Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The short term and long term of Kirk Cousins, the Vikings' O-line, weapons and DBs

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

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It's strong and dependable, exactly like playing tight end. Just like the incredible players we sit down with on the podcast, the Chevy Silverado is in a league of its own. Strong, advanced, and dependable. Download TE1 today, wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and joining me from Zone Coverage is Sam Ekstrom. What's up, Sam?

Good to join you, man. Happy Monday. New week. What's new in your life? I love your peppiness. What's new is that I am in the process of making my sun porch into my home office and I've put in baseboard heaters. And so now I am warm despite the cool weather outside, and that's great.

So you're going four-season porch. I mean, none of this three-season stuff. You're going all season. That is correct. So, you know, we had somebody come in, obviously, because I can't do electrical work or anything close to that. And so we got the heaters in now we're going to get some carpet in here we're going to get some blinds and we're going to make it the full office experience and then hope that we can write it all off the taxes

uh anyway so that's me uh any random life update you want to share before we get into this uh Titans Vikings game uh no I mean no we no, we're good. We're good. I was reading an article about someone's taxes last night, but we don't need to get into that. We don't want to go there. All I want to say, though, is I hope to pay the same amount next year. That would be wonderful for Purple Insider business. Anyway, so here's what I want to do on the show, Sam. I want to ask you the same questions, and when we first talk about them, let's talk about them through the lens of yesterday against the Titans, and then let's circle back and ask the same question

and talk about it in the big picture, because this is where I was haggling over my post-game reaction which was mostly focused on how great Justin Jefferson was and the post-game podcast where I suggested that Vikings fans sort of strap in and just enjoy the ride and focus on the players that matter in the future but I know that that's not for everybody here. When you watch a game that ends the way that it does with the debauchery of the final drive and the Vikings losing a close game against a good Tennessee Titans team that you felt like you could win and potentially get right back in the race to end up falling 31 to 30. Not a good feeling for a lot of people. So not everybody is sharing Trevor Lawrence memes online, and I respect that. So let's just start off with analyzing Kirk Cousins. And if we feel like yesterday was just emblematic, or maybe even these first three games, emblematic of what Kirk Cousins has been as a Minnesota Viking, where you have some really good throws. I mean, excellent,

excellent throw to Adam Thielen. One of the best, in my opinion, since he's been a Viking. We're rolling out and finding him in the back of the end zone. The throw to Jefferson drops it in the bucket. I mean, I'm not sure people realize how difficult that throw is when you're dropping it in the bucket from 40 yards away to Justin Jefferson on the 71-yard touchdown, but then we have the same problems of melting down in the final drives, not sticking a dagger in the Titans, and then after the game saying, well, we did all, you know, almost go for 500 yards and score 30 points with kind of a, well, well, did my job, and so from the short term of this year, though, how do we take these first

three games? Yeah, I like the exercise, by the way. That's a good concept. You know, I think this is true to what we all kind of believed about Cousins. Like, he needs to have a competent defense to compliment him. And the way I think about it is these Vikings are equivalent to like the 2016-17 Seahawks. And my game pass just like started auto-playing in my ear. Sorry, got to pause that. That happens, but it didn't go over the podcast. That happens to me with ESPN box score all the time. Oh, I hate that. If I leave that up, yep, it'll't go over the podcast. That happens to me with ESPN box score all the time. Oh, I hate that.

If I leave that up, yep, it'll start blasting in the ear. Yeah, I'll just X that out, and I'll get back to you so I can watch Jamar Steffen film. Anyway, I think this Vikings team is a little bit like the 2016-17 Seahawks, like post-Legion of Boom when they had a bad, like kind of young rebuilding defense and no offensive line, but Russell Wilson was so good that there wasn't that noticeable of a drop-off. And I think they missed the playoffs one year, but then they were right back in it. And now they actually have a pretty good defense again. And now they're legit. Like he got them through the rebuild. Kirk Cousins is not Russell Wilson. So we shouldn't be surprised when a bad defense doesn't really, you know,

mesh with his game. I think he was justifiably horrible in the first two games. Like, even in the part of the games that were meaningful, like when they still had a chance in the second quarter of those games and it was still a contest, he didn't play well. Yesterday, I think he's going to take the most heat for the final two drives when I thought the protection was abysmal. I thought it was some of the worst interior play that you can put on tape.

