when it's a group of players behaving

in the same way in a certain activity. Like it's to me, it feels hard for me to believe like Dan Campbell had no idea what was going on. There wasn't like some sort of some, like there should have, there should have been a culture and just like a rule setting of an expectation set in place from the top down like hey calvin really got popped for gambling last year like let's all make sure that we're not doing it or that if we're doing it we're checking with our compliance guy we're checking with the pa like to me that that starts with the head coach and working its way down and so then you combine that then all of a sudden i feel like there's some uneasiness there culturally have some questions about that and then i think jared I feel like there's some uneasiness there. Culturally, I have some questions about that.

And then I think Jared Goff is a really prime regression candidate this season. I think there were a lot of things last season that were above the mean for him. Certainly, I think his turnover luck was high. I think he was a little bit above a lot of his career trajectories in play action and some of the success he had in a lot of different areas that tend to fluctuate quite a bit from year to year. And I think not only are you taking some of the wide receivers away from golf they still i'm in ross st brown but they're not as strong in that group his past catchers i think are a little bit diminished and i think he is himself is going to diminish if the quarterback play comes down a

little bit i think that's really going to be what holds their offense back it's going to feel more like some of those rams teams with golf where they're a little frustrated with like man we just need a little bit more from the quarterback position to put us over the top but at least those Rams team had some really good defenses and the Lions defense was abysmal last season and got better for sure but I don't think it's going to be like help carry Jared Goff's mistakes again's good and so I think as a whole like I don't I'm not sold on the talent of this roster taking a big step forward and I think if Goff regresses a little bit the team as a whole starts to perform worse and you start to be wondering like okay like is this campbell stuff still working with these guys are they kind of tapped out hit their ceiling

and do we start looking at him saying like he's making a lot of noise but a lot more bark not enough not enough bite and a lot of flash but not a lot of substance and by the end of the season you know they're still sitting at around a 500 team while teams like the bears and the Vikings and the Packers, maybe play them closer, beat them a little bit more. And you're like, eh, maybe, maybe Dan Campbell's was still a little bit of a fraud and it's not, not actually the, the heroic sort of exciting rah, rah guy that we thought he could be.

I think you put in a great effort there. I think that there was a lot of good points. And when we think about these rah-rah coaches, sort of Rex Ryan comes to mind for me because I covered him a little bit in Buffalo, but just even his time with the Jets, where as soon as they didn't have an elite roster with the Jets, you sort of saw the shortcomings of Rex Ryan. And sometimes when you are so fast and loose with how you play with the players, like do whatever you want. I remember Rex Ryan saying like, yeah, I tell my players, they could criticize me in the media. I don't care. And then by the end of the season, they did. And it was like, actually, this is bad. And so there's a little bit of like Campbell being so

much of the players coach that sometimes you can lean a little bit toward not being really in command. I don't know if that's the case for him, but I could see it. Like historically, we've seen it enough times. Uh, I really do believe in their offense and their offensive coordinator, but I'm in Ross St. Brown. Again, we talk about ankle tweaks, like you're an ankle tweak away from who is your wide receiver one. Um, you don't have real depth there. There's another thing too, that, uh, one, I think they could really, really regret not drafting Jackson Smith, the Jigba as opposed to Jameer Gibbs.

And there's the yards after catch thing that they got an ungodly amount of yards after catch last year. And that is hard to repeat year after year. It's kind of, it can be kind of random, like how many yards after catch you get. So can you just keep asking Goff to drop back and deliver these short passes and then have somebody get big gains after? And they also like changed out a lot in their backfield, even though their backfield was pretty good. It's a little bit weird. Overall, I do think that the Lions will be the best team in the NFC North, though.

That's not because of what you just did. You did a good job. You laid out all the points. But the one point about the defense, though, I think that they have made pretty big gains on the defensive side. Specifically, I think that we know that the number one thing that's going to determine how you are as a defense is your pass defense, your coverage, because they have a great pass rusher. They've got a couple of guys who can get after it, but they made a lot of big moves in the secondary, specifically Cameron Sutton's a really, really excellent excellent player Jeff Okuda's kind of been a disaster for them historically they moved on

from him and I think that that could actually even the tide so even if there are regressions that you talked about which I agree with that their defense was actually kind of horrendous last year and I think it could they could be so much better in coverage than they were before and I also don't think the bar is that high to win the NFC North. It could be like 10 games. It could be like 11 games. And I think in order for Campbell to be called a fraud, they probably have to miss the playoffs with like seven wins.

