Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Was the Vikings' approach to the offensive line better this time? (A Fans Only podcast)

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

Matthew Coller answers Minnesota Vikings fans questions, starting with whether the team didn't do enough to bolster its offensive line this offseason. Then he's asked to talk us into Kirk Cousins making the Hall of Fame someday and where Harrison Smith ranks in Vikings history of great defensive players. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and this is another fans only podcast and look with the questions keep coming then the episodes keep coming as well. So I know that if you've been listening to every one of these you know exactly where to send the questions. Purpleinsider.com go to the contact us or feel free to send me a tweet at Matthew Collar. You can also direct message me if it's a little bit longer and you feel free to send me a tweet at Matthew Collar. You can also direct message me if it's a little bit longer and you can't fit it in a tweet. But if you send it, I will do my best to get it on the show. And I think I mentioned this before. If you lost it in the shuffle, feel free to send me a tweet and say, hey, do you know

if you answered my question? Because a lot of times I have, but I've done so many of these episodes that I don't expect all of you to catch every single minute of every single show. So feel free to send me a tweet. If you want to know if I've answered your question or something like that, go ahead and do that again. At Matthew Collar is where to do that. So let's open, still in Diet Pepsi mode here. So we'll open the diet Pepsi and get going with the questions. Um, all right. So kicking us off first at the very top of my list, let me scroll back up is, uh, at McGillis one on Twitter says, although you definitely

talk about offensive line from time to time i feel like it may not get talked about enough how absolutely bonkers it is that management is rolling the dice on a patchwork offensive line once again in a supposedly win now season if there's one glaring need on this team outside of maybe defensive back it's offensive linemen i can reason with rolling the dice on hunter and smith staying healthy and a young guy or two breaking through at defensive end. But if you want to lean into the Kirk trademark, thank you. Um, the last frontier is building him a legit offensive line. What are the chances that they use the large majority of the remaining cap space to sign a guy that gets cut from another team during camp,

a left guard, center, even right guard. Cleveland or Bradbury as a backup is not a bad thing. And at least I can go to sleep at night knowing that Kirk would have checked down to Johnny Mutt, regardless of whether he had a clean or a broken down pocket. Love the show and what you do for us Viking addicts. Okay, that's a really good question. And you know, that is true that I feel like in our off-season conversations, we have focused on a lot of things, a lot of things that could go right, a lot of things that could go wrong

with this team and run through all the scenarios as we get closer and closer to actually seeing them practice and play preseason games. We're not that far away from that happening. And so as we've talked about it, it's been a lot of big picture, a lot of where's the direction, where is this team going? And we have not really deep dived into the offensive line. Now, I think that we should at some point have our offensive line guy, Brandon Thorne, come back on the show. I know right now he is in Frisco, Texas. I saw him tweeting

Brandon from Trench Warfare, where they have every year a bunch of offensive linemen get together and they watch film together and all these different things. And Brandon is involved in that. So maybe after he gets back, we could talk about it and talk about this offensive line. But I feel like the reason there isn't the same level of freak out as there has been in the past is that Christian Derrissaw showed some pretty good stuff last year and has the potential to form a pair of tackles that can be good for a long time. And I think just as we sort of like envision the offensive line, it's starts with the tackles and you go, well, you might be pretty good there. And with left guard, we've probably given too

much credit to Ezra Cleveland. I can pull this up right now, uh, where Ezra Cleveland ranked last year by pro football focus, but it really actually wasn't that good. Um, and we haven't discussed it a whole lot, I think because he's gotten some benefit of the doubt of, well, it was his first time playing left guard and there should be a natural improvement. And Kweisi Adafo-Menta said he's excited about Ezra Cleveland and things like that so we haven't really talked about a lot and he was not the disaster artist last year of the offensive line so he kind of flew under the radar in almost the same way that say you know Josh Klein did a couple of years ago where Josh Klein wasn't great, but he also, you know,

wasn't that good either. So Ezra Cleveland in terms of his overall ranking. Now this is going to kind of take you in a few different directions. Last year, he was 23rd out of 56. So above average in overall PFF grade. However, that is a lot based on his run grade his pass grade was 42nd out of 56 that's you know kind of concerning that even though it was his first year doing it to rank that poorly not particularly great let's take a look at the pass blocking efficiency though because so he was 26th in pass blocking efficiency. And I don't mean to like get too deep into the numbers here with Ezra Cleveland left guard, but you know, he's a really good athlete. And I think sometimes when you look at these PFF stats and you