And it wasn't just one guy. Like, Samia was obviously bad the whole game, and he got burned in there. But Bradbury has the bad snap and gets backed up into Cousins on the one play Dozier got beat Reef got beat on the Hail Mary which you know forced him to throw it a little earlier and he got hit um O'Neal got got beat on uh on a run play so it was literally all five of them I don't know if I put a ton on Cousins in those two drives in particular, but I think we're just learning that, or, you know, it's justifying that he is not a quarterback that can overcome, you know, these other flaws on the team. And unfortunately, the Vikings made this commitment to him where your

hands are a little bit tied for next year. And I think people would feel a lot more liberated, a lot sort of like freer about the way they thought about this team if they didn't have all those commitments going forward. Yeah. So that's going to be the follow-up here is the bigger view from the smaller view of the first three games. He seemed to really struggle in the first two games, but there were also times where I wondered, does he have anyone to throw to, or like, where is Justin Jefferson, and why isn't Justin Jefferson on the field catching the footballs and doing something with them, and the offensive line has been a struggle, all those things that are typical, but the first two games, you could almost say those are classic,

like, cousins no-show type of games, that he always has these. You go through every season. Chicago and Green Bay last year. In 2018, there's back-to-back games against Seattle and against New England, and we all looked at John DeFilippo and said, this must be you, man. But if you go through Cousins' career, it's not uncommon to see two out of three games, two out of two, you know, back-to-back games where it just isn't working for him and he can't do a Russell Wilson thing where even when it's bad, it's still good,

or a Patrick Mahomes thing, and we do know that. So I looked at it like, all right, you know, he'll probably bounce back. Kubiak will probably figure some things out and so forth, and that's what happened against Tennessee but when you go back to when he's given an opportunity to win late in games it hasn't happened many times and when he's given an opportunity to beat good teams it hasn't happened many times think about Kansas City that's what yesterday's game reminded me of is Kansas City last year where he's got a chance to go drive down the field and beat the Kansas City Chiefs on their turf, take advantage of the fact that Matt Moore is starting, and there's a check down to CJ Hamm and they punt the ball away and then Harrison Butker kicks a long field goal and that toward the end where you always come back to the same spot of if you need your quarterback to put his team on his back. And I agree on the very final drive.

It's just a complete disaster, as Mike Zimmer said. It was chaos. Totally agree. I don't know who the errant snap is on, whether it's Cousins or Bradbury. Seemed like probably Bradbury. And all right, fine. So throw that out and let's not call it his fault. But it's still the same result we've seen many times when it's a tight game.

And the New Orleans win does not throw that all out entirely. And so if we were looking at this season with huge expectations and that game hadn't been an 0-2 team, but rather a 2-0 Vikings team, we would be saying some of the same things we have in previous years. Well, good team, opportunity to go win at the end of the game, put the team on your shoulders, and oh, Kirk Cousins wasn't able to do it. He was only able to have success when Delvin Cook was running over the Titans, and they were using eight-man boxes.

So that's how I would look at it if we were focusing on this game as if it was a very big deal toward this season. If we're looking at the big picture here, Sam, we still come away with some of those same analyses of Cousins, but then you look at it much more from the perspective of you can't get out of this. So even when you do turn things around on the defensive side, this is still going to be how it goes, and you have to hope that you can play from ahead in games like this.

Well, they did play from ahead in a good portion of it, but not have to be in a point at any point where you are having to come back or rely on a final drive or rely on a dagger drive or anything like that because even in 2019 when they largely played decently or well on defense you still did not win a lot of those types of games yeah you know that Chiefs comparison by the way was really really adept now that I think about it because I think it was it was Rudolph who caught the go-ahead touchdown in that game as well yeah and I think I think it was two consecutive blunders on offense where they could have iced or won that Chiefs game.

So, yeah, that is a really good comparison. You know, Cousins going forward has obviously no incentive to, you know, tank. Mike Zimmer has no incentive to tank. This team has no incentive to tank because of all that the players have invested and and the the you know the coach and the quarterback but it might happen inadvertently like if if Cousins can't overcome all of these defensive woes and make up deficits and win a shootout late in the game um it might happen like I mean and and I don't know I don't know if it's going to be tank in the

sense that they are the number one overall pick. I think that's pretty tough to do when you look at like, there's like eight winless teams right now. A couple of them have a tie, but there's some really bad football teams out there. And the Vikings, as bad as they've been, do have, I think, a significant upward trajectory in terms of players returning from injury and players improving. They're still super young. So I don't think they're going to be the number one pick, but I think you might be in a position where you can get a quarterback.

