Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Bears aren't getting Russell Wilson, right?

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Matthew Coller is joined by Locked On Bears podcast host Lorin Cox, who breaks down why a Russell Wilson trade to the Bears is unlikely and what other options Chicago has at quarterback. He talks about the similarities between the Vikings and Bears and goes into the situation with Chicago's GM Ryan Pace and head coach Matt Nagy and how much longer they are likely to be in Chicago. Plus they talk about the most ridiculous recent Bears/Vikings games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get Coors Light in the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by Scout Logistics and Symbol, your stock market for sports. Matthew Collar here and joining me is Loren Cox. He works for WCLO 1230 Radio and does the Locked on Bears podcast. What is up, Loren? How are you?

Hey, I'm doing well. Appreciate you having me on and love seeing everything you've been doing with Purple Insider. It's great. Well, I really appreciate that, man. It has been a super fun time. And last year, Purple Insider started in May. So the draft was over and free agency was over. And now I have a chance to get really stupid excited about all the things that are about to happen to us all,

including Russell Wilson being traded to the Bears, right? You know, I am not keeping my hopes up. I'm trying to be realistic about this and look at what it would take and why would the Seahawks make that deal. I mean, all the rumors, right, have been Bears, Bears, Bears, Bears, Bears. Russell Wilson lists his four teams, and you can kind of go through the list and say, well, you know, the Raiders just reiterated how much they love Derek Carr. The Cowboys just paid Dak Prescott,

and the Saints won't have a salary cap space for another five seasons. So, like, the Bears are kind of left out of those four teams. But I do think we kind of assume that, like, those are the only four teams that he could possibly be traded to, as opposed to, no, those are just four teams that Russell Wilson kind of happened to put towards the top of his list. All right. But when Bears was on the list, you had to have, like, had your brain melt, right? I mean, this is – I saw someone joke. I think it was Robert Mays made the joke that it's one of the best days in Bears

quarterbacking history just to have Russell Wilson mention the Bears. It's been the best month of Chicago Bears quarterback history. Absolutely. Like, between him and Deshaun Watson, I mean, it's been over the moon in Chicago, all these quarterback dreams. We went from talking about, boy, do we want Jameis Winston, Cam Newton, or Alex Smith to, oh, how about a potential future Hall of Fame quarterback who wants to be here, here?

Like, has he looked at the team? Has he looked at the roster? I mean, it's one of those things where it's like, wait, if he wants to be here, should we question whether something's wrong, you know? Right. Blink twice, Russell, if you're being held hostage and being forced to say – like, you've seen those tweet threads before where they're like, say something that, you know, people would know it's not you.

That would be a quarterback wants to go to the Chicago Bears. That's a good point. But let's say, though, that the Raiders are okay with Derek Carr. I'm not entirely convinced by that, but he had a decent season last year. So let's say that that's out the window. And it's pretty much Chicago or Chicago, or you stay in Seattle, if you're Wilson, where he's clearly not very happy. How would it get done?

Because like everyone else in the world, I went to overthecap.com and I pulled up the cap calculator and I went boop, boop, boop, and nothing worked, Lawrence. So tell me how they get Russell Wilson to the Chicago Bears. Yeah, so like they just franchise tagged Allen Robinson and the team is like $25 million over the salary cap as of this moment. A lot of restructures and extensions and releases are still going to come to even get them back to zero, let alone taking on Russell Wilson's contract.

That's the number one – I mean, I don't know if I'd call it the number one obstacle because the Bears don't have a lot to give up in a trade. But you can always find some combination of assets to probably make it work, even if Seattle isn't thrilled about it. But for the Bears, you can't just trade Khalil Mack in this deal, because if the Bears trade Khalil Mack, they're set to incur around a $20 million dead cap hit from just trading him. To have him not on the roster, they're going to have to pay $20 million against their salary

cap. And for the Seahawks, they're looking at a similarly large number, I think a little bit bigger. I don't have the exact one in front of me. If they trade Russell Wilson, the dead cap space that they would inherit from Wilson is, you know, I think approaching that $30 to $40 million mark for all the guaranteed money left on his deal. So like, it doesn't seem like it makes financial sense for the Seahawks, let alone the Chicago

Bears. If I start to try and put a trade package together, you start having to cost yourself more money just to get rid of the players that you would be giving up to then also absorb Russell Wilson's salary coming in. I mean, it would take the Bears clearing up astronomical amounts of cap space, releasing both starting offensive tackles like the Chiefs did. You could start going down a long list of, you know, a team Hicks might have to be moved.

