Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Will Ragatz Show: Host of the Stay Hot podcast Theo Ash talks Vikings-Packers rivalry

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Sports Illustrated Vikings reporter Will Ragatz talks with Theo Ash, who has become one of the top Tik Tok NFL content creators and co-host of the Stay Hot podcast. They talk about his unique background and his view of the Vikings-Packers rivalry and his memories growing up in the region. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Will Raggett show on Purple Insider. I'm Will Raggett, cover the Vikings for SI.com. And joining me today is a very special guest, Theo Ash, who is the co-host of the Stay Hot podcast on the Blue Wire Network. One of the top football content creators on TikTok with over 170,000 followers and a great Twitter follow as well at Theo Ash NFL. Theo, how's it going, man? Thanks for coming on. It's going well. I'm in the great state of Minnesota where I'm from, Northfield. I was in Arizona. I live there. I have an apartment down there because of school. And it's always nice to come back here and get some cooler weather. It's already 100 degrees down there and just like some green, which is nice to see.

I always love making it back here to the Midwest and I always love talking football. So it's great to be here. Yeah, and I want to start. We'll talk about the Packers are actually your team, not the Vikings. We'll talk about them. We'll talk about the Vikings. Everybody right now is turning the podcast right off. They're like, no, brother.

I know some people will maybe cringe, but don't don't turn it off um we I want to start by introducing you a little bit for people who maybe don't um don't know you um so you are a Minnesota born Packers fan um and I guess maybe just describe that a little bit how like where's your love of football starting and your love of the Packers yeah uh well my my family is from Appleton, Wisconsin, which is right south of Green Bay, about 45 minutes. And both my mom and my dad are from there. My grandparents are all from there. So I grew up in a Packers house, even though they moved states to Minnesota and grew up watching them and grew up when I was going to my grandparents' house in Appleton for winter break or whatever, we would go up, they have season tickets for the Packers.

So we would go up usually in the winter and I would get to about a game a year that way. So just kind of, even though I grew up in Minnesota and all my friends are Viking fans, I grew up in a Packers house and that's how that really started. And, you know, as a, as a Packer fan growing up in Minnesota, you've kind of got to constantly defend yourself from, from slander and defend your, and slander, of course, the Vikings in high school and sports arguments. convince other people all the time that you know Aaron Rodgers is a good player or like you know Jordy Nelson is good or whatever it was going going forward is like I constantly needed to to kind of it was it was like an arms race of like who could who could know the most who could

make the best argument about things so that's kind of where that started is is that rivalry and um yeah it's it's been fun I've cooled on the vikings uh hate a little bit going you know doing this professionally now i can't just be like you know yeah the vikings to me now are like most other teams where i'm like you know i i'm interested to see what they do always so yeah but that's how it started yeah that probably like just kind of subconsciously was preparing you for um having this platform where you have the podcast and you have the tick tock and you're, and you're having all these takes and that's cool. And I, I can, I can relate to that.

My best friend all throughout high school was born in Minnesota and from Minnesota, but a big Packers fan. So we would always have kind of that back and forth. And we actually both went to the 2012 NFC wildcard game together, famously started by Joe Webb. And so that's not the game. I was I was at the game before that with my Viking fans where where Peterson was seven yards short of the all time record. Yeah. And was it Blair Walsh who won that in overtime or right before overtime? That 2012 would have been Blair Walshh's rookie year i think yeah yeah when he was

a good kicker and he sent them peterson would have had a chance to break the record if it went to overtime but but blair walsh hit the kick and it sent them to the play i was one of the craziest games i've ever been to in person i wanted to ask you about that actually like do you have any any lambo memories that stick out did you ever see a Vikings-Packers game live? Yes, me and my friend also. The same – my best friend is a Viking fan. We went to Lambeau one time, and it was just a total blowout, and he was so miserable.

It was like – I don't remember the final score, but I remember Bridgewater was hurt, I think, and I think it was ponder had to come in and julius peppers had a pick six i think they only put seven points on the board i can't remember the exact details of the game but that's probably the last the last one that i went to a viking packers game that's the last one i went to but yeah i think some of my favorite lambo memories are um there was an eagles game that i went to that they won like 55 to 7 or something like that there was a snow game against the texans which was just a gorgeous game to attend

oh yeah um so yeah those are probably the ones that stick out the most in my mind i remember even when i was like four years old i remember going to a a pre-season game against the bills and a bills player scored and i just remember giving him a big thumbs down. And I thought that would really, really affect him seeing like a four-year-old do that from the crowd. But yeah, no, definitely, definitely some good memories there. That's a great, I mean, that's a great stadium. Yeah, it really is. It really is, has a lot of charm to it.

