Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Athletic's Chad Graff says goodbye to the Vikings beat and talks Mac Jones vs Kirk Cousins

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Chad Graff covered the Vikings for several years and moved on to cover the New England Patriots. What is Bill Belichick like to cover? Will Mac Jones be better in the long run than Kirk Cousins? What will the biggest narratives of the Thanksgiving Day game between the Vikings and Patriots be?  -- For more of Matthew's Vikings coverage, head to purpleinsider.substack.com For bonus discussions, interview clips, and more videos, check out our YouTube channel! Interact with us on Twitter! @Purple_Insider Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here. And this took longer than expected because Chad Graff of The Athletic just left town all of a sudden. But is now here for his goodbye Chad episode. And I have to say the other day, Chad, it finally became real. That you now cover the New England Patriots for the athletic and not the Vikings. When I saw you tweet out for a mailbag, send me mailbag questions about the Patriots. That's when it finally hit home that you no longer cover the Minnesota Vikings. But I'm happy for you.

You are near family and you are getting an upfront seat to the Bill Belichick experience. So how is the move? How are you doing? What's going on, man? Well, welcome to the Bill Belichick experience where we are here in this windowless dungeon in the bowels of Gillette Stadium at the moment. My kind of realization moment that, oh, God, I cover the Patriots now was as the Vikings sent out their 53-man roster right at the deadline,

3 o'clock Central time, whereas the Patriots waited until 7 o'clock because apparently that's an advantage against the Miami Dolphins, who they play next week. So glad that McDaniels doesn't have time to prep down in Miami for this 53-man roster. Turns out Mac Jones is going to be the starter. So all is going well here in New England. Well, they used to do that to us here, where they would wait way longer than necessary. So shout out to Kevin O'Connell and Kweisi Adafomensa

for just doing it right at the deadline, like grownups and letting us write about it. But I think we have to talk about the Patriots. We'll go position by position. I'm just kidding. But I do want to talk about Patriots since the Vikings play them on Thanksgiving. And we'll be happy to see you in your return to Minnesota here. But also, this is the goodbye Chad episode.

So we have to talk about also your time covering the Minnesota Vikings. How weird is it though, that like we get to the end of the Zimmer era and we're all sitting here like, oh, new coach, like kind of finally, because we've been doing the same thing over and over and you and Courtney just bolt. Like we're covering other teams. Forget this. Was it, was it Zimmer that you were going to miss so much that you had to leave I thought after Zimmer's fired like who's the coach that's left that would treat us poorly and not say anything in his press conference and give us no information to work off and I thought I know what I'm gonna do and meanwhile Courtney was like where's a place that I could go to cover like

five or six wins this This has been too much success in Minnesota. I want to go somewhere worse. So she ended up in Chicago after the number of times that the three of us have sat around saying, God, wouldn't a breath of fresh air be nice? And maybe what if they got like a young GM and a young head coach that understood the changing landscape? And then as soon as that happens out the door, we go and, and that was the bill Belichick show where he truly runs everything here, which is still kind of bizarre to me that he picks the GM and then the GM kind of still reports to him. And if Belichick wants to draft a player,

he's the guy that does it. He's the scouting department, the personnel department, the coach, the he's everything here. So that's still taking some getting. It's different, I'll say. But so far, so good. I mean, I had 10 years in Minnesota, loved my 10 years, didn't think we were going to leave. But got this opportunity here in New England, and it's where my wife and I are both from. And she was definitely riding the train of, let's go home wife and I are both from. And, uh, and she was definitely riding the train of let's go home a bit more than I was. She wanted to get back and be by family and have babysitters and raise the children by grandparents and uncles and all of that good stuff. So, uh, here we are a couple of weeks later, you know, mostly settled in in New England,

still getting used to things well now you have to raise them to be more blunt with people because uh this is it took me and it's still as you know i'm not 100 there but like a while to sort of get used to the midwest culture versus growing up in the east because in what i've said about the east is like you know everybody who doesn't like you like there's really not a whole lot of question about it in the East. So maybe your child got enough Midwest to be nice to people or not honk while driving. Maybe just enough Minnesota for that.

Ideally, she was there long enough to be nice while still being in the East long enough to know what to do at a four-way stop. I came to one the other day and I'm used to after years in Minnesota of just being like, Hey, I'm just going to go. It doesn't matter if that car, they're going to wait for me. I'll stop and then go. And for everybody else has that same mentality, get to the stop and like, screw you middle finger. I'm out of here. Oh yeah. I got got to defer to some people here or we're going to cause some accidents. So there's definitely been some getting used to. Yeah, the merging, the merging will be a thing that you're going to have to adjust to as well.