And, you know, I'm already getting the mentions on Twitter where people are like happy with the result yesterday because you saw from Jefferson what you wanted to see. Yep. And you still lost. So you're still one step closer you know you probably jumped up up a couple draft slots just by losing that game and maybe it's not Lawrence but maybe you're in a position where you can get a quarterback um and then Cousins obviously has the prohibitive cap hit next year 41 million dollars but after that mean, it's a fairly reasonable out. I think he's got 10 million dead after 2021. So if you think about maybe getting like the third,

fourth quarterback off the board, who, as we've seen, those quarterbacks can sometimes be the most successful. So I've been looking into this. So let me just read what my friend Brad Spielberger from PFF said about the $10 million dead cap because that is sort of nonexistent with this contract. It's a little bit weird. So let me just – I'm going to read a paragraph I wrote that I ran by him to make sure I had it right, okay, because this is complicated. And he does the cap stuff for PFF and over the cap. The Vikings have to make a decision by the third day of the league year in 2021

whether to keep or cut Cousins. If they cut him, they take on his entire dead cap for 2021. If they keep him, he's set to make $45 million on the cap for 2022. The only way basically to move him is to trade him. So his 2022 salary gets guaranteed on that third day. And so they can't cut him and get that dead cap. Okay. Well, that's brutal. I thank you for clarifying that for me. Sorry, I didn't know before. No, no, that's okay. I had to go to lengths to figure out how exactly this thing worked because it was a common question, and so I'm glad that Brad cleared that up. So from the long perspective, it feels like unless you're trading him away at some point, what you saw against the Titans is a where you might draft with him because I think that if

we get more performances like that and we probably will I still think it's a five or six win team yeah I think that the way the schedule shapes up you've got you know that sequence of home games kind of middle of the season where you probably will have some fans in the building to to increase the home field advantage which has kind of killed them know, I think in a couple of these. I think that you're probably going to win a couple road games. You wouldn't ordinarily have business winning because of that fact that there might not be fans or limited fans. I think it probably evens the playing field a bit like when you go to Seattle,

and I'm not predicting them to beat Seattle, but they could beat Houston. I mean, Houston's a winless team. You could, and the other thing too, Collar, is because of the expanded playoff field, it wouldn't take much to give you incentive to like think you're in the hunt. I mean, if you're two games back, you know, with four to go, I mean, you're probably not going to make it, but you obviously are going to go out there and play as hard as you can and try to win those games. There's not going to be an incentive, you know, with Spielman and Zimmer to sit down and say, well, let's really focus on Ezra Cleveland and Troy Dye and playing some of these younger guys. They would still try to get the W. And I'm not convinced that if given a week 17 game

with like Trevor, like if you lose, you get Trevor Lawrence. I'm pretty sure Mike Zimmer would still go out and try as hard as he can to win. The man who like doesn't like losing in the preseason. So it's going to be hard for the Vikings, I think, to sort of manipulate this situation to get a higher pick, sort of like, you of like the Timberwolves might have done last year. I don't think that's going to happen. There's going to be a lot of people that are trying to win six, seven games still. I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods.

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like you're pretty much done as the general manager. If you're the coach and you're benching him to try and lose a game at the end, you're probably done. Even if it is the smarter thing to do in terms of the big picture, and we know that tanking works, and I have a lot of respect for the fans who do enough research or pay enough attention in sports to see the benefits of drafting higher and losing on purpose, you know, trading away everything that isn't nailed down and trying to get to the bottom.

I just think with this situation, that's a really difficult thing to do because it involves benching the quarterback. Most of the time that Kirk Cousins plays that way, he's winning the game. They gave up some big plays. A kicker who missed three in the first game makes every kick against them because kickers always make every kick against the Vikings. And it's kind of some randomness thrown in there. And the fact that the Tennessee Titans are a legit contender in the AFC, and they're a very, very talented team, especially on offense. They were without their best wide receiver,

and they were still completing big plays to a guy named Raymond, who I had never heard of before. And congratulations to him and his family on the great game. Everybody loves him. You know what? Oh, wow, that's awful. What? A couple weeks in a row. Sorry, you just hit me hard on the everybody loves him thing.

But a couple weeks in a row now, it's guys we've never heard of before who are rising to the challenge. Mo Alley-Cox, did anyone know who the heck that was? And so now everyone loves him. Valdez Scantling the week before that. I was telling you yesterday in the press box that it seems like every week you get these third wide receivers, second tight ends that come out of the woodwork and perform.