You know, they might have to do something with Allen Robinson, either trade him or sign him to a contract extension to lower that year one cap hit. I mean, it's really every contract on your roster you have to go through and squeeze out every non-guaranteed dollar and push it to the future as much as you could. So I was assuming that part of it, if it was at all possible, would be extending Alan Robinson and that he would be much more happy to get a contract extension if Russell Wilson was also coming to town. Let's just move past all the details and pretend that those are feasible. They do hire cap gurus and all these other things to figure this stuff out that know the cap a little better than us, so maybe.

Anything is possible. If Brett Favre can become a Minnesota Viking, anything is possible. So let's talk about how good the Bears would be with Russell Wilson. I think just by having him, even if you have to give up a lot, you still become a Super Bowl contender not only because he's good and always has Seattle in contention no matter how poor some of their rosters have been in recent years. He always gets them to 10 wins or more. So right there you start with 10 wins is the floor, I think.

And then there is still enough talent, assuming they'd be keeping Khalil Mack, to be a good defense. I mean, I think that you look around the NFC, too, and go, well, who's really going to challenge you? I mean, if it's not the Bucs or if Tom Brady slips even a little bit, who's going to challenge you in the NFC? It's probably the Packers. And then who if you have Russell Wilson? Well, that's the thing. It's like you're going to give up so many of the other players around him

that I would hesitate to say, like, this would potentially be the worst supporting cast overall that Russell Wilson might have in his career. I mean, obviously they'd have to make some things happen in free agency in the draft, but, like, to make that work financially, you know, you would have two new starting offensive tackles. You might have to give up Roquan Smith at linebacker. Their star rookie cornerback, Jalen Johnson, they really like as a long-term piece. He would probably be one of the kind of young assets that would go in this deal. And you start really kind of gutting your defense across the board.

Like, yeah, you have Khalil Mack, but, you know, you got a lot of other aging veterans. I mean, they'd still be an okay defense. They're not going to drop down to the bottom of the NFL. Like, it instantly makes them a better Super Bowl contender because Russell Wilson will make the level of play of everyone else around him a lot better, and then he'll, you know, the rising tide and all that with raising all ships. But, like, 10 wins is, like, what I would be happy with in the first year

just because I feel like it would be such a gutted team through and through. I mean, you obviously got to put the Packers up there. You got to put the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And then, you know, maybe the Rams with Matthew Stafford. You know, it's kind of an open NFC. I agree with you. But I have a low level of confidence in the Bears being able to properly field a championship caliber team

after everything they would have to do to make that deal work. Quick aside, are you also skeptical about the Matthew Stafford Rams? I don't know if skeptic, I'm not like making them the Super Bowl champion, but I do think Matthew Stafford will play better there than he has in Detroit, and I think it will be a good fit. I don't know that year one he's going to come in and just light the world on fire and be this top five quarterback, but I think it's enough to make them a legitimate Super Bowl contender, absolutely. Yeah, I don't know.

Sometimes when you end up with 12 years of excuses for why someone never won anything, I start to wonder, was it really that? Or was it your very high sack rate or the fact that you're not consistently accurate? Or, like, I'm just not a huge believer in Stafford has been victimized. Like, yeah, they have a bad organization and they've had some very poor defenses, but they've just tried different offensive coordinators and different weapons and they've built this line and everything else. And you sort of still get the same results over and over again with Stafford.

And you wonder, well, how good do you really have to be? Like, can Sean McVay just dial up some play actions and all of a sudden, Matt Stafford takes the team to the Super Bowl? Like, they lost Brandon Staley to the Los Angeles Chargers. And I don't know. Having watched a lot of Matt Stafford not play well against the Vikings defense, I just go, I'm like, I'm not sure. I saw him get sacked ten times once in a single game,

and I'm just not certain that over 16 games he can sustain it because he's got Sean McVay near him. Hey, Jake Miller's been sacked ten times in a game, too, sir. Thank you very much. I've seen bad offensive line play. I know what it's like. But I feel like the Rams were not just a quarterback away. I mean, I just really was not a big believer in Jared Goff.

And I think the upgrade from – I don't think Stafford's going to come there and be this vastly different and fixed quarterback, but I think the Stafford we saw in Detroit is enough of an upgrade over the golf that we saw in Los Angeles that I feel like he and Sean that could be enough of a boost for the Rams, and they didn't have to really give up a lot of other existing talent. The draft pick swaps are obviously going to hurt them eventually, but I think that can be enough of a boost if they have a decent offseason here and don't have to scourge too much salary cap-wise. I think they'll be in that conversation.