But yeah, you and I had the same strategy out here. I was like, why is everyone just staring at each other? I'm just going and everybody else is going to have to figure this out. That is an adaptation for sure also the sports fans there is a lot of complaining i think that goes on with every fan base no matter what uh every fan base has their players they don't like and everything else but the violence level of the east is just different like of a buffalo bill player once fumbled the kickoff return i believe it was actually against the patriots to lose a game and they like mowed things in his lawn by the time he got home or spray painted his lawn like it is it's just a

different universe where you are in terms of the aggressiveness and i also think that uh you know sometimes even for me people aren't used to the way that i even like kind of make fun of the team sometimes or like very aggressively critical about some things and uh there though it's like this is like a four out of ten so two things on that that i've kind of noticed and had to realize one is that the pitchforks come out quickly here media wise like one preseason game where the starting offense was bad for two drives and it's like burn the whole thing down this thing is after they're going nowhere why even play the season and yet like the other thing that i'm kind of fascinated by is how are the fans going to kind of get used to that like yes bill

belichick's still the coach and as long as he's the coach you're going to give yourself a chance at winning some games that your roster wouldn't otherwise deserve and yet like the Tom Brady era is over six Super Bowls in 20 years is not going to happen again um how are they going to handle like I think realistically over the next three or four years they're probably going to be similar to, I think realistically over the next three or four years, they're probably going to be similar to what the Vikings have been the last three or four years. Maybe you get hot and string together a good season against the AFC championship game, but more than likely you're probably second place in your own division behind Buffalo. Now

you're probably trying to compete for a wildcard spot week 16 and 17 are no longer like resting all of your starters and getting ready for you know a two-week buy pretty much it's now like fighting tooth and nail for that wildcard spot i'm curious to see how fans here are going to embrace that or or not embrace that uh after all of the obvious success that's been here. Right. You cannot make plans for wildcard weekend like they could for so long and just like, oh, well, we're not going to be playing at that point. And not only that, but if the Patriots were in the NFC, they're probably a top four team. And in the AFC, there might not be a top seven team

just based on how difficult that is. I tend to believe that they just find a way usually but i also think that um you're right the one cam newton ugliness year was easy to probably move on from because none of us remember 2020 as part of our lives anyway but now if you have a franchise quarterback and you're kind of marred in mediocrity. And part of it too is like they spend a lot of money on things that aren't that great like last year and now they couldn't really upgrade from what they had. So you're just losing players like JC Jackson and then all of a sudden you're kind of like, well, it must remind you a little bit of the Vikings where you go like,

oh, well, you know, there's a lot of good players here, but is this really going to get over the top? Probably not. They've spent more money than any other team, or at least by the cap, on their pass catchers. And that group includes Nelson Aguilar is the number one, Jacoby Myers, Hunter Henry, it's Kendrick Bourne. It's a lot of mediocrity. And I think that's kind of the whole roster, which will be eyeopening for people here to realize.

But the number one question I've gotten from Patriots fans kind of know in the background is you've seen Kirk Cousins up close for a long time. You're starting to see Mac Jones. There have been comparisons right or wrong between the two of them since Mac Jones entered the league. Like how much of that is legit? How much is not? Do you see comparisons between the two of them since Mac Jones entered the league. Like how much of that is legit? How much is not? Do you see comparisons between the two? Do you not? And I think that there are some, you know, natural comparisons. Both are more accurate than they are like crazy

arm strength guys like Herbert or Allen. But I think the biggest difference and where I've been impressed with Mac Jones, at least so far and this could definitely change he's working with Matt Patricia and who knows what's going to happen this season but he has really good situational awareness and um if it's third and 12 the ball is going 12 yards and it might get broken up and it might not work and they might be punting but um god you can tell between being coached by Nick Saban and Bill Belichick, he is he's just off the charts on the field. I don't know if his arm will be good enough to ever make him a top five quarterback, but he just is so good in knowing what to do with the ball. It was one of the most irritating storylines, to listen to draft analysts talk about how,

Oh, Mac Jones, he's just like her cousins. Like, look, their background isn't remotely close. Like, I mean,

Kirk has made every one thing you have to give her cousins credit for always is that this guy has X talent and he has gotten exactly X or more out of that talent. But Mac Jones is more gifted than he is. I mean, he's one of the best in terms of statistically ever quarterbacks at Alabama and just college football in general for the way that he played. And his athleticism scores were much better than Kirk Cousins. So he was more of 70th percentile, where Cousins was more 40th percentile.