Meanwhile, the Vikings can't, like, they can't coax anything out of their depth, pass-catching talent. Even Irv Smith has more penalties than receptions this year. Imagine that going into the season. He was supposed to be the breakout guy. Right, yeah, and that's where I want to go next with this. So just to kind of put, I don't know at least a period on it for now with Kirk Cousins I think that if you are the Vikings you are not in any position to bench

Kirk Cousins unless you have a trade already worked out for him for the offseason to have him out of there and there isn't much other than that you could do aside for maybe trading away Anthony Harris who hasn't had the big impact this year that he did last year. Maybe you could trade away Riley Reif. I don't know. But are these things preventing you from winning five or six games? The Dolphins won five games last year. It's really hard to be that bad.

And a sneaky team to watch for the number one overall pick next year, Denver. Denver is playing Jeff Driscoll and Jarrell Casey just got hurt too. They are in dire straits, and I don't think they have any reason to try and win. Their coach is clearly a guy you fire in Vic Fangio, and you hire some offensive guru. So there's a bunch of teams that, in my mind, are still ahead of the Vikings. And so from the Cousins' perspective, in the big picture, if you watch yesterday's game, you felt like, well,

we're in for this for a few more years is the way that I would look at that game so let's talk about some of the other guys I mean you brought up Irv Smith let's talk about weapons in general here from yesterday's game it was amazing for Justin Jefferson a breakout a reason to remember the game 175 yards is not your average breakout game. We would have written it for 75 yards and eight catches. He goes for 175, a 71-yard catch. But at the same time, you have B.C. Johnson, who looked somewhat promising, is completely benched in this game.

And as you mentioned, Irv Smith has totally failed to break out in these first three weeks. So look at yesterday's game. What do we take away from that in the short picture of how those three have performed so far? Yeah, it's the truism that you can't always rely on what you see in training camp. And maybe that's why we're not seeing Alexander Hollins more, who I've been begging for. But D.C. Johnson looked good too. I thought he was deserving of the number two job. I thought he looked better than Jefferson, and he played five snaps yesterday. They put Chad Beebe in front of him after Beebe was a scratch for two weeks, and Beebe didn't do much of anything

either. He continues to sort of lack the impact, I think, that the Vikings believe he can make. Jefferson, though, I mean, if you want to talk about, you know, sort of the failed, you know, strings the Vikings have tried to pull a wide receiver, that was an absolute hit, like, for them to make that insertion, to move him outside. And it begged the question why he didn't play more in the first two weeks, to be honest. But, I mean, I'm glad they made the move,

and they didn't wait for someone to get hurt. Like, I still wonder if Stephon Stefan Diggs or I'm sorry, if Charles Johnson in 2015 hadn't gotten hurt, like how long would it have taken them to play Stefan Diggs? I mean, would he have just sat on the sideline for eight weeks? So I'm glad that they made that move and they clearly were trying to, to do something to right the ship and it got the offense going. So credit to the coaching staff for making that switch but it is concerning like we talked about when you see Khalif Raymond you know stepping

up or last week it was Paris Campbell for the Colts when there's some depth that can show up and just sort of step on the field and make an impact and the Vikings have seven wide receivers on the roster not including Alexander Hollins and they can only get something out of two of them, that's problematic. You're getting no tight end production, except for Kyle Rudolph kind of doing the twice-a-year thing that he does, the one-handed catch back of the end zone, an amazing catch and skill, but nothing between the 20s. That was supposed to be Herb Smith territory.

He's too busy blocking people in the back. Tyler Conklin hasn't been used much except in 13 personnel. And, you know, I really thought, Collar, that they were going to go with more of a running back rotation with Madison and Cook. And, you know, can't blame them for keeping Cook on the field more with the way he played yesterday, 181, really impressive. And I think when Madison was on the field, things didn't go as well.

But, you know, as we've seen in the past, like when Cook has huge games, it doesn't always equal wins. Like against the Packers last year, I think Cook had a similar game in terms of production. And it didn't translate to a W. So passing is pretty important. The Vikings didn't really control the clock yesterday as much as you would expect when you run that well. I think the time of possession was 31-28, so it was better. But, I mean, the defense still can't slow anybody down or even force a three and out. So that's a bigger problem.

But let's circle back to the original question. Weapons, where are they? I mean, I think you've got like 10 weapons on this team that you think you can, you know, squeeze something out of. And right now you're getting something out of like three of them. Yeah. And Jefferson's breakout game yesterday absolutely should have you wondering about why he wasn't used a little differently. I don't mean as much as he was, because I believe that a ramp up is probably necessary for rookies, especially with him being on the COVID reserve list to start. And he already got put behind and you can't put guys out there if they're not comfortable with what they're supposed to be doing on specific plays.