look at their grades, sometimes really good athletes can get negative grades on plays, but they don't allow a sack. Maybe they allow a pressure or maybe they're able to avoid it, even if they have a negative grade because of their athleticism. I know this is a thing with Brian O'Neill where his production against sacks is absolutely incredible, but his grades have only been like pretty good. They don't suggest that he's one of the truly elite right tackles, but I think he is because of the consistency of that production of avoiding giving up sacks. And Ezra Cleveland last year only allowed one sack

and was above average in terms of pass blocking efficiency. I think that will probably continue, but to your point, the center and right guard positions are super head scratching, especially the center position. If this was a team that was looking down the road and saying, all right, we need to find out what we have. And even though Garrett Bradbury got benched last year and there's nothing in his metrics to suggest that he's even ever going to be average at pass blocking.

Let's just let his contract play out. Like why eat any dead money? I'm not sure how much money it would have been if there was some dead cap, but just like, why not see if this former first round pick can do better under us or develop? I would get that if they were in the mode of finding out what they have. There would have been a lot of guys that you would have said, Oh, well, why don't you just play this guy or see what that guy's got? Rather than sign, if you were in that mode, rather than sign Zedaria Smith, you just play

Patrick Jones and see what he's got. Right. But they did sign Zedaria Smith and they did sign Jordan Hicks as opposed to letting it play out between Blake Lynch and Troy Dye and Brian Asamoah and Chaz Surratt instead of having a big competition they went out and got a veteran and at the center position they just said yeah I mean Austin Schlottman is not an option he's the only guy that they draft or that they've signed that is really a center now chris reed can play center and took some reps there when somebody was missing i forget uh who exactly was out but he took some reps there in minicamp so he can do it and maybe he ends up as part of this competition but again you're talking about chris reed journeyman offensiveeman, wasn't even projected to be a starter last

year, ended up starting some in Indianapolis, but was not picked up by Indianapolis as a starter. Jesse Davis was a starter at tackle and is now being moved into guard where he does have some experience, but again, you're just rolling the dice and you're kind of throwing numbers at it. That's also one area where I would say it's a little better than in the past where in the past it was Nick Easton got hurt, I think in OTAs and they were just like, nah, all right, we're fine. The Tom Compton will do it. It'll be okay. Has

he ever played 16 games before? No, but whatever. And last year was the same thing with Oli Udo where Oli Udo, have you ever played guard before? No, but you can, right? I'm sure you can. Are you a developmental tackle? Who's not even really sure how to play in this league yet? Sure you are, but go play a different position. Like they're not doing that. They have put a bunch of numbers into the right guard spot. And I think that that competition should bear out, whether it's Ingram ends up beating out the veteran players, kind of unlikely, but, uh, Davis read, we'll see who kind of plays out there. And both of those guys should be of the Josh Klein type of type of ilk, which is an improvement from Oli Udo who led the league in holdings last year, uh, or an improvement from Compton or, you know, Mike Ramers moving

positions. Like, I don't feel like it's totally mind warpingly insane what they've done. Um, it's just at the center spot, totally believing in Garrett Bradbury is one where, I mean, we're going to have to see it to believe that they know something else is there. And as far as using the remaining cap space, you can't use a ton of it. Uh, they have about, you know, 10, 11 million, but you also have to keep some, um, you know, you've got injuries that happen, players you have to pick up and sign what, you know, whatever. So you can't use a ton, but if they were to drop two, three million on somebody, you could do that.

It's just if JC Tretter was in good enough physical shape for him to play and be good, someone would have signed him by now, right? I mean, bringing him to camp at this point in the game and having him compete with Garrett Bradbury and see where he is physically, that sounds like a good idea to me, but it just doesn't make any sense considering how good JC Tretter was that he wouldn't be in this, you know, conversation for a lot of different teams. Last year, JC Treader, as far as pass blocking had the second highest pass blocking grade in the NFL and played over a thousand snaps and no one has signed this man. I, I mean, I don't understand it. So if they were to pick him up last minute,

you have to support that deal because if he's even able to play 10 or 12 games and gives them pass blocking like that, it's a massive improvement from what they got last year from Garrett Bradbury, who, if you were wondering, or if you forgot was dead last out of all starting centers in the NFL that played more than 50% of the snaps. Garrett Bradbury was dead last in PFF pass blocking grade. JC Treader was number two. That is a huge jump if JC Treader can still play, but he played over a thousand snaps.

