Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Ringer's Steven Ruiz talks Vikings, Justin Fields, Mac Jones and the NFL QB landscape

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

Matthew Coller and Steven Ruiz of The Ringer talk about the Vikings' tough situation where winning this week doesn't always help. Also what Justin Fields being named the Bears starter means for him and that franchise, Mac Jones's strong game against Tom Brady, Trey Lance getting his first shot for the 49ers. What does the emergence of more athletic quarterbacks say about the Vikings' future with Kirk Cousins. Why it's exciting for fan bases to think about what their quarterbacks could be versus a flawed sure thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and now joining me, Stephen Ruiz, for the first time since he joined The Ringer. You were at USA Today before. You've been on the show many times. What is up, Stephen? Congratulations on the move, my friend. Thanks. I appreciate it. I think it's been like a month now and I'm having the time of my life. It's been everything I expected it to be. That is very cool. That is very cool. Well, you get to work with Kevin Clark and... Well, that's one of the downsides. Yeah, that's one of the downs. Yeah, sure. Uh, I always enjoyed the once a year I get to run to Kevin. I don't know if you'll ever get a training camp tour of your own, but that's when I, I get to see Kevin once a year when he comes

to write about the Vikings. And, uh, this year, I don't, I don't know what he wrote, but whatever, if he wrote that they were going to be good, it hasn't worked out so far. So I guess we'll see. So I wanted to change gears a little bit from what we've been talking about on the show, which as you can imagine, when your football team goes one and three is just everything is sadness. I mean, that's just how it goes. Everyone is playing bad.

Everyone is wrong. And it's an unfortunate situation. But I do want to ask you to start before the season. What was your take on the Vikings? Did you have one or were you kind of like, well, they exist? a year ago, but I didn't know if they were going to make the necessary improvements on defense to get to where they were. What was it? Two years ago now when they beat the Saints and lost to the 49ers, it just seemed like a team that was running in place. And those are the most boring teams in the NFL, right? It's kind of like being an eighth seed in the Eastern Conference in the NBA, the worst place you want to be. Yeah. And we've been talking about that a lot, but I think that that's the hardest thing for everybody is when you get stuck in that spot. And I've sort of made some comparisons to where Cincinnati was a few years ago with Marvin Lewis, because usually when you get stuck in that spot, you usually don't like jog yourself out of it

and make the one move that you go from middle of the pack to all of a sudden, great, unless it's quarterback. Usually where you go is like a slow slide into being forced, kicking and screaming to have to eventually rebuild things. And I, unless they can turn it around, I feel like that's where we're headed here. Yeah. And it's almost like you don't want them to turn things around to the point where you're just making it to the playoffs, but you're not like a threat. That almost would be a bad thing. And I think that's kind of where the Vikings have been. And I know we've talked about this before, where it seems like they're chasing that 2017 year and what happened and getting back to that spot. But it's tough.

It's tough being an NFL team, because I know if I was the Vikings in that following offseason, maybe I would have made the same move for Kirk Cousins. Maybe I would have been like we were just a quarterback away. But things change year to year, and what your holes were last year, I mean, there may be new holes the next year. And it just always felt like they were a step behind, and now it feels like they're two or three steps behind.

Right, and following the 2019 season in the game that you referenced, And it just always felt like they were a step behind. And now it feels like they're two or three steps behind. Right. And following the 2019 season in the game that you referenced, they decided to sort of double down on things, but maybe didn't factor how hard it would be to rebuild the defense. And this is where I just wanted to ask you a broad question. Then I want to talk about quarterbacks around the league. It's just like, it seems to me now more than ever that your quarterback just determines everything that's going on. Unless you have maybe

the number one defense in the NFL, but even then number one defenses are fallible all the time in the NFL to great quarterbacks. And, you know, I saw somebody say the other day, like, I think that Kansas city's defense is a complete joke, but you'd still pick them, right? Maybe Buffalo is the only team you're picking over Kansas City at this moment, maybe Tampa Bay. But it really, I think, it sort of comes back to Mike Zimmer football where you want to run and you want to hit a few play actions, and you want to play number one defense. It's just so fragile that threading a needle, and even since 2017, I feel like it's gotten even harder to do, threading a needle to play that way. It just requires so many things to go right. And what we've seen these last few years is it's just hard to get them all to go right at the same time.