And I'm not sure if he was supposed to run a different route on the pick six that wasn't or if that was just Cousins throwing the ball out to nobody I'm not certain about that but he was used in such a robust way Seth Walder from ESPN tweeted out his route tree he lined up in the slot he lined up outside he ran goes he ran deep crossers he ran hitches he ran slants it's like there's a lot of the route tree here and he's lining up all over the place so was he this far behind last week did this guy have one hell of a Wednesday practice right so and then there's the other part that I'm sure you notice this too that when Jefferson caught the ball he was working at a different sort of

speed and power from most other receivers. Like his first step after catching the ball, the way that he ran into defensive backs and then just pushed them forward for first downs on a couple of occasions, the way he ran away from cornerbacks with his speed in the open field on the deep crossing round. It's an athlete that's of a different level, and to not be able to use him effectively in the first two weeks because you were running three tight end stuff so much early in the game, that's where I would say early in those games, you should have been using Justin Jefferson in some fashion to make sure the football was in his hands.

So I would question that. But he played well when he was in for those first two games and then has this huge breakout. And that kind of covers up for all the other things that you're mentioning. The fact that you had to bench B.C. Johnson, the fact that now you're going back to that with Irv Smith not performing at a very high level through three weeks. To me, it's not red level concern, but it's maybe orange level concern because you said it. In training camp, Irv Smith Jr. was an absolute monster, and they were throwing to him all the time. He was open all the time. Maybe it was because it was against his defense. I don't know. But, I mean, he looked great.

And with tight ends, they usually don't have great rookie years. And he had a very solid rookie year, especially in the middle of the season. And for him to, like you said, have more penalties than he does receptions and not be a centerpiece. I mean, you wonder, is this a Kubiak thing? Because he wasn't using Jefferson effectively the first couple weeks. Is this an Irv Smith thing? And the penalties have kind of been bad breaks or just boneheaded plays and we're focused on them more than receptions because he hasn't had any like who is to blame here and should they be as excited now about Irv Smith after a very slow start as they would have been going into the season yeah we all wrote the piece you know this is the Herb Smith breakout year. I wrote it. I'm guilty of it. I think we all assumed, because a lot of the elite

tight ends who are drafted in the early rounds, they wait until their second year. So this was supposed to be it. I think there is a little danger in small sample sizes. You know, panic in small sample sizes can be kind of problematic, because game flow, you know, affected them the first couple weeks. Obviously, they didn't have the ball very much. Furthermore, you know, they like to run the ball, so he's a blocker many times. They also need help in pass protection, so he's probably, you know, an extension of the line on a few of those passing plays too. They did target him I think three or four times against the Colts. And he had an OPI

on one of his catches. They got overturned. He caught a nice one over the middle and then got rocked by the safety and dropped it. And then I think they threw another one to him that was very interceptable. It was a bad Cousins pass. So there's like one game they did try to involve him quite a bit and it just didn't work out. Yesterday, did he get targeted? I know he didn't have a catch. I don't think he got targeted. Pull this up right now.

I don't remember him getting targeted, but I will look here. So, yeah, I mean, so yesterday is kind of egregious, although you did have. No targets yesterday. You did have, you know, a pretty effective new weapon, Jefferson, that was getting a lot of targets. So, I mean, I think you're right. Moderate level of concern, you know, the fact that you haven't been able to involve him, you know, at all is probably the biggest part. It's like how drastically he's been underutilized.

It's not surprising to see that with Kyle Rudolph at this stage. We know he's a red zone guy. He's just not going to be a catch monster. He's not going to get big yards. But Irv Smith is supposed to counteract that. He was supposed to complete the tight end position and be the one who can move and get open. And that's pretty disappointing that that hasn't happened. So maybe that's the next step. You get Jefferson involved this week. Maybe next week it's Irv Smith we'll see if he's you know an increased part of the game plan going forward and this is where you do have to ask is it partly Kubiak just getting comfortable with what he has here and figuring out what's going to work and what doesn't work

as a play caller in specific situations with these guys because with Irv Smith in the middle of the season last year Kevin Stefanski was moving him all over one thing that you and I have both talked about is the lack of motion in this offense I saw that Buffalo with Josh Allen suddenly playing really well is using motion as much as anybody in the league the Rams use it all over the place and one thing you can do when you have a move tight end is you can start them in this place and move them to that place, or you can get a move in at the snap,