I look this up. The only athlete that's worse than cousins, like right now is Nick Foles in the NFL. Like that's the only guy in terms of his height, weight, speed, all those things like that's not Mac Jones. He's more of in the middle of the pack. He gets rid of the ball. And at least so far as I could see, there was something that stuck out to me. And I don't know if you guys have talked about this or what your impressions have been of Mac Jones, but that when they lost to Buffalo, Buffalo just kicked their teeth and was way better than them. Their defense could not stop Josh Allen. So there was nothing really Mac Jones could do in that

game. At the end of that game, every player on the Patriots walked over to Mac Jones, patted him on the head, gave him a hug, pulled them in, gave him some words of encouragement. Every player. I don't know that we've ever seen that from Kirk Cousins, who generally stands away from everybody else during the game. And then when they lose, goes up, shakes the hand of the opposing quarterbacks, you know, and then just has a smile and walks away. Like, I think that their personalities are probably different, which is why I wouldn't be willing to say that they'll just be stuck in mediocrity forever. I think that there might be a little more there. Yeah, the Patriots had joint practices in Las Vegas last week. And obviously, that's where Josh McDaniels is now after he spent most of two decades in New England.

And he said, while the Patriots were there, like, I almost didn't take this head coaching job, not because I was going to pull another situation with the Colts, but I think so highly of Mac Jones that I didn't know that I wanted to give that up. And he's got Derek Carvick now, who they just paid 200 plus million dollars to. He was so effusive in his praise of Mac Jones that I was almost like, God, if I dare a car, Vic, well, I guess I was your $200 million second fiddle. But Mac is, you know, he's in the locker. We're back in the locker room, which is nice. And he was in there the whole time that it was open to the media. He just, you know, is chatting with everybody. Everybody seems to like him. So I think he'll do well. I don't think he'll ever be the top five quarterback

or join kind of that tier of Herbert, Allen, Mahomes, et cetera. But I think he can be, I think his ceiling is just a little bit higher than Cousins. I think Cousins' ceiling is probably ninth, 10th best quarterback in the league. I think Mac Jones can push it just a little bit beyond that and be the seventh, eighth best quarterback in the league. Will he get there? I don't know.

I don't love the current situation for him with Joe Judge and Matt Patricia being his primary play callers. I think that was the biggest difference for me. My first day sitting here was one of the worst offensive practices I've seen in several, several years. And I was sitting there thinking, for as much as I've given cousins a hard time about various things I went from watching like Justin Jefferson Adam Thielen Dalvin Cook Kevin O'Connell was super impressive in the limited time I spent with him just knowing offense talking offense and now I'm watching like this offense that can't get out of its own way run by Matt Patricia what have I done to myself like Justin Jefferson was worth staying

alone just to be able to watch him every day and now Nelson Aguilar is the number one receiver here like it can be ugly at times well also you got the Gary experience while you were here and watching Gary I mean those those bootlegs in practice there's there's nothing like it um but you know the the Mac thing what what's funny about like the way we try to categorize quarterbacks is sort of the way that you just did, which is like, well, where are they in the NFL compared to everyone else? But with a lot of the time with someone like Jones and look, Kirk is free to prove all of us wrong on any of these things anytime he likes. So if he does, then we'll change the way we talk about it. But like a lot of times it is about those small things, right?

Like maybe the talent is somewhat similar. I don't know. But if it is about the situational awareness, I mean, that has been such a major problem for them and maybe coaching changes it. But I don't know, because he's the one that kneeled down instead of spiked when he was in Washington. Like he was the one that said, I'm not the guy who calls timeouts. You deal with it. Like what? I mean, these, these things have been problematic. He also gets rid of the football. Like you see it coming out pretty quick

and he doesn't take a whole ton of sacks. Like, I think that there are, there are these tiny little edges when it comes to whether you win or lose a football game that we've seen so many times it's kind of decided on one drive or or not succeeding on one drive and then you fall behind and then you come back and you get numbers and so forth but you lose by three and it's like oh well it's a back and forth game you're like yeah but when he really hinged on it you didn't get what you needed there and so i don don't know if that's Jones or not. It certainly was last year. But whether that, you know, he's going to have a strong enough roster and a good enough play caller to help.

Can you explain that to me? Like, what did they said about it? They said, we're insane. So we hired the two biggest Joker head coaches to call the plays like Belichick wants to prove so much. This would be like, like if you were a great jazz musician, you're like, I'm so good. I will walk into any elementary school and I will have them play the star Spangle banner while I solo for 20 minutes.