And I think that's what's key. The Viking stadium is really cool too, but I always love like, especially like a snowy outdoor game at Lambeau, I think has like a certain type of personality to it. And it feels very, you know, authentic, but not a lot of stadiums are like that. So I always think Lambeau was worth the hype. Yeah. I started covering the Vikings in 2019. I finally was able to get to Lambeau to cover a game

just last year uh for the the Sean Mannion game so not the greatest uh not the greatest football game but I enjoyed the press box it was cool to be there the last time I was there before that was actually that 2018 as I was still a fan this was the 2018 Vikings Packers game where they tied in week two and it was just so hot and uh Daniel Carlson missed like four kicks and got cut the next day because Mike Zimmer was not having that so that was a pretty memorable one as well but um moving past that so you you went to you go to Arizona State you have do you have one more year I think I am not taking classes because of the whole podcast thing anymore but I did go to ASU but

now I'm doing enough where I'm like I think that I can just kind of focus on this full time so I can always go back but right now yes I went there for ASU I did sports journalism until June first semester of junior year then I stopped taking classes and went to focus on some other stuff full time so yeah I was a sports journalism major and it was a lot of fun. It was kind of a unique major and, and you got to talk to some interesting people. And I talked to Charles Barkley on a zoom meeting, which was really cool. I talked to the author, Jeff Perlman. And that's the one that always sticks out to me because Jeff Perlman, he wrote a book on Brett Favre, which I had already read. And he was like, you know, if you're going to be a journalist, you should be on every social media platform you should be on,

you can be on, you need to put like as much content out everywhere as you can. And that's when I kind of was like, bit the bullet. And I made a I made a TikTok account, which I'd been resisting for a long time. But once I made that the ball really started rolling for me. And there just wasn't a lot of serious creators on there. know on twitter there's like all kinds of good football dialogue happening on tiktok it's all just little kids so for me to but there's some some teens on there as well and there's some like young adults mostly so for me to go on and start talking about football on kind of a coherent level was i thought kind of a breath of fresh air and really allowed me to grow kind of a young audience there and there wasn't a lot of competition it's I'm not really dealing with

the like on Twitter you got to deal with you know beat reporters so many beat reporters from every team and YouTubers and everybody's there on TikTok you know I was kind of one of the first on the boat yeah and for people who may not have seen your TikTok you do a ton of cool stuff on film breakdowns. I like right now you're doing the interception series I saw where you're like looking at every interception or a sample of interceptions thrown by a quarterback last year and kind of assessing blame for them or whether the receiver fell down and it wasn't their fault or whatnot, which is adding some cool context and just things like that. But going back, when did you start the TikTok account? And then when did you kind of see it start to take off and,

and get the sense that this was maybe going to be a big thing for you? I started it in right before the 2020 season, the pandemic season. And it, I had some interesting takes right away. I thought like my first ever video on there was disproving the Larry Fitzgerald has more tackles and drops stats, which I think everybody's heard. But that one, I was like, there's no way that's true. So I went back and looked at some data from PFF and their drop rate had them at like more

drops than tackles. It was still crazy low, but it was like more drops than tackles. And Sports Info Solutions, Football Outsiders outsiders as far back as they were tracking drops like it was a little bit ahead of the pace that that you see i think the number you see is 29 career drops and his drop rate is still crazy low but that that number is like kind of made up it comes from an nfl network stat that was like um you know he had this many drops this season like one one two one zero one two and i went back and looked at some larry fitzgerald film and i'm like okay he clearly had like two drops in this season and it said it only had one but there's like very like even if you're going to give him the benefit of the doubt where like

anything outside of his frame is't a drop it's like these are like obviously drops so that that's that is wrong and that was like i thought kind of interesting analysis and a bunch of people got mad so that did that first video like do pretty well it did pretty well and then i did i made some other videos i was really analytically oriented to begin i was big into football analytics dvoaA, EPA, all that kind of thing. And just kind of introducing people to that and making takes based off that was doing pretty well. And a lot of people hadn't heard that on TikTok and were kind of interested in that. I made one where I talked about how, you know, Saquon Barkley was a bad pick at number two, which two years ago was a very hot take or, you know, Aaron Donald might be the greatest defensive player of all time he's just as dominant as Lawrence Taylor was if not more which you know is more acceptable now to say than it was you know

two years ago but uh some hot takes like that sort of everybody was kind of picking fights with me too that were already there on that app so I kind of came in swinging and like having these crazy hot takes based on numbers and um I feel like a lot of people didn't love me at the beginning because of it, but it really did grow the, grow the, the base right away. So I saw some pretty instantaneous growth these days. I'm more of doing film. I think I've calmed a little bit. I've shied away from analytics and numbers because I've, I've found more problems with, with the way that that kind of works in football. So I've shied away from analytics and numbers because I've found more problems with the way that that kind of works in football.

So I've I've kind of like humbled myself, I think, a little bit. And I'm trying to learn the game and the actual sport and what goes into it and the coverages and like interception series. Like, you know, picks are picks. Right. And and EPA lost the picks as epa lost the picks but some of those picks just aren't the quarterback's fault so like going back and looking at those and that's kind of the arc i'm on now is i just want to be a good film reviewer i know what i'm looking at and yeah that's a cool point it's like hot takey as i used to be but people still like it people still like it it's a cool series in general because i remember in 2020, I wrote an article that was basically just like that concept. Like Kirk Cousins, I think through week six, had 10 interceptions like among the league leaders.

And people were like calling for him to be benched. And it was a whole it was a whole thing. And I went in and I kind of think I ranked them like from most to least his fault. And he had a couple that were not his fault, really, that were like a Hail Mary against the Colts. And then he had one where he threw it right to Deion Jones against the Falcons and it was terrible. So just like the little things like that, where you're kind of helping people expand their knowledge of the game

beyond just the basic box score stats. I think that's really cool. What's it been like just in general, seeing this community that you have take off on TikTok? And as someone who is on TikTok a lot myself, like I know the comment sections can be kind of a wild place, kind of unique to any other social media, I think, just with like the age thing. Yeah. Where it's so many like literal kids sometimes, but also a lot of teenagers and stuff. But what's that just been like in general?