And then you go to the podium and go, well, we had this go wrong, this go wrong, this go wrong. And you're like, yeah like yeah well they're right that's the problem is that when those things went wrong you couldn't overcome them yeah your margin for error is just so small like thinking about this last week when the defense played well or maybe it was baker mayfield playing poorly either way you got good defensive results but now this time around it was your offense that let you down after the offense had played well in previous weeks and that's just the light it's not like a thing where you're like oh we can if we just fix it we'll be good no that's always going to be the case there'll be weeks where you put both of them together and you get a complete performance and you beat a team that

maybe you didn't expect to beat but more often than not you're going to be this team right and that's what they've been and they've just sort of bounced back and forth around 500 and now you have a long way to get back to 500 and a very very long way to even be relevant in the nfl conversation which i mean it's it's you know when i see fans trying to say well we just need to win the next two i'm reminded of when i covered ryan fitzpatrick in buffalo and it was the same thing all the time right right? It was, we'll see if Fitzpatrick just has a hot streak, they can win seven in a row and make the playoffs. You're like, yeah, cool. Yeah. I mean, I suppose like that is true that that's possible. So Justin Fields today, I want to talk about some of these young quarterbacks. Justin Fields was named the

starting quarterback in Chicago. Welcome to the rest of the universe, Matt Nagy, that what we knew for week one. Now I've never been against guys who are, who have to sit for a while. I've never had a problem with that. I like that strategy, even though it kind of burns a year of your rookie year, but you usually don't win anyway. But this one, I mean, make up your mind, either go with Andy Dalton or don't. The bouncing back and forth, it just makes it look sort of incompetent. I wonder what you've thought of Justin Fields' play so far. A tremendously bad week, a bounce-back week. Just what you think it means for Chicago being competitive this year.

I think that first week, that first game, our first start against Cleveland is proof to what you're saying about why the bouncing back doesn't really work because you have to run one offense for Andy Dalton. You have to run one offense for Justin Fields. And the problem is in practice, you have to run just one offense. And we saw that kind of Andy Dalton style of offense against the Browns. And it just didn't work because that's not the type of player Justin Fields is. You didn't draft Justin Fields to be Andy Dalton. You drafted Justin Fields to be Justin Fields.

And the second game plan, we kind of saw a game plan that was tailored to Justin Fields. Like he was throwing downfield more often. He wasn't throwing these short hitches. He wasn't throwing RPO passes. You were taking advantage of his ability as a downfield passer. And when you watch Montaigne going back to college, that was his clear strength. So I think this was just a move you had to make because you were going to play him eventually. And there's no point in messing around with the offense, trying to come up with this hybrid that

works for both guys, because it's not going to work for either guy. So I didn't want to judge him based off that first game. And it's the same thing I'm going to say about Trey Lance after he made his cameo appearance last week and looked pretty bad but that wasn't a game plan for him I would give Justin Fields the same pass for that Browns game and I think what we saw against the Lions and you do have to factor in that the Lions are maybe a historically bad pass defense one of the they're the worst pass defense in the league there's no question about that but they might be historically bad but I think that was an encouraging sign to see that Fields can win in the way that you thought he could win in, and he could take care of business against bad NFL teams,

because not all rookie quarterbacks are going to be able to do that, even against the worst defenses. And it's only going to get worse for the Lions. Kirk Cousins destroys the Detroit Lions, and I don't see that changing this week. But I wonder what you think about just evaluating rookie quarterbacks in general, because I think it's really fun to watch Mac Jones play against Tom Brady and say, man, that was a pretty gutsy performance. I enjoyed watching that game. I thought he was getting the ball out quickly on those blitzes and making some plays,

and he put his team in a position to win. And that's not easy to do when there's that much pressure on you and all that sort of thing. We've seen many people shrink when Tom Brady's on the other side of the field. At the same time, I don't think that I'm preparing a gold jacket for Mac Jones or Justin Fields for having a good game or Zach Wilson for finally looking like an NFL quarterback. I feel like it's one of the most entertaining things to do is to try to break down what you see,

but also one of the almost sort of silliest things we do, because I'm not even sure anything in a rookie year, unless it's a complete tragedy, like Josh Rosen will really tell us what these guys will be. Yeah. Here's the dirty secret about covering the NFL is you have to overreact and take silly stances week to week. Otherwise, you're going to be saying the same things every week and you're going to get boring and repetitive. Like if we did actual power rankings, there wouldn't be hardly any change week to week.

