Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Athletic's Arif Hasan takes the Vikings Draft Grade survey

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Arif Hasan of The Athletic talks about how to properly use "consensus" draft boards and why they've been proven to matter. He discusses the Vikings' strategy versus the draft charts and whether getting a great prospect is better than two good prospects. Arif takes the draft grade survey, which looks into our souls and decides whether the Vikings had a good draft or not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collard here, along with Arif Hasan, also known as Mr. Consensus Board. Arif, can I ask you a question to start off? Honestly, I have never used the word consensus board so many times in my life, maybe not ever until this year. And then all of a sudden, now I'm saying consensus board all the time. And on the internet, they're saying consensus board all the time. I think it's really interesting how your idea to grab all of these different mocks, put them in a bucket, and then PFF to look at it and say, oh, my gosh, there's actually something here. It's really interesting because it's kind of changed the way we look at it. Because I think that before it was sort of like, well, I like this pick. I don't like this pick. What are you

going to do? Who knows who's right. And now there's actually a way of evaluating and saying, Oh, so reaching on that guy was a problem. I think it's a, it's cool to see. Yeah, no, I think it's fun, especially because like, like you said, everybody has all of these different opinions on draft prospects, but you never really get a read on the, like the temperature in the room. Right. Like a lot of people like, man, I, I hate Trayvon Walker. What an awful idea to pick him. And you have him ranked eight. Right. Which isn't to say that you don't hate the idea of picking. I hated the idea of picking him first. Right.

But it's, it puts everything like into a certain context, right. Cause you're not saying that you think Trayvon Walker is going to be a bad player. You've ranked him eight, right? You're not saying he could be a bad player, right? And having all of this information together really gives us a good understanding of kind of where the draft community at large, you know, sits on a number of players. Because, you know, the things I've found over the years is that, you know, hey, man, the draft community is like bagging on Josh Allen. And yeah, they definitely got that one wrong, but it's not like they didn't have them outside of the top 100. Right.

They had him as a second rounder. Right. So it gives us a lot of context for the way that we talk about a lot of these players. It allows players that just haven't had a ton of reasons to talk about them, have a moment to shine. Right. Because like, you know, if, if you're like the 20th ranked player, right. And, but you're not polarizing it. If everyone agrees that you're the 20th ranked player, no one's going to talk about you. And so when, when, you know,

that player falls to like 30 or something and someone picks them, you can say, Hey, that was a really good steal. Let's talk about that player. Why did he fall? So I think it's really nice to get a read and hold everyone accountable honestly for um kind of where where they they rank players and and how they talk about players and just kind of the overall feeling of what's happening with the draft and i think we can also say to the teams you guys should know this like you should know what the world at large thinks about your draft picks because if you do violate the consensus board then you're taking your life in your hands i mean i

think yeah you better be right yeah right right yeah i mean if you're the new england patriots and you draft a guy that everybody thinks should be like a third round draft pick then you better it better be travis frederick for you who everybody hated, I remember. And we remember those outliers. But at the same time, there are a lot of those reaches that end up not working out very well. And I just thought it was really interesting that when somebody drops, it's much harder to say who screwed up here. But when there's a reach, it's like, no, don't do that. If the whole world thinks the guy's not good and you do for some reason, you should be looking yourself in the mirror and saying, wait a minute, why is it that we love this

guy? And everybody else is saying, no, no, no, uh, that's not that, that type of pick. But you know, what's interesting about the Vikings is that their first two picks, the ones that will matter the most did pretty well against the consensus board. Um, and so I, you know, look at the charts at the end of the consensus board um and so i you know look at the charts at the end of the day that say oh the vikings went against the consensus board overall but um they did so on their lesser valuable picks the first two picks the ones that will you know really determine the draft class as most first and second round picks do

those ones they actually got good value on yeah you know um it always like it's always tough because a lot of these especially like the the the debriefs that you write or the the post draft podcast or whatever you'll talk a lot about these players and you go through them one by one and if there's like eight picks in a draft and you hated the last four picks and you love the first four picks that's a fantastic draft in your opinion right you like your opinion of that team's draft should be good but it comes off really negative because or even right because you hate you like four you hated four um and uh and and you spent a lot of time talking about a

player you dislike or whatever wait maybe they shouldn't have picked that player and and honestly that that draft sounds like a b plus and that's actually how I felt about the Vikings draft, right? I think I gave them a BB+. I don't know. Letter grades are made up. But I was like, overall, I'm positive. But I'm going to talk a lot about, you know, picking Ed Ingram, or I'm going to talk a lot about picking Ty Chandler. They didn't make any sense to me.

I'm going to talk a lot about some of these later picks that, you know, I didn't think were really smart picks. But they nailed the first two. And if you're going to pick two to nail, those are the ones, right. And so to me, that's, that's an overall, like, I, I don't know, like give them like a C on their, on their grade three or their day three draft. And I was like, Hey, that's like 10% of your grade. I don't care. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. I mean, those are the bonus questions or something on the test. And that's where like a Caleb Evans, for example.