And then as a follow-up, I'm curious what the take is when you were first, when you were still doing the hot takes, what was the take that people got the most mad at you about? It's been fun. I think like a lot of young kids enjoy, like there'll be memes and like running bits that they really embrace. So I think it's crucial to sometimes kind of switch it up and add a kind of an element of humor to some of your

videos. Like, like I pretended the other day that my producer is making me push it to a top 10 narrative and I'm like being held hostage. And like, sometimes I'll make videos like that, that I'm like, just joking around. And I think that kind of keeps the kids happy instead of just always being serious all the time. And especially on Twitter, I'm, I'm, I'm not always providing like super, super serious analysis and I'm more just like joking around or saying things like, especially after the Packers lose my way of coping is just like, you know, it's being funny saying I'm not a Packers lose my way of coping is just like, you know,

it's being funny saying I'm not a Packers fan anymore saying I'm going to take my talents to Detroit where they actually know how to run a team. And I think you've kind of got to embrace the humor of all that and kind of not take things super seriously because a lot of the people watching your videos are, are more attracted to you as kind of a personality more than just the analysis. Like I could talk about, you know, my favorite albums and it would get a lot of you i could talk about whatever it's like you kind of

got to be a person on on the same side of thing it's like oh theo he was a while i i talk about bird watching and some of my other hobbies on there too and it's i think the comment section my take on that is like i'll see some horrible football takes on there too but i feel like a lot of the people are just kind of there to have fun and and they'll kind of mess around or say this and i get a lot of ideas from the comment section as well because i'll make a video about like daniel jones throwing picks which i just did and none of the comments will be about daniel jones or the video they're just like do this next do this next do baker next yeah do this next baker next when's next so it's like the comment section

it's not always about the video that actually is getting posted it's um it's just about whatever so you kind of got to be flexible and malleable and kind of have fun with it and it's a source of a lot of ideas and the take that people got most mad at me on is definitely my bengals take my joe burrow take about him having a weak arm before this season when they went to the literal Super Bowl I thought that they would be I thought Joe Burrow coming off an injury and he had that huge scar on his knee and they didn't fix the offensive line and I was like you got Eli Apple and chido be a woozie and like Trey Hendrickson is maybe their best defensive player I'm like the defense isn't going to be good. Burrow is not going to be cut.

He's going to get sacked a lot. He might get hurt again. Jamar Chase was like dropping everything in preseason. I'm like, is this guy even good? So I was like, you know, this is going to be a bad team this year. And then, of course, they were not a bad team this year. And I mean, I'll be the first to say that take aged horribly. And people were mad when I made it, but I was,

I was totally low on the Bengals and people were mad at me about that. They thought I was an idiot and I was an idiot. But that was kind of my logic going into it. It was just like, I was, I was concerned about the offensive line. I was concerned about the defense concerned about chase even. And then I don't, yeah. I don't think the logic at the time was that terrible. I don't think people really saw them as a Superbowl bowl team i'm sure you got lots of people coming back to to dunk on you

and take victory laps but had them with that's the internet lowest win total right so it wasn't like the craziest thing at the time but um people were really and then that was a running bit throughout the year it was just like i'm not gonna listen to you because you had the bangles take and i'm like you know what all right fair but that's that's part of the internet is you're gonna if you're gonna put out takes then you're gonna get some of them right and look good um like say kwan barkley not being worth the number two overall pick and some of them are not gonna age as well and that's just kind of just gotta roll with it and have fun with it right right yeah yeah so yeah it is what it is but that's definitely the one where people got the

most mad at me and i'll i'll be wrong about something this year for sure again because no one this year especially i think you look at every single team like even the lions or the texans or the dolphins or whatever team just the jets whatever perennial basement team that there is uh i guess the dolphins are usually that bad but every team has some hope this year or a young quarterback even the bears and everybody the jaguars the jaguars might have a competent head coach now yeah right there's not one team that because someone's gonna win three games right so i'm gonna predict whoever i think the worst team is to have like a three-win season and then like i just know that this offseason is going to

be like especially bad like like at least last year you had the texans where like everybody knew that it was bad but this year i don't even think you can say that is there is there an argument for the texans being being better this year like i don't really think so but i think lovey smith as the head coach just that one, that one confused me during the whole cycle. They've got Stingley. I guess he's good, but the rest of the secondary is bad. Like the front seven is bad. The wide receiving room, like cooks is good, but the rest of it, it's probably one of the weaker receiving rooms. Still Davis mills is your quarterback. Offensive line is okay. It, it like, there's some reason for hope because like maybe mills is your quarterback offensive line is okay it it like there's some reason for

hope because like maybe mills is good and maybe stingley is like really good but still like looking at that roster it could still be one of the worst ones so who knows but texans fans will still still think they're underrated yeah so i want to get to the i want to get to the packers and the vikings and some off-season thoughts but uh real quick the last thing i just so now you are doing um you're doing the tiktok stuff and you're doing the stay hot podcast um just tell people really quickly about um the podcast and what you guys do because i know it's not just nfl it's you you do nba you do general sports stuff um it's you and and matt and bladen who are other um tiktok guys how did you guys kind of meet and and start that yeah we started that because of we were just all we all

had pretty big accounts on tiktok and and i think that we all kind of like each other's work and there was a there's a company called Clutch Points. And they put together like this account where it was all the big creators under like one Clutch Points thing. And we all signed on to do that, which was kind of stupid in hindsight. But we did because we were just excited that someone wanted to work with us. So then me, Matt, and Blade and all worked during that. And we had a group chat.