The Chiefs would be number one no matter what they did the week before. Like when you look at those ELO rankings on 538, they don't change. But if we did power rankings like that every week, no one would click because they would know what to expect. And I think the same is true with quarterbacks. We go back and forth on them after performances. Like I'm going to go back to Baker Mayfield because he's a quarterback I like to pick on.

And you guys just watched him as a Vikings fan. It's like he'll have these games like he had against the Vikings, and then he'll bounce back the next week throwing a bunch of play-action passes to wide-open receivers, and then people will be like, oh, you guys wrote off Baker Mayfield too soon. Like, see, look, he's producing. And unless Baker Mayfield wins in a way that I didn't know he was capable of, like I can know he can do the play-action stuff.

I want to see him run quick game from the gun, from empty, convert on third and long, and do all that stuff, the quarterback processing stuff, before I'm going to change my tune so I'm not going to overreact to these performances. And it's the same with Mac Jones. Sunday night, like you said, he did what we thought Mac Jones could do, right?

He was accurate. He got rid of the ball quickly. He didn't take sacks. He avoided mistakes, although he did try to throw the game away to Devin White, and that would have changed the narrative completely if he caught it. But I'm not going to, like, that didn't change my perception of Mac Jones. That was my perception of Mac Jones. When I see him creating plays out of structure on his own

or throwing downfield in the tight windows, then I'll be like, oh, I have to change what I thought of this quarterback. But until I see them, if they're continuing to win in ways I knew they could win, yeah, my opinion is going to stay the same. So I think about with Mac Jones, how hard it is for somebody who's a rookie in the NFL to even trust what they can do, because I don't see Mac Jones trusting throwing the ball down the field at all. He seems very scared to do it. And, you know, I think he's got the arm strength to at least throw it 50 yards in the air. I don't think that's impossible for him. But when you don't have a laser arm, then it's much more of throw to the open guy.

And he's coming from Alabama where it's always throw to the open guy, throw to the open guy. There's only so far you can go with an offense where you only throw to the open guy, right? And I think this was part of the McVay-Stafford things. Like at some point, the guy has to drop back and throw in triple coverage and make a play. And it's one of the issues why Kirk Cousins, I think, hasn't won more is because he just doesn't do that all that often. At the same time, it's like I feel like with mac jones i don't want to say for sure

that this can't happen because he is just starting in the league and like you have to real like realize where those windows are going to be and i think this is the hard part of it i'm not trying to like sell you on mac jones i'm only saying that i feel like with some quarterbacks we decide what they can't do in their first year and then they are able to like realize that maybe josh allen would be example of like recognize that i have to be more accurate i have to change my throwing motion and it's that's when it's determined where these guys are going to go yeah i think all these guys deserve time to prove what they can and can't do and mac jones is one of those guys. We saw him throw downfield at Alabama.

We know he has it in him. I do think it requires a different skill set in the NFL where at Alabama he could just kind of throw it up into space and he knew his guy was going to win. That space isn't there in the NFL. You have to pierce tight windows to throw downfield. That's where my skepticism comes from. But I would be encouraged from what I've seen from Mac Jones in the early

days. Cause we do see that his, the base of his game, the foundation of his game, the quick processing, the accuracy, it plays, like it translated to the NFL and he still has it. Like you said, give him time and we'll know in two or three years, whether he's going to become that guy. And if he doesn't, then they can move on. And if he does, then great for them. Kind of a weird situation there though that they signed all those guys in free agency and they just spent money like crazy and then they have a rookie quarterback that's really hard to win with the rookie quarterback in the nfl so it's like you you sort of stacked your team as if you thought

you were going to play cam newton and then you decided that you weren't going to do that which by the way pittsburgh should really sign cam newton i mean right what what are we doing here exactly uh now with someone like you know trey lance i'm very interested to see how that goes because san francisco has expectations and of all the rawness i mean mac jones comes from a program where he wins the national championship justin fields has a prolific college career, but Trey Lance, I mean, he played as many games last year as you and I did. So, um, I think maybe he played one, I think, and, uh, against the subpar opponent. So now he's got to come in and he has to try to like lead an NFL team with expectations. I think that's a totally different story from someone like the jets where if Zach Wilson has the worst game, he'd be like, yeah, well, get him next week.