Now, moving up to get him, I thought I'm not really sure I understand. You guys better really love him. But at the same time, I just can't make too much of this because any sort of swing that you guys see something and like on a fourth round corner, by all means, go ahead. Right. Because I think that and this may you tell me if this is actually different but i think that the closer the prospects get to each other which is later on the harder it is for everybody at large to rank them and you're also putting so much focus from the draft analysis world on the top 100 top 50 that you're telling me that whatever website watched a lot of

a Caleb Evans to determine probably not, but did they watch a lot of Trayvon Walker? Did they watch a lot of Louis scene? Of course they did because those are the guys that are going to matter most in this draft. So, I mean, how could you possibly watch two, three years of a Caleb Evans play, right? Versus a real scout whose job is actually to watch two, three years of a Caleb Evans play. That's all they do. Yeah, and they have to like mark in their scouting report which games they watched live, which games they watched tape of. You know, you always get at least four, right?

And usually you get like 12. Yeah, and I noticed that because like I have a variant score in the consensus board to see how much, you know, polarization or how much disagreement in rankings that a player has. And, you know, Trayvon Walker was up there. He had a high variance. N'Kobe Dean had a very low variance, which is very funny that he fell, you know, unfortunate, obviously, for him. But it's always interesting. Like everyone agrees he's the 24th best player, you know, for some reason um and no he's all the way to like 83 or whatever it was um but you know i've got a variance score and i think that that's like really good context because

if you reach on a guy with a high variance score then then it's very understandable like you understand that you know there are a lot of people that are really high on this guy so i guess it makes sense that you would do that. And one of the things I found, actually, I found it right away back when I started doing this in 2014, is that you have to adjust for rank, right? You have to adjust for the fact that we're at the 150th spot or the 100th spot instead of the second spot. Otherwise, it's meaningless how much variance is at the top of the draft because it gets overwhelmed by all of the disagreements and rankings that occur at 150. Because like you said, the differences between players are small and the top of the draft because it gets overwhelmed while all the all of the disagreements and rankings that occur 150 because like you said the differences between players are

small and the amount of time invested in watching those players is significantly smaller and so if you just happen to catch a good game of your 150th ranked player someone else caught a bad game that guy is 200 now on that board that's 50 ranks that's so huge and it's like you i mean you caught a slightly different game right like they had a cold or something um and so uh yeah it like it so when a team does that in like the fourth or fifth round it's just like well it's not the 500th ranked player i get it i see where this is coming from right uh so before we play a couple little games here that i have for you one is a draft grading system that only the deepest state of analytics could really break down okay it's a survey that'll figure out what you actually think you think you think it's a b or b plus but we'll see what you really think um but but i i wanted to ask you about the trade charts because it's just it's become comical at

this point where it's like five right right right like this person's trade chart thinks you're an idiot this person's trade chart thinks you're brilliant i mean how are how is anyone supposed to know this is this used to be like with offensive line play before pff graded the guys and they got like 26 starts he's great right probable must be awesome yes right and then and then other teams they'd be voting for who makes the pro bowl and they're like is that guy good i don't even remember we didn't play him this year pro bowl like so no one knew who was good and now we have payton manning wouldn't have a bad left tackle right right right yeah only all of them uh but uh jimmy johnson was supposed to give us all

of the answers and then pff and brad spielberger and jason fitzgerald was supposed to give us all of the answers. And then PFF and Brad Spielberger and Jason Fitzgerald was supposed to give us all the answers. And then some guy who shares a name with a left-handed pitcher for the Twins is supposed to give us all the answers. Did they win any of these trades or not? I have no idea at this point. So the way I think about it, because there's five, right? The way I think about it is that there's two groups, essentially,

of trade charts. And they happen to be analytics and traditional, but really I think about it like in terms of what does the market tend to think of, of, of draft picks and trades? What is the market for draft picks? And so that's the first set of trade cards. That's Jimmy Johnson and Rich Hill's trade chart, which is based off of historical draft values or historical trade values based off of what teams actually did.

And then what has been the outcome of those trades, right? Because Spielberger's and Fitzgerald's chart is based off of the contract value, the second contract. Chase Stewart's is based off of, you know, pro football reference approximate value. And PFF's is based off of wins above replacement. And those are how those draft picks did. You have to smooth out the chart a little bit, do some fancy math, but how those draft picks did you have to smooth out the chart a little bit do some fancy math but how those draft picks did at those spots and so then you evaluate based off of well is historically based off of what second rounders have done versus sort of what fifth rounders have done the difference in their value is equal to like a third rounder or something like that right and so that's what you

um that's what those two groups are and what what's really interesting is with the Vikings trade with the lions, the two groups split perfectly, right? The traditional market, like the by market, the Vikings got awful value, but based off of how the players do it, all of these spots, whether it's contract or approximate value or the PFF grades or whatever,

the Vikings got a little bit more out of the trade. And so it's kind of interesting, but like, it's so ridiculous looking at all the different trade charts. I can only think of it like those. And if those two groups have disagreement internally, then it doesn't matter. Then no one won the trade. We're fine. Yeah, right.