Like what is that? What he's trying to do here? Because I don't understand taking a defensive coach and a special teams coach and being like, why don't you guys just offense this thing up? Go ahead. It's not far off, especially considering he's still the defensive coordinator. He's running the defense and calling the defense and then coming over and saying, yeah, I'm going to pick out some of the offensive plays too. Like he's putting so much on his plate in this quest that he's on to prove that he can do all of this without Tom Brady. And while Brady went on

his FU tour to show that he wasn't just a system of Bill Belichick and he could win elsewhere, Belichick wants the same thing. That is not a hidden or surprising or overblown thing. Belichick truly wants to show how good he is even without Tom Brady. And I think he is afforded something that, you know, when you look at the comparisons right now between Jones and Cousins, it underscores how valuable that rookie contract is. The Patriots spent a ton of money in free agency a year ago, whiffed on a bunch of it. And yet, because of the nature of NFL contracts, a bunch of those are coming off the books again next year, and they're going to have a ton of space again next year, and they can give it another shot to sign a ton of players and to try to beef up the roster around Mac Jones.

Their drafts have not been good, so that is kind of what you have to do to make up for it, but it's just so bizarre. Belichick always picks out his little phrases that he repeats over and over, and right now his one on patricia and judge and who's going to call plays and why are you doing this is it's a process so if you ask who's calling plays it's a process why matt patricia well it's a process is joe judge really the quarterbacks coach like the guy was a special teams coach and then his head coaching time went horribly and daniel jones was bad and that experience makes you want to have him be the one in Mac Jones's ear every play. So that part of it is bizarre.

And then Matt Patricia is not even formally the offensive coordinator. He's the offensive line coach. And so since he's taken over this role as play caller, when the drive ends, he goes over and sits with Joee judge and mac jones and nobody talks to the offensive line nobody coaches the offensive line it's such a bizarre setup that if the offensive line is terrible they're going from having had one of the best offensive line coaches of his generation to now having matt patricia slash nobody um i'm not optimistic that this is going to turn out favorably. I know

that those who have bet against Bill Belichick are often wrong. And yet, God, my bet isn't so much against Bill Belichick. It's against Matt Patricia and Joe Judge. Oh, and man, if we if we have any experience in knowing that someone can step on their own feet, it's Matt Patricia and watching him dial up the same defense, like four games in a row against the Vikings and then just get demolished every single time. And it's just like, no, no. Yeah. Keep doing that. Keep running single high and have a linebacker run at CJ ham. That'll work. No one will be open behind it. I promise. Like Matt Patricia is one of the weirdest,

like painted as this super genius but then just you know kind of gets revealed like many other bella checks but okay if he was coming back to coach defense which he wasn't that great at anyway and i remember nick full smoking them in the super bowl but like okay you would get it like offensive line are you just bill are you just looking at people that you know and having them be line coaches or whatever? Like what? You couldn't find anybody else?

There's no place to apply? This isn't the athletic where you could just kind of have this system where you apply? It's not that where you can so easily transfer. My favorite Patricia story looking back in Detroit, though, was when, and I still remember as we were walking to the practice field, checking Twitter and saw what was happening. When he had the Lions practicing outside in a blizzard to get ready for three straight indoor games. And that was the moment there were many, many, many, many red flags along the way. And that was the one that kind of made everybody stop in their tracks like what in the world is going on in detroit like no wonder his players are popping champagne in the

locker room the day he's fired um just a bizarre setup and so yes it does feel like belichick is handicapping himself and like you don't think it was impressive that i won six superbowls well watch me go to the afFC championship with zero good wide receivers and a banged up offensive line and a defense nobody has heard of. And Matt Patricia and Joe Judge as my primary offensive coaches. Like if I can get to the AFC championship with that, that's almost more impressive than some of the Super Bowls we won. I remember the great Pat Shermer saying it's the players, not the plays. And boy, that could very much prove to be true when it comes to that. It's such a, it's such a odd choice from

him, but you mentioned it like all of a sudden after this year, Josh Allen becomes very expensive and then the Patriots have space and Mac Jones isn't expensive yet. And like, so, so they could make all these mistakes. And this is why we talked about drafting mac jones here it's like you can make all these mistakes and still get bailed out by just the fundamental way that the system works it's really amazing but i do think that i did want to ask you more about the belichick thing uh first of all billy could be a little more creative than it's a process like come on what is that like how people will steal words like woke from like you know gen z or something and they'll be like uh woke huh and you're like no don't that's not you shouldn't be trying to say that like the the youths