and then the defense has to adjust and figure out what they're going to do. Now, Irv was in the backfield I saw at one point yesterday, but I think they just ran as opposed to maybe trying to do something tricky with him. There was a play San Francisco used with George Kittle out of the backfield that was really clever where he actually ran a deep route from the fullback position. And so when I saw it, I thought, well, maybe they'll do something really creative here. And that didn't happen. I think that Irv Smith is a creative play caller's dream, but you have to be

creative with him. And then we'll see where it goes from there. And so I'm going to give a little bit of leeway here for Gary Kubiak over these first couple of weeks but I think Irv Smith and his development is central to how good the group of weapons are going to be next year because if you look at it for the big picture and you say all right you're going forward with this version of Jefferson who can be unstoppable at times Adam Adam Thielen, who is solid and you know is very good, and then this move tight end, who can do so many different things. Well, that means you've got a good position with your offensive weapons. If Smith does not emerge

and he sputters or struggles this year, then you have a lot less confidence in that position and what you have there. Speaking about no confidence, the offensive line put together one of its most abysmal pass-protecting performances since I moved to Minnesota in 2016, and let's think about that. Like, let's think about the 2016 season. I mean, last year, 2018, the interior of the offensive line, Drew Samia got a 1.4 pass blocking grade out of 100. And from the guard position, allowed six quarterback pressures. Garrett Bradbury, pass protection, a 28 out of 100 grade.

Riley Reif is trucking along, having a career year here and doing great. But aside from that, yesterday's game was nothing short of abysmal. Even Brian O'Neill did not have a very good game yesterday for the Vikings on the offensive line. 17 pressures allowed, I'm seeing, for the group. And you know what's interesting? You mentioned 2016. I remember the last time that Clowney was at U.S. Bank Stadium for the Texans

when he ate T.J. Clemmings' lunch. The Vikings did win that game. But it was Clowney again yesterday along with Jeffrey Simmons. Oh, my goodness. Jeffrey Simmons looks like a player. And that's why you draft for the future and not right away, by the way, because he had that torn ACL when he drafted. And he came back second half of last year and was a stud, too.

I mean, and that was coming off injury. So he's probably still getting better in his second year. He's unbelievable. And that's the story against this team. It's those big interior rushers that seem to really take advantage of them. And they moved Clowney inside a little bit, and he did the same thing. Drew Samia has us begging for Pat Elfline again. And that's a shocking thing to say.

Pat Elfline had a really bad first game in pass protection. And I keep coming back to this. The Vikings sort of were given, I think, an out in the offseason because people assumed, oh, they don't have the money to really fix this offensive line. Oh, they got Ezra Cleveland in the draft. Okay, there's an important piece. And so notwithstanding how they handled Cleveland, which I think is a little confusing still, they draft the tackle,

they move him to guard, and then don't, you know, really try to move him up that ladder too much. I don't think that it's fair to say that they didn't have money to spend on the offensive line. Like, they've proven that they had money. Rob Brzezinski can manipulate this cap like crazy. They obviously had the money to pay the franchise tag to Anthony Harris. They had the money to pay Ngakwe.

They had the money to introduce some new cash to the salary cap with the Dalvin Cook deal. So if they had prioritized it, I think they could have signed a really good starting lineman. But instead, they subtracted from that group by cutting Josh Klein. Maybe there's more to that than we understand. Still doesn't make a lot of sense. Maybe it was an injury thing, a concussion thing. But the fact that they didn't go to any lengths, I think is even more of an indictment. After you see what they have, just assuming that in-house fixes were going to solve these problems, you know, Dozier's been about what we expected.

Elfline's been exactly what we expected. Samia, I mean, it was foreshadowed last year that he was struggling to pick things up. I think you're still in an okay spot at your tackle position, but you know, if Reef is gone next year, you're not even using your second round pick at that position right now. So there's a lot of questions I have, and the Vikings, no one should be surprised that this is happening. I I mean everyone forecasted it and it's all coming true it's all like as bad as you think it might have been thanks to a lack of natural athleticism or commitment or overbearing sports parents fewer than one percent of one

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The short term of this is, and we were very critical of Cousins' play through the first two games and some points in yesterday's game, but the short term of it is you didn't give Kirk Cousins a whole heck of a lot of opportunity to sit in the pocket and feel comfortable there outside of garbage time when opposing teams are not rushing the same way they normally would but you took your quarterback's kryptonite and it's almost like you took that green rock of kryptonite and you put it closer to him and you said oh you thought it was bad with Tom Compton wait till you see Drew Samia and that was one of the worst guard performances honestly I've ever seen live it just felt like uh they were running right through him from the very start and the run blocking was good at times, sometimes very good, where Delvin Cook had big holes and burst through for a 39-yard touchdown. But the run blocking has never been the problem. It's you're not helping your very expensive, important quarterback to the franchise.