For me, as soon as we have the names of the players, throw out the charts. Because then we know what actually happened and we can study it but you know we can take our guesses based on who they got and then we can watch it for the future but um so the vikings get a very good safety prospect to some people the dallas cowboys since they always seem to leak their board really liked um but you know still ends up going 32 and a cornerback who has to stay healthy but could be very good and they give away a player who could be potentially great and that's what it comes down to as i mean we all want to have a first guess um but what will really determine it

is how good were you guys at evaluating jameson williams because that's who was going there it was either him or kyle hamilton or jordan dav Davis so if any of those guys become stars then we get to go back if Louis seen does not or Andrew Booth does not and then we go that didn't win that one I mean that's really how we have to do it because when you have a good case for both sides of it of like well they need bodies they need human beings they need draft picks players but then on the other side they also need great players because they have one great player who is under the age of 30 uh i mean well brian o'neill is a is a really good player sure but one great player and that's justin jefferson on the whole roster under the age of 30 your other great players phelan harrison smith eric kendricks are not

the best versions of themselves already at this point and won't be getting better. And if you want to win a Superbowl, I mean, how many great players did the Rams have that they're probably like what five, six, seven great players. I mean, that's probably what you need if you're going to win a Superbowl. And so where are you getting those? Are you getting them at 32? Are you getting them at 42? Are you getting them at 42? Are you getting them at 59? Like probably not unless you get really lucky, which, you know, sometimes does happen. So I guess that's kind of the way that I look at it. Like it's appropriate to go both directions.

It's appropriate to want more players. It's also appropriate to try to want a star, which I think that's my theory on the Jimmy Johnson in part is like old, old James G James J he was like stars win championships. How would I know I'm Jimmy Johnson coaching Troy Hickman and you know, and it's where do they come from? Usually the top of the draft. So I guess there's, there's that push and pull that I guess everybody's been trying to, you know, calculate the math on. Yeah. One thing that I wouldn't say frustrates me, but it doesn't seem to be accounted for in some of the outcome based charts

is you can only put 11 players on the field at a time. Right. And, and so if you've got like nine of those positions, like, I mean, the Vikings have a lot of those positions on offense, largely settled. Right? And so the only way you can improve those positions in a meaningful way that'll help you win games is to get a star, right? And so if you've got a fairly good team, you should be comfortable taking some losses by these analytics charts, because the gains you would have had would have been in the third and fourth round guys that are not going to see the field that often in your system anyway. And so you have to be very cognizant of what the constraints on your roster are before you decide hey when i add up all of the wins above replacement in the pff chart of these picks

it's it's it's really high and it's like well yeah man i mean like that that guy is a sub package linebacker um that plays on third down for like 200 snaps and he's good at it um so his wins above replacement on those snaps is like good but you don't need that guy who cares right so like you need you need a starting linebacker go get that guy right like so it's like that um you need to understand that there's going to be a limit to the number of players you can put on the field and so a limit to the the types of value you'll get out of charts that value having more draft picks. And so, yeah, I mean like,

do the Vikings get, you know, to the 2017 NFC championship game without, you know, Harrison Smith and Adam Thielen and Stefan Diggs just being crazy good at what they do. No, right.

Like if, if they had three fourth round picks equivalent to what Harrison Smith does, they don't get there. Right. And so you do need to grab some guys that are going to swing games for you. And where the Vikings think they are, you kind of think, well, you think you're about to compete.

You think you're going to win a division. You think you're going to win in the playoffs. Grab a star. I don't know. Folks, while there is plenty of classic football gear to check out at SodaStick, the hockey playoffs are beginning, and you can jump on board with SodaStick's amazing hockey designs. Dollar Bill, Krill, Moose, Madonna, the old North Stars logo. They've got everything for you for a deep playoff run.

Hats, shirts, hoodies, and prints for your fan cave. Go to SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. Use the code PURPLEINS purple insider for 15% off. That's how I felt. I felt like if you have two stars at the receiver position, or if you can get your next Harrison Smith who becomes great. Um,

