Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Trade deadline analysis: Vikings trade for Josh Dobbs and deal Ezra Cleveland

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

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🎵 🎵 everybody welcome into our nfl trade deadline special featuring a new quarterback and one offensive lineman shipped out of the minnesota vikings matthew collar here as always with former minnesota viking who i don't believe was ever traded traded Jeremiah Searles what is up sir how are you I was traded I actually was traded after I was traded from the Viking or from the Chargers to the Vikings after training camp so I was uh I was a trade person at one point in my career that is right I I assumed that you were just the pickup uh from being signed by the Vikings but that's right you were traded here what's it like to be traded very very strange um for me i was sitting on the bed in the hotel next

to my girlfriend at the time who was not my wife and you know we kind of gone through the the scenarios in our head of like okay you made the team you're gonna get cut or you're gonna make practice squad and i remember getting a call from Tom Telesco five minutes before the cut deadline going, Hey, Jeremiah. And like, obviously you get a call. You think it's the worst. And he's like, Hey, just want to let you know, you know, you made this team. You did a great job for us in camp, but we traded you the Minnesota Vikings for a six round pick. Thanks for everything and bring in your playbook and we'll be in touch.

Okay. And then you get a call from Rick Spielman. And he was like, man, super excited to have you here. Uh, really excited. Your flight leaves, uh, San Diego tonight and we will see you tomorrow morning. And it's just kind of one of those things where you're like, okay, that was really strange. And that's not how I expected this, but such as life in the NFL. And I'm assuming it's very similar. These mean, what is it's a Tuesday. So a lot of these guys are probably sitting at home, hanging out in their their off day doing their thing and got a phone call saying hey you're either leaving or you're going somewhere else well I imagine Josh Dobbs was probably ready

for it after the team announced that it was either going to be Clayton Toon or Kyler Murray so they weren't changing their tune for how they felt about Josh Dobbs. Am I right in sending him to the Vikings? But this move splits the difference between going after some sort of big ish fish like a Jameis Winston or like an Andy Dalton and not doing anything at all, because if they did nothing at all and Jaron Hall couldn't handle it, it does not sound great on Nick Mullins about where he stands. He's dealing with a back issue, which we know can be tricky. Sean Mannion just showed up here. So even if Sean Mannion knows some of the offense from last year, that's a lot different. Plus we've seen Sean Mannion start

before, and that's not really something you'd want to do week after week. So they go out, they acquire somebody who already has been through this with Arizona, learning the offense quickly, having to react, and has played some fairly good football games on a very bad football team. And at least in the past has shown a reasonable ability to step in and lead an offense as good as you could expect for someone in this circumstance but it isn't the Tom Brady move it isn't the Matt Ryan move and it also isn't a complete hey let's just play Jaron Hall and see if we could draft as high as we could possibly draft so what is uh your thoughts on getting Joshosh dobbs yeah i think it's probably the right move you know you can't have a starting quarterback and go all in chips in the middle of the table with a guy that

has really never taken an nfl snap before when you're heading into the back half of the season it's just not it's not a smart move by any organization at all and you know koc noticed that right away and we're really lucky, lucky that this happened this week and not next week, because then we'd really kind of be hosed, you know? So the fact that he was able to go out and find a quarterback, that's got experience, got starting experience this year, you know, he started a lot of football games already this year. And, you know, I haven't watched a ton of Cardinals games, you know, I broke down quite a bit of their tape just as I've watched them and he's serviceable. You know, I think that's when you're bringing a guy in, you want

to say, okay, he's played football games this year. Yes. He hasn't been able to win some games, but he brings a different type of player than Kirk cousins was. And he kind of mirrors a little bit of what hall is with the athleticism, right? You heard KOC talk about, he brings athleticism, you know, and that means that it brings a different wrinkle to the offense. Now of a quarterback that can move and run. I mean, Dobbs, I believe has three or four rushing touchdowns on the year already. He can scramble, he can move, he can create with his legs. And, you know, I think that when he gets himself up to speed, I do think he'll end up being the one that starts the rest of the season, unless for whatever reason, Hall goes out this week and

just lights it on fire. And he's the next Brock Pur purdy 2.0 but very rarely do you hit on a quarterback like brock purdy late in the draft that can come in and have the success his rookie year like that i would guess that jaron hall starts this week because he knows the offense because he knows how to operate it and then after that josh dobbs will take over and clearly this is a guy who is capable of learning enough of the offense fast and on the fly, such as has to be the life for a journeyman quarterback. I imagine that they'll be able to put in enough where he can operate the offense to some sort of reasonable level.

Even if they have to hold his hand a little bit. And I guess the thing is they gave up nothing for Josh Dobbs. So you didn't lose anything. It's a pick swap. They literally just said, yeah, go ahead, take them. We're not going to use them. So just, you know, have that. Although maybe the sixth and the seventh, whoever they got will turn out to be some hall of famer or something, but I'm doubtful that you have to like it from the perspective that if you're Jordan Addison, that someone is going to throw you the football, that's going to allow you to continue your growth as a young budding star NFL player. And nobody on that offense is going to look at this. Like they,

they tanked on us. They wasted our time. They gave us no chance because when you look at Dobbs, he's had some good games in the NFL. I mean, he had a very good game against the Dallas Cowboys of all people where he averaged nine yards pass in that game and went 17 for 21. And he can make some plays with his legs. Also given really good pass protection, given really good wide receivers, which I don't think he has either one of those things in Arizona. It is possible that they can hang around in this playoff race with a couple of wins.

And there's always the Vikings classic case Keenum scenario that exists in acquiring Josh Dobbs. However, there is another side of this where you might say, if this guy wins like two or three games more than Jaron Hall might've won. If he goes in, what good was it to go seven and 10 or eight, nine?