I just don't think they'll be quite as well-oiled as a team like Green Bay. Right, good point, and we don't know if they're going to add weapons, if they're going to add offensive line, and you can always work around some of the cap issues involved in that, and that might be the determining factor. I just wonder about, and I'm not a huge Jared Goff believer either, I think Detroit's doing the right thing, having him as like a Ryan Fitzpatrick-y bridge quarterback to whoever is their next quarterback.

I just wonder if this trade is not looking in the mirror for Sean McVay and for that team with the offense and saying, you know, when we went to the Super Bowl, the offensive line was unbelievable. The weapons were really great. The running game was really great. And all those things helped our quarterback. Now we're asking Matt Stafford, who's never truly overcome those things to be a winner in Detroit when there was shortcomings around him. Now we're saying, oh, yeah, now you got to do that, though, because you're here because I'm Sean McVay.

So there's a little bit of I mean, I don't know, maybe it's being too aggressive for the Midwest to call it arrogance on the part of Sean McVay to think, oh, it was actually all the quarterback's fault. What if it was your fault? What if other people have figured out some of the stuff that you did that was magic a couple years ago and isn't now? Or what if it was actually the players and you built a great roster and you weren't the genius that you said?

So anyway, there's always those things run through my head. But I want to go back to the Bears. Sure. Because that was just like a windy road away from your team. It's adjacent. It's fun. Well, that's the thing. It's like you've covered enough games with Matt Stafford to probably have

some of the same observations as me where you go, you know what? It's not all Detroit Lions organizations' fault. Anyway, so back to the Bears. If it's not Russell Wilson, which is, I'll admit, for me, just covering games and stuff, it would be exciting. It would be exciting to have Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers in the division and get to see those guys go up against the Vikings. And I made the joke that Russell Wilson just wants to play the Vikings twice

because he absolutely owns them. So maybe that's why he wanted to come to Chicago, and not to mention that Soldier Field also owns the Vikings. But if it's not him, whom will it be, Lauren? See, that's where it gets more depressing, right? Like last offseason, there were all these good quarterback options, you know, Tom Brady and Phillip Rivers and Teddy Bridgewater. And at the time,

James Winston and Cam Newton both had a little bit more shine to them. And so many other different quarterbacks that were all available and they're all high quality options. And the Bears traded a fourth round pick for Nick Foles. It was like, wah, wah, you know, like, okay, like, welcome to Chicago. So, like, now they're ready to actually make the big splash, and you look around, and it's Jameis Winston, Alex Smith, Ryan Fitzpatrick, you know, and it's like, oh, man. None of the free agent quarterback, Winston is kind of in his own category

because you have the real swings of, like, sometimes he's phenomenal and sometimes there's some real poor decisions in there. And it's a little bit more of a roller coaster that I would be willing to ride. But a lot of the other options, it's like how much of an upgrade over Nick Foles really are you going to get? You know, I mean, is Ryan Fitzpatrick a huge difference maker in that regard? You know, it's kind of a long list of guys that, you know, Jacoby Brissett and Tyrod Taylor and Andy Dalton.

And it's like, eh, you might as well just go with Nick Foles if those are the other routes that you're going to go. I mean, Alex Smith is the name that I've had circled pretty much all offseason because Matt Nagy can't stop tampering legally about Alex Smith. Matt Nagy's had two off-season press conferences so far, and I haven't counted the number of times he's said Alex Smith's by name, but it's more than three because he talks about, you know, well, when I coached Alex in Kansas City, it was like this and this

when he's talking about what they look for in a quarterback, and it's like not technically tampering because he's not talking about Alex Smith, the Washington football team quarterback, talking about what they look for in a quarterback. And it's like not technically tampering because he's not talking about Alex Smith, the Washington football team quarterback, but it's very much like, hey, we like Alex Smith. They're probably going to look at bringing in Alex Smith, but Nick Foles is guaranteed on this contract right now, so they can't just release him and move on.