I don't know. That's a very strange one. Maybe he's holding out to see if somebody gets hurt or someone gets desperate at the last minute and pays him what he wants to be paid. But to your question, I think they have done better than they did in the past, but I also thought they would go into the off season with that being a main priority and to not do that. If we're going through the same things again, where it's Kirk getting pressured in the same ways. And, uh, we're not seeing, you know, anything changed from the past. That is one where we can absolutely go back to and go, come on guys, that one you should

have seen coming. So good question. All right. This one comes from at Demp Dolph on Twitter. Fans only talk me into Kirk Cousins goes to the hall of fame. I'm going to need a sip of the diet Pepsi before I can answer that one. Okay. All right. So here's what I've got. You know, I always have tools at my fingertips to work with. And for this question, I have the hall of fame monitor by pro football

reference. I love this thing. All you have to do is Google pro football reference, hall of fame monitor by pro football reference. I love this thing. All you have to do is Google pro football reference hall of fame monitor, and it's not a player ranking system. So don't take it that way. It's how does your resume match up to things that put people in the hall of fame? And so you, you know, you can say, well, QB wins don't matter or something like that, which I think is kind of a, I don't know, immature opinion, but whatever. Like, I get it. You know, that's a thing that people say. But this and you could say the same, like all the Pro Bowls, silly or whatever, which now that I'm more, you know, tend to agree with. But this looks at championships, all pros, Pro Bowls, and then a bunch of your general statistics.

And there are measures to figure out what's the average Hall of Famer look like by those measures. And yes, someday we'll have better ways of doing this. Probably. But it's still going to matter when it comes to the Hall of Fame. The total numbers that you put up, what won the awards that you got like that's what gets people into the hall of fame at the quarterback position and just to read you the top of the list you have brady manning rogers farve unitis montana breeze elway marino tarkington. So that's the top of the list. Looks pretty good, right? So when I type in Kirk Cousins name, um, he comes out right now for his career around Jim Everett

and Carrie Collins, which I think is totally fair. Now, Carrie Collins led a team to a Superbowl, uh, and Jim Everett was pretty good for a short period of time. Jay Cutler is right below those guys. For people of a farther back era, Craig Morton is right above them. Andy Dalton is just a shade ahead of where Kirk Cousins is at this moment. And Derek Carr, right behind. So those guys always together. Ryan Tannehill Carr right behind so those guys always together Ryan Tannehill

right behind so that gives you an idea of where he stands right now so in order to jump the list I'll give you where it starts to get to guys are in the hall of fame so as I went down that list you know the the greats of the great you're not getting Kirk into that conversation but could he get into a conversation with like, you know, okay. I I'm having a little like it's, he's got to go pretty far. Could he get into a conversation with someone like Russell Wilson? No, probably not. This is not a question that seems like it's really possible. I mean, even with a Super Bowl win, I don't know how you get in there.

Like Joe Flacco would be what? Kirk with a Super Bowl win? But even Joe Flacco was in the playoffs much more often. He didn't make, Joe Flacco didn't make a single pro ball. That's fascinating, but Joe Flacco is not a hall of famer. So I'm trying to go through the people who are hall of famers or are guaranteed to get there and say, how could cousins in his next couple of seasons get to having a resume like that Eli Manning is probably your best case if you were to win two Super Bowls is he going to win two Super Bowls that doesn't seem all that likely uh Kurt Warner maybe again where if you win a Super Bowl and lead a team to a Super Bowl the rest of your stuff doesn't really matter.

And that's kind of the case for Kurt Warner. If you have a really hot stretch with great numbers, you go to a Super Bowl, you lead your team to another Super Bowl or two in Kurt Warner's, you know, in his case. Even then, Kurt Warner had two all, like these are really tough things to overcome. So I guess the only way I could go about doing this and think about like Alex Smith and Tony Romo are much higher on this list for what they accomplished. And they're kind of comparable in some ways, but they also just were on teams that want a lot more. Trent green is within shouting distance. So the guys that are within shouting distance of Cousins are kind of like Trent Green, Jeff Garcia, Matt Hasselbeck.