I don't know so much about Jordan Davis. I think that's kind of a big swing with him on the, that one's interesting. Yeah, that one's interesting. I don't know so much about Jordan Davis. I think that's kind of a big swing with him on the interesting. Yeah, that one's interesting. I mean, they're hoping he is Linval Joseph, which is very difficult to be, but let's just say the other two guys are a little more projectable. If you compare, my thing is kind of coming back to common sense when it's, when all the data can't figure out what it's doing, let's come back to common sense on this. And the common sense is let's look at the 12th overall picks. A lot them are really great players let's look at the impact of having multiple star wide receivers historically if you have three it's hard to stop go back to

commanders 1991 man like look look at look at Washington with those three receivers way back in the day then look at the Vikings then look at that like there's only a handful examples when teams can put three great receivers on the field and it's usually unstoppable so is that guy this year's Super Bowl right or teams that are built around having three great receivers in the field now one of them had an injured receiver right but like the whole idea was that you'd have Cooper Cup and Robert Woods and Odell Beckham. And this other team happens to have T Higgins and Jamar Chase and Tyler Boyd, like Christ. Right, right, right. Well, and that was, and that was Cincinnati too. Cincinnati made this bet that if we draft this amazing wide receiver and now he was especially amazing, but if we draft this amazing receiver, then that's going to be

worth more than the tackle that everyone wants us to take to protect Joe Burrow. Burrow got sacked a gazillion times and still just threw bombs to his great receiver and had people open all the time. I think that really, it really did surprise me because I thought that Kevin O'Connell coming from the Rams would push for more receivers. And he just didn't like that. Clearly that was not the case that they would push for more receivers, but you had Robert Woods and Cooper cup already. And you said one more, I mean, even going into he just didn't like that clearly that was not the case that they would push for more receivers but you had robert woods and cooper cup already and you said one more i mean even going into the season they had deshaun jackson they drafted tutu atwell in the second round like some of these didn't work out but i mean it seemed like they were always intent was there yeah they were always saying

one more weapon one more weapon and so now your big bet is that uh jesse davis and chris reed will improve your interior offensive line and that kirk cousins will be a different human being when he has a coach who pats him on the back rather than yelling at him so i you know i don't know like that's that's just i bet i i personally i always bet on roster over everything else it's just players talent over was it this coach's fault? Was it that coach's fault? That's generally how I see it. But well, let's take the survey.

And then, and I have not tried this out. So if it's a total disaster, then we'll laugh at it. But if it works great, it'll look deep into your soul. Okay. So I have five questions, one through five, and this will tell you what you think of the Vikings draft. Okay. All right.

Play along at home, folks. Okay okay how bad was the secondary last year one is extremely bad five is good one and a half is there or do i get digits like or do i get uh you can't no not decimal points don't make this hard on me look that's who i am i'm gonna round up to two then you went with two if you're saying one and a half all right next question how bad was the vikings offensive coaching last year one is extremely bad five is very very good two okay so poor clint kubiak just taking strays uh let's see do you care about the consensus board one is no and five is yes a lot at five yeah i know it pays my bills right made it uh i knew what the answer would be there okay do you think the analytics and trade charts or uh i'm sorry do you think the analytics trade charts or the jimmy johnson chart is more accurate one is the analytics and trade charts or uh i'm sorry do you think the analytics trade charts or the

jimmy johnson chart is more accurate one is the analytics chart five is the jimmy johnson one going analytics all the way okay do you think that teams should draft only quarterbacks defensive ends receivers and corners if you do not think that it's one if you do think that it's closer to five four okay let's add this up and see what we got all right so two four nine ten thirteen so you give the vikings a b for a which is exactly what you gave them i mean let's let's go through these questions real quick though the secondary was indeed stupendously bad last year we can all agree on that and that's where i want to give them credit for what they did with the first two picks it's necessary if you want to win you have to stop the

pass so even right there we have to say it's been horrific the last two years you need some guys who can do stuff in the secondary yeah no it's yeah and and they especially like they need like long-term answers too they can't just keep signing patrick peterson for progressively less money on one year deals so uh they they need to have a long-term answer and eventually a long term answer with harrison smith which i think what the scene pick does i forgot to go through the the grading system was if you if you scored lower it was a higher grade so yeah five through nine was an a 10 through 14 b 15 through 19 c and 20 through 25 is a d or lower so um how bad was the office of coaching last year this is the biggest bet they're making

i think that it was more of a three than a one um but you know it's one of those situations where it's like how what was the what was the driving force behind the offensive coaching versus like what was you know the ability to to coach offensively and i think that those are because mike zimmer had an influence on the offensive coaching i dropped it right because yeah i honestly I think the offensive line coaching wasn't awful. The wide receiver coaching was great. The play calling was whatever, but that was influenced by Mike Zimmer. So I think there was like a,