It's not that way for Trey Lance. I think it's a real uphill battle for him, even if he has Kyle Shanahan. No, yeah, because he has an actual veteran starter that we know can start in this league and win games in this league. He was in the Super Bowl two years ago, and I think that really makes things difficult for him. And I always thought the plan, or at least I was guessing, the plan was going to be give Lance his little package of plays every week, bring him along slowly, and by the time you get to November, December, maybe we're ready to unleash him on the league.

And then the league doesn't really have time to adjust by the time we get to the playoffs. That's how things happened with Kaepernick when he went to the Super Bowl I don't think it was planned obviously Al Smith got a concussion and that changed things but that's how it worked out and now Jimmy G I think he has the calf injury or whatever the lower leg injury and now you that plan goes out the window and you just got to throw him into the fire and I'm interested to see what this offense looks like I don't know what it's going to be I mean mean, is it going to look like something we might see out of a service academy on Saturdays?

Because he did not look ready as a passer and it was fairly obvious why he wasn't starting yet when you saw him pass against the Seahawks. Fans are going back to stadiums, so you have to be ready with the best Minnesota football gear. That's why you have to check out SodaStick. I saw a ton of SodaStick gear around training camp. I expect to see it in the stadium as well.

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And I can tell you that the shirts are comfortable and they last because half of my closet is now SodaStick at this point. Again, that's SodaStick.com. Minnesota sports inspired goods. comfortable and they last because half of my closet is now soda stick at this point again that's sodastick.com minnesota sports inspired goods and keep your eye out for our soda stick giveaways that was even in preseason too where he had one spectacular throw and then a lot of really bad ones and uh yeah i don't i don't think that he's ready, but yet that team is, is ready to be a winner. So I guess they have to hope that Jimmy G comes back. You know, what's interesting to me too, to think about Steven is the Vikings didn't draft one of these guys. They couldn't have

drafted Trey Lance, but they attempted to trade up for Justin Fields. That did not happen. They could have taken Mac Jones. They didn't take Mac Jones. And I think about, as we discuss this, how interesting it is to talk about these guys and how exciting it is to talk about what Trey Lance can be if he does sort of have it click in at some point. If he starts off, he's probably going to start off terrible,

is my guess. It's going to be tough. It's going to be a tough road. And then if it clicks, all the talent that's there. And the same thing goes for justin fields that by the time the vikings face chicago late in the season how interesting it will be to see what justin fields looks like and i i feel like there's there's a lot of value in

that as a franchise like even san francisco they traded their whole rest of their draft picks for the rest of existence for trey lance but to have the fact that he's starting has got to be so exciting. And I have to say that I'm, I'm very jealous of it. Like whoever's covering it this, this week in San Francisco, I'm very jealous of it. And I feel like there's an extra layer of value that comes along with drafting someone like that. Just of what they could be.

That's interesting and fun for a franchise. Yeah. I mean, I think that's why i am so like uh attached to cam newton because that's what he was for me he got me back into football i was a panthers fan back then and like i'm gonna be on i watched every panthers game but i'm gonna be honest watching jimmy clausen go five for 18 every week was not fun it was hard coming back every like sunday in november and watching that but when you get cam and like the panthers up until that point never really had a franchise quarterback of their

own like jake delome kind of quasi took him to a super bowl but he wasn't like he came in as a veteran but cam was different he's first round quarterback he had so much potential he was unlike anything anybody had ever seen in the league. And I think Trey Lance kind of has that to him, that potential to him, as an athlete and a dynamic quarterback. So, yeah, and that's why it's hard for me to wrap my head around a team drafting Mac Jones in the first round. But I know he was the last quarterback taken, so it's not like they took other guys.

It's not like they took them over more dynamic players. But it's just hard to get excited about a quarterback like that because you know there is a ceiling to it whereas with trey lance like your imagination can run wild especially with kyle shanahan well even think about like what we thought of justin herbert when he was coming out and all the questions there about him but there was the level of intrigue based on his physical skill that has come to fruition and completely changed that franchise they might even have some of their own fans show up at a game

hey yo uh i i covered one of the games in the soccer stadium and it was purple it was entirely purple you couldn't find a chargers jersey uh so hopefully when i cover the next one it's going to be better than that but that's another thing, that these quarterbacks who are drafted recently, some of them have busted and just like blown up right in front of our eyes. Dwayne Haskins. Sorry about all that, Dwayne Haskins. But wow, just a miserable experience in Washington. You're the backup to a guy who can't take the snap and drop back at all.

