Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - What are reasonable expectations for Jaren Hall?

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Matthew Coller answers fan questions about the Minnesota Vikings starting quarterback Jaren Hall and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's comments on Kirk Cousins' future Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and look, I'm all alone. It has been a while since I have done a live solo podcast here, but I'm looking for viewer participation from everybody who's joining on YouTube for tonight. We did a lot of these during training camp, but during the season, I've had all sorts of guests coming and going, which has been awesome, but I don't have a guest for tonight. So we have a lot to talk about. I have some sound to play for you very shortly and much to discuss in regards to this week's game against the Atlanta Falcons, a new starting quarterback, which has been quite some time since we have seen that for the Minnesota Vikings. Guess that would be going back to 2021 when Kirk Cousins had to miss the game at Lambeau Field and Sean Mannion started. That also began the tumbling down the mountain of Mike Zimmer's comments about Kellen Mond after that game, which played a role in his exit from Minnesota. But aside from that, there have been very few times where I have been getting ready for a game and Kirk Cousins has not been the quarterback and that goes for everybody else as well. So a very strange feeling at TCO

Performance Center. And what I'm interested in is hearing from you good folks about what your expectations for Jaron Hall are and what's reasonable to expect from someone who has only thrown a couple NFL passes, played several preseason games, had an NFL training camp, and has only been QB2 as a backup working as the scout team quarterback for a couple of weeks. At the same time, he did throw in college over 700 passes, over 6,000 yards, 61 total touchdowns in college, an experienced quarterback. of your friends when you go to work tomorrow that jaron hall is only 264 days younger than tj hockinson who is now entering his second contract and he is 449 days older than justin jefferson so we have an adult quarterback here though he is a rookie uh jaron hall of course you know a lot of players who go to BYU, do missions, and then come back and play football, which is why sometimes they come out of college being a little bit older. And TJ Hawkinson was joking about thinking about someone his age basically still being

in college. But it allows for Jaron Hall to take a very mature approach to his first NFL start and thought it was interesting. Some of the comments that have come out the last couple of days that even in the tiny sample size of being thrown into the fire at Lambeau field, though, the first drive did not go how they wanted it to go. Probably shouldn't have been set up with a passing play on third down, but then came out, converted a first down and handled himself well within the huddle. So I wanted to bring you what Kwesi Adafo-Mensah,

the Vikings general manager, said about Jaron Hall today at his press conference. I believe a lot in Jaron Hall. I think he's a really good player. Now, the problem is when you project something, you don't know, you don't expect him to start in his rookie year at this time. I can't say that we expected that. I can tell you that Grant Udinski and Chris O'Hara are out there on the practice field with him every day after practice like he was going to be the starter.

So I have that in the back of my head, the confidence that's instilled by watching him do those preparations, the things we saw about him in the process coming out. So there's Kwasi. I've got a few more comments from him uh to play you as well as kevin o'connell when we inevitably get ourselves to the discussion about kirk cousins and the future as well but i'm curious give give me a projection in in the comment section you guys let me know what you think jaron hall's stat line is going to be. And we could try to work our way through that. Like what factors go into this?

I just saw a chart from, I believe it was Arjun Menon who does analytics. He was posting about how defenses switch up their coverages. So how often do different defenses around the league change up their coverages? How unpredictable are they? You'll be shocked that the Green Bay Packers were the most predictable, as we all saw last week. And in this case, all their fans are actually right that they should fire their defensive coordinator. But that's another story. The Atlanta Falcons were among the teams that change up their coverages the most. I think Jaron Hall

is facing a challenge there. Another thing too, is that the Atlanta Falcons have actually done a pretty good job of stopping the run this year. And as you all have probably noticed, the Vikings have not done a very good job of running the football. So I think there's a lot of factors that go into this. They don't have a spectacular defense against the pass, but the Vikings are without Justin Jefferson, which matters less if you have Kirk Cousins hitting every open wide receiver over the last two weeks might matter more with a backup quarterback. Because one of the things that I was very impressed with Kirk Cousins this year is how often he went to a read that did not look like it was the first read.