Mike Zimmer made the coaching worse than it already was, which was maybe average. Yeah, I think he terrified Clint Kubiak. I think he was a frightened, scared man because the first couple of weeks, we spotted some things where he went, ooh, like that's kind of interesting, Clint Kubob yes emotions 11 personnel actually and then gone and then gone and then they were using tight ends that we had never heard of and didn't even know were on the

roster so we talked about consensus board and the charts um but the positional value here i didn't ask you what you thought of that i tend tend to lean like you, that teams probably should only draft quarterbacks, defensive ends, receivers, and corners because of the outcomes. I think another player has to be great if you're going to draft out of those other positions. So how do you feel about where they went with positional value overall? I think that they were basically, I actually do think safety is an important position. I think that they has straddled the line between kind of traditional thinking and analytics thinking on positional value because traditional thinking, it's like the closer you are to the ball, the better,

unless you're a center because they have brains and we don't want that. So, so like, I get it. Right. But like, no, that's not what matters. What matters is who impacts the game the most. And so having, I have like linebackers just, sorry, they're trained pigs. That's what Justice Muscata always says. If you have a great one, like, I mean, Kendricks is nearly great. Right. So that matters. Right. But for the most part, you know, they are replaceable if you've got good defensive linemen and that's already included in the in the position of value

stuff we talked about anyway so yeah i mean i think that they kind of straddled the line there um but you know taking you know reaching on a guard in the third round getting a linebacker uh in the third round or i guess the guard was the second round which is the even more concerning part. Yeah, they did okay on prioritizing positional value. Right. Corners would be good. I entirely have changed the way I look at the positional value just to be based on who the league pays, because you not only need guys who are really good at football

that can win you games, but you also need cheap guys so you can have good players elsewhere that you paid for. And if you're getting $20 million less than the top player on a rookie contract, that's really good for you. The quarterback thing exists on all of those positions that I just named. And that's where it makes, I think a huge difference. So let me just run through this real quick for those playing at home. Once again, just real quick. How bad was the secondary? Bad is one good as five. How bad was the coaching last year?

One is bad. Five is good. Do you care about a reef's consensus board? Please tweet him. If you don't one is no five is yes. And do you think the analytics charts or the Jimmy Johnson chart is more accurate? One is toward analytics. Five is toward the JJ. And do you think that teams should only draft quarterbacks, defensive ends, receivers and

corners? The lower you got, the better the grade is for the draft. So now here's the other thing I wanted to ask you. We've gone all the way through. We're at the end of the road of the offseason there are players who could be added um but you know usually they end up turning out very brie lindy if you're adding them at this point well greg jennings ish yeah um although i mean they almost with everson the way he was playing so they almost got one of the biggest steals very unique circumstance

there but the best you can do is really just some role player. That's not really changing the outcome of the season. And I want to know from you, if we went back now, knowing where everyone was drafted and everything else, and we imagined the start of the off season again, and all the different directions they could have gone like what would have been in your mind the most ideal in comparison if you were conjuring up here's what the free agents signed for here's what they did with the cap here's what they did in the draft versus the absolute best possible utopia football offseason for the vikings for their now and later um what what do you think that would have looked like instead i mean like my brain instantly went to maybe they

should have traded for tyreek hill but i don't know if that actually would have um yeah that one's because the because the vikings i the players that they signed they signed for like a reasonable value it's just like what they prioritized in free agency that was like the primary concern and honestly if they weren't going to go offensive line in the draft which I mean I guess technically they did with Ingram but they should have signed a center right because I mean those those are not too expensive you could have found a good one I guess technically there's some still out there We'll see how excited Vikings fans get when they sign J.C. Trotter to a veteran minimum deal and everyone thinks that he's as good as he was, even though

he's like he costs less than a million dollars against the cap. But, you know, if they're not going to go with a center and they hate their center enough that they're not going to give them a fifth year option, which fair. Do so well earned. Yeah. There's two games were so good. Yeah. I think that,

you know, they should have signed a center. I think that that market was fine. But honestly, like if, if we presume that the Viking strategy is good, right. That they should double down,

right. And extend Kirk cousins and all that. Then. that the viking strategy is good right that they should double down right and extend kirk cousins and all that then um i don't know like it's i'm trying to remember what the cornerback value was because i don't think chan and sullivan was very good signing um but for the most part they read the board pretty well in the draft um They shouldn't have drafted at Ingram. Maybe they should have drafted Dylan Parham before the Raiders could. But yeah, I don't know. It's a tough because I have to like condense an entire offseason and come up with like the best out.

And I don't know the answer to that because I don't remember everybody who signed everywhere. Well, you have an answer, right? So think about it. Think about it this way. It's like if we went back to stage one of the offseason and we imagined a totally different direction that they had gone, one that we thought was possible, like not they should have gone back in time and got Steve Young. Then they would win. Like, not that.

But I mean, but I mean, so like, for example, there's a couple of different ways you could look at this. Like if they had traded Kirk Cous cousins in imagination land and then they, and they could have traded for like Russell Wilson or something. Or in more reasonable imagination land, Baker Mayfield or drafted Kenny Pickett or moved on from feeling Harrison Smith. Like I should have phrased it in that way. Like if they had gone a bar.

Okay. Yeah. They should, they should have phrased it in that way. Like if they had gone a bottle. Okay. Yeah. They should, they should have traded Harrison Smith. They should have explored trade options for Eric Kendricks. I mean, I like him a lot, but he's a $10 million linebacker that a lot of teams will find a lot of

value in. I mean, he's great locker room guy, fantastic off the field guy. I don't see why he wouldn't be worth a lot in a trade, even though you kind of want some of those in your locker room. Adam Thielen, absolutely should have been traded away in that scenario.