are saying process bill you can do better than that but i think that's what everyone wants to know from you here is like what's it like to cover Belichick he I will say gives you more than I ever thought he would like comparing him to Mike Zimmer you learn a lot more just from listening to Bill Belichick now you can't ask him anything about things that kind of matter day to day or in the moment ask about an injury and he'll shut down or you know the specific game plan against a certain team and he's going to give you nothing but if you ask about why they did something last season on third down he'll actually give you a really good answer or why like right now they're trying to switch to this outside zone rushing scheme that the rest of the league is in

love with and it's led to you know a lot of questions here and a chance to bring up gary kubiak since he is one of these godfathers of this but he's good at belichick's good at telling you why they're doing that or why it works or why it's hard to defend against he'll give you like thousand word detailed five minute responses and then you you'll say, Hey, what's the injury status of so-and-so we'll see. Oh, okay. Well, this is, we just went from a thousand words to 2000 words. So if you go about it the right way, you can actually learn a lot from him. And like Zimmer was forthcoming at certain points, especially on the side and would kind of let you know how he feels about certain players. But I don't know the big picture. He was that great at breaking down

philosophically why you do certain things. Belichick is great at that. And it is interesting to just kind of in a weird way, learn from him about some of that stuff. Yeah. I think what I learned the most from Mike Zimmer is about player evaluation. And I mean, it's something that we've said a million times on the show is like Mike Zimmer's problem was not player evaluation. And boy, did that come true on cut down day? Like, Hey, look all the Mike Zimmer didn't hate rookies. He hated rookies who couldn't play. I mean, he didn't hate Kellen Mond. He hated how Kellen Mond played football and didn't believe in him. Just like this coaching staff didn't, it wasn't personal toward Wyatt Davis. The guy couldn't play. He w he wasn't bringing up the linebacker depth

because it made him feel good. It was because Chaz Surratt was a bust like that's it, you know, but he would, you're right. Zimmer would tell us exactly what to look for with players. He'd be like, you know, Trey Waynes, you got to watch for like, doesn't get his head around and get his hand or whatever. And you'd be like, oh, I'll watch for that now. Or like this guy's out of shape. And then, so we start paying attention.

Like, oh yeah, he's running gassers after practice. And stuff like he would give us these hints about players and was so good at like spotting everything that a player could and couldn't do. But you're right. When it came to like even historical stuff, because he came from Parcells like Belichick we thought like oh he would be a history buff or whatever that wasn't really him he was very much sort of like in the moment and also though what I don't see a lot of that I think people think Belichick does but when

I look at press conferences and stuff I don't see him like biting people's heads off. I mean, I think that like that was a Zimmer thing. Like he would absolutely bite your head off. But when it comes to Belichick, it seems like the worst you can do, which is my one time talking to Belichick. I asked him about QB sneaks and why they were so successful. This was on a conference call a couple of years ago, right? Yeah. Yes. There was a long pause. I was like, Hey uh hey bill you know i was just curious like there's this crazy stat about patriots and qb sneaks and probably he thought like we're about to play a game and you're asking me about qb sneaks which i totally understand but that the article was about how the vikings weren't doing it and it was like you're losing on third

down and fourth down because you're not and so i was like uh you know what you guys have this crazy success rate like what do you think that is and long pause long pause execution and then i was like then i didn't say anything and then he didn't say anything and i was like somebody just asked the next question don't follow up and then he gave more and i was like no i'm not quoting that i'm not quoting that i'm going with execution because he's right he's comfortable in silence where if you ask an uncomfortable question or something that needs to get asked or recently about play callers okay take a couple deep breaths it's a process and then he'll just sit there in the silence he's up at the podium and it's you know it's almost like a big auditorium here because there's so many people

so it's like a what you picture what you sat in in college for like introduction to science or something. And he's up at the front and it's just dead silent. He's good at just staring off into the distance, comfortable in the silence, waiting for somebody to ask something else. So that part of it is definitely bizarre and taking some getting used to. Yeah, that's amazing.