That's really his ballpark, I think. To get past that, I think you would have to have nothing short of two Super Bowl appearances and win at least one of them to get Kirk Cousins there because statistics are already a part of it. And he doesn't have consideration as a top elite quarterback right now. That's part of it too, is how you were thought of. Sometimes it's even where you were drafted, like Matthew Staffordord where he was drafted has always mattered in matthew stafford's career and the analysis of what he is as a quarterback but last year he had the same pff grade as he had for many of those years with detroit but played on an unbelievable team in one right and in some of those games didn't even play that great but but one, and I'm not trying to take it away from him, but through his entire time, based on his skillset, everyone said, well, this guy's not

getting enough credit. This guy's not getting enough credit. And I still don't think Stafford is a hall of famer, but, uh, you know, winning the super bowl to go along with all those stats that he had for all those years, it gives him a better case because he won the Superbowl, even if he didn't do anything crazy different from stuff that he's already done. So with cousins, he's got a run of statistics that would make him worth the discussion. Only if he won a Superbowl.

And let me just look real quick. Um, I'm doing a lot of scrolling and talking at the same time. So I'm sorry if I lose my train of thought, but I wanted to look again at Kurt Warner because I feel like Kurt Warner has a great case based on his multiple all pros and hall and Superbowl appearances, a couple of MVPs. I mean, that certainly doesn't hurt at all for Kurt Warner, but how many great years did Kurt Warner truly have in the NFL? Let's see. I mean,

three, four, five and five great years, two of them were MVPs and he went to the Superbowl three times. So, I mean, that that's going to get you in that conversation. So these next few years, that's basically what you would need is MVP level play and at least a Super Bowl win. And then another Super Bowl appearance in order to get Kirk Cousins into the Hall of Fame. It's not an easy route to get there for Kirk Cousins, especially in an era where so many quarterbacks are putting up really great statistics. I mean, talk about Alex Smith. I mean, if he's not in Alex Smith or Tony Romo's ballpark,

you've kind of got a long way to go still there. But, you know, it kind of starts with this year. Can you go deep into the playoffs? Can you win? Cause if not, then you're still going to stay in that same range all the time as Derek Carr and Ryan Tannehill, good numbers guys who are not considered to be hall of famers. All right. But a fun challenge, a fun challenge, and really use that hall of fame monitor toy around with it. It's pretty good.

All right. This one comes from Mac jaw 68 on Twitter. Fans only question, excluding quarterbacks. If you could add one player to the Vikings in the league, who is it and why? Okay. In the entire league, who wants me to name offensive linemen? Like, is that, did, did Zach Martin best guard in the league come to everybody's mind right there all at once? Is that, that is the first thing that comes to mind. And I don't hate it, honestly, because if you had, let's just play along with me here. If you had Zach Martin and Brian O'Neill to go along with, let's just say Chris Reed wins the center job. I don't know. Like I, my belief is just not super high in Garrett Bradbury where he's at right now, but man, that would be pretty good to add Zach Martin. So let's just say it's not an offensive

lineman. I think you have to go with wide receiver next year because of the individual impact of a great wide receiver. And we've seen it. This was always bizarre to me when people would argue against the receiver for the Vikings. When you've seen Randy Moss, Jake Reed, and Chris Carter play here and absolutely dominate and see how many times other teams forced Kirk Cousins to try to throw to Laquan Treadwell or to Tajay Sharp a couple of times in 2020 or whoever else was the wide receiver three. I remember in that game in 2018 where Belichick just started double teaming every third down putting two guys on both phelan and digs and it's like you've got no answer and in a fourth down situation he targets laquan treadwell that number three receiver i think kj osborne's a nice player i'm not trying to degrade

kj osborne is a good story and a smart player and somebody who can clearly make plays. But if you were to take Devante Adams, wait, how would it be? Would it be Stefan Diggs? Could I say Stefan Diggs for this? Let's just say Devante Adams. If you were to take a receiver who cannot be stopped, Cooper Cup even, Debo Samuel. Ooh, Debo Samuel. His health record's a little less great because he's been used as a running back. But last year, Debo Samuel had like 350 yards rushing and 1,500 or 1,400 yards receiving.