Now, I don't know all the play calls and all the progressions and everything else, but oftentimes when you see just looking at the quarterback's head movement, you can see the kind of progressing that Kirk Cousins was doing. And I think with someone like Jaron Hall, you're maybe trying to ask him to get to that first read more often being inexperienced. Going back to what we saw in preseason, and I've been going back and looking at some of the reviews that I wrote, looking at the game, the fourth, well, third pre preseason game there isn't four anymore third preseason game uh what jto sullivan from the qb school said about jaron hall and there's a couple things that stood

out to me i mean number one is that he can move and he can throw on the move so jaron hall played baseball when he was in college as well and you can see kind of that footwork when he's rolling out and when he's got to do that kind of like on the move and then hit somebody in stride. There's several plays where he does that really, really well. And that lends itself to the play action and bootleg type of game that the Vikings sprinkle in with Kirk Cousins. But I think with Jaron Hall, you want to run that a lot more with those play actions. And that's where the running game kind of comes in and tying them together. But that's something that he seems to be very good at. There were also some passes into

some tight windows that I was really impressed with. And then other times where it was just not as accurate. And so the consistency of the accuracy and being on the same page with his wide receivers, which I think was at times a problem in preseason, as it always is going to be when it's the preseason, there were some sacks too. And this would be the biggest concern, I think, for Jaron Hall is in the preseason. Let me look this up. I just had this up a few minutes ago for Jaron Hall is in the preseason. Let me look this up. I just had this up a few minutes ago with, with Jaron Hall. He took a lot of sacks. I think it was, hold on. I got that number. It was nine sacks in 64 dropbacks in the preseason. Now, some of those of course,

were because he's playing with a backup offensive line. And one of them, I remember specifically, nobody blocked the defensive tackle and they just sacked Jaron Hall. That's not his fault. But nine sacks is a lot to take in 64 dropbacks. That's like a game and a half worth of play or two games, depending on how much you throw. That's too many.

So that can't happen. And that's another reason to try to get them on the bootlegs and so forth. The offensive line has played very, very well. But then when you go back and look so that they were good last week, I think that when I reviewed the game, they weren't as good as I thought they were in person. And part of the reason was that Kirk Cousins was timing it out extremely well with when the rush was getting close to him and when he was getting rid of the football. And that's not as easy to do if you're Jaron Hall

and you have zero career starts versus Kirk Cousins that has, it's like 140. So there's a big difference there in that experience and they will need a better performance. It does help that Grady Jarrett is out of this game. Every time he's ever played the Vikings, he has absolutely destroyed them in the interior. And Ed Ingram really had a tough game this last game. And I think that if he goes back to playing the way that he was early in the season, then yeah, it's going to be a pretty rough ride for Jaron Hall because Kirk Cousins knows how to make up for that. Sometimes I don't know that a rookie knows how to make up for that ever. When you're talking about starters, you know, on the defensive side, not preseason caliber players that are chasing you down. And maybe you've got athleticism enough to escape backup players, starting players. It's going to be

a lot more difficult. So let me get to some of your comments here. Dustin says, once Kirk went down, I gave up on the season. So I'm excited for this evaluation back part of the season. We'll see what kind of coach Kevin O'Connell really is. I think, yeah, that's a tough one for me. You're not the first person to bring that up. A longtime listener and fellow journalist, Josh Smith, who's been on the show before said the same thing to me, that he's very interested in seeing how Kevin O'Connell handles not having Kirk Cousins. The problem with that is you're talking about a fifth-round rookie from BYU, which is not a high level of competition. It's decent, but it's not Alabama.

And the other quarterback is Josh Dobbs, who is 1-9 in 10 career starts. Yes, the situation is good. The receivers are good. The linemen are good. But are we really making assessments about Kevin O'Connell based on what he's doing with almost the worst possible quarterback situation? I mean, in comparison, even if they had an Andy Dalton or even Nick Mullins, we might be able to say, oh, I guess we'll see what he does without Kirk.

But this is, I think, much harder. You got to teach Josh Dobbs the offense in a week, potentially, if they don't like what they see from Jaron Hall, or you have to bring in a quarterback who has less physical skill as far as arm talent than Kirk Cousins, nowhere near the experience, nowhere near the openness of the playbook and what you can put on his plate. O'Connell talks all the time about all the things that you could put on Kirk Cousins. You can add in motions, protection changes, cadence changes, silent counts, different reads, backsides of reads that he can get to, coverages, everything, because he's been around for so long and he can handle it. And now you're talking about a guy who, what, how long ago? A year ago is looking over to see

a picture of SpongeBob to know the play. I mean, this is just very difficult. And this is one of the reasons why so many of the young quarterbacks who have been put into the NFL are struggling. It's not like going from triple a to the majors. It's like going from T-ball to the majors or slow pitch softball for a rookie quarterback. And that's one of the major