Yeah, I mean, if people are acquiring players via trades, which is exactly what happened this entire offseason, if people are open to that, then yeah, absolutely. Trade Harrison Smith to a team that needs a back-end safety that can blitz. There's a lot of those teams that are on the brink of getting to the Super Bowl. Do the same thing with Eric Hendricks. Make some team pay for a linebacker. Do the same thing with Adam Thielenicks. Make some team pay for a linebacker. Do the same thing with Adam Thiel.

Yeah, absolutely, they should have. And then they should have taken as many shots in the dark at young players in free agency, which is a tough sell if you're a good young player to go to a team that just traded away all their best players. So you really have to take shots in the dark. You can't just find good young players. They have to be players that can't leverage the fact

that they're good, right? So players that were, like, you know, under good right so so players that were like you know underutilized like i think last season josh reynolds to the titans would have been a good example of that where it's like i don't know if it's not going to work out the tight the the the rams didn't play you for a reason but everyone seems to like you so let's let's see what happens like i don't know um and and take a lot of those shots um and and see if you can find like you know some crazy athlete at the edge that didn't get a ton of play like or or a super big receiver that was really good in college but just was on the on the practice squad for whatever like justin watson right

like i i think that finding as many young players because if you hit on like two or three of them you've done a fantastic job setting up your next quarterback. Right. Because the rest you can just get rid of because they're young players and nobody wanted. Right. So, yeah, no, they absolutely should. And then you have a ton of picks to work with. Right. Because, you know, Harrison Smith might be a second or third. Adam Thielen might be a third or fourth. Eric Hendricks might be a second or third. Maybe I'm overvaluing these guys a little bit, but, you you know they can help the team win right um and so with that you can uh you know draft kenny pickett or whoever or you can trade those for a future first and say hey we don't like the quarterbacks in this class but man the quarterbacks in the next class look

pretty good let's trade for a future first and have a bunch of draft capital for that and then draft around you know those guys that you just lost except now they're on cheap contracts so draft a kyle hamilton or lucene to replace you know harrison smith draft you know you've got a couple of second round picks draft uh you know sky more whoever to replace adam thielen draft um nicobe dean to replace eric i mean eric kendrick's nicobe dean are often copped to each other right so you just just like use the second or third round picks to replace the players that you lost in the draft some of them won't work out because these players were excellent and you're drafting in the second or third round but take as many shots as you can yeah i think that's the ideal offseason if we

allow the vikings to blow it up which you know you and i both think that they should have right so we can actually now compare what it fully looks like to what it might have looked like. Oh, yeah. Right. This roster does not look like a 12 win roster to me now that we've finished the process. I think that's a good point. Well, and that's the threshold for if you want to be a Super Bowl contender, because I looked back at all the teams that reached the Super Bowl since I forget when it was

like 2000 or 1990. And there's some who make it on 11 games. There's a few that make it with fewer, including the Cincinnati Bengals this year. But normally your average team is at 12 wins and the lowest threshold is about 11. And so when we look at, are you really competing for a Super Bowl?

We have to say, can you be a 12 win team? And maybe that is actually 13 wins now with uh you know the 17 game season but since the rams did it with 12 we'll just put it there and no you're not so how can you get there but also you can actually put names to this and say would it have been better if so like would it have been better if let's just say that it was marcus mariotta quarterback because somebody signed him to be their bridge starter in Atlanta. If it's Jamison Williams, wide receiver, along with Justin Jefferson, if it's, you know, it wouldn't be Louis seen as your starting safety, but let's just say you're

drafting some other safety to pair with Cam Bynum and you're starting to rebuild that defense with the draft picks that you use, let's say two, three more draft picks, that kind of thing. Like, is this, does this have the better bones of a successful team at some point in the next three years than the ones that you have on the field? And we might be wrong about this, but I tend to think the answer is yes, because after you moved on from Mariota, or let's even say they traded Kirk for Baker Mayfield which apparently Baker Mayfield thought they were going to do but you would only keep him for one year you move on from Baker Mayfield you go to quarterback x that you're drafting in 2023

at the top of the draft and that feels to me closer than it does right now where you're hoping for kind of the same thing that the previous regime is hoping for guys who were good several years ago being better. This, this feels like, especially with the divisions they're going to play, that the best outcome might be very 2019 ish where the veterans stay healthy and the schedule just kind of falls the way that they really needed to fall. Yeah. I think if you project out, which like what pick area that you could have gotten for Baker and a pick for Kirk, what you could have gotten for Harrison Smith and Eric Hendricks and,

and Adam Thielen. And you graph that onto where those picks actually ended up going. So let's say you draft James and Williams at 12, then you've got the Kirk Cousins pick, which maybe that's the middle of the second. And hey, maybe that's Trey McBride. Maybe that's George Pickens, right? Now you've got a receiver to replace Adam Thielen.