So how do you make that work with two veteran quarterbacks? I'm more in the boat of go trade up for a quarterback and make your big swing in the NFL draft for somebody that you think could maybe be better than Nick Foles as opposed to one of these veteran free agents that are all the same or a late round quarterback that may only have that Nick Foles ceiling anyway. Absolutely. And it really depends on just how desperate, and we have this discussion all the time here uh how desperate is your general manager to be good in the year 2021 like that is always a big determining factor because i think that you can make a really good case for the bears to trade up and get a quarterback

because as you mentioned all those guys that you said are the same guy. They're all 8-8. If it goes well for Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's 8-8. I mean, this was a thing that I stole from John Clayton. He said if you're a backup quarterback and you can go 8-8, that's fantastic. That's what you hope for. And guys like that, Winston was a backup quarterback last year. Ryan Fitzpatrick's a backup quarterback. I know that the Internet loves Jameis, but I'm not buying it when a guy can throw 31 picks in a year.

So you're left with the only option for any upside beyond eight and eight to be a draft pick. Now, were you at all buying Mitch Trubisky runs play action bootlegs and can win more than eight type of thing that happened last year. Were you believing that? Is there any chance that Trubisky comes back? Those are two separate questions that have similar answers. But I would say when you mentioned John Clayton's eight and eight, Mitch Trubisky is what popped into my mind. It's like that's Mitch Trubisky's future.

He's that guy that you can go eight and eight with if you support him with a good offensive line, some good receivers. You run the play-action Kyle Shanahan kind of style of offense and keep him moving around the pocket. Yeah, he can win eight games as your quarterback. I would not be interested in bringing him back in Chicago, and he does not sound at all interested

in coming back to Chicago. That's kind of been building up here over the course of the end of the season, even as things started to look better with the Bears. It That's kind of been building up here over the course of the end of the season. Even as things started to look better with the Bears, it was always kind of the understanding that Matt Nagy was always trying to get, for years, Mitch Trubisky to fit into Matt Nagy's system and make that work, and it never did. And so then when they had to go back to Mitch Trubisky at the end of the year and they just needed to win games to really save their jobs,

then they changed the whole system and did a lot of the rollout passing and play action and things that they probably should have been doing for Mitch Trubisky all along, but you know, they didn't want to have to settle when they use the number two overall pick on a guy that's supposed to be their franchise quarterback. They wanted to make it work the way they intended to. And the fact that they went to change the scheme at that point was kind of waving the

white flag and just saying, you know what, we'll make this work for now, but we're not going to keep doing this long term. So he is for sure playing elsewhere next year. And I imagine he'll get a Marcus Mariota kind of situation with the Raiders where a decently paid backup with maybe an opportunity to start and maybe he can show you enough to make teams forget about some of the mistakes he's made and remember that, hey, that was a number two overall pick. Who can move?

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and check out the Marketplace for Sports today. They should have been doing that offense from the very start with him, but it's funny about how, well, A, coaches are always reluctant to go away from what they are known for. So he got that genius label after the first year. Oh, wow, you got this offense that's so complicated and there's a million different plays and all those sorts of things. But as always, those things get figured out eventually. And it's also almost like with

the rollout offense, with the play actions, the Kubiak, the Shanahan, it's almost like, oh, that's for quarterbacks who just aren't that great. So we try to, which is funny because the year RG3 runs it, he is like setting the world on fire. John Elway wins the Super Bowl with it. Matt Ryan goes to the Super Bowl, has a 28-3 lead with it. And here's Kirk Cousins setting career highs in quarterback rating and PFF grade with this offense. And you sort of go like,

why is that the solution to quarterbacks who aren't that great when maybe it should be the solution to quarterbacks who are great to try and get them over the top. But that's just so my point is, how did I forget the most obvious one? Like Aaron Rogers last year. So if you draft Justin Fields, Lauren, run the boot. Run the play action. Makes sense. But it's like, will Matt Nagy? You know what I mean?

That's the thing here. I mean, this is why Bears fans are ready to fire the general manager and head coach three months ago. When the season was over, it was kind of like, yeah, these guys are not maximizing the talent. I mean, first of all, they're not making the best talent decisions along the way of who to acquire.

And then even when they do acquire guys, they've struggled to properly evaluate them and to understand how to best utilize them. And some of that bled over on the defensive side of the ball with Chuck Pagano, and he retired. And that was somewhat of a scapegoat move there because they were probably going to fire him anyway. And it was like, even if the Bears, you know, get Russell Wilson,

and that saves Matt Nagy and Ryan Pace's jobs, like, is that good? I mean, it's good to get Russell Wilson, but, like, to some extent, do we want them to be extended and be, you know, do we trust them to continue to lead this franchise in the right direction after some real questions about that over two consecutive seasons? I mean, we were all in love in 2018, but they were a pretty lucky team with a pretty well-built defense and with Vic Fangio and everything going around,