I think that there are benefits to say to the locker room, we're going to get you a veteran. We're going to get a guy who can run the offense and give you guys a chance to do something special here and make the playoffs. That does matter. It matters for Kevin O'Connell, the crazy Adolfo Mensah would get him a quarterback that could do something and has some experience. Also, we would probably never remember it if they ended up losing out and then going and getting, you know, whatever, trading up for Drake May.

And so I guess I feel a tad conflicted because I think he's just over the line of someone who could mess around and get you to 8-9. Yeah, and I mean, the way that Kirk was playing, I mean, he was really playing lights out. And I mean, I went back and watched that tape again today. I mean, he made some incredible throws against Green Bay. I mean, absolutely some remarkable things. And you now bring in a guy, I think we all have to be very realistic. It's going to be a drop-off. It's going to be a drop-off. And the question then becomes, can the defense continue to maintain what they can do in order to for us to

win but i think that he brings you a chance and there's no one more excited about this trade than josh dobbs like no one else there's no one else besides maybe the 49ers who got chase young who i think won the trade more on the trade deadline than josh stops right you're like hey by the way you want to come throw to tj hawkinson justin jefferson addison kj osborne you know some dudes and have the two best tackles protect you like he's walking into this thing fired up and also he's walking in to try and make say i'm a starting quarterback in this league you know he's fighting for i started a lot of games already beginning part of this year we weren't a great team i got benched but i still want to prove that I can be a starting quarterback. So you're going to get the best shot that he has.

You're going to get the best opportunity for him. And do I think that he's going to come in and go 10 wins in a row or whatever it might be? Like, probably not. But I do think that he gives you a good chance to compete in just about every game we're in just because of the talent that we have on offense. And because, like I said, he's serviceable. We don don't know what hall is we don't have any idea what he is it could be a disaster it could be great but I think this guy is just more of the consistency that we're going to look for to give ourselves a chance to win some more football games and yeah

I mean eight nine wins is probably still where I put this football team just based off the talent that's around him and so you have to try weigh, and I'm sure they had these conversations of just how valuable it is to give them a shot with Brian Flores' defense playing like a top five defense over the last month. And yes, I know I'm very aware of the opposing quarterbacks that they played. You don't have to remind me of that. But at the same time, I give credit when a defense makes bad quarterbacks look worse or terrible. And they did that in every game, especially with Jordan Love, who looked completely lost out there. Fields looked completely lost.

These are not guys who have never had a good game in their life, but they played really badly. And even they turned over Brock Purdy a few times. They stopped the run really effectively against Christian McCaffrey. They did not let the Packers run on them last week that if you have a defense that's playing this strongly and you have so many star players on offense and you don't give them someone who has at least some track record of getting in there and playing at a okay NFL quarterback level, then you're essentially saying, Hey, all you guys, it's just over. And maybe Jaron Hall is good, but you know, they've seen him in practice. We saw him in training camp. We saw him in preseason.

There wasn't really anything there that would indicate that he was going to be a really, really good quarterback. And I'm sure that they would sort of throw up their hands and go, Oh, okay. Like, I guess, I guess the rebuild side is more important to you guys. And a lot of these players, including Justin Jefferson, by the way, and Christian Derrissaw, your superstars, who you want to sign extensions, they're not going anywhere. And heck Brian Flores might not be be going anywhere if he's blackballed by the nfl like you want everybody in your organization who's going to be a part of this in the future to remember that you made the effort to make sure that you were going to give them that shot to

make the playoffs i think there's a value there that is hard to quantify but i totally understand why they would do that and then you mentioned the schedule everyone knows the upcoming schedule it's not hard they with Josh Dobbs could win a good number of these games yeah that's right where I was going on my next point is we've made it through the meat grinder with Kirk Cousins and through this team I mean October was the month we all circled the beginning of the year like whoa this, this could go off the rails a little bit if we don't handle business. And they were able to go and create momentum in the month of October. And then you look across and you're like, man, okay,

so it's really just the Bengals and the Lions that we're super concerned about as we head into the back quarter of the season. If we can get a quarterback that brings us in here, we're going to give ourselves a chance. Now, does that mean we're going to win the North? Does that mean that we might sneak in as a wild card? Yeah, but it's like you said, you want to keep your star players happy

because you want them to stick around. And whether that means that we sign Kirk Cousins back on a discount deal because he's coming off an Achilles or whatever it may be, or we still find a way to get a quarterback in the draft. You want to keep your star players happy and you want to send the message that we are a winning organization.

And if they would have lost the game against the Niners, lost the game against the Packers, it's a completely different story. But you and I have talked about this show since the beginning of kind of the skid at the beginning of this year. Like, these middle parts of the season are really going to be turning point games for are we buyers or sellers at the trade deadline? Are we tankers or are we contenders? And I don't think we've made theers are we contenders and i don't think

we've made the huge jump to contenders by any means but i think that we've kind of set ourselves at a point where we're in the middle of the road of in the wild card race the other teams there's teams that are way underperforming compared to the vikings and you can't just let this team go completely because there's just too much talent on it. Like you can look at a team like Arizona or look at a team like, um, the jets, right. Or the giants. And you're like, they don't have a shot that there's no shot that that team is going to be a contender by any means. This team at least has a glimmer of hope and a shot based off of the talent and the player and the personnel and the coaching that we have. Yeah. And, and I just want to get to a couple of comments here. Dystopian Utopia, love that, says,

I'll never understand. That's like Minnesota sports right there. I'll never understand Minnesota's obsession with mediocrity and just barely making the playoffs every year. And now I understand that. And that, because I have been master and commander of Tankland for so long and it doesn't take much effort to look around and go, hey, man, that Detroit team looks pretty

good. Where were they two years ago again? Or, hey, Cincinnati started to come on. What happened to them? I don't remember. There have been a lot of teams that have done aggressive resetting over the years and it's worked. that have done aggressive resetting over the years and it's worked, but I've never felt even when this team was down that they were going to be in that category because they just have so much talent.