And we know that he's not going to make up for that. So maybe if this is Deshaun Watson with these guards, but even him I think gets sacked a bunch or any of the other moving quarterbacks, just because they're not even putting up really a fight at the moment on the interior. And like you said, first guess you could made on that. Now the long-term is, do you trust the Vikings to ever find human beings who can block? I think Riley Reif at this point now has to stay next year, unless you're certain of what you're going to do there,

or if you're certain that Ezra Cleveland is going to go from the bench to starting at left tackle next year. But that might be a big step back if you guess wrong on Ezra Cleveland. And also the fact that they said oh we're trying him at guard but then never ever used him at tackle which makes me think that they think they have a guard and so now are you drafting a tackle the guy from Oregon at the very top what like what are you going to do to solve this problem will you finally learn your lesson and get some proven free agents but that's gone bust in the past.

I mean, it feels like this team just cannot put five people on the field that can successfully block outside of 2017. This reminds me of the other beat that I cover. It's the Golden Gophers basketball team, and every year you put on paper, you know, how deep the bench is going to be, and then the season comes around and all of the potential you thought was there isn't there and they're like they have like one guy on the bench to who can who can sort of play that's sort of what the Vikings offensive line is like because I think going going into the season you you said well you know at least they have a lot of bodies they've got Avion Collins you know is kind of never really fulfilled this potential and uh Brett Jones is a nice piece who's always in the building

and is never allowed to play. And maybe, you know, Ole Udo can kick inside. He had a nice Week 17 game. And none of these things come to fruition. Like, they still kind of go back to the same people that they preferred last year. I mean, Dakota Dozier got preference last year. He gets preference this year. Pat Elfline has always had favor in the team's eyes, and he plays again.

Now, looking at next year, I don't know if you've seen the terms on Reef's contract, if his fifth year of his deal also got affected by the restructure or if it got eliminated entirely. I know they did that with, I think, Brian Robison a few years ago. They just eliminated the last year. They let him go to free agency. I don't know what Riley Reif's contract status is, but I know that in a world where you probably want to extend Brian O'Neill and extend Yannick Ngakwe. I think in your cap planning meetings, you probably

assumed that you were going to shed that reef cap. So I don't know if you can keep him or not. I mean, if you can restructure him again, sure, great, do it. But Elf line contract year, it's got to be a less than 25% chance he returns. Unless his stock is so low you can get him on a cheap one-year deal i mean under those circumstances i might consider it but not as a starter brian brian dozier dakota dozier um contract here so hey good thing they didn't sign uh brian dozier to a huge contract extension right like that worked out for the twins. Brian Dozier, great pad level. But they could have three different linemen next year, and maybe you can say that, okay, they've got one man in waiting.

That's Ezra Cleveland. Other than that, they don't have clear successors. Drew Samia, I don't think after what we've seen for one year and now two games, I don't think you can count on Drew Samia as being a 2021 starter. I mean, you need to do some serious work, invest some serious financial and draft capital, and your financial situation is way up in the air with the sort of wavering cap situation and the loss of revenue.

And that's where the do you trust them comes in because they've invested a second round pick in Ezra Cleveland, a first round pick in Bradbury, a second round pick in O'Neal, a huge contract in Riley Reif, and then the Josh Klein thing, they had to cut him. You know, even going back, other players that they've brought in have not worked out, and you just sort of have to ask that question. Is this been a stroke of bad luck for them for the last few years under Zimmer, or is this something where you don't have a good eye for offensive line talent? On the Riley Reif matter, at least over the cap is listing his contract still going through 2021, and him having a $14 million dollar cap number and you could cut him before

June 1st and get 12 million of that so from a cap perspective it makes a lot of sense from an on-field perspective if Ole Udo isn't even dressing and they brought back Rashad Hill maybe because they didn't feel quite as high about Ole Udo as the rest of America who watched the week 17 game then you, maybe we're talking about them restructuring again with Riley Reif, or if this isn't updated, I'm not sure. It looks like it is for him for next year, but bringing him back, I don't think is crazy the way that he's played this year and your lack of answers otherwise. So I guess before we wrap up, let me just ask you one more thing.

We know what the small picture of the defense was yesterday. They gave up huge plays. They made mistakes on plays that even went well, as Mike Zimmer outlined with the interception from Harrison Smith, where he pointed out somebody else was supposed to be there, and Harrison just made an unbelievable play. But the cornerback group, the defense, from the big picture of it, to not have Mike Hughes and Cameron Dantzler playing in that game and to have Jeff Gladney get smoked again deep and Holton Hill still struggling, I think from the big picture here, you, through only three games, can still go, what's going to happen here? What's going to happen with Hughes' health?