and everything kind of clicked in a way that is really hard to sustain in the NFL. We haven't seen a lot of proof of them being able to get back to that or sustain it when they do get there. I think that there are certain things that someone who covers the Bears and someone who covers the Vikings just understand. And it's unsustainable performances that peak one year and then their team thinks it's going to go on forever. If there is any common thread there other than quarterbacks, you know,

all over the place, That is exactly it. Bad offensive lines? Yeah, I mean, you know, you've seen it, right? Akeem Hicks, man, like that guy has done a lot of damage. Like, I mean, whenever he signed his last contract extension, it was probably in part all the money that he got because of the Minnesota Vikings because he just eats them every single time. Anyway, so, all right, which quarterback would they have a shot at then?

Let's just put the saving jobs aside and say that they recognize it's a bridge quarterback situation that they're not going to get to Sean Watson, they're not going to get Russell Wilson, but you bring in a Ryan Fitzpatrick because you're going to bench him and he'll just accept it. Is there a guy that intrigues you? I mean, is there someone who you think could be there or not an insane trade-up that might actually be a fit with what they're doing.

I will say aside from the draft real quick, one thing that we, one wild card that's in this quarterback mixer, I guess it's sort of two, but other trades, other quarterbacks, Sam Darnold has been thrown out there a lot. Even in Rappaport has mentioned Sam Darnold and the bears by name as a

potential mix. They're not one that I'm super fired up about, but a swing for a quarterback that maybe has a chance to be more than Ryan Fitzpatrick and, you know, long list of fray-jig quarterbacks. The other one, Gardner Minshew from the Jaguars, expected to potentially be available and some fire starter. That'd be fun in Chicago. It'd be kind of like a Jim McMahon style of like punky, you know,

fired up kind of quarterback that the fan base could get behind. But I don't like the team building strategy of trade for Jaguars quarterbacks two years in a row. That doesn't feel like a great way to build a roster. So, you know, when it comes to the draft, it's kind of like we're expecting four quarterbacks to go before the Bears pick at 20. You know, it's in some order, you know, Lawrence Wilson, Fields, and Trey Lance. I would be of the mindset of once three of them go off the board,

trade up for whichever of the fourth one is still left at that point. And however long you think you can wait to do that without missing on them, that would kind of be my strategy. Mack Jolinson, Alabama, could be there at 20. But I don't know, he's kind of one of these statuesque big-arm quarterbacks that sure, he's fine. I mean, he can be Andy Dalton. He could be Russell Wilson.

Not Russell, excuse me, Kirk Cousins style of like stealing. But how much better than Nick Foles is Mac Jones going to be? And I think similarly with like Kyle Trask from Florida, maybe in the second round or if the Bears traded down or something like, yes, he could be a younger version of any of these quarterbacks that we've talked about. But like if I'm going to go all in, if I'm trying to get my future at the quarterback position,

I want a guy that's going to give me a little bit more of that variance that maybe I feel like he could be something special, something a little bit more of that variance that maybe I feel like he could be something special, you know, something a little bit more over the top. Maybe a guy like Kellen Mond from Texas A&M or Jamie Newman from Georgia, but I don't feel great about their set of flaws. And I'm certainly not making that my off-season plan to go with Alex Smith and Jamie Newman from Georgia as, all right, we fixed the quarterback spot. See, we got those two guys.

So, like, if I'm Ryan Pace, I feel the pressure to trade up, and then I'm trading for a potential premier quarterback without having to gut my entire roster or give up 1,000 first-round picks to get it done. I might have to give up my second-round pick, but it's worth it if I can get my guy and save my job. Do you ever think about during draft season with someone like Mac Jones, like I get very meta about overrated, underrated.

I'm like, what is overrated? What is underrated anyway? Because I think that Mac Jones sort of falls in both categories. He can be underrated in that if you get Kirk Cousins for a very, very cheap amount of money, you can win and build a really good team. I mean, you're a really good team with Mitch Trubisky, and he's not good at all. So if this guy, I mean, right?

So if this guy becomes Kirk Cousins and you build up the same caliber of roster, you've got a chance to go to a Super Bowl. At the same time, I could also see NFL people being like, pocket quarterback, am I right? Looks like a traditional type of quarterback. You could see that, and you could see him being overrated. So as we go into the first round, I'm going to have absolutely no clue. But I wouldn't hate it, and I brought it up for the Vikings.