So you're just wasting a lot of people's times by not trying. There is another side of it though, even beyond tanking versus not tanking. That is how much effort did you want to make? Because getting Josh Dobbs is some effort. But when we talked to Kevin O'Connell, it seems like there was at least some opportunity to make more effort, meaning try to get a quarterback that would cost you more.

And repeatedly he has talked about how important it is to not be like sacrificing your future to go out and get somebody else. Clearly, they didn't think Matt Ryan could play. That wouldn't have cost them anything. But the Mac Jones idea never came to fruition. Apparently, the Patriots didn't get any calls about Mac Jones and so forth. But I wonder what you think of that idea and the fact that they decided not to push chips to the middle of the table, but to kind of flip a few chips in and then they'll fold if they have to. Yeah. That's a great

analogy to use because when you don't risk anything for your future, it's only a win-win, right? Like if this comes in and somehow this is a magical type thing. And I know you say you don't like mediocrity, but I know Vikings land. And I know those fans would be a lot more upset if we were two and 15 at the end of the year versus having a chance to go make something happen in the playoffs, just getting yourself in the dance. You don't know what's going to happen. Look at the giants when they wanted, they snuck in as a wild card and they went all the way. And like, you just get yourself into the dance at the end of the year, Anything can happen.

Now, it's not likely, but when you look at this team and you say, okay, they didn't lose anything. They didn't give up a big piece of their future to go get a quarterback that is very serviceable and has started a lot of football games. What's the downside? That's what I kept asking myself as I saw that trade. What is the worst-case scenario here? Worst-case scenario is we're no better off than we were if we didn't get Dobbs.

Like, Kirk's hurt, Dobbs sucks, and then Hall sucks. And we're, okay, well, we tried. Like, we did something. Like, that's worst case scenario versus if you don't get Dobbs. Worst case scenario is this thing crashes and burns in a horrible fashion, and there is no answer to try something different besides just Hall. Right right so all this was was hedging our bets a little bit all this was was putting our back and say we're just putting a little bit of an insurance policy here that we want to just have something here that might be able to make something happen it might not it didn't cost us anything but

there was really no downside to bringing joss dobbs into this organization the only downside is that he could win a few games and not enough that's not really a bad side though i don't see that as a downside because winning games in the nfl is hard to do and it's what you it's what you everyone it's all 53 guys on that roster's whole entire goal is to win football games but i'm looking at from the player's perspective and that might be wrong you, because I'm not a player anymore. But as a player, I really respect what they did with the ability to come in and say, hey, we're not just folding on you as a team, right? We're not going all in on bringing in a big name and risking anything, but we're not just folding. Like, we're going to put some effort into this, and we're going to hedge a little bit because we still want to win football games because losing football games is miserable now putting our hat on in the media side I totally get where you're going to go and how you're going

to go with this of like well what if what if we end up being a 10 win team or a nine win team and we backdoor and we get smoked by the first seed or the second seed or whatever, like, yeah, that would really suck. But as a player, you can't look at it like that. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Folks, if you're struggling with the holiday blues and you're having some trouble getting excited in the same way that other people in your life do about holiday get togethers, and all of that just sounds stressful to you, then maybe it might be helpful to add something new in your life to help deal with those feelings. That's where therapy could be a bright spot for you.

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You win. And speaking of winning, everyone scores with convenient delivery of their pizza pizza pick portal pickup so many times of saying the word pizza uh so grab some friends and enjoy a few slices during the tastiest hour before kickoff so i don't think that josh dobbs is going to be so good that suddenly they start reeling off win after win after win. I would guess that they will be in the, in the hunt graphic going into the final couple of weeks of the season when they play their most difficult teams. And it's going to be really hard for them to pull off those wins

against Detroit, against Cincinnati. And they probably, this is if you're projecting out, they probably come up a little short, but if they were to make the playoffs at a 9-8 scenario, get killed in the first round, and then forego their opportunity to draft one of the higher quarterbacks without trading up, it could have that ripple effect to then you're bringing back Kirk Cousins coming off of an Achilles injury, which they still could do. But then you're bringing him back, hoping that a 36 a 36 year old quarterback can now plant and drive the football in the same way off of an Achilles that's just been repaired. And I am a big fan of medical science, but I still know that is going to be hard. Even being like the same age as Kirk Cousins, my recovery from

anything is not good. And age comes for everybody. So, I mean, I think that that is a bad bet that you probably don't want to make. And are you hurting your opportunity to do that by bringing in a competent quarterback who could win you some games? I find it hard to make that argument because the side of it that's like, it's important that you continue to try to win for so many players that are part of the future. I, that's like, it's important that you continue to try to win for so many players that are part of the future. I think that's compelling. And I think that matters for the relationship from Kweisi Adafo-Menta and

Kevin O'Connell that if they had said, sorry, Kevin, in fact, we're playing Mannion because we want to lose more. That's the way you lose the whole team. That's like the Sashi Brown thing. If you were blatantly losing on purpose,

maybe you could do it in basketball and organizations will be fine but in football that gets you fired real fast you usually don't get a full rebuild a tank it's usually the next gm it's like ryan pulls i think he made this move today in part to be like see ryan's got a plan ryan's gonna help your team you want to keep ryan don't you like that because usually the person who tanks they don't get to stick around to see what happens next. And that's part of it. So this is where there's like the push and pull of the entire thing. Give me the range of outcomes that you think that can happen here

with Josh Dobbs potentially taking over as soon as, I would say, next week. Yeah, you know, I think we go out against with hall this week and we probably find a way to give ourselves a chance to win at the end and we'll get a chance to see who he is. You know, I think this is much of a coin flip game of anything because of just the uncertainty of who he is as a quarterback. I think Dobbs then gets two weeks in the playbook, gets himself up to speed. Jefferson will be back in two weeks, right? He'll be back. Well, he could.