Ben Roethlisberger at this point, and you haven't taken his job. But the teams that have drafted, many of the teams that have drafted these guys of physical freakishness have been rewarded recently and the ones who haven't haven't duane haskins tua and and mac jones will see how that works out but i wonder if you think there's a fundamental shift here because for many years it was, hey, look at Brady, look at Breeze. You want accuracy, and that's true. But now that I watch weekly a guy who has incredibly good accuracy and can't overcome it when the other defensive line is winning, I just feel like it's the only route to go is to draft physically freaky quarterbacks

and just hope they turn into Cam Newton. Yeah, I mean, you're preaching to the choir right right now i've been trying to say that for like i think it was the my light bulb moment was probably the burrow herbert thing where i it kind and it was a lesson learned from josh rosen because i was a big josh rosen guy i thought he was the best quarterback in the draft me too yeah me too and i thought of thought that because of the reason you just said we want a pocket quarterback like when i see a college quarterback go through his progressions from the pocket and do so like in a timely manner and throw it I think it was like a certain amount of rushing yards per game. And if you were under 20, like the only ones that succeeded since the 2011 CBA, which cut down on developmental time and like practice time and all that,

was the only one that got a second contract that was drafted in the first round was Jared Goff. And if Jared Goff is like the best case scenario, maybe you should look for another scenario and i think it's the athletic guys because it's kind of flipped what our notion of a pro ready quarterback is like i think a guy like mac jones who was so used to being the smartest guy on the field at all times in college and now he goes to the nfl and he's probably and he's one of the least experienced guys on the field now he doesn't he's not going to be able to outsmart defensive coordinators who have been calling plays for 20 years. And if he doesn't have that athleticism in the fallback

when he gets beat mentally, then what use is he? Whereas a guy like Justin Fields, there was a fourth down against the Lions where he kind of rolled out and they had everything covered, and what did he do? He outran a defensive end and ran for the first down. Mac Jones isn't going to give you that that happens with mac jones you guys are punting so i think that athleticism that you could fall back on that crutch almost i think that's a prerequisite for calling someone a pro ready quarterback otherwise i think it's going to take a year or two for you to catch up mentally where you can get to a point where you are beating defensive coordinators with your mind.

And there's so many great defensive linemen in the league that they're just beating offensive linemen in seconds all the time. And if you can't run away from them and create something more, how many plays does that add up to over a season? How many times, like I brought up the example the other day on the show, but it's like Storm Norton is the starting right tackle for the Chargers. Who cares? Justin Herbert's going to make that fine, right? Even though that's a disaster, but he's going to make it fine. And your pocket quarterback is not going to make that fine. And how many times is he going to get beat by a Bosa or somebody who's great over there? It's going to be a lot. Max Crosby, it's going to be a lot. And so over a season,

it's, it's 30, 40, 50 plays where this shows up that someone is in your lap and can you make something out of it? And it's hard to overcome that with just your mind. Now that, now that said,

if I were the Vikings, I still would have drafted Mac Jones because we've also seen someone like Baker Mayfield is on a great team because you get all the money that you can use. And I think that if you have the right setup, you can still work around something like that. And that's the sort of counter. But if you draft Mac Jones, you have to realize we're only having Mac Jones our quarterback for four years. We don't care what he does because everybody who goes farther than that, they get themselves

in trouble. Yeah, I think that's how you have to separate these prospects now. One contract quarterback prospects and then franchise guys. And for me, at least, there was a clear line between – I mean, I don't know if I would put Zach Wilson in that first category, but I know most of the league did. Obviously, he went second overall. But between Lawrence, Fields, and Lance, category but i know most of the league did obviously he went second overall but between lawrence fields and lance those guys at least had the athleticism and physical profile to

eventually become those guys whereas zach wilson who's a smaller guy i don't know if he's going to be able to hold up to getting hit and uh mac jones i just don't know if they have the bodies i was talking to mike tannenbaum recently the former former Jets and Dolphins executive. He was one of the guys that was really high on Herbert. He thought Herbert should have went number one overall, and his reasoning was he's big, he's strong, he's fast, he can throw, and he wants to be good. And it's simple.