If you are going to move on from Cousins eventually, I don't hate it, and I don't hate it for the Bears, if I'm them either, just because of what the price tag is, and can you work around the flaws if your team is awesome. It just feels to me like, and I agree with you for sure, that he is a quarterback that you can, he looks like a quarterback that you can win games with in the NFL, absolutely. I just feel like if I'm the Bears,

I've had guys like Mac Jones at quarterback forever. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, he would fit right in as this, this quarterback that we're questioning for his entire rookie contract. Is he good or is he not that good? Or, you know, is he, or more so, is he worth a quarterback contract extension, right? I mean, by the time he gets done with his rookie year, whatever the top of the quarterback market is going to be is going to be where he's going to be pushing.

And I feel like he's this kind of quarterback that we're never going to be quite sure if he's worth top quarterback money because he needs all this supporting cast. And you end up kind of in this weird limbo of, like, he's good and he can win games with us, but he's not so good that we're going to pay him, you know, the Kirk Cousins style contract when his contract ends up. And I know that's thinking a little bit too far down the line. And, you know, there's always this chance that he could be something even better than that and better than we project. But, like, I would much rather go with the guy that gives me that might be more of a complete bust.

Like, I don't think Mac Jones is just going to be this awful bust quarterback. It seems like he's a much safer prospect. But I'm tired of safe quarterback prospects in Chicago. You know, I want the Patrick Mahomes type swing for the fences where it's like, I don't know if he's going to work out. But if he does, that might work out really well. And if he doesn't work out, it might go up in flames really badly. Yeah, which has also happened all the time with Chicago quarterbacks. That's an interesting

thought, though. And I think that there are Vikings fans who would say the same things. Like, we want to be the team that has fun, even if there's some risk there. And there are other people who say, look, if you draft that guy and he goes bust, you ruin your organization for a while. I mean, Christian Ponder really set back the Vikings and, again, with the Bears. He's been set back many a time by a quarterback that didn't work out. So what's the throw a parade or raise a banner for the offseason and then for the Bears? I mean, what would have to happen for people to be celebrating in the streets of Chicago

because they won the offseason? Aside from Wilson. Wilson's kind of obvious. Of course they would throw a parade there. But aside from things that are more reasonable to actually happen. Yeah, I think the only thing that would really get people fired up is a trade-up for one of those quarterbacks. And even then, you'll still get Bears fans that are upset about it. I mean, of course. That's part of how this goes.

Like for me, it would be trading it for Justin Fields or Trey Lance. I'm assuming kind of Lawrence and Wilson are probably going to be one and two there. And, you know, there's a chance that all four of those guys could go in the top ten or somebody could start to slide a little bit. I mean, that is what would get me fired up because I think to your point there about, you know, wanting something a little bit more exciting even if there's some ups and downs with it. It's like if I had a general – if I had confidence in my general manager and coaching staff to consistently build a strong supporting cast around a quarterback, I wouldn't feel that pressure.

You know, I'd be like, oh, yeah, get Mac Jones. Give me somebody just consistent under center that's not going to turn the ball over and is going to manage the game. If I could draft a young Alex Smith, that would be great. If I had a general manager and head coach that I felt like could consistently build around and support that quarterback. But because I'm assuming flaws in the supporting cast and perhaps the play calling or whatever it might be,

I need to get a quarterback that can make up for those flaws as opposed to being brought down by those flaws and not be able to overcome them. Hey, everyone. I want to tell you about our friends at Scout Logistics. And I really do mean it when I say friends. They are fans of Purple Insider over at Scout Logistics. And since they reached out wanting to support this show, I want to tell you about what they do. Scout Logistics is just-in-time transportation for full tractor-trailer loads.

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and overperform and go the extra mile for your company. Or in another way, you'd almost prefer, if that is how you sort of feel there, that they just go with somebody who's a bridge quarterback and it blows up in their face and they win four games and then they change everything and draft someone next year. I mean, if you're talking about long-term options, that might be a better way to go than trading a bunch of your assets to try and move up for if it's Trey Lance, who knows.

Trey Lance is just such a small, tiny little sample size of playing like seven-on-seven football. Right? I mean, the guy was 19 years old, and he's playing against competition that is just not even remotely close to the NFL. So you're going to throw him in there and try to save your job? That doesn't really seem like a very good way to do it. So maybe that's the way to go is that they'll lose their jobs anyway,

like John Fox with Mitch Trubisky. You know Ryan Pace loves quarterbacks with one year of college experience. It's really fun. One of my favorite things about draft season, and maybe number one is the nonsense that goes on with the quarterbacks. It's just like Lamar Jackson should be a wide receiver. And then other people think he's going to be a hall of famer. And then like the wide variety of opinions that come out and then how the

NFL finds a way to draft Daniel Jones, like sixth overall or whatever, like how, how did this happen? They're supposed to be smarter than us. And then they end up doing that. Maybe he'll become good someday. I don't know.