He could be back, right? So then we get Jefferson back into the mix there. Addison continues to grow strong, and I think this offense doesn't obviously have the firepower that it's had, but I do think this is still an offense that can score 17 to 21 points a game. They have enough weapons, and especially if you Cam Akers, I think we haven't even touched on the Green Bay game and the a game, right? They, they have enough weapons. And especially if you cam acres, I think we haven't even touched on the, on the green Bay game and the, and the run game, but you know, I thought cam acres brought a little bit of a bright spot with his ability to run the

football and you get him more involved in the game plan and you go into a little bit more of a run first approach. And I know that's going to feel like vomit coming out of Kevin O'Connell's mouth because he wants to throw the football and wants to go everything but this is also going to show how good of a coach is Kevin O'Connell is he able to pivot is he able to make adjustments with the personnel that he is given right any coach that can have a great quarterback with great receivers and just go back there and say hey Kirk you're going to handle this all we're going to throw up put a game plan like this is going to be very telling of what kind of coach and what kind of offensive mind is Kevin O'Connell. Can he pivot mid season and can he move and change and, and change his offense? And I think if he's willing to do that and take pressure off of Josh Dobbs, put more

on his offensive line, you know, put more on it, cam acres and say, Hey, we're going to become a little bit more of a run heavy team, or at least become a little bit more of a balanced run team. Then I can see us still coming out and beating Atlanta and, and giving ourselves a chance to beat the Packers again. And no, and know the i mean the lines look really good you know but also they completely got dismantled by baltimore right and the bangles are coming on here so i mean i think we give ourselves to go 500 maybe a few games over 500 here as you look at the rest of the schedule and that's kind of where i see this team right now uh delton says the draft is five deep at quarterback well we don't know that uh right

now we always think in the middle of the college season we know but it isn't until after the combine we have a good sense and then we even usually don't know because we thought three first rounders were going in what was it 2022 and there were uh just one um so we don't really know that right now and it says uh delton says matthew thinks five quarterbacks are going in the first 20 picks which happened in 2021 because mac jones was the fifth one taken at i think 16th overall or something like that so yeah that does happen but the point is more that the farther down the draft board you go the fewer options you have and the harder it is

to go up and get your guy. So the Chicago bears, for example, they traded up, I think from 20 something to get Justin Fields, but it costs them the next year's first round draft pick. If you are drafting eighth, then it might not cost you your future first round draft pick to go up, or your guy might be there. And I do think that there are often a lot of good quarterbacks who aren't the first guy taken. But, you know, we look at like a Herbert or Tua or Mahomes or Allen, they're still in that top 10 range. And it's hard not to think about the future when we have this discussion about getting a quarterback who can come in and potentially win you games. But I agree that what this sort of guarantees is competitiveness for the rest of

the way. And I, the one thing I want to see is how much this setup impacts a quarterback, because I don't know that Jaron Hall gives us a true idea of that. And I don't know if Kirk Cousins gives us a true idea of that because he's above average. So he's a guy that this is perfect for. He's got a good offensive line. He's got time to throw. He's delivering to wide open receivers and he's very accurate when doing so.

What does this do for a mediocre quarterback? And what does that tell us about what the next quarterback might end up doing? But before we sort of go farther down that road, and then we have another trade to talk about with Ezra Cleveland. Do you think that the Vikings will want Kirk Cousins to return after this, or does this put an end to the Kirk Cousins era? Because obviously Dobbs does not change how you would have felt about that. Like yesterday.

I think this gives us a little bit more of a cushion and an insurance policy than if Kirk were to play out the rest of the year. You know, I think that if we find ourselves, like we talked about a nine win team, we're picking at 16th, right. We're right in that smack dab middle of the road.

It gives us the opportunity to revisit the Kirk cousins. I talk and say, okay, Kirk, you're 36, you're injured. What's this going to look like to bring you back? Right. Because he now has to be realistic with his, with his thought too, of like, do I want to go start over with a new team? Or am I willing to take a bit of a pay cut, stay here, take a team friendly deal and stick

with my guys. Right. but stay here, take a team-friendly deal, and stick with my guys, right? And I think that gives the Vikings a little bit of wiggle room for what they want to do for the future. And you talk about not being able to draft in the top 10 and get the quarterback. You can draft a good quarterback in the second or the third with a developmental thought of, hey, this guy can learn under Kirk Cousins. We know what we have in Kirk. We can Hey, this guy can learn under Kirk Cousins, right?

We know what we have in Kirk. We can still bring this guy in and learn. Now he might not be the next pro bowl hall of famer that you could possibly get in the first round, but I think this doesn't slam the door shut on bringing Kirk Cousins back. I think this actually brings the door a little bit open compared to what it was because the rate at which he was playing his price tag was going to be very, very high. It was going to be, if he would have kept on the path that he was going and the numbers he was putting up, the price tag to bring Kirk Cousins back was going to be high.

This gives everyone a little bit more wiggle room. I think it calms everyone's nerves down. It causes the anxiety down of both sides of his agent and the Vikings front office. I still think there's a chance we see Kirk back in purple. I think a lot of it depends how the rest of this year plays out. And much to your last point, if Dobbs come in and lights the world on fire and we go, okay, it's KOC system, right?