And I think they'll do better than that. So even though I don't think that Jared Goff is some sort of dynamic quarterback who's going to make all sorts of crazy plays, I think he's good enough. Ben Johnson's good enough. And their improvements on defense are good enough for them to be at the top. And I also, I'm glad you didn't go the route of like, Hey, they're the lions. Cause I don't think that's a really good argument. I think we kind of have to judge it more of, you know, year to year. Yeah, no, I mean, I, I think, I think those

are some, some valid points there. Like I probably do not credit enough the improvements in this defense. I do have a little bit of skepticism of just, like, you know, like two free agents are going to be your starting outside cornerbacks, and I just have this general distrust of reliance on free agency. Like, chances are that not every free agent they sign is going to end up panning out, and perhaps both of the cornerbacks will. I mean, I agree. I like Sutton quite a bit, and I think that's a good signing for them.

But, like, there's a chance that things don't line up super well you know with like cj garter johnson coming in as well and trying to like mesh mesh that personality in there with with that defense not that he's going to be a malcontent by any means but just there's a lot of different moving parts all coming in together and it's like all right make a defense out of this and that could very well work there's also some some room for volatility there but yeah i agree i don't think, I think the, the division being bad also makes this a tough argument that like that they're going to have some easier games for all,

all the division games are going to be more winnable than they have been in, in a lot of different years. And that's, that's a little bit hard to go like full Dan Campbell fraud. I agree. It would take a, it would take a pretty catastrophically bad season. I do think the floor with the lions is a little bit higher than like disaster Campbell is fired instantly at the end of the year. But I, I am skeptical that he can be the coach that really puts them over the top. Like, especially like a year from now, if Ben Johnson gets hired away, then how he replaces the offensive coordinator spot there can really go a long way. And it just, yeah, I think long-term but this I agree that it's it's hard to be definitive like this year he's going to be exposed as the

fraud yeah right right and said and I guess when it comes to like rough and tumble coaches Mike Vrabel's the same way he's had a lot of success in Tennessee and I think he's a pretty good coach um overall so I don't want to say like every one of those types of coaches fails, but we have seen kind of a lot of them like, like Jack Del Rio and Oakland, they were supposed to be the next team with their car and then they have a good year, they fall off the next year and then he's just fired. So it does, it does happen where we kind of anoint someone who's like, yeah, that's the toughness they need. And then, oh, well, actually he's bad. So I i it makes sense to have me talk you into something packers related so uh what what do you got packers related talk me just because i just because i want to hear it

talk me into the green bay packers finishing fourth in the nfc north for the first time since 2005 oh now this is where it's like that meme with the two hands clasping of like vikings fans and bears fans like yes here we go see this this might be the like that meme with the two hands clasping of like Vikings fans and bears fans. Like, yes, here we go. See this, this might be the easiest.

This might be the easiest one. I mean, Jordan loves bad. I do. I have to, do I have to say a lot more? I mean, we've had really interesting discussions about the state states of these

other teams, but you know, with the Packers, their roster is pretty good. And I think if they had a really good quarterback that they are a playoff team, but their roster is not so good that they can survive bad quarterback play. And with Jordan Love, the sample size of what we've seen is so small. If he just struggles right away out of the gate, they could fall behind early and these other teams could be at least decent.

I mean, I think that you could end up with eight and nine and nine and eight for those three other teams. So if you fall behind a little early and you win seven games because Jordan Love's not that good or it takes a long time to kind of get his feet underneath him in Green Bay, then it's a pretty easy case. And the hard thing is actually arguing that jordan love is anything like if you had said tell me jordan loves the next aaron rogers about it well i i can't really do that because i've seen nothing and if you said tell me jordan loves horrible i said well i can't really do that because i've seen nothing um you started it was like jordan love is bad and i was like well do we know that and we don't but we don't know that he's good either like yeah we don't but I think that if I'm talking you into it

just based on like an odds play what are the odds that Jordan Love is good enough to take a team that's pretty mediocre in their roster has some aging players I don't really believe that their defense every year I hear that Packers defense could be great this year and then it's not it's like good or okay um they forgot to cover justin jefferson in week one last year so i don't know i don't buy that their defense is so good that they could just win a bunch of games like the jets did last year with uh mike white and joe flacco and zach wilson or something like if. Like if he's not good, real good, they're probably going to miss the playoffs. And what are the odds that he's even really good

without an elite wide receiver? I know Packers fans are really, really excited about Christian Watson. And I think that's cute and that's nice, but he's not an A.J. Brown. He's not a Justin Jefferson. He's not a Devontante Adams who is going to raise the play of pretty much any quarterback they play with. And the rest of the receiving core

is pretty young. They haven't paid anyone to come in there. Their offensive line is not what it was in Rogers is peak. Aaron Jones, pretty good, but as a running back, good enough to carry an offense. I think we know the answer is no. So if I think they have an okay defense and a pretty blessed setup on offense, Jordan Love has to actually be great. Like that's how I think of quarterback play in general. Like every situation is different. We're not all running the same course, right? And so how difficult is somebody's course versus what they do is kind of how we evaluate quarterbacks. I think Jordan Love, if we were ranking all 32, how tough is your course?