Averaged 18 yards a catch, just complete absurdity. Debo Samuel, I think, is my answer. I don't know how you stop that. You have your possession receiver in Thielen, your deep receiver in Jefferson, and then your give the ball to this man at any given time, Debo Samuel,

and I don't think you need an elite offensive line because you have options on every single play. I think if it were anybody in the league, it's probably that guy. It's probably Debo Samuel. This just weapon you can use in any way. Percy Harvin recreated. Maybe Jamar Chase is the other answer. If you were asking for like one year to try to win a super bowl, I think I take Debo Samuel long-term though, Jamar chase and Justin Jefferson, uh, would probably go for that as well. But, uh, that's, that's a fun question. Now on the defensive side, I think the answer is like just super obvious Aaron Donald, or, you know, maybe Jalen Ramsey or one of the great corners in the league. But, you know, with Aaron Donald, like don't take this wrong that I'm downplaying Aaron

Donald's impact because in the biggest moments, Aaron Donald pressured Jimmy Garoppolo. He pressured, you know, Joe Burrow to win games. He was right there. He's the most dominant defensive player since Lawrence Taylor, all that stuff. But there was a chart somebody made. I think it was Tage Seth, who was a PFF intern who makes great charts on the internet. This is how it works these days. But he made a chart about the teams and where they ranked in offense versus where they ranked in defense. And then, you know, some other things when it came to reaching the super bowl and it looked exactly how you thought like it was all great offenses

and the defenses were kind of spread out you need your defense to play great and to have great players to win the super bowl normally but it's your offense that's going to get you there most of the time it's going to be elite offenses. So if we're doing the lean into the Kirk, I'm taking a wide receiver playmaker over Aaron Donald, but he's the only defensive player that would get into this conversation for me, someone who is a complete nightmare and game wrecker. So I would, I would put him in that conversation.

That's, that's a fun one though. I'm sure there's a ton of answers that people could come up with, but I like the Debo Samuel selection. This comes from Sean via email. Now, he sent four questions. So I really appreciate that, Sean. So I'm just going to pick one and I will save the others and put them in different spots in the file and we'll go back to them. different spots in the file. And we'll,

we'll go back to them, Sean. I appreciate that. Uh, let's see here. Harrison Smith is my favorite Vikings player since Jared Allen and Antoine Winfield before that. Those are good selections, especially Antoine Winfield. Uh, I am an appreciator of his talents. One, where does he sit referring to Harrison Smith? Where does he sit in the pantheon of Vikings defensive backs? And can we get excited about him continuing or even adding to his dominant play with a stud safety running mate in Lewis scene despite his age? Well, let's go to our toolbox and let's see where Harrison Smith ranks in terms of approximate

value by pro football reference in comparison to his defensive backs, brothers of, uh, Viking hood to give us some context. And then we can have a conversation from there because my thought on this, my, just my snap reaction is that Harrison Smith probably is the best safety in Vikings history, not named Paul Krause, because it's going to be very hard to top Paul Krause's interception total, which I'm pulling up right now, but it's just absolutely absurd from back in the day when they used to throw interceptions all the time, Paul Kraus 53 over his career. Like no one's touching that, but Harrison Smith has 29 and you know, he's, he's got a good number of sacks. He blows up run plays. I mean,

16 and a half sacks for Harrison Smith. Paul Kraus never had a sack in his entire career, very different game, very different player but it's just interesting that Harrison Smith has been so effective rushing the the passer coming up and playing in the box he's just been all you know in all parts of the defense for many years now as far as the approximate value goes which is kind of their way of ranking players, uh, Harrison Smith is slightly ahead of Jared Allen in terms of approximate value as a Viking. That's not for Jared Allen's whole career, but as a Viking, that's where he ranks along with Everson Griffin is just ahead of him. You have, you know, like Chad Greenway is in this ballpark. So Henry Thomas

is in this ballpark. What I would say is at this moment, Harrison Smith still has a little way to go to be considered like one of the truly great defensive players in Vikings history. But we're talking about a history that has unbelievable defensive players. Like when I look up this list, Carl Eller, Alan Page, Jim Marshall at the top, and then Kraus, Randall, Dolman, Studwell, Bobby Bryant, who we mentioned is being underrated. And then you get to Greenway, played for a long time. And then, you know, players like Everson Griffin, Harrison Smith, Jared Allen. So he's kind of in that second tier. Joey Browner also mixed in there has a good case for being like in that same range as

Harrison Smith. I think that's probably a good comparison. Joey Browner and Harrison Smith. So that kind of tells you where they're at, like ring of honor type guy, probably. But to the second part of your question, the book is not yet written. He's probably got two more years as a Viking per his contract. And then we'll see where it goes from there. I think in year one, it would be hard to say Lewis scene makes Harrison Smith better, but by year two, can Lewis scene be good enough to make Harrison Smith kind of keep age at bay.