So I want to ask you one thing and then I want to talk about like your favorite things about having covered the vikings and mike zimmer um but uh when it comes to this thanksgiving contest which we will have another pod and preview but and we're here so i might as well ask you uh do you think by thanksgiving we'll be talking about a sort of uh make or break game for each team that's like right in the middle of the season uh do you think that we'll be talking about like oh well and since you've mostly covered both here um well the vikings are struggling and they're gonna have to go up against the belichick in a

short week which i think is a huge advantage belichick in a short week versus a new coach in o'connell um what do you think the narratives will be when we get to that moment? I could be dead wrong, and I think I'm going to regret saying all of this as that Thanksgiving game approaches and we play this back, but I think the Vikings are going to be pretty good, and I think that they'll still be in second

in the division at that point, but they'll have a chance at winning the NFC North at that point, maybe a game or two behind, and it'll be, God, if they can win this game, they're right there to be able to dethrone the Packers. Whereas I think we'll be looking at it, and this could be just a completely wrong narrative, we'll be looking at it and saying,

wow, the Patriots have really turned things around. They had a tough start, but now, like they did last year, they've won five or six in a row. And it's not going to be because they figured anything out. It's that they have a tough schedule to start. They've got a couple of tough road games, and they have the Ravens, they have the Packers. And then the Patriots have such an easy schedule from there.

They get the Lions, the Browns without Watson, the Bears, the Jets twice. And that's what leads into that Vikings game. So I think it'll get tons of attention as, look, Bill Belichick's got this figured out. They were one in three to start. They've won five in a row. Here comes Mac Jones and the Patriots. And then I think the other thing, and I know Vikings fans haven't always loved when I brought this up, that Mac Jones angle deserves to be talked about a ton that week of that was the Vikings' other option. They could have taken Mac Jones, sat him for a year, and then given him the reins. They chose not to do that.

They chose to ride with Kirk Cousins. And I think, you know, by that Thanksgiving game, we'll have a sense of, yeah, Kevin O'Connell has changed things with Kirk Cousins. He's improved his situational awareness. This is really working out. Or, gosh, they're 5-4 and headed for another wild card. And Mac Jones is, you know, one of the options that they could have had, and they chose not to take it. So I think that will kind of be the big storyline along with, oh, my God,

the Patriots are good without remembering that they played the Lions and the jets twice leading up to that vikings game are you suggesting a revenge game angle like you know i need i need to do an article where like every game is a revenge game that would be that would be good just a season-long bit just pick out one player or a hometown or something and see if you can make it work for 17 games shandon sullivan revenge game beating his old team the packers they let him go they they the disrespect no but you know that that will um like they could have drafted kenny pickett this year they didn't do that i understand that more because he was taken so much farther away from where they were picking at 12 and it's still pretty questionable whether he was really a first round talent or they kind of reached and so forth but the mac jones thing i mean this guy checked

every box first round talent success in college all that stuff the character he played it freaking alabama so it wasn't like it was oh well you know pit or something or liberty it was like no this guy played for the best program um and on draft night it's like i think they should have just taken him because you just never know and and a lot of the responses were no no no you need an athlete you need an athlete it's like well if he continues to succeed and win a lot of games and by the way joe burrow ran for like 100 yards last year not that he's not a good athlete but like i don't think you need someone running all the time to win um but that that one if mac jones actually wins something

wins the division and surprises everybody goes deep in the playoffs we will definitely look back and be like that was right there for you man that was right there for you you knew you weren't buying fully into Kirk and you have to even wonder if Zimmer and Spielman if they would have gotten along better because that was really the cause of this I think the Wilfs just didn't like the conflict but like if they had gotten along better and they had another option to turn to and traded cousins to the Colts. And they could be like, this new guy, that's the guy. They might still be here.

Yeah, if they talked. And, you know, we've seen that happen all the time with coaches who get one last shot. Basically, like John Fox was that way. You get one last shot because you got a rookie. And, you know, if it turns out well and it looks like that rookie's headed for success you keep your job and if not uh then you'd got another year of several million dollar salary um i'm curious what you think kind of because i haven't been paying as close attention to the vikings i was pretty bullish on the offense at least by the time I left, mainly because I've been very impressed by Kevin O'Connell, Justin Jefferson, you know,

I think is at worst the third best wide receiver in the NFL. Like there's a lot of pieces there that you would like. And I think after watching them and then watching the Patriots, you know, I was kind of reminded what an average offense looks like here I'm curious what your expectations are for the Vikings and again I think there are definitely questions on the defense that could plague them but give me your big picture thoughts on what you've seen so far and where they're at entering the season so the the last practice I saw before recording this kirk threw three

interceptions and had two more that could have been picked and was very upset after practice and the last time i saw cousins act like that was 2018 so uh that's one of those where it's like i am not pushing panic buttons here but i'm just saying that that's the last time that I saw that. And so there, there is something I really wonder about here because I think there's the potential to be a team that throws for 4,500 to 5,000 yards that leans on Jefferson a ton early in games. So even if his statistics are, aren't different, you're better like as a football team and you, and you win by more and you don't have to play every game close't different you're better like as a football team and you and you win by more and you don't have to play every game close because you're running the ball every time you get up by