And then we were like, you know, we could probably do be a little bit more effective doing our own thing our own podcast so uh we kind of split off on our own and we're going to do that and then as luck would have it Blue Wire was looking for talent and they reached out to Matt who has like a ridiculous amount of followers on TikTok he's got like 300 something followers thousand followers on TikTok it's crazy so they reached out to him and they said, would you be interested in being like a podcast personality? And he said, can I bring these two? They also have a lot of followers. They said, sure. So we made the, we made the podcast and you know, we, it's,

it's been fun and it's kind of the same deal as, as our videos, except our videos are three minutes long max and the podcast is us talking for an hour. So we can get into a little bit more depth. We can talk a little bit of basketball, which I don't like as much as football, but I can talk a little bit of basketball. And yeah, we can just talk about whatever's going on, really. So that's been fun.

And yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And we've been able to go out and cover the draft in Vegas, which has been super cool. We've been out to LA to watch a Chiefs versus Chargers game and see some different studios. So Summer League in Vegas. So it's like, man, I made this TikTok account and now I'm out in LA doing stuff.

So it's been crazy. I've been super excited for it. That's awesome. And people should definitely go check that out wherever you get your podcasts. So I want to talk about the Packers and Vikings. We'll start with the Packers because this is your team. And I just want to know your general kind of offseason thoughts.

So Packers lose Devontae Adams, who I think kind of clear cut the best receiver in the NFL over the past two, three seasons. Vikings fans will be the first to point out that justin jefferson is entering his name into that category very quickly but lose a darius smith who is now on the vikings um but get some extensions done with aaron rogers devondre campbell who just an unreal signing last june reston smith jr alexander um we'll get into the draft in a second but on kind of the free agent losses extension side um what stands out to you about that that area of the offseason for green bay yeah well wide receivers definitely stand out to me not just adams but hill and aj brown and all these wide receivers that have been moving around where i think like 30 million dollars for a wide

receiver is a lot of money it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And there was a time just a couple of years ago where the highest paid wide receivers were like Julio Jones at $21 million, like $22 million. And then the DeAndre Hopkins trade happened and he got sent to Arizona and he just kind of jumped the shark and signed a $27 million contract. So all of a sudden, it doesn't take a couple of years where it's like, oh, we're matching, we're going from 22 to 23 and then the next year 23 to 24 and the next year 24 to 25

it's like directly from like 22 to 27 so that like accelerated things by like five years in a covid era where the salary cap is like not growing as much because there's not as much revenue so all of a sudden some of these wide receivers are worth like a ridiculous amount of your cap space and adams is incredibly special and i think that we're going to see a lot of rogers throwaways this year i think we're going to see a lot of aaron rogers yelling at christian watson for doing the wrong thing and we're going to see the the efficiency take a pretty major dip like what it was from 2015 to 2019 i want to say for rogers where i was kind of looking like he wasn't quite that mvp type guy anymore i think we're kind of going to see a little bit more of that although that was the mike mccarthy era and

now we're in the matt lefou era but still i think adams is incredibly valuable but like 30 million dollars is a tough pill to swallow um and the team hasn't been good enough to get to the Super Bowl with Adams. And like, if you tie up that amount of money, it's, it's tough to be, you know, to rebuild into maybe a better team in the future. So it was really, I mean, I love Adams and clearly he's been amazing and I think the offense is going to suffer and we're very obviously a worse team than we were last year. But at the same time, I also get not paying a wide receiver $30 million.

I think there's more talent at the wide receiver position right now than any other position. I think every year in the draft, we're seeing a historic wide receiver. Like, oh my God, this class of wide receivers. Yeah, it's like three or four in a row where there's like, this is the best receiver class. Yeah. Like, oh my God, this class of wide receivers. Yeah, it's like three or four in a row where there's like, this is the best receiver class. Yeah. Yeah, oh my God.

Like since 2014, it's like this wide receiver, this wide. Okay, but this one, and even next wide receiver class with like JSN out of Ohio State is like, oh, is he the best? And Jordan Addison, it's going to be another great wide receiver class next year. So supply and demand of wide receivers is a little bit out of whack. I'm sad that he had to go, but like, I get it.