And one thing that's very impressive as we'll go back to the toolbox again here about Harrison Smith is we talk a lot about how there's ups and downs from defensive backs by PFF grades. Cause you know, it could be small sample size and how often they were targeted. Harrison Smith, since Mike Zimmer became the head coach of this team has never had a bad year by PFF grade, not a single time. He's never had a bad coverage grade. He's had a little lower or a little higher, but he's never had a bad coverage grade. He's never had a bad tackle grade. He's never had a bad tackle grade.

He's never had a bad run defense grade. It's really, I mean, it's really incredible. And if you only judge it by things like interceptions and sacks, you're missing a lot of Harrison Smith's career. And one thing that's really amazing is his health record over a thousand snaps every single year since 2017. So yeah, Harrison deserves all the credit. I would say as far as Vikings history goes, there's that top tier that is where Harrison Smith exists, which again is, I mean, that's not a criticism of Harrison Smith. That is a compliment. And I do think it's possible, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves that Louis

scene could help Harrison Smith stay young as they go into the next two seasons. All right. Next question here. Let me take a, uh, take a quick sip and we'll take a look at the next question. All right. At that guy, Frank 29 on Twitter for the NFL as a whole, which team or teams do you see having a pop-up season and which do you think will regress from last year? Okay. That's a fun one. Um, the Detroit lions seem to be the very popular team that will have a pop-up season. I am not convinced of this. I can see where everyone is

coming from it for sure. And I think if you're doing this question, that's the first team that comes to mind because when a team goes to the bottom, a lot of times the next year or two, not every time jets, not every time lions history, but a lot of times they stack talent, they get draft picks and think about where the Miami dolphinsphins were a couple years ago. They were trying to lose to the point where their owner was telling their coach, I'll give you more money if you lose. And yet they have, like what, above 500 records over the last two years? Like they've gotten a lot better and they've stacked their roster.

It happens quick in the NFL. So that's where the conversation starts. You know, you certainly don't have to believe in Jared Goff. I don't blame you, but even a team that was good had Tua at quarterback and Ryan Fitzpatrick and was able to at least be a competitive team because of the way they built it up. So that's a team that comes to mind that could go from the bottom to being competitive. The Jacksonville Jaguars are a natural pick. I don't love everything they did in the off season. They certainly overpaid players, but also like, you know, when you make that criticism, you have to remember that they're the Jacksonville Jaguars. How else were you getting Christian Kirk other than overpaying him? It's what you can do with your rookie quarterback contract. Go do it. I had no

problem with that part of it. Even if some of the decisions were questionable, I think they overpaid someone like Zay Jones. Like what? I think you can find somebody like that, but you know, okay, let's not nitpick here because they have a very competent head coach who was recently in the super bowl and is not a sociopath. And then they have the rookie quarterback drafted number one, overall ready to take the next step. I mean, that one just has all the flashing lights around it. And if you think, oh, well, it's the Jaguars. It won't work for them. Cincinnati Bengals. I mean, who would have said? I remember going into week one.

We were like, oh, well, you know, Bengals, they're not there yet. You should still beat them. And the Vikings almost did. But they went to the Super Bowl because their quarterback emerged after year one. I remember reading film pieces. Joe Burrow doesn't have a strong enough arm and all this stuff. It's like this, this is what happens if you get it right. If you get it wrong, you know, you end up with Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold on the same team or something, but like you get it right with the quarterback position and all those things, then, um, you know, you can be that team. So the Jaguars are a team that I think if you're trying to bet those

worst-to-first type teams, that's probably one to look at. Let me see if there's any other teams that are kind of at the bottom that might be a lot better. I'm inclined to say Washington because even though it's Carson Wentz, I think we go a little too far because of the way he ended the season on Carson Wentz. I don't think he's good, but I also don't think what he did last year in Indianapolis was so disastrous that the man should never start another game in the NFL. Uh, I, do they have a good enough offensive system around them receiver wise they have terry mclaurin

but who else yeah uh curtis samuel is going to come back that might be able to help him but washington the new york giants are another one the new york jets with zach wilson like all these teams have that kind of you know maybe there's reason to think that they could be better and be legit competitive. The Giants getting a new coach. I'm not a Daniel Jones believer though. Three years in a row under seven yards per pass attempt. I don't think he's cleared a 90 passer rating yet. Like even if your coach is Joe judge, you gotta be better than that. But new coach, they were the most injured team in the league last year. Like, I think there's signs with those teams. As far as regression goes, the new England Patriots probably had the worst off season in the NFL for any team, not named Seattle that had to trade Russell Wilson to