10 points and you know the whole deal uh but there's another part of me that says will kirk cousins ever be comfortable letting it go and that seems to be the the little bit of the friction here is matt stafford led the league in picks last year, but Matt Stafford does not care that he led the league in picks. Like that guy will throw a no look rocket pass. That's not cousins. It never has been. And I think that Zimmer and Kubiak and Stefanski, like they really worked with what made him the most comfortable running these bootlegs and give, giving him space to throw it down the field. Because when it was like, Kirk, it's all on you shotgun, four wides go fire. Like that just wasn't really him. And there have been some times in practice where I've thought they looked absolutely phenomenal, but there have been other times where I'm like, Oh, he's not comfortable. And you know, this,

you know, the Kirk not comfortable. Look, there's the hitching and there's the like body language. So, you know, to me, it's very much to be determined because I, I, what I think ultimately is that it ends up being somewhat similar, but if you can manage games smarter and Jefferson is Jefferson, you can actually win more just by proxy of those things. And maybe also not having your coach completely not be able to stand the guy and every loss just burns him to the inner parts of his core soul like if that if that if that's the case then maybe you survive it but there have definitely been moments during camp where i went oh i don't know you know that's interesting because when you remove yourself from the

situation and haven't seen them and then people ask you here, hey, how do you think the Vikings are going to be? It's really easy to be bullish because of all those coaching points that you laid out, like just simply not running the ball on second and 15 is a boost. I think he'll be better game management, which is a boost. And then if you just get a little bit more out of cousins or, you know, lean on Jefferson a little bit more, like it's all there to be better. And so it's been easy for me to say, yeah, I think they're going to be pretty damn good, like right behind the Packers and the division. And then, you know, I think when you're there every day and watching it every day and remembering, oh yeah, it's not as easy as just throw it deep to Jefferson, or at least even if it seems it should be that easy, that doesn't happen. Then it, you know, perhaps as a reminder of, of why they won't win 14 games. Yeah. And I mean, you know, like, look, Kirk is 34. So it's, there's certain things that O'Connell is going to have to just adjust as he goes along part of it though. You know,

I will admit, like, like I said, when you see that practice is the last thing you see it can shade how you feel about it but ugly practices happen right and 2018 the offense actually started out good the first handful of weeks and then it struggled as it went along so i'm not ready to say oh i saw a bad practice and it's brutal but there's just been this little tension of Kirk. You are supposed to throw it there, but you checked off to a different read or you clearly weren't comfortable making that throw and through a pick. Like there's just these things that I don't know if they work themselves out or not. So let's, let's, let's finish on this though, Chad. I want to know your favorite Mike Zimmer quote of all time.

I want to know your favorite game that you covered all time, as a Vikings reporter, obviously. And I want to know what your favorite part of being on the beats with all of us was. So those three things. Oh, boy. All right, let's start with favorite quote, and maybe this is

a bit of recency bias because it's been recirculated and there were a lot of them but I still think my favorite is probably end of last season I got there's so many good ones but I think I'm going to stick with end of last season sean manion plays a must win game in green bay and it's just thrown out there a question it's so easy to avoid a bad or dumb or controversial answer to hey did you want to see kellen mon today no i didn't oh why didn't you want to see kellen mon well i see him every day okay well that um that speaks volumes so thank you for that um i think my favorite game to cover was that playoff game in new orleans kyle rudolph catches it in the end zone um i didn't cover the minneapolis miracle otherwise that would be an obvious answer but

that new orleans game was so good where at first the vikings look great it looks like the Saints aren't going to be able to stop Dalvin Cook then the Saints come back with Taysom Hill and it looks like the you know Zimmer's going to lose his mind trying to stop that kind of different passing game once Breeze exited for a bit and then Kirk Cousins makes probably the best throw of his Vikings tenure over the top to Adam Thielen who comes out with a great catch and they win that game. And just hearing the different swings in the Superdome of how loud that got to how just deftly silent it was after was interesting. And then, God, even on that same trip,

that brings up some of my favorite memories from the beat. I loved going to dinner in New Orleans. We had pretty much the whole crew. I don't think Courtney made it, but pretty much everybody else was there. Eating fried oysters in New Orleans was a good one. I think that might be the favorite. There are a lot of good ones from inside the media room and memories. Like, I guess my other favorite, and everyone was included in this, so I'll be able to share it, but we gave out