KOC has built a system. He's got the playmakers around him that we can plug in a quarterback. Then maybe we do decide it's time to move on from Kirk Cousins. But if this comes in and it's a complete disaster and it's a rain, it's like, okay, maybe we're not ready to bring in that quarterback yet. If we want to be competitive, maybe we do need to bring Kirk Cousins back. I think this opens the road. This opens the door to so many more options. When you say we talk about bringing Kirk Cousins back for 2024 or not. to remember the last thing you saw, which was absolutely wonderful quarterback play over the last two weeks. But you cannot ignore when you are making this decision, all the other elements of what you're projecting him to be in the future, what quarterbacks that are similar to him

have done into their late 30s, which is not particularly good um aside from some of the all-time greats which i don't think he falls in that category even the inconsistency from year to year that he's had plenty of hot runs throughout his career and i've chronicled them before it's easy to forget because we only remember how the season ended in the totality but you forget in 2019 this guy had like an mvp that's where kirk tober began had like an mvp run of about six or seven games in fact the reason he's still a starter in the nfl is in 2015 after he did the you like that game he went on one of the most insane i mean i'm talking like 10 games where he had 130 quarterback rating. Like that's been who he is over his career. And they can't kind of lose sight of all of those other factors,

despite how good he was playing. And Kevin O'Connell said, yeah, I mean, this was probably the best quarterback play of his career. I don't doubt that, but we kind of say that every single time he gets hot. That's what good quarterbacks are able to do when they have good setups. So that decision, I think remains complicated. They did not trade for like their next future quarterback, nor did I expect them to do that. So let's set that aside and discuss the Ezra Cleveland trade. I think this

speaks well of Dalton Reisner still makes you wonder why he didn't just sign Dalton Reisner on day one, if he was going to be a good fit, but that's a discussion for four weeks ago. But trading Ezra Cleveland, I think he has had one of his better years, but Reisner is just a better player than him. And if they like what they have for depth, I'm okay with it because they clearly were not going to extend him after this year. Yeah, you know, I thought the riser was better player, but he didn't play great against green Bay. Uh, I went back and

watched the tape. You know, I think he started to get a little, I don't want to say fatigued, but I think the not playing football caught up with him a little bit, you know, sore from starting an entire game going right back into gameplay. And that's just part of some growing pains of not playing the game and then getting thrusted right into it. So he left a little bit more to be desired for me on the tape. But it does show that they are confident moving forward with him. And it makes sense.

He's played a lot of football. He's started a lot of football games. And if you know that you're not going to extend a player at the end of the year, you might as well try and get something for them. And that goes back to the rebuild idea and goes back to building for the future. You know, you didn't get, obviously he was a second round pick and you would have liked to get something more from him, but to at least get something out of him and to go and allow him to say, Hey, on you, let's send you to a team that has some holes at offensive line right now, which

Jacksonville does and say, hey, give you a chance. Go do your thing. We appreciate all you did, but here's your hat. What's your hurry? I do slightly worry about our guard depth now a little bit. You know, I thought with having Reisner and Ezra Cleveland and Ed Ingram, that's pretty good three-headed beast there of if we do have any injuries going down the pipe here, being able to plug and play guides.

You know, that now leaves, I think, Braden is now the swing guy, I would assume, right? Like he's the guy in the middle. That's a good try at his name. Yep, that was a good try at his name. Blake Brandle. Blake Brandle. Why did I think Bradson?

I don't know what I'm doing. Blake Brandle. So I've been watching a lot of tapes. Blake Brandle now is the swing guy inside, and he has starting experience, but, again, not someone who I would feel super comfortable to go start out the rest of the year if one of those two guards got hit by a truck tomorrow. So it kind of goes back to that depth piece,

but I think it was probably writing on the wall that Dalton started two weeks in a row, played serviceable enough, and time to move on. It's crazy, three, four weeks ago, we were all saying that it was Ed Ingram, the one that needed to go, and we'd be remiss if I don't think Eddie was playing the best football of his career. He's playing very well. He still has some hit or misses here and there and some bad beats here and there. But I think as a consistency point, Eddie Ingram's

probably playing the best he has really since they signed Dalton Reisner. I think it lit a little bit of a fire under his, uh, tail. I caught myself for life, caught a little fire under his tail and said, you know, hey, we're not satisfied with what's going on at the guard position. You've got to elevate your game, and he's answered the bell. I think that last week was a step back a little bit for Ed Ingram. I was not impressed, especially in the run game for him. But there were a few pass game things as well with Ingram. But there's no question that he has improved from last year in totality and what where you see it is and this is why i

use the pff grade so much because even though i do watch every game back it's easier to see the accumulation on paper of all of those reps and what you see is last year he was grading as one of the purely worst offensive linemen in the league and that was absolutely a fact from watching him where now i think he's still below average but in a serviceable way in a like you expect every guy who's not good to miss a few here there and that's kind of where he's been and i think in trading away ezra cleveland and sticking with Reisner and having Ingram continue to play right guard it gives Ingram an opportunity to continue his growth

you are certainly right that it seems like the minute Dalton Reisner got here all of a sudden he decided that he was going to be ready to go and uh yeah that's not something you absolutely love but I also think with offensive linemen and there's no better evidence in this than Garrett Bradbury, it takes a while. This is why when you try to desperately flail to draft a guy to fill in a guard like they did last year, sometimes that doesn't work right away. In fact, probably 95% of the time it doesn't work right away because it takes a lot of work to be an offensive lineman in the

nfl and to deal with the punishment the complexity of the defenses the complexity the offenses and how damn good the other guy sorry now i did it uh playing uh i know i told jeremiah no swearing because we're live and i can't edit it out and then i did it but uh how good the opponents are like that you know that that takes a while and I think I've seen a lot better from him. I don't think he'll ever be some sort of like a Zach Martin superstar, but an average starting guard is fine. I like that they're going to give him this opportunity rather than just saying, hey, Dalton Reisner, you slide over to right guard because he's bad when Cleveland comes back.

Give him the opportunity to continue his development, which I think has at least shown enough to do that. Yeah, and the fact that he's taken the jump that he has this year shows that there's still growth potential. When guys don't take jumps in their second year and their third year and they're going into that fourth year, kind of like Bradbury had that slump in his second, third year, and then he turned it on and came through.