Denver. New England looks like a team that could fade, especially if the jets get stronger and the dolphins are better this year. And they still have to play in the same division as the Bills. The Tennessee Titans are not winning the one seat again. That would be very surprising, even though that division is not super tough. I just don't see that continuing for that much longer with Tennessee, where they run Derrick Henry all the time, or last year they played good defense at the right times and somehow got to 12 wins. That seems like a possible fade. New Orleans missed the playoffs last year, but losing Sean Payton and relying on

Jameis Winston is just not a great model. And another team that could fade is the San Francisco 49ers. If they don't figure out what they're doing, a quarterback like this situation with Jimmy Garoppolo going this deep into the off season, are you going to trade him? Is he going to compete with Trey Lance? But there's just a possibility that Trey Lance is bad. I don't know. I'm not projecting that he is.

I haven't seen him play other than one game, but if Trey Lance is bad, then San Francisco could absolutely fall off the edge of a cliff. And there's still unhappiness there with a Debo Samuel. I guess I would throw the Arizona Cardinals for another team in that NFC West. It's like the Rams won the Superbowl. Then their division got way easier because the Cardinals got another receiver, but still don't have a defense and still don't have a coach. So I think those are some of the teams that I'm kind of looking at that could have some pretty big swings from last year. That's a good one. Feel free to ask anything about the league, by the way, when you send these questions, if you have a question about the Dallas Cowboys or whatever,

or what team do I think X, Y, or Z send it my way. Okay. Next question here comes from at hammer PWR from 2018 to 2021, a Courtney Cronin special pie chart of blame. Courtney will be back soon, by the way. She's been very busy on first take, sitting next to Brian Windhorst as he broke the internet. So, but let's see, a Courtney Cronin special pie chart of blame.

Spielman, Cousins, Zimmer. I tend to put most of the blame on Spielman, but the media and player narratives this offseason seems to be to blame Zimmer for most of the mediocrity and locker room issues. Thanks, Matt. Love the pot. Well, thank you. Okay, so a pie chart with, let me add an other.

So we got like Spielman and Cousins, it's like, can we blame Cousins for signing a contract that someone wrote up and put in front of him and said, how much money would you like? Is it a lot? Here you go. I've never gotten on board with criticizing Kirk Cousins for signing the contract. I know I've gotten many people over the years who have said, yeah, but shouldn't he take a pay cut to help them sign other people? And my answer is no. I mean, maybe, but like, it's not his fault that they drafted a bunch of busts in the first round over the past number of years. It's not his fault that they tried to make preposterous trades for Yannick and Gawkway and Chris Herndon.

It's, it's, it's not his fault that they didn't have a plan to quickly rebuild the team after 2020. Like those are Rick Spielman things, but also other might be the Wilfs. Like how much did they push for Kirk cousins to be the quarterback? The reason I don't, the reason you could make a case to blame it all on Kirk or none of it on Kirk is that he didn't sign his deal and he wasn't any different. In fact, he played as the best version of himself. He put up his career numbers and he played as the best version of Kirk Cousins, which means it was a mis-evaluation by Rick Spielman to sign Kirk Cousins.

And the hilarious thing about this offseason has been Rick Spielman doing interviews where he implies that Zimmerman and Cousins not getting along is the reason that it didn't work. And it's like, if we could only find the person responsible for pairing them together, who was it? Rick? I cannot remember who would have made this signing, but it has been implied by Mr. Spielman. And this is where I would

give him a little break has been implied. And after this off season, I tend to believe that ownership wanted them to keep going down the Kirk path and possibly even wanted them to go down the Kirk path to begin with. So there are two approaches to this as we hand out blame. Like the reason you haven't gone farther is because of a huge quarterback contract that did not yield results that have to be at the level you need to win with a huge quarterback contract which is essentially like an mvp level i think we all agree on that if you're really really highly paid you have to play at an mvp level to overcome that or your team has to get stupid lucky in the draft or both. Right. We all agree on that. So I would go Spielman 50% because of the aforementioned things. They did not build around Kirk well. So if you're going

to have that guy on that contract, you better do all the rest of it in the most efficient way possible. And they did not. I will go 20% on the Wilfs or other we'll just call it other because if they pushed, if they indeed pushed for cousins to continue to stay on, they also extended Zimmer when it wasn't working between him and cousins with that relationship, uh, Zimmer and Spielman. So they kept those guys on too long when they had an opportunity to move on, but I'll go 20% there and I will split the rest of the other 30% on both,