Now you're in the third or fourth round. Now you could get N'Kobi Dean. Now you can get maybe whatever safety ends up falling there, maybe like a Brian Cook or a JT Woods or some other super athlete that you think might be able to develop. Grab another receiver late uh grab another edge rusher like an epiketty um and you stack like those really tantalizing looking names and all these draft plate people have fallen in love with and talked about endlessly and you say hey what is a team

with jameson williams and jalen petrie and george pickens and amari Barno or whatever edge rusher catches your eye or whatever. Um, and what, what does that, what does that draft class look to you for a team that doesn't yet have a quarterback and wants to next year? I think a lot of people will be like, that's incredible. What an environment you get to throw to Jameson Williams and Justin Jefferson. And then the defense pitches it back to Cam Bynum and Jalen Petrie. And, you know, this quarterback that you really like, and, uh, you've got and Jalen Petrie and you know this cornerback that you really like and uh you've got this edge rusher that you know you don't even have to put him on the field right away he's he's an edge rusher that'll take a little bit of time right and so

let's do that let's let's develop that guy that is a much more exciting team for a for us to cover but I think b for Vikings fans to like buy into right because it's just like yeah no we really believe that Kirk Cous cousins can take justin jefferson and i don't know in irv smith that fantasy players are always talking about um to to to you know be a four five thousand yard season and 12 wins and it's like i don't that doesn't feel right to me it doesn't sit well well part of it with justin jefferson nobody in the nfl has more yardage over the last two years than justin jefferson nobody in the nfl has more yardage over the last two years than justin jefferson and the case is that it's going to be better and like i just think that's

i'm a little dubious about that like better like better than one of the greatest starts to a career ever like that's like wow okay i mean it is a passing league i guess but i mean that's a big ask for that guy to be driving it it's really not that guy who was the issue for why you weren't getting to what, you know, it's like, no, we just need a more now. I mean, look, I, I said, you should be throwing it to him 10 times a game where she'd been put in jail. So like there is that, uh, and they didn't always do that in some of their losses, but like, it's really hard to say that someone could never be shut down for a week or two throughout a season. So yeah, now here's a question though. How do we evaluate whomst is right about this as we go forward them or imagination land? Because it's very easy if they win eight games for us to be aha, we caught, we told you, see?

But at the same time, we don't really know if the imagination land would have worked out. I think that it's a better process. And I think that if the owners of this team had been not who they are, that maybe they would have taken that route if say they were the Philadelphia Eagles owners or the Baltimore Ravens or someone. But I also think that it can be a little unfair to do.

I told you so, unless you could kind of prove it. So how how will we judge it? Is it entirely on just, hey, if you don't win 12 games, you were wrong and thumbs down, right? Like zero stars. Like how will you how would you think of that? I, so I think that the, the typical, like, I think your response is usually fair, right? To say, Hey, I'm going to need some benchmark by which I can evaluate this alternate reality that I've constructed for how you should have performed in, in the draft. Right. And you could like, in theory say, Hey, now that we've got this like look back we

can say these are the guys that would have drafted this is where i project the trade picks to be based off of the rumors that we were getting um and i'll draft these guys we'll see what these guys turn out to be at the end of two years and compare them to where the vikings end up and say which is a more reasonable scenario maybe but that that that, that one is still, I think, fraught with a lot of failure. I think instead the Vikings made a gamble on certainty against uncertainty. They're terrified of not knowing. Right. And that is what imagination land is, right? It's not knowing it's, it's, it's just assuming that maybe you can replace Harrison Smith with Brian Cook or whoever. It's just assuming that Jamison Williams will turn out, which we know like half of first-round picks don't, right?

It's assuming that a lot of these players will end up pretty good, right? And we can't know that. I think in this case, it's smart to just only take a look at how the Vikings executed on their current strategy because it is based so much in how certain they are in how because i think everybody saying blow it up rebuild i think every single one of those people is saying i don't know if blowing it up is gonna work i just know this other one's not going to right and and so like if you compare a hypothetical blow it up scenario to what the vikings actually do

um it's kind of unfair either to yourself or to the Vikings. And instead it's okay. I think just to, to, to grade it against how the Vikings actually perform. If they don't get 12 wins, we were right. I think it's like,

I, however you would have executed your blow up would have been just as valid as how I would have executed the blow up because we don't know how this is going to go. That's part of buying into uncertainty because we don't know where the floor is for a rebuild. We've seen the Lions and the Browns rebuild forever. And it's only very recently that the Browns even seemed to sort of get it and they didn't even get it where they sort of got it. Right. So I know that there's a floor, but I also know what the ceiling is and it's what the