You know, you don't want to see guys take a step down. You want to see them continuing to get better. And obviously he showed enough through practice, through training camp, and then through the beginning part of this year that they still believe that his best football is in front of him. You know, if they didn't think that he still had better football in front of him, they would have put him and sat him down.

But it also goes to building confidence as a player. And I think it also shows a little bit about this regime's loyalty to their draft picks, right? Hey, we drafted you. We're going to stick with you. We believe in you. And I think that speaks a long way to volumes of what this front office wants to do with their guys, right? Because those are their guys. And so they're going to stick with him and allow him to develop. And as long as he can keep showing signs of improvement and moving forward, then they're going to just keep going on with him in there. And you and I have talked about it for years on this show, years.

If we can just be middle of the road, we're okay. We just can't be in that bottom third. If we can just be in that middle pack to the 15th to the 1st or the 17th to the first guard will be just fine because everyone would take that in the NFL, right? Everyone would say, if we can have a top 15 to a top, if there's 64 guards and we're in the top 32, because well, with our right and our left guard sign me up all day, all day, every day, right? Because we're just, they're hard to find. They're really difficult to keep. And if you can have one on a rookie contract that can be contributing, it allows you to spend money

elsewhere. Folks make little Caesars, the official pizza sponsor of the NFL part of your game day order online during their pizza pizza pregame one hour before NFL games and get ready for some football and fun. Choose your favorite Little Caesars pizza and pick the toppings you crave. Either way you win. And speaking of winning, everyone scores with convenient delivery or their in-store pizza portal pickup. So grabs of friends enjoy a few slices during the tastiest hour before kickoff pizza pizza. Folks, I hope you've enjoyed listening to us talk about prize picks this year but if you've missed it here's how it works you go to prizepicks.com and it is simple you pick either more

or less between two and six players stat projections and that's it now you're playing so if it's x number of yards for a quarterback you just decide are they going to throw for more or less than that number of yards? But it works with lots of different options, receiving yards, touchdowns, even field goals, all sorts of sports as well. PrizePicks.com slash purple. Go there, use the code purple for the first deposit match up to $100. One of the reasons I like PrizePicks, it is very simple to use. You'd see how we do it on the show real quick and easy. And then we talk about our picks and also not expensive either. You can turn $10 into 250 by nailing just a couple of picks. So go to prizepicks.com slash purple, the code purple daily fantasy sports made easy. yeah no that's completely right and uh i do think last year they should have stuck with a veteran at that position and let him develop a little more before he stepped in but when you're a situation

now where you are trying to compete but you're also trying to evaluate and that's very important to evaluate every young player every young player needs to play like mckay blackman made three really nice plays at the end of that game last week and i thought like okay this is good like you want to see all the young guys being out there and getting opportunities while you're still trying to win games and they have split that difference about as well as you can we've seen a lot of young players get opportunities cam Cam Bynum has grown. Josh Metellus has really found, I think, a very unique and excellent role in this defense.

Caleb Evans isn't grading well by PFF, but I see him making a lot of tackles, and he's not getting roasted. I think it's a lot of stuff in front of him which matters. And so now you're building on a lot of sides of the ball all these guys who are going to be a part of the future. They all need these opportunities. So that's why I'm good with shipping out Ezra Cleveland and having Ed Ingram continue to play there now let's talk about the moves that they did not make and

I mean of course okay so we sort of touched on not going out and getting a quarterback that would have cost them a lot more money or draft capital. But how about Daniil Hunter? When we asked Brian Flores about it, he said, nobody's happier than me that they did not get rid of Daniil Hunter. He's leading the NFL in sacks. And the price based on what Montez Sweat got, if that's a guy that they were going to trade for

and then extend, he's not that much older than Montez Sweat, maybe only like a year. Tells you probably would have been a second round draft pick. And if that's what you're passing up for Daniil Hunter, and I also want to say something kind of funny. Before they won those last two games, you were saying, hey, maybe you should just trade him now so you don't win these games

and then get too excited and not trade him. That's exactly what happened. So you're feeling on them, not moving to Neil Hunter for what would have been a pretty high draft pick. I don't think they could at this point. I think that if you tried to trade to Neil Hunter, you'd have a mutiny, not just by the fan base,

but also by the team because you won those games. And if you lost those games, I think it's really easy to say, yep. Okay. Yep. Where we're at, but it was exactly what I think it's really easy to say, yep. Okay. Yep. Where we're at, but it was exactly what I was worried about where we're going to get excited. We're

going to have opportunities and we're going to say, okay, he's a pivotal part of this defense. And if we're going to say that we're still going to stay competitive and go, we have to have it because if we don't have him, this defense falls off in a big way when you don't have the production from an individual like that. And especially with Davenport still not being out there and a lot of attention still going to Daniel Hunter, they're projecting a little bit looking in the future too of like, Hey, when we get Davenport back, what does he look like?

Does he have the more free up? Does he have more options? And they just couldn't pull the trigger of letting a linchpin of their defense go like that because that would just create a bunch of problems inside that locker room where I feel like they have a really good locker room right now. And, you know, I watch the interviews and I watch the guys that are talking and you can tell this locker room is jiving really well together. The guys love each other.