uh, cousins and Zimmer for not getting along. I think cousins was put in a lot of really good positions by Zimmer hiring Gary Kubiak and Kevin Stefanski. So I don't ever buy the narrative that he did nothing to help Kirk. He completely overhauled their offense after 2018 to help Kirk, but then they had a one-year window and missed it. Um, so, you know, Zimmer mishandled game situations, uh, mishandled the locker room made for an unhappy culture and all those things though. I have, I have yet to ever cover a losing team that had a super fun culture. So there's also that part of it, but yeah, I think the main

culprit is signing and extending Kirk cousins to the amount that he was extended to, to the structure he was given and then failing to get more wide receivers around him, failing to build a better offensive line around him, failing to get him a coach when it was time to get him a coach. Like like we're just doing this now you guys just found out today that zimmer and spiel or zimmer and cousins were a bad fit you just found out today that zimmer and cousins were a bad fit no you knew that in 2018 you knew that in 2019 and yet it took until 2022 after the end of the 2021 season before they had a new head coach to work with cousins so yeah i mean there there's another pie chart that maybe it's just like

all of you all of you get blamed for this but the one thing is that you have to say for kirk cousins is that he's been kirk cousins This is like when you draft a player and you're like, dang, I thought we could make them faster. Like a wide receiver say thought his speed wouldn't matter. It did. Okay. Why that might be, do I have a short one? Do I have a short question? Maybe if I have a short, quick one, um short question maybe if I have a short quick one um let's see okay I think uh I didn't want to dive into anything like super crazy deep at the moment for this episode I still got a lot of questions in the file but I wanted to do maybe like one more okay this is from at rat trapping and hopefully he's listened this far to get this a lot of fans might not

remember but madden used to have a competition as a franchise and they were at oh yes and they were actually behind the pack until they made a pretty desperate move did you ever play 2k in the early 2000s if so what was your reaction when madden bought the rights and images and likenesses from the NFL PA and monopolize the football video game industry. Yeah, man. Heartbreaking. That's the answer. I still have NFL 2k5. I recently, maybe within the last three years, pulled it out, played it and won the Superbow bowl with Josh McCown on the Detroit lions, right? Because as one does on a video game, but that 2k5 game is so far back in the past that, you know, no one remembers it unless you were a certain age, but it just had a lot of really good features in its gameplay and within, you know, the franchise mode and within just like how you could, uh, watch the halftime show and see your highlights, the celebration.

When you won the super bowl, think about this. I played a Madden season. The last time I played a Madden season was maybe two, three years ago. And I won the super bowl and I'm, and I'm waiting. And there's like a 32nd thing. And then it's done. It's like, dude, I did all that work to win the super bowl and there's not even a big celebration in the year, whatever it was, 2018. Yeah, no, that's, that is a really to my own video game playing really, really crushing because after that, I mean, I still played Madden from time to time and every once in a while in the summer or on a bi-week or something, I'll pull it out, play a couple of games, but it's just, it just is so frustrating when they can't make a better game

now than was made in the year 2005 15 years ago it's basically the same game i'm sure that the developers would tell me many different things and i respect what the franchise has done all those types of things but it's just like it's just not good enough it's just not innovative at all uh if you want to develop players on madden 2004 you can do these awesome training camp drills if you want to develop players on Madden 2004, you can do these awesome training camp drills. If you want to develop them now, you just get random point numbers like, Oh, Oh, Oh, my player got a thousand XP. Awesome. Cool. That's really fun. So yeah, two K five, I thought push them to innovate and make better games in the short term. And then after they bought those rights,

they just talk about the rest on your laurels. They just thought if we make it, it's the only place people can come and that's what they did. So yeah, it's still disappointing. And I still love to play that game every now and then, because it's really fun and well put together. It had its glitches.

Every time I bring it up, I'll get, well, it didn't do this well. It was their first year. I think it would have gotten better. So yeah, there's your hardcore video game analysis to end the podcast. I feel like this one got pretty intense, but I appreciate everybody listening. And I know that I've said it like every episode, but as we get into the next two weeks

and, and your fans only questions do not have to pertain to this, but I'm going to start writing all of my previews for training camp. And like, you're starting to get that feeling. It's like, it's coming, man. It's coming. So thank you so much for listening, everybody. I really appreciate all of your time, all of your questions. And I mean, think about this. It's the middle of July, early July, and we can talk for 50 minutes, just football. It's great. Football.