Jordan Love's might be like 20th or 23rd. So he's going to have to be better than a Kirk Cousins by a lot really to be good because Cousins has Jefferson and has Kevin O'Connell and so forth. And I guess I'm not sure Matt LaFleur is, I guess we'll find out more than just Aaron Rodgers greatness. So I actually think this one is kind of easy to see it and to just say, like, I don't know. I don't think that he's going to be to that level in his very first year starting to get them up anywhere

in this division. I realized in asking that question, it puts me in the position to have to defend them, which really, really turned the tables on myself there that would that one is uh that one is tough but i will say like it doesn't look to me like this packers team didn't get worse in many areas and i think they got better in a lot of areas like i think their safety position i have some real questions about and you know a couple little transitions in the secondary but i feel like i've got confidence in that pass rush with with rashaun gary coming back healthy and Lucas Van Ness added up front and of course that defensive line has always had some talent there I think the linebacker position is getting better with I think Javon DeCampo will be healthy this season again and can get back to some of the high

level play we saw from him and Quay Walker now coming into his second season like that defense like I agree like every year we hear the backers defense is supposed to be good but like I don I don't think it's going to be great, but it feels like, okay, like more of the pieces are in place here. I still don't super believe in, in Joe Barry as, as the, the, really the maestro there. But I think, I think that can start to work a little bit better there. And then like offensively, I don't really see them getting much worse at any of those spots compared to last season. Like they moved on from some older wide receivers, but added jaylen reed the second round this season and all those young receivers have had all this time to work with jordan love at practice over the last couple of seasons and now they can kind of mesh that all together and you're right the offensive line isn't as great as it as it has been in the

past but like i think jordan love can can handle that like it's a good enough offensive line they got a couple of nice young tight ends in there like it's it's a young and ascending group that's going to grow together especially like all those pieces on offense were all drafted in the last like two seasons like it's Jordan Love it might be one of the oldest of their main core offensive pieces as far as the like the skill positions go I mean besides like air but like the receivers and tight ends like Jordan Love is kind of like the the senior of that group so like for them to be able to kind of ascend and grow together, it feels like a group that as this year goes on, could start to dial in and get on the same page a bit more.

And if the defense can just do enough to kind of help out Jordan love a little bit here and there, you don't have to carry them, but just make sure he's not down three scores in the second half. You know, you can rely on a really good backfield. I mean, Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon are really, really solid duo. You feel like the tight end position I think is, is much improved with Musgrave and Tucker craft. Like those guys can give them more effective to tight end sets than like

Mercedes Lewis last year. And I'm not, I mean, as much as Bob time is a Chicago bear. Now, like I still don't think he was any kind of like masterful tight end. And those guys have some real athletic upside to where Matt Lafleur likes those two tight end sets.

Then you've got some really speedy athletic young receivers on the outside. Like they can do some damage and make it a very quarterback friendly situation. And let's not forget too, like Aaron Rogers and Matt LaFleur clashed a lot on how much of that offense was Matt. How much of that was Aaron and Aaron didn't want to run as nearly as much pre-snap motion,

want to do so many things his way. And I think LaFleur kind of to tailor it that way, but can he make it more of a Shanahan style, like super quarterback friendly, even more stretch zone and rollouts? Like, I think they can put it, they can get in a decent enough situation where a little bit like we were talking about

with Fields in Chicago, where you start to have fewer of the excuses around him to say like, why, if this isn't working, is it someone else's fault? And say, yeah, the supporting cast could be better for him. And certainly I think Chicago's supporting cast around the quarterback is better comparatively, but like, you're not going to sit there and say, oh man, supporting cast could be better for him. And certainly I think Chicago supporting cast around the quarterback is better comparatively, but like, you're not going to sit there and say,

oh man, we don't know if Jordan loves any good because his wide receivers are so terrible. Like they're not great, but there's talent there. And the running game should be pretty good. And the offensive line should be pretty good. Like it's all there for him to show what he can do. And like, kind of like the fields question, it's a question of like, what can he do independently?