They talk really well about each other. You don't see anything like what's going on in vegas right now where they ask like josh jacobs like well how do you fix the offense not my job right like you don't see any of that coming out of this vikings locker room and this is the tiny little thing like hey we traded daniel hunter could spark a giant wildfire in that locker room where now you've got guys talking out of both sides of their mouths you've got sources that are coming out saying things that's the kind of thing that the front office probably just wanted to completely avoid not even want to deal with it you already lost your franchise quarterback let's just keep status quo this is regardless we could have got

a second round pick out of him or not we know the kind of player he is we know what he's going to bring us every single sunday let's just stay status quo and And yeah, we gave up a second rounder for him, but I just don't think the headache would have been worth trying to ship him out of town. There's a, certainly a part of me that says second round, like second, a second round picks become Debo Samuel sometimes, or AJ Brown second round picks can become stars. And I saw some of the analytics people for ESPN really losing it about the Montez sweat

deal, which we could talk about in a second, but because a second round pick was coming back. And if you hit on a second round pick like Brian O'Neill, that guy costs you like $900,000 when he's playing really well. And then he, you know, you can extend them and everything else. So there's a lot of benefit to hitting on a second round draft pick. There's a lot of value there. Also, if you need to trade up from say 18th to 12th to get your quarterback, Hey, you know, we got the second round draft pick from the old Jaguars. Let's send that your way. And we didn't even lose anything. We got that for free. There's a lot of benefits to that.

One of the, I don't want to say problems because it's kind of a decent problem to have that the locker room really believes Kevin O'Connell when he speaks is that you also have to live by it. And when he tells the team, hey, look, if we get to four and four, we think we're going to have a chance to make the playoffs and we're not going to sell and follow me to four and four, we think we're going to have a chance to make the playoffs and we're not going to sell and follow me to four and four. And then I'll give you guys a chance. I could fight for you. Then they get to four and four. And then you go, well, actually,

I didn't know Kirk was going to tear his Achilles. Goodbye. Did he'll have a nice flight? That's when you get the kind of degrading of that sort of thing. And I know, I know from the previous head coach that one of the problems was the things he said and the things he did did not match up in the locker room. And that had lost a lot of guys' trust. It's a hard thing for a coach to maintain trust, but he's got to go into those meetings and say, I'm going to fight for you guys to get a quarterback who can get us there. I'm going to fight to keep Daniil Hunter and give you guys this opportunity to go make the playoffs because that's what I promised you I would do if we got four and four. And if you go against that, then you're talking about losing

a lot of trust there, which is hard to get back. So there's all these things that just swirl in my head of everything I know about the success of all the, not all, but a lot of the good teams in the NFL and how they were built. And then I keep coming back to this other element that's really important. Do you think that this and this keeping Hunter here, how much does that increase the chances that they extend him after this season? I think it increases him a lot, you know, especially if he has the year that if he stays on track and can stay healthy through the rest of the year, I put a pretty high probability that they're going to want him back based off of, you can't

really find guys like to Neil Hunter anymore, unless you go and hit and hit one in the draft early, right? Edge rushers are is equally as hard to find as offensive tackles. And when you have one, you better be dang sure about letting him walk out the door that you have a backup plan and in place. And you're really rolling the dice when you do something like that, because they are true game changers. They are true game wreckers. They can win you games and lose you games of not being able to have a pass rusher that can close out a game in the fourth, right? We talk about offensive line and running backs of on the offensive side of closing out a game in the fourth quarter with the ball in your hands and being able to make it, but equally can

be said about an edge rusher, like a miles Garrett, a Daniil Hunter, a Nick Bosa, when the other team is driving to go try and win the game at the end of the game. And you have an edge rusher that can show up in a strip sack or a huge sack and call game. And Daniel Hunter is one of those guys. And so if you let someone like that walk out the door after not trading him and not giving up a second round pick, it's a little bit of egg on your face. And I think this shows that the organization does not want to let Daniel Hunter walk out this door. They want to keep him in purple and they're going to try and do everything they can to make that happen for the right price point they were able to extend hunter for three more years and that puts him into the range of where

a lot of similar pass rushers historically have fallen off in that 32 33 34 range um if they pair it with a rookie quarterback contract is very manageable if they do not pair it with a rookie quarterback contract it becomes not something it's going to allow you to build the rest of the roster in which there are still holes including who else is going to be pass rushing uh last thing i want to talk about is just what happened around league today i think we have the same feeling about chase young going to san franc as like, I guess their strategy is to hurt other quarterbacks since their quarterback has always hurt. But the Montez Sweat one is so fascinating. What did you think of the Bears? Because I saw a lot of scrutiny over this trade. I thought it was actually pretty good.

You extend that guy. You got a ton of cap space. He's a really great player and they need good players and you can overpay when you're not paying a quarterback. That's my take on it. How did you feel about that move for Chicago? I liked it because, you know, you had Khalil Mack at one point and you let him walk out the door. You traded him and you've never had a bass rusher since, right? You've never had a guy that I just talked about my last set there about the guy that

can call a game. And Sweat is one of those guys that's proven to be time in and time out and they're going to pick high again and if they pick another rookie quarterback which they very well might then yeah you can afford to pay other positions a little bit higher to start building your team again and so i like that trade i thought it was a great move for the Bears to go and get a piece that every team that's a competitive team right now has one of those guys right the Niners the Eagles I mean you go through it everyone has at least one or usually two of those type of guys and if Poles being a offensive lineman and being a front first guy he identified that as being something he wants to start building with and i was totally okay with that move by the bears i'm going then you know i feel really bad for ron rivera you know ron

rivera is a guy that was sitting there and they just found a way to be really close against the eagles and they've they lost to the bears are kind of this and then they basically like hey you're two uh you're two best edge rushers yeah see ya right And we talked about that, what happened with the Vikings, if that was the case, and they're like, KOC, I know you're trying, man, but we're sending all your best players elsewhere. That's a little bit where Ron Rivera's sitting right now going, well, that sucks.