awards last year. Everybody got to present two awards. They could be to players, to fictional people, to media, to anybody. And so that was a fun day having everybody kind of stand up for a couple of minutes, present their award. And then we got to eat cake, if memory serves correct. Or maybe we got some barbecue catered and whatever it was, we had a nice little meal after. So that might be my favorite. Yeah. So just on those three questions regarding you, because you are a huge part of what made it super fun over the last few years. There were a lot of crazy things that we covered, but being able to lean on each other as friends and colleagues, like there are beats and maybe yours is like this now that are super competitive and people are territorial, but it just so happened that a lot of us were sort of in the same, we all grew up with the internet for one, but also like in the same

place in life a little bit. So we were kind of there for each other. My favorite was when you got in a car accident and thankfully you were fine that we, we put, you know, RIP Chad or whatever promo code dead in your, in your locker, because that, RIP Chad or whatever, promo code dead in your locker, because that was when everybody was doing promo code athletic stuff. So that was probably my favorite. This morning, I almost texted, I probably should still text the new Vikings writer, Alec Lewis for the athletic, just to say, hey, I think I didn't take that stuff down. You didn't. Don't be alarmed. Like you can take it down. Don't worry about it. And then I found out that I

didn't know for the longest time here that there are cubicles. I just thought everybody like left for lunch or something. And that was the only reason I was the only one upstairs. So I finally found my cubicle and it's got the same kind of, you know, place where you can put push pins in the back and hang up stuff. So I almost texted him and was like, hey, do you want to send me that stuff in an envelope? The RIP and whatever else I had there just of mock games that we've played and awards that we handed out. But I figured it might be a little weird for the Patriots writers here to be like, why does it say RIP Chad on his desk? Like, that's strange. You had to be there.

The ring stays with us though is all i'm gonna say but uh uh let's see oh zimmer's favorite my favorite zimmer quote i think was did you see the game like after daniel carlson missed and was like so why'd you cut daniel carlson did you see the game it's just like come on you could say anything and at that moment i knew daniel carlson would be the best kicker in the league. It was like unequivocal. This is going to happen. An honorable mention from maybe two weeks before that quote was the sideline interview

in a preseason game saying, well, if our kicker is going to miss, then I'm just going to start going for two. It's the second preseason game. It doesn't matter. What are you talking about? If our kicker keeps missing, I'm going to go for two. And of course the, uh, there was the tendency to coast and the, uh, I mean, there's just, there's a waterfall of those. Uh, well, Oh, and, and your favorite game I think is mine as well. I mean, we had, we just, as a group, uh, had a really good time in new orleans which is a great city but that game i don't know that like usually when you're covering a game you're just kind of

sitting there and whatever that one was like sweating heart racing like the the intensity of the noise is like it physically affects you and in that stadium you're just out there like there's there's stadiums like chicago it's just a nightmare you're like indoors you can't hear anything it's deathly quiet and rick spielman used to sit right behind me in chicago i was just like don't tweet anything you know just like rick can you see my tweets from there how's your vision uh you know and we're like whispering to each other the offense stinks tonight you know like so uncomfortable're like whispering to each other, the offense stinks tonight. You know, like so uncomfortable. But that in New Orleans, Sam Ekstrom was sitting right next to me and we were like screaming to each other to talk because it was so loud.

And then the way that it ended, the locker room after that was crazy. The Kyle Roof glove, Rudolph glove incident. There are a lot of yeah, a lot of things. So it really it really felt like as you leave though i am extremely happy for you because you're a great friend and uh yeah you know i always um want to be happy for people that succeed and grow in this industry but i personally was sad to see you go because we had so many ridiculous and fun things, crazy things that we covered, stuff that all of us went through together and were there for each other and all those sorts of things at the time.

So with you and Courtney leaving, it felt like, all right, well, now this is a little different. Like we had a group and now it's kind of changed. So wish you the best, Chad. We will absolutely get together again soon. Even just, you know, whatever. You just want to talk ball on a podcast that isn't maybe insane. Like I know you're always willing to go on some crazy pods, but you're always welcome. You're not getting rid of me this easily. It was sad to leave Minnesota, sad to leave the beat, but both the fans and you personally are not getting rid of me. So I'll be pounding down your, your stream yard so that we can pot again. I appreciate it very much and follow Chad's intrepid Patriots reporting at Chad graph on Twitter. If you, I want people to go send you ridiculous mailbag questions, not send them

nineties Patriot referenced is Sam Gash, the best fullback ever. Maybe I need to start. That's going to be a bit. I'll start sending you mailbag questions. Perfect. I'll look for them from Matthew C. All right. Thanks so much, Chad.