It's a simple way to think about it, and you kind of laugh at that. When he actually said it before the draft, you were like, oh, he just wants to draft him Cause he's big. That's stupid. We've seen that fail. But like when he was explaining it to me, it made perfect sense. Like Baker Mayfield, for instance, smaller guy who likes to move around, he's going to take a lot of hits in those hits for him might be,

might lead to injuries that cause his physical ability to decline. Whereas Justin Herbert is a big dude. He can avoid those hits. And even if he does take them, he can absorb them in theory. And he's going to last much longer. So I don't know. I think just maybe now, like I know there was a time, maybe it was an overreaction to Jamarcus Russell failing.

But I think we gave up on the big the big strong toolsy guys a little too soon and i think that was a lesson we learned with herbert yeah and i think that there were some very notable uh implosions beyond to marcus russell i mean um paxton lynch i mean what i i if paxton lynch was right behind me i wouldn't know what he looked like. And, uh, who was the other one? Zach, uh, Zach, um, Hackenberg. Yeah. Christian Hackenberg, Christian Hackenberg, Zach Mettenberg was someone else. Yes. Blaine Gabbert. Right. Um, so there was always the, you know, the guy who sort of, um, like you said, has these big two and Blake Bortles would be another one. So I think that this notable string of guys who were freakishly athletic probably shades our opinion of that.

But I also think the game is just different. I think it's changing. That doesn't mean Bortles would have been good, but I think it sort of sets up a different bar for who you want to have your franchise quarterback and who can take you somewhere under the right circumstances. And then you have to decide what those circumstances are. I don't it was i don't think it's just mobility too i think it's the ability to make like arm talent is the word that people will use or the phrase that people will use but the ability to make tough throws with an awkward platform or where you have to reset quickly and throw it and

i think we saw that with baker mayfield. Baker Mayfield has a strong arm. Like we've seen him, he can put velocity on the ball. The thing is he has to put his entire body behind it when he makes those throws. And those throws that he missed this weekend, he kind of had to reset quickly or climb the pocket, and that's when that lack of natural ability kind of shows up that, oh, this is why he was a walk-on. Yeah. Shows up.

Right. And I think maybe that ability is something that we've underrated in draft prospects. And I think too that when the other part that I see is when Russell Wilson gets confused, he then can do something amazing. I saw in the first half of the Vikings game, he didn't touch the ball in the second half. So who knows what he could have done. But in the first half, there were multiple occasions where he dropped back and he looked around and you could tell he was like, oh no, that coverage doesn't look like I thought it was going to look. And then he just sort of like turns around and takes three, four steps and throws

off balance and makes a great play. And it's, it's those that are so hard. Like we've seen Brady for so many years, just be right on everything and never be confused and always be so accurate. And there's just almost nobody else who's able to do that. And that's what you see from, I think the quarterbacks of the future, if you will sort of end up like that. And if that. And if you're a Vikings fan and you like Kirk Cousins, I don't blame you for liking Kirk Cousins. I don't blame you for thinking that he can win and that he's good enough at football to win. But under what circumstances, I guess, is the question. And they've never been able to give him those circumstances.

And also, there's just too many times in the flow of football where you're not going to recognize the coverage, where your left tackle is going to get steamrolled immediately. And those just take apart the Vikings. And I think it's, it's fundamental. It's like people look at his quarterback ratings, completion percentage, but there's this fundamental thing that sort of holds him back from being one of those guys. And now instead of being like, well there's two or three freaks that are great and now it's like 10 12 and i i think another way to put it is if tom brady gets drafted in 2021 i don't think he becomes tom brady in this day and age where quarterbacks don't get the same amount of developmental time they don't get the time with the coaches to learn the playbook like Belichick was spending most of his weeks with Brady teaching him how to reach averages and what defenses were doing and that coincided with when he took off statistically it was like

2007 when I think Belichick took a more hands-off approach with the defense and I don't know I just think drafting guys like that and hoping like someone becomes a Kirk Cousins that's why I kind of snickered when you said oh the Vikings the Vikings passed on Mac Jones, because it would be like drafting another Kirk Cousins. And the thing about Kirk Cousins development is it took him until the second half of his rookie contract, the final year of his rookie contract to become the guy. And like you said, these quarterbacks are really one contract guys and you don't want to sign them beyond that. So if you're only getting a half a good year on that rookie contract, is it really worth it? Right. Yeah. Right. And like you said about the development has become just almost impossible.