That's not going to help me keep my job at all. But that shows where they're at as an organization. But I'm all about that trade for the Bears. I think it's a really good move by them. It reminds me of when the Jaguars signed Christian Kirk andirk and everyone said well he's not worth that much money and it's like well it doesn't matter to them because they need a wide receiver and you can't just make one magically poof and appear you'd rather overpay a good wide receiver or overpay a good edge rusher rather than just hoping that you draft one especially when you have the cap space already,

which the Chicago Bears do. So I think what they're trying to argue, Ryan Poles to Kevin Warren, who used to be with the Vikings and is now taking over Chicago, is I've got a plan. We're really close. We just need to draft Caleb Williams or Drake May,

pair him with Marvin Harrison Jr. And then we've got this defense that we've been building with Montez sweat, whether that will actually work. I do not know. We went 47 minutes without a fire crazy, but we've got one in the comments. So yeah, I,

you know, let me just end on this. I just want to say, I think that this organization and the way that they handled a lot of things, the draft Blackman played really well. Addison is a star, the players.

They let go. I'm noticing Delvin cook and what's happened with him and Eric Hendricks. I think a feeling has been pretty good, but Addison has been better and is for the future as well. The way they handled the Kirk situation, if they had signed him to a three-year extension and bent to the will of his agent. And you know,

I I'm, I'm all for agents of course, but if they had signed him to a three-year extension, then he tore his Achilles. How'd we feel right now? We'd be going, well, why did they sign him to this extension when he tore his Achilles?

But instead they left themselves flexibility in case a 35 year old quarterback suffered a catastrophic injury, the way that they've handled this on the whole, and then splitting the difference between making your coach happy, making your locker room happy by getting a quarterback, but not giving up anything, then getting something else for an undrafted free or not undrafted free agent, but for a guy who was an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year in Ezra Cleveland, all these things are right moves. They've built a defense that played as a top five defense over the last month by getting a lot of players and putting a lot of players,

young players in opportunity opportunities to do that. They hired the right guy as the defensive coordinator. I'm having a pretty tough time figuring out why I'm supposed to fire the general manager here, Jeremiah. I just like somebody's going to have to lay this out to me in better terms, because I think that there's heck, even the 2022 draft has looked a little better recently. I mean, I think that they are very much handling a lot of things in the right way recently. Doesn't mean they're going to win the Super bowl next year but that's my feeling on evaluating this now that we've gone through another kind of big moment for

quesia daful men's yeah i i don't i think that's that's pretty dumb to ask to fire him right now you know i think there's time to scrutinize and there's time to praise and i think right now is the time to praise you know so many times i've seen GMs fall into the same cycle that got the similar GM, the GM before them fired, right? Because that's what this organization has known is what the owners know. And you're kind of afraid to come in and really push back against that and be like, no, no, this is now what I'm doing. And yeah, change is hard. No one likes change. And, but I feel like Quasi has done a nice job with saying listen this isn't always going to be what everyone's happy about but this is how I want to handle things

and I think him and Kevin O'Connell have a really good rapport right now you know I think that if he would have went and traded Daniil Hunter and not brought in a quarterback there could have created a Rift there and this is still a a regime and a staff that's only in their second year right like they're still trying to understand that we don't want to get fired after four years. We want to be here for six and eight and nine years. Let's not create a giant rift in the middle of year two that is going to be really hard for us all to heal back from. But let's also be realistic. And they found a great job doing the middle road.

I would have, you can't fire that. That's just a dumb statement. Sorry, I don't know who said it. and i hope i'm not offending you but that's just a really dumb statement when you look at the thing of a whole right now and i'd love to hear maybe your one reason as to why you really think he should be fired because i cannot think of one right off the top of my head that says get him out of town right now well the uh response seems to be based on josh dobbs um and maybe you know i don't know i guess um we didn't get we didn't lose anything there's no lose side to him coming in besides us winning

games and that's a weird thing to say like that's a really weird thing to think about and it probably makes a lot of people's brains break including mine like the worst possible thing that can happen from bringing josh dobbs in is we win 10 or 11 football games that's the like worst possible thing that can happen from bringing Josh Dobbs in is we win 10 or 11 football games that's the like worst possible thing I mean there's no other downside to having that quarterback on our roster we lost nothing else yeah uh I'm right I mean it's weird it's a weird thing to say I have a real difficulty finding any trouble with uh what they did with Josh Dobbs seems fairly reasonable to me. You need to be able to evaluate your players. You need to be able to give your players

a chance to win. But also what's the difference between Josh Dobbs and say, Jameis Winston, who has a career 87 quarterback rating and everybody seemed to want him. But if you're the Saints, you're not giving him up unless it's a higher draft pick, because you know, the Vikings are desperate. And do you want to give up a third-round pick that you're going to use to build your team later? I don't think so. And that wouldn't have made a whole lot of sense to me.

I thought the worst idea would be to give up a mid-round draft pick to get someone like Andy Dalton, who's probably not going to take you any farther than someone like Josh Dobbs. So they handled it about as well as they could have saved for getting Tom Brady fire. Quasey. What is he not in your phone? Kevin O'Connell,

Kevin O'Connell. I asked him, I tried, he would not reveal still who was texting him about trying, trying to become the next quarterback of the Vikings. But I would have loved to have hacked that cell phone and seen the texts that were coming in after Kirk got hurt. Anyway. So look, nobody's perfect. I'm not claiming that it's perfect, but when I think about logically through how they've handled their way through a competitive rebuild they're doing a

lot of things that to me, set them up to be in a good place in the future, depending on of course, what happens with the quarterback and so forth. So we'll see how it plays out. Jaron Hall will start on Sunday, according to Kevin O'Connell. Then we'll see if Josh Dobbs comes in after that. Maybe we'll never see him because Jaron Hall will play well.

I don't know that that could happen. Thanks for your time and your adjustment today, Jeremiah with the trade deadline, bumping back when we usually record and thank you everybody for watching a huge crowd here on trade deadline day we didn't get the fireworks that we maybe expected but a lot to talk about going forward so thanks for your time and uh thanks everybody for watching this was a lot of fun absolutely i'll see you guys next week