Christian Watson, I scouted him. He reminds me of Marquez Valdez Scantling. So I kind of wish we would have just paid Valdez Scantling and maybe taken a different wide receiver at, in the second round, especially giving that pick to the Vikings who they then used to trade up to Booth, who I liked more. So I was like, man, if Booth is better than, than Watson, that would be a really tough pill to swallow because we took,

we took the new MVS and they got a good corner, the Vikings. So to give a division rival, the ammunition to do that while taking kind of a project wide receiver, I thought that was kind of the worst move of the off season and it involves the Vikings. Yeah. Theings got a lot of heat the new gm quesadilla fomenta got a lot of heat for the trade that they made on day one with the lions where they moved back from deserve i think they should have gotten all the way back moving that far back that that's my thing too when i've we talked and written a lot about it is like even if you think the process of it makes sense and you

won by the like the analytic charts that grade, like career outcome and PFF war and things like that. And like you, if you think that that was the right process, I still think you could have gotten more, um, like using just the market value in the, the, whether they're outdated or not, like the Jimmy Johnson charts that people still use and factor in and the precedent of recent trades where like the bears moving up to get justin fields had to give up a future one and then so much more and that wasn't even moving up as far so um maybe it was the best offer they had at the time i've never i've also never seen i have never seen in the history of pff them say that the team that traded

down lost the deal all right so they all like you could trade down i'm convinced you could trade down whatever however much for whatever and pff would say you won the deal but yeah no given the recent history of trades i definitely think like you would expect i think there was a drop off after like there was a point where it went from kyle hamilton got picked at 14 and then the 15th pick was kenyan green out of texas a&m it's like there was a point where it went from Kyle Hamilton got picked at 14. And then the 15th pick was Kenyon green out of Texas A&M. It's like, there's a teardrop there. Right. So the Vikings were kind of in that first tier and then they moved. But I did think moving up with the Packers for Booth was,

and I like Louis seen as well. I think they had a decent, decent draft. I just think like they could have gotten a first round pick next year. Well, that's what I was going to say is like i think vikings fans maybe can take some solace in that like if there may be people who are still frustrated about that that round one trade ultimately how good lewis seen and andrew booth and and jameson williams to some extent are is going to be how that's judged but to hear you as a packers fan saying that you did not like that trade where they gave up um the two seconds to go up to 34 and get Watson probably makes some Vikings fans feel a little bit better, but I want to ask you just, just, sorry,

just general draft thoughts from the Packers, not only that trade, but getting Quay Walker and Devante Wyatt in the first round. Did you like the draft that they had in general? Yeah, I did. I mean, I liked, I liked yeah i did i i mean i liked i liked what they did on day three a lot too with zach tom and romeo dubs and um and oh the tackle from penn state whose name is escaping me right now i they picked a lot of guys rashid rashid walker yes rashid walker um who i thought did a half decent job on aiden i only know that because there was that video of him taking a guy down and then like doing the

two humps motion on top of it. He's a little immature. I think that he did that and I think he like stole a bike to get to class faster his freshman year, which was dumb. So he's definitely probably got some maturity issues from that video and just kind of like some of his past, but like he's an athletic

tackle and did a decent job on Hutchinson and in the seventh round, I thought that was good value in the first round i liked coy walker a lot when i watched him he was my i will i loved leo chanel out of wisconsin um him and leo chanel went up crazy ended up going crazy late but him and walker i thought were the two best in this class even ahead of dean and lloyd just because i thought that they were the most physical like they were the biggest bodies and they sorted through the trash so well and for his size quay walker could also flip his hips and cover really well and like yes he only started one year at georgia but it's it's georgia of course he only started one year at georgia they have

like nfl front sevens every year you're not going to start unless you're a senior, unless you're really special. But he's got ideal speed, size, coverage ability, diagnosis things pretty well. Him and Devondre Campbell and really the whole Packers defense, you look at it and you don't see a lot of weaknesses. And then Wyatt next to Clark, that filled the only other weakness I thought that we had,

which was someone like a three tech next to Kenny Clark. It was like Dean Lowry playing that role a lot. And now it's Devon, like it's Wyatt, who is a little bit undersized, but just can wreak havoc in the passing game. Really quick first step in a variety of pass rushing moves. And like, man, you think of playing a team like the Vikings and Garrett Bradbury and like that interior defensive line or offensive line for them. It's like, man, it's it's it's wraps with with those two.

So I look at that Packers defense. I see Jair, Rasul Douglas, who played really well last year. Stokes, who had a good rookie year. Like if it's a nickel, you got those three out there. Amos and Savage, Quay Walker, Devondre Campbell, and then Gary, who broke out last season, Clark, Wyatt, and then Preston Smith, who had a bounce back year last year. So it's like, I don't, that could be the best.

If they're like 11th in the league in defense this year, I'm disappointed, right? They've got to be top five. And they're not really playing the most difficult schedule of quarterbacks with Goff and Fields in the division. And maybe they take a leap and we're playing. Well, and the AFC East and the NFC East,

yeah. He's got the same, same schedule. So Mac Jones to Zach Wilson, it's like, man, this defense can give a lot of the quarterbacks on our schedule, the major problems.

I think like, so that's what I liked about the off season is I like our schedule. I love our defense. We've still got an MVP quarterback. Bakhtiar is coming back. Jair is coming back next year. This cap situation is a little bit better because Adams didn't get paid. I'm concerned about, I'm concerned about the efficiency of the offense,

but I really don't think they're going to need to score that many points per game to have a winning record because I think the defense looks that good. Yeah. interesting. So that could be the kind of the route to staying a top contender in the NFC is even if there's a little bit of a drop off with Adams gone, if that defense kind of levels up and some of the second year guys step up and the rookies are pretty good right away, that could be just just hearing you read through that personnel is pretty uh impressive so um let's talk let's talk about the vikings a little bit um because this is a vikings podcast um and you have an interesting perspective as a packers fan um who wants to beat the vikings and then stay stay on