And doesn't that – that opens the door of, like – I'm not directly comparing Mac Jones to Daniel Jones, but, like, when you talk about big, tall, white, strong-arm quarterback, like, you can see a team take Mac Jones before Trey Lance, before Justin Field. I mean, for the reason you talk Jones before Trey Lance, before, you know, before Justin Field. I mean, for the reason you talk about with Trey Lance, I mean, you could easily see a team say, ah, you know, that Carson Wentz guy didn't end up working out as well as I thought out of North Dakota State either. And, you know, this Lance guy is even more inexperienced and he's not tall or white either. You know, like he's not, you know, he doesn't fit what NFL GMs view as what my franchise quarterback is supposed to look like,

whereas Mac Jones, I let my daughter date that guy. All that permeates through the NFL, so I could easily see one of those quarterbacks end up falling and Mac Jones going way earlier than we expect, even though it doesn't feel like that's what any of us see as the best strategy at this point. Think of how differently the draft would have gone if those ridiculous things did not exist. I mean, think about how many teams have gotten their franchise quarterbacks just because they were like, I don't know.

I don't think Lamar Jackson is a wide receiver. Or in the Ravens case, it's funny too, because they get the credit for having this great franchise quarterback who's super exciting. They drafted a bad tight end first who was like 30 so I mean even right like even the teams who make the like quote good decisions still botch it entirely and maybe just fall backwards into it like Seattle with Russell Wilson if you loved him so much you would take him the first round, not the third round, but you just kind of got lucky.

And it is always funny. It's like the not traditional-looking passer who drops. Like, take that guy. Whoever you are, take that guy because there's a good chance it works out and it becomes Dak Prescott. There's also the Sean Kaiser. We talk about him as a potential first-round pick, and he dropped and dropped for good reason.

But, you know, Dak Pres about him as a potential first-round pick, and he dropped and dropped for good reason. But, you know, Dak Prescott and Russell Wilson are great examples. I think the reporting was that Jerry Jones wanted Connor Cook before Dak Prescott. He wanted, I can't remember, it was one of the first-round quarterbacks that was bad. He wanted, like, three of the other bad quarterbacks, and then they all got taken right in front of him. They're like, fine, fine, we'll take Dak Prescott. We'll just roll with that, see what happens. Yeah, it's always funny.

Teddy Bridgewater not wearing his gloves at his pro day, big problem. Red flags everywhere. Now, actually, you know what? We didn't bring up Teddy, but it is kind of funny with Chicago where if you have Teddy last year, what do you win, like 10 games? I mean, the decision to – this would be like fireable enough right here. The decision to say to Teddy Bridgewater, no, you actually have to compete with Mitch Trubisky, that's like fireable on its own because you were already done with Mitch Trubisky,

and yet you said to another quarterback who would have been an upgrade, and I don't know if it's a Super Bowl upgrade. Of course not, although Carolina is awful, so I'm not sure you can quite compare those two. But it's just funny the decisions they made. Like Cam Newton is probably better there than he is in New England, a team that was completely torn apart. And they end up going with Nick Foles. It's just like kind of mind-blowing.

I think that could have been a first guess and not just second guessing in hindsight. Yeah, that was my take last offseason, and it was not super popular at the time among Bears fans. It was like, oh, Nick Foles, the Eagles, they want him back, and he was hurt in Jacksonville, so he could still be good and Super Bowl MVP and all that stuff. But it was like the Bears prioritized not getting the best possible quarterback, but getting a quarterback that could compete with Mitch Trubisky. Like they put Mitch Trubisky's development or whatever respect for Mitch Trubisky they wanted to have, they put that above team building.

You know what I mean? To put that above doing what's absolutely best for your franchise. There was some reporting that they had negotiated with teddy bridgewater but i think to some extent they got a little bit priced out that they weren't going to pay teddy 20 million dollars a year or whatever to compete and maybe be a backup right if you're paying them that money you have to make them your starter and i don't think the bears were ready to just give that starting quarterback job to somebody not named mitch trubisky very much to their own detriment and now you're seeing them pay for it right Right. I think of this all the time with sports, like a relationship. If you are thinking about

breaking up with your girlfriend, you should just break up with your girlfriend. Like, how do you get past that? How do you get to, well, let's see, we're thinking about it, but we had a real nice weekend. So now I'm not going to like, come on. I mean, it's like, if you're already done with Trubisky or you think you're done, then you're done and you should just move on. But you know, there's a lot of people that are trying to save face at any given time in the NFL. Here's what I want to end on. What is the most ridiculous Vikings bears game in recent history? Most ridiculous. Boy, there's a lot of candidates.