And there's no way to just like to know or argue like, oh, he's going to be good because of the coaching he's received or his technique is just going to be improved. But they're in a position where the floor is his to take it as far as he can go. Oh, I, uh, I think your rebuttal is solid. Uh, I wouldn't personally say that I think in, in terms of my real opinion, not to talk me into that. I think that they will be horrible unless Jordan Love is just complete garbage, which I think with, I really have a

lot of respect for LeFleur. I mean, I've saw him go toe to toe with Mike Zimmer game after game. And I think he's a very good coach. I don't think it was just Aaron Rodgers greatness that resulted in those two MVPs. I think that LeFleur was a huge part of that and that he can, and that, and that whole group, that whole coaching tree, that's what they do. Like from Mike Shanahan to Gary Kubiak to Kyle Shanahan, like all those guys, they all make life easier on quarterbacks. And so if there's any situation to drop into with a coach, I think that's a pretty good one. And I actually do believe they have a good defense. It's just that every year though, last year we're like, oh, well, you know, Rogers lost his receivers, but the defense will be great. And I'm like, I don't know what. So I think that the truth

is somewhere in the middle and they're probably a nine win team or an eight win team. And that will be determined by one score games, field goals, fumbles, whatever, but it's not, it's not as hot of a take. Give give me the give me this last one let's finish on this one just a 30 second one this has been a long excellent show 30 seconds a nfc north team wins a super bowl ring in the next five years doesn't doesn't matter who just one of these teams wins the super bowll ring rapid fire. Talk me into. Oh man. I okay.

Boy, it's hard to talk you in any of it. Like, cause I, I don't, I mean, I think the, the,

the, the path to a super ring is like Justin Fields takes a Jalen hurts type leap. Cause I don't think to me, it would take a lot of Minnesota Vikings luck to get up there. And like, we've seen them be close, but I don't think this team had quite is that.

I don't think Goff and the Lions are going to be good enough. Like it would take either Jordan Love being the next Aaron Rodgers, like the next Packers Hall of Fame quarterback and rising up, or Justin Fields taking that meteoric rise. But to me, like the quarterback questions for Detroit andnesota in the long

term don't or maybe maybe the vikings draft uh caleb williams and within the next five years he's he's in the super bowl with that team because he's just the next big thing but i don't it's going to take somebody getting a quarterback that's more special than we've seen them play up to this point yeah that's right and i think the the paths there well i mean detroit like jared goff got to a Superbowl before. So I don't want to say that's impossible, but they've got to do it really this year, next year, probably for them.

And then their quarterback future becomes a little like, if they're not good, then they're looking at new quarterbacks and then you have no idea. And then maybe they wasted their window and so forth. But if the, if fields is great, and then they spend all that money next year they're a potential super bowl contender and with the vikings if they hit on some of these draft picks and then you have justin jefferson and you draft the right quarterback then you do

a chiefs then you do an alex smith to patrick mahomes type of thing and then profit so not impossible but i don't think any of us are putting these franchises in the top list of if we were saying next five years who's going to win a ring. I was not talked into that. You did a horrible job with that one. You're like, I don't know. I don't think these teams are winning. What are you talking about? But the rest – sorry.

Not a strong spot for me. Agree. Yeah, that's right. But the rest of the show is terrific. So for like 44 minutes, you're fantastic. Lauren Cox, one of my favorite people to talk football with. I don't know your Twitter handles, so you should just give it if you want to or where people can find.

I mean, you do good work, so people should check out Lockdown Bears. But what is it on Twitter? Yeah, so I always tell people it's CoxSports1, which I say is like FoxSports, but with a C on Twitter. And yeah, I didn't want to be the guy who's like, oh, Justin Fields is going to take the Bears. I don't like to be the homer. I don't want to take the homer take, but I can't sit here with a good conscience

and say Jordan Love is going to take Green Bay to the Super Bowl. So I should have just stuck with Vikings draft a great quarterback and it gets them there because that would at least win over your listeners even more. But Alex. Yeah, there you go. So give your threads, give your my space, give your blue sky, give your LinkedIn. No, I'm just kidding. I invited, let me know. I'll I'll take, I'll take it.

Somebody gave one to me, but there's like no one there. So it's weird. But anyway, well, great stuff. Great to catch up with you again, man. And we'll talk again soon. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me on. It's a lot of fun.