top in the nfc north right just in general from what they've done this off season, the big thing was, this was our huge story in January was obviously the regime change and the coaching search and look like the Vikings were going to hire Jim Harbaugh. Eventually they, they end up with Kevin O'Connell to replace Mike Zimmer, who as someone covering the team, I've been just really impressed by Kevin O'Connell so far and all the things he said, and obviously he has a Superbowl pedigree coming from LA. Kweisi Adafumensa, the analytics GM, who has also sounded really a lot, really impressive. His first draft, we can't judge yet. It was interesting for sure. But starting with kind of that, that regime change,

like as a Packers fan with what they've done done so far um the regime change also some of the on-field stuff like does that scare you a little more than maybe like the dying years of the Mike Zimmer Rick Spielman era or um yes do you feel like the gap is closed a little bit maybe the Vikings have the the Vikings have had a lot of success against the Packers recently I feel like the Packers have been the one seed each of the past, like two, three years, something like that.

And they always seem to drop one against the Vikings. Like it, it just seems like, like in the Kirk cousins era, they, they might have a winning record against Rogers, something like that. They,

they usually play the Packers pretty well. So for them, like, and I think Zimmer has something to do with that. I think Zimmer, historically, his defenses have done a pretty good job on Aaron Rodgers, specifically. And Rodgers has spoken really, really highly of Zimmer. So Zimmer leaving, to me, was like, good, I guess.

We don't have to deal with... He's just had so many, so much success against Rogers where I'm like, I'm, I'm kind of glad Zimmer's out of here. But that being said, I think that they can build a pretty good offense around Kevin O'Connell. I think like Harbaugh maybe would have scared me a little bit more because I think that he's like his pedigree of success is just crazy considering what he did in the NFL on the 49ers and then bringing Michigan to the college football playoff like I think he's a really good coach but O'Connell and I think Kirk Cousins and O'Connell work pretty well together because when

I look at Kirk Cousins I kind of think of he's really efficient right he's especially this year it's like you can make the case that he's a top 10 quarterback based on his numbers I think Kirk doesn't really dictate the things quite like a guy like Rogers does, or a guy like even Dak Prescott does when it comes to like reading the entire, I think that's kind of the difference. But if you can like point him in the right direction, he can make an accurate, precise throw. He's got a good enough arm and he doesn't make mistakes almost to the fault.

Sometimes for Zimmer would like get mad at him for not being aggressive enough, but whatever. I think like you look at the Rams type of offense and the success that like golf has had and the success that like Jimmy G has had in San Francisco running kind of a similar thing where a lot of like horizontal timing routes where accuracy and just being able to hit the easy thing is, is paramount as opposed to like full field reads. I think that Kirk cousins like is like kind of a souped up, better version of like golf,

and we'll be able to hit those precisely every time. And, you know, he won't have to, you know, maybe like read everything out or make things happen outside the pocket, which he's not that good at. So I think that it's a good marriage between O'Connell and I think Cousins is going to be able to do everything that O'Connell is going to want him to do. he's going to be able to you know we've seen Kirk on play action under

Stefanski like be ridiculously efficient and ridiculously good in his yards for it like I think we're going to kind of that 2019 season he was very efficient especially on play action yeah yeah so I think we're going to kind of see that kind of version of Cousins again and I think like statistically like if you want to make if you want to say there's 10 better quarterbacks or 15 better quarterbacks than kurt cousins you can make the case or whatever you want to say it doesn't really matter if he's putting up top 15 numbers like right i think that like they're going to get good play from the quarterback position this year or at least efficient play from the quarterback position this year dalvin i think is a fantastic running back still i know kind of a down year last year by his standards but when i

watched him, I was still really impressed with his footwork and his vision and all that. Jefferson is kind of reaching his athletic prime, which is kind of a scary thought. It's the Vikings, man. They always seem to have a lot of star power. Daniil Hunter coming back and Zedaria Smith,

who is just was so fantastic. One of the more underrated players in the league during his time on the, on the Packers. I thought pressure rates always through the roof. You can put them anywhere, whether that be inside, out on the edge, you can find the weakest off the offensive lineman that the opponent has and put Zedarius on him. Right. So yeah, I think that he's, I think he's still got stuff left in the tank.

And they brought Mike Petten and Mike Smith over to kind of help run the same stuff they were doing in, in green bay and um the idea of just i think they called it the rover where where they just move them around and and you can go attack the right guard if that's the worst player or the left tackle or just wherever i think that's something the key is going to be health with smith and hunter because they've both missed like entire seasons in the last couple years but in 2019 they were one and two um in pff total pressures i think among edge rushers or maybe total i don't know where aaron donald was but um that the potential of the defense if people stay healthy i think is is fairly high yeah i know they've got a lot of star power they've got a lot of star power and

that's what the secondary is a little dicey but but like Dancer was, excuse me, he was in Zimmer's doghouse last year, but you still think like he can be a capable starting corner with the way he's performed his rookie year and in a smaller sample size last year, like maybe with more opportunity, he'll be a good corner, but you could also say, well, maybe he was in Zimmer's doghouse for a reason, right? So he's kind of a wild card. Booth is kind of a wild card. Peterson is who he is at this point. Did you sorry let me interject real quick did you like the lewisine

pick at 32 like take the trade take the take the trade down out of it i loved it i loved lewisine he was one of my i think i think i had him as a top 20 player on my big board he i don't think he has any discernible weaknesses really as a safety his size is a little questionable he's a little undersized but like dude's got not a ton of ball production is the one other thing but i mean he can he can just light dudes up he can fly though so like he's got range right because he could fly he's super physical coming downhill i thought he's fine and covered like he's not a bad covered maybe not like tons of picks or turnovers for us but like not a not a weak guy in coverage either i i thought he did everything pretty well where like maybe the ceiling of like a cam chancellor isn't there because he's not built

like calvin johnson right but um size matters but he to me i was looking at like flaws of lewis scene and the list wasn't very long. I think that he's a real good safety. I think that his range is a, is a superpower. I think he's got like one of those elite special traits and that's his speed and his range and his size or not his size. He's just kind of burst. So he's got something that could truly make him special.