That's the thing. I'll nominate one and you can think for a second. Okay. The one that comes to mind for me right away before you take it from me, it was,

I'm filibustering because I have to look back at the year really quickly. I know you're going to get it. I know which one you're going to go for. It was 2016 Chicago Bears at Minnesota Vikings filibustering because I have to look back at the year really quickly. I know you're going to get it. I know which one you're going to go for. 2016, Chicago Bears at Minnesota Vikings, week eight. I believe, was that the game Jay Cutler came back from injury?

Yeah, I think it was his first game back from injury, and the Vikings were like five and, you know, they were running away with the NFC North, and the Bears had won like one game all season. And randomly Jay Cutler returns and comes in, and I don't even think that one was – was that one at Soldier Field? It was at Soldier Field. It was actually the first time I had ever been to Soldier Field because that was my first year covering the Vikings.

They were 5-1, and I think the first play of the game went for a 70-yard Jordan Howard run, and then it was just downhill from there. And then the Bears lost like every game after that. It was every game before that and every game after that, but that one, they played like hell. It was amazing. Yeah, because they kicked the crap out of Sam Bradford all game. I remember that. They just dominated the Vikings offensive line, and Bradford couldn't go anywhere. And that was when he had been playing so well. It was like that one year where it all kind of clicked for him. Did they trade a first-round pick for him,

or did they get a first-round pick by trading him? I forget. They traded a first-round pick for him out of insane desperation, though I would defend Sam because he played about as well as he could have played here. And now the postscript on that game was Mike Zimmer harmed his eyeball permanently at some point that day and in that game, and it required multiple surgeries, including him missing a game.

So that happened. And also, Norv Turner quit after that game. Oh, that's right. Yeah, because that was the game that he – I remembered it being a firing, but did he resign? Like he left the team after that? Yes, he just straight up quit because there was a power struggle, as there so often is in football, between, from my understanding,

of just like how Pat Shermer wanted to run the offense with Sam Bradford because they had been together in multiple locations before, and Norv Turner wanted to run his like, you know, nine-step drop thing, which is a great idea. This is one where, like, Pernell McPhee was injured all the time and came back for one game and got, like, nine pressures or something. I mean, the Vikings are running out two of the worst tackles in the league and running, like, nine-step drops with Sam Bradford, who can't move.

I'm just looking at the starting lineups in that game, and, yeah, it was Bradford and Matt Asiata in the backfield. Charles Johnson, wide receiver two. Oh, God. Jake Long, Alex Boone, Joe Berger, Brandon Fusco, TJ Clemens. Good luck. Oh, man. Yeah, so I'll nominate another one, which was Gus Farratt and Kyle Orton in 2008.

Oh, wow. I don't know if you're familiar with this game, but if you're not, you need to go look at it because the Bears beat the Vikings 48-41 with Kyle Orton and Gus Farratt in one of the all-time great journeyman quarterback shootouts. Gus Farratt threw four interceptions in that game and still only lost by seven points. So you need to go back and find that one from 2008.

And those were my early days. I remember the 2008 Bears. I don't remember that game specifically. I remember Gus Farratt matchups, but, man, what a wild west of a game. That's great. I did a full deep dive on whether the Vikings are cursed at Soldier Field, and the answer is yes. Like there have been so many times where just even compared to the Vegas line

where they were unable to even cover when they were much better than the Bears and Chad Hutchinson beats them or something. So I don't think that's going to stop anytime soon. Well, people need to go follow you, Cox, C-O-X, sports1. And you do great work. Lock down Bears if you want to check out what's going on in Bears land. And always fun to get together, man. I'm glad we could do this. Hey, absolutely. I appreciate it. And I will certainly return the favor and call upon you

for some Vikings analysis, especially as things start to move forward here a little bit. I'm kind of curious to see when and where the Vikings are going to be able to find some moves to make, because they're in a pretty precarious spot here. So appreciate you having me on, sir, and I love the work you guys are doing, especially adding Sam into the mix here too is a great one. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Thanks again, man.