Bengals just did. Right. Like I know what the ceiling is to a rebuild. And so I don't know where you end up when you blow it up and and get back in and maybe the vikings internally maybe they were like well next year's the year to blow it up because they have quarterbacks and if that's the reasoning fine and and and i got and i got too caught up in my feelings about this year but i don't think it is i think that they thought that they could win a super bowl this year and so if they don't get 12 wins i think it's fair to say hey you should have blown it up we were right but that's where it gets weird because they made moves to say we can win a super bowl this year but then they call it a competitive rebuild and you're like uh what

so i mean that's that's very much hey we have to players that's a competitive right we have young players to me that's just hedging on don't yell at us if we win eight i mean that that's what that feels like because there was no rebuild so it's just uh we told you it was going to take time it's to be able to circle back and say we said competitive rebuild we didn't say we were winning the super bowl and uh to me when all of your moves say that you can then you can't hedge like that yeah trust what people do not what they say yeah absolutely and the reason I agree with you on being able to just judge this as it pertains to their success or failure is that even if all the things we just laid out,

even if they traded for Baker or they got Marcus Mariota and they drafted Jamison Williams and whatever number, you know, spent a bunch of draft picks on those other high positions. And like you said, I think it's actually a great idea. And the chiefs do this to try to get former first rounders who may have busted and see if you get one, right? Like Sammy Watkins worked out for some people, for example, like half the teams that he's played for it worked out if they were terrible and, and Mariota was just a train wreck and everything else then you draft at the top and get the top quarterback and if that quarterback blows up well then you just had the worst luck

right like if if everything that if the the imagination land rebuild has to go wrong by just the worst luck of drafting a really good quarterback prospect who's way better than the ones this year and that was the thing that took you down but you did everything else right and you just had bad luck okay but i mean this team needs supreme luck to get to that 12 wins they need everybody to stay healthy they need everybody to maximize the best versions of themselves and even then like they've done a lot of that in the last few years even though they claimed bad luck it's actually hard to find from last year right oh my gosh the the the thing that's gonna bother me for that i know that this is going to come up a ton over the course of this offseason it already has a little bit is the vikings close games right how many close games they lost and it's like well

were the vikings unlucky in close games like i don't i don't think they were particularly i got basically 500 right if i If I remember correctly. Six and eight, but you also, but you also lost the Cooper rush and the lions. That's not luck. Yeah. That's just, you shouldn't be in those close games. Right.

And so like, if they, if they like, they're going to, but if that gets floated and they bring it up, it's like, Hey, we get a little bit better. We flip some of those close games. And it's like, what, this is the team that got into a close game with the Jared Goff Lions and the Cooper Rush Cowboys. Like the issue was that there were so many close games against bad teams. Right. It's nice that you got some close games against good teams. Maybe you should have closed some of those out. Right.

Maybe you should have beaten the Bengals and the Ravens. But like, no, you don't get credit for that. And so we're going to see a lot of that where they're going going to talk about um you know the bad luck that could have flipped and they're never going to talk about the good luck that went their way including in some of the close games that they ended up winning so yeah they also lost the close game where they scored seven points um and they also lost a one score game technically to the los angeles rams but yeah very technically they got crushed that day they got completely outplayed so yeah i mean that one the injury thing again we have numbers for this they weren't one of the most injured teams last year i mean everyone

has players get hurt in in the end oh yeah and people will talk about which players got hurt and the more you list the more it seems like wow you were uniquely unlucky but we've got the numbers i mean i'm glad football outsiders does this everywhere they do the adjusted games lost and it's like yeah i mean the v the Vikings were a lot more injured than most defenses, but man, were they a lot healthier than most offenses? Are you sure that's going to keep up? Are you confident? Right. I mean, it was really Adam Thielen, a couple of games, and that was the whole injury report. Derrissaw may have missed a couple at the end of the year, but I mean, that was it. And a little bit of Dalvin Cook, but you know, he forced himself to play when,

I don't know, maybe he shouldn't have, I guess guess but that's a gig right like three like you didn't you didn't have like maybe vikings fans remember 2015 2016 they were signing offensive linemen off the street i've never seen that in my life where they're just like long baby jake long yeah hey man your knees can hold up for like five games right yeah one good fine come on you're in you have no other options uh yes i'll never forget alex boone telling us all that he should play tackle because things were going that badly for tj clemmings i don't know how like alex boone says a lot of stuff i don't know how wrong he was on that one i mean it truly could not have been worse what they had the tackle position that year and then then they just they adjusted their strategy fixed the tackles and

left the interior to be terrible for five more years what a time uh a reef uh well if people haven't checked out the uh consensus board work that you have done um the athletic is where they can find your work everyone Everyone already knows you though. So I don't have to tell them like where to find a reef for gosh sakes. So, but great to get together with you again, man. And we'll be doing a few more of these throughout the off season, just getting together, shooting the old breeze on the off season, but a very interesting perspective as always, man. And great to chat.

Yeah, absolutely, man.