And I think that he's pretty well-rounded in other areas as well. Good tackler and decent coverage and all that so I think that like him and Harrison Smith I think Harrison Smith has definitely lost a step from where he used to be maybe not quite a all pro or maybe not even a pro bowl level player anymore but still still someone who you know you trust and still someone like who if he's your second best safety and scene is like the best one this year or whatever i don't know i think like i think that scene was a good pick is what i'm getting at and eddie too i thought was someone who's very raw sometimes his flip hips will open the wrong way and it'll be turned around from where it needs to be but the ball the ball skills are just unreal um Super fast in a straight line, especially. I think that he's got, his hips aren't like Trent McDuffie level good,

but they are pretty good. So I thought that he was one of the, definitely a great pick in the second round. I thought like late first, you could, you could pick them late first and I wouldn't have happened to die. So to get picks from him trading back for him trading back and also, you know, getting him, it was, it was a great pick a home run.

Yeah. The, the, the thing with him is just going to be Kenny stay healthy because he played through a lot of stuff. Um, he's coming off like a core muscle hernia surgery that he had to get another surgery for after trying to repair it the first time, but the potential there just with the ball skills, like you see the one handed picks, you see, uh, just the athletic ability I think is really high. Um, but yeah, like you see the one-handed picks, you see just the athletic ability,

I think is really high. But yeah, just, I mean, just in general, the Vikings had an interesting off season. Like we, we talked about it a lot, how they, there was a, there was kind of a window for them to maybe go into a rebuild with this new regime, maybe try to get, get rid of the Kirk cousins contract, which is so much of the debate about Kirk Cousins has to come down to the contract. And instead they didn't do that. They've kind of called it a competitive rebuild,

but a lot of the moves they've made like signings at Aries Smith and bringing Patrick Peterson back. And they had, they brought in like Jordan Hicks to replace Anthony Barr and Harrison Phillips to replace Michael Pierce, little things like that. Like they're telling you X, they extend Kirk Cousins in other years, the big one. They're telling you that they plan on being a competitive team this year and competing for the NFC North and trying to make a run. I think they could win the division.

I mean, you look at the NFC right now and it's like, who is the seventh best team in the NFC? Is it the Saints? Is it the Vikings? That's probably what it will come down to. I think it's very possible to say the Vikings are, are one of the more talented and it comes down so much to health with them. Cause it's like, if that defense can stay healthy and injury prone players are injury prone, that's kind of my mentality where it's like, if someone is always hurt, they're probably going to get hurt again. Like that's just how it is with some guys.

So to project like total health for the Vikings defenseings defense is probably a little silly a little bit um optimistic but you know they've got that ceiling they've got that ceiling and i think the offense is going to be good under under a connell i think it's going to be a really efficient offense and they're going to make the most of what they have so it really comes down to especially the secondary in my eyes is like, can, can someone be an alpha core? Like can someone in that secondary be good against the wide receiver ones of this league, or are they going to be kind of picked on like they were last year? So that's kind of what it comes down to to me is health. And like someone in that secondary, whether that be Dantzler,

whether that be Boone, I don't know who it's going to be, but someone's got to step up. I think that's what- Yeah, and I'll throw out the offensive line as well. It's another thing that's always going to be kind of a key factor for the Vikings. It's been a weakness for a long time. I think they have a lot of talent there. They've poured so much draft capital into that

in the late Rick Spielman years. Brian O'Neill, I think, is one of the best right tackles in the league. Darasaw looks pretty good through one year as for Cleveland, but Garrett Bradbury is still the starting center. He's like ranked dead last in PFF past blocking grade, basically every year he's been in the league. So can they kind of mitigate that to some extent? Cause it's such a weak link thing.

So there's several key factors like that. I'm really fascinated for what the Vikings are going to do this season because they basically just said, Hey, like we think the big problem last year was Mike Zimmer. Not necessarily Mike Zimmer, the third down defensive guru, but Mike Zimmer, the head coach, with his relationships with people and his game management and the way that they just completely fell apart

at the end of every half and game and lost a lot of close games. So making that bet is an interesting one. And I'm really curious to see what's going to, what's going to happen this year, but it's interesting that you, you think that they have kind of that division winning ceiling. I do.