Is Cam Dantzler thick enough to not get hurt in this league? Jeff Gladney, I wouldn't freak out about, but Holton Hill, I might, right? So your kind of, before we wrap up, big picture take on the secondary that had so many questions going into the year? Yeah, the quarterback thing is interesting because I think it's great that you've gotten a chance to play Cam Dantzler and Jeff Gladney this much early in the year. And I know Dantzler's got the rib injury right now, and I think he'll be back fairly soon or else they would have IR'd him. But in the grand scheme, if you're of the mindset that this team is going nowhere this team should tank then you should be thrilled that they're in a position where the cornerbacks can

you know play this much and get this much seasoning I think for the young guys awesome opportunity for Holton Hill who I think continues to struggle, this was supposed to be his breakthrough year again. And it's sort of like Irv Smith. I wrote the story, like, Holton Hill could be your best corner this year. And it's not like anyone's running away with that title. I guess he still could be. I feel like I'm good there.

Are you good there with Holton Hill? Are you kind of like, all right, I'm set. I don't need to see any more when the other guys return. Just play it up. I don't. I don't. I know. I don't. You're right. I would rather develop Gladney and Dantzler, I think, in front of Holton Hill at this point, and then have them. You're probably going to need to do a little rotating at some point. Why not have them in reserve? I'm more disappointed in my cues. Like like I guess in some sense it's maybe a relief that Holton isn't going to have this type of year that's going to like require you to pay him a corner like a starting cornerback salary because he is an RFA um so that'd be coming up Mike Hughes though is a

first round pick and you still want to see something from him and like Mike Zimmer was saying early on in training camp that he lacked confidence, which I thought was an interesting thing for him to volunteer. This is his third season. He keeps dealing with injuries. And we have no idea what this neck thing is going to mean, whether it's, you know, a Daniil Hunter neck, whether it's the vertebrae that he had late last season.

Mike Zimmer is just so hard to read on injuries. Hughes is probably the biggest concern for me, that he hasn't stepped up quite in the way that we hoped. I know it's only two games that he's played. I'm not going to judge Dantzler or Gladney too harshly at this point. I think they both had decent moments, but they obviously clearly have a ways to go, and that's to be expected because you didn't sign anybody in free agency to kind of help be a stop gap.

Yep. I know that it's only three weeks in with Holton Hill, and maybe it's a little aggressive to say that I'm done caring about that and how that goes. But when you have these other draft picks who have potential, I just want to see them instead. I'd rather see Chris Boyd. I know that PFF didn't give him a great grade, but he was only targeted three times yesterday. And so give me

some Chris Boyd. I don't mind seeing that as opposed to Holton Hill, who's been targeted 20 times, 14 receptions, 209 yards, and quarterbacks have a 120 quarterback rating throwing at him through three games. So, you know, hey, in your third year, there's no, oh, you didn't have preseason or something. Like, this is, you are not a rookie. Let's not treat him the same way through the same lens as the others. And with Hughes, when he comes back from this neck injury, assuming it's short because he didn't go on IR, that's, I mean, it's pedal to the metal for him. He has to prove that he deserves a fifth-year option or that pick is not going to look very

good and I agree with you when you hear cornerback and confidence you sort of scratch your head a little and it's been some ups some good games some downs some bad games and he's never had this continuity of playing like you know 10 games in a row and for someone to be in their third year and has not played that long of a stretch where they're a starter and playing significantly, you definitely hear, you know, the warning signals for that. So that's, that, that goes under the category to me of keeping an eye on for the rest of this year. But I want Hughes, Dantzler and Gladney,

and then Chris Boyd mixing in when everybody else is, is healthy. So Sam, this has been fun to look at things through the Titans game and then through the big picture. And there will be a lot more of that to come. Make sure you read Sam's work at zonecoverage.com. Does great work there. And also, it is the Football Machine podcast, is it not?

Yes, it is. Wednesday nights with Arif Hasan and Luke Inman. And then Monday reactions with a rotating cast of characters, often myself and Luke Inman. All right, perfect. Luke always brings an incredible amount of energy to those podcasts. He does. So they're a must listen. Sam Ekstrom, make sure you check out his work, and I appreciate the time, Sam.

Thanks. Let's go get on some Zoom calls. How about? Doesn't get any more exciting than that.