When I was growing up, Mark Brunel and Kurt Warner and all these guys would sort of come out of nowhere. And, oh, it was someone else's backup. And now they're a superstar. We just don't see that anymore. My thing about drafting Mac Jones is if you have Kirk Cousins on a rookie contract, you can get an offensive line that protects him for four or five seconds, but you'll never be able to do that. You'll never be able to afford the top free agent guard or whatever, which they've chased year after year. And it's just never the guy always signed somewhere else. So I wanted to ask you before I let you go,

because I've really enjoyed this. And this is sort of refreshing for me to stop talking about how the Vikings left guard has played recently. So I appreciate the conversation, but I wanted to ask you like, what surprised you this year? Like, what have you been wrong on? Up until last week, i was wrong on the rams but now i guess we'll find out because i thought i don't know i've watched a lot of matt

stafford and there's a lot of good and there's a lot of not good um so i'm gonna hang on to that take for now because it was bad matt stafford last week but has there been um some things where you thought oh you sort of never saw it coming and then once it's in the light of day, like, oh, wow, I was way off on that. I'll tell you one. I thought Atlanta would win. I thought that they needed a new coach and they would win. I'm with you on that one. That's a good one for me.

I thought Atlanta would be a lot better offensively, at least. Like the defensive side of things has not been a surprise. I thought Atlanta, I mean, they're like one of the worst offenses in the the league I thought they would be near the top and at least in the top half even after they traded Julio but I would say the Panthers on both sides of the ball I didn't have faith in that coaching staff I kind of questioned I questioned Phil Snow I questioned Joe Brady after what we heard Teddy Bridgewater say during the offseason but man that team is fun to watch and it looks like a well-coached team. And I've had to change my tune on the coaching staff.

I think Matt Rule, I'm still skeptical of any type of, like, CEO-type coach, which I think he is. He's a program builder, first and foremost. But the thing you want to see out of those type of coaches is the ability to hire good assistants. And I have to say the Phil Snow hire it's worked out the Joe Brady hire has worked out and those weren't like no-brainer hires either like Joe Brady had never coordinated an offense at any level he was the pass game

coordinator for LSU before he got hired Phil Snow was a Big 12 defensive coordinator you know the the memes and the jokes that we make about Big 12 defenses these were outside the box hires and they've worked so i have to say good job to them i was skeptical as a panthers fan sam darnold that move has worked out at least so far so yeah the panthers i was wrong about which you know maybe i'm just too cynical of a fan i was gonna say though we'll see because their schedule through those first three games was pretty easy uh now the vikings will play them next week and that will be an interesting test assuming the vikings beat the doors off the lions then that will be an interesting test of like are you good because if you are or because they've been saying that they're good so like are you capable of going on the road and beating a team that has a decent

defense and that has a quarterback who's now capable in carolina um or at least for now with sam darnold we'll see because i i was skeptical about him too and i'm gonna i'm gonna kind of remain so uh but it's it's sort of been interesting to see how many things have fallen exactly how you thought especially maybe like urban meyer for example i mean i i didn't expect this i thought it would go i did but you expected this like oh yeah i had the lowest expectations and he still managed to not reach them it's it's i didn't know the details but like yeah i expected this yeah this is about how it goes when you hire guys who have to quit college programs because they're basically you know sort

of shamed into faking a chest injury or whatever it was that's a good point i remember he played maryland one time ohio state and they were losing the whole game and that man was having a lot of health problems on the field and then they won at the end and he's the healthiest man in america that's that's what i mean i just these i don't'm not, it's like you, if you're a cop, if you're a former college coach, you've always got to go much farther to prove it to me. Cause I just don't, I'm not sure I buy it.

Steven Ruiz. You could follow him on Twitter at the Steven, which is with two E's. We had a, we had Steven Ridley here. S T E V A N. So yeah, it's S T E V E N Ruiz.

So follow him on Twitter. Now with the ringer. Very happy for you, man. Great to see it. You do terrific, terrific work. So people should look for your piece that's going to come out on Justin Herbert at some point if I'm able to reveal that on the show. Yeah, it should be out Thursday. Very good.

Very good. All right. Thanks for your time, Stephen. Great to catch up with you, man. All right. Appreciate it.