I do. I think like there's a world where the Packers offense just can't quite get off the ground. I think there's a world where, you know, the offense is David Bakhtiari. Maybe he comes back and he's, I mean,

he's he's old. All right. The end comes quickly. Right. So if he's not the guy used to be, if the defense and I've. great yeah that just never it never seemed to go down like that so um i'm optimistic but i i can see a world where the packers are a little bit underwhelming i absolutely can without with without rogers being the age he is i'm not projecting a big fall off from him with how old brady is and you know how some of these quarterbacks have played in their prime but you got to take it into account and there are no good wide receivers and the offensive line is like the packers offensive line coach is like fantastic and they've got their little holding technique that they can kind of get away with some stuff yeah but it doesn't seem to matter like who is like his fans will agree with you on that one for sure yeah they will i always did hey you know

no but anyway um it doesn't matter who's on the offensive line it seems to always be fine like yash engagement or whoever is there like last year it was a really beat up unit and they still weren't like noticeably horrible jenkins would have been a better pick for the vikings in 2019 than bradbury i'll say that uh he's good but and i think we can kind of safely probably both agree that like it's a a two team race in the division. I don't think the bears are lying with all due respect to Dan Campbell and Justin Fields. I think even in their best case scenario, it's not this year.

I do think the lions are close to being good. They've got a really good offensive line. All five positions are pretty good starters. The wide receiving core of Amon Ra, Jamison Williams and TJ Chark and TJ Hockinson with DeAndre Swift. It's like, if they had a quarterback, that offensive infrastructure is like,

like about as good as you can ask for on defense. They've added Hutchinson. They've got a Quarra coming back. Like maybe this is year that corner whose name I'm forgetting right now. Okuda. Yes. Okuda. Like, he's coming back.

Maybe this is a year where he finally gets right. I do think, like, the Lions could be a surprising team, but I don't know if I'm banking on it right now. But I do think their rebuild is going pretty well so far. Yeah, and one last thing I want to – The Bears don't have NFL talent. Sorry. Well, sorry, Two last things.

First is to tie back to TikTok, a last Vikings thought, is have you seen Rick Spielman's TikTok page? And what are your thoughts? I think it's very funny that Rick Spielman is on TikTok. And it's something when I first made the account, I was like, soon, I've got to get big soon before like real guys start to come on here and rick spielman is definitely like a real like he's a former gm so it's like that's a real analyst or like a real dude who knows what's up so it's been nice like to see that like real names

on that platform kind of legitimizing things but when it comes to spielman's analysis he's very like basic i think i wish he was like a little bit more in depth using like his experience and saying like you're is what i would have done as the gm but instead he's like giving very basic right he's like here's what i think of the broncos i'm really interested to see what russell wilson is going to do in that new offense yeah and he'll be like jerry judy will he break out oh it's like well what do you think right yeah yeah former gm what do you like do you think he's going to or is he not it's like well what do you think rick like yeah yeah former gm what are you like do you think he's going to or is he not he's like patrick is our tan that's a great young corner it's like well yeah how good is he rick it's like i wish he was kind of like going a

little bit more in depth things instead of just kind of like giving some some brief overviews and i'm like okay like yeah you're right rick but he also danced one time he was like dancing yeah i saw that i think that was like on like a burner account or a private like maybe he meant to what he was doing he's it got it got out on twitter though that was just that was interesting um anyways one last thing i'm gonna put you on the spot here and um give me your early super bowl prediction which you can you can modify later if you want to make an official prediction. But what are you thinking right now for the two teams? I'm thinking, I'm saying 49ers and I'm saying Ravens.

Those are my two teams. I'm a Lance fan. I think that he is better than everybody's giving him credit for. I think Shanahan, like with a half decent quarterback, because Garoppolo is not that guy. With a quarterback that is that guy and a running quarterback that he can like design, like even more misdirection and readaption and,

and add a gap, like a gap that you have to account for with, with a running quarterback. I think that could be super special. I think the defense is good. I think like that's a team in the NFC that could really be dangerous. If Lance is better than Garoppolo. And I really think that he could be.

And then in the AFC I'm going with, I don't know. I was expecting you to say the bills because that seems to be the trendy Ravens because my thought is this. Usually every Superbowl winning quarterback of like the past several decades has not been on a huge contract. Like these massive quarterback contracts, they don't win Super Bowls. They just don't.

It hasn't happened since like Steve Young. I think the number is like 13% of the cap going towards the quarterback. So I was looking at teams that don't have that. And that's kind of what I was making my Super Bowl pick on because that's been the trend for a long time. So I thought our Jackson, I still think Lamar Jackson, even though he's kind of had two down years compared to the MVP year, I think Lamar Jackson was playing out of his mind at the beginning of last

season. I think that their secondary looks a lot better. I think that I don't know if it's going to be my pick, my official pick once we get close to the season um just because you know the weapons are i love rashad bateman as well um i don't know if the weapons are as good as the pills but that was my pick right after the rams versus um the rams versus bengals superl ended by like immediately after that ended next year, 49ers versus Ravens. I don't know if I, I still feel all right about the 49ers. I don't know about the Ravens,

but that that's, that's what I'm going to say. Like having a, having a great quarterback on a cheap contract is, is really the best thing you can have. So I think those two teams have a good shot. Something that the Vikings do not have, but maybe will someday. Yeah, that's true. Theo, thanks so much. This has been really fun. I appreciate you coming on. You can find Theo.

I think both Tik TOK and Twitter are at Theo Ash NFL, if I'm not mistaken. And the stay hot podcast, wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on Twitter as well, at Will Raggetts. So thanks for coming on. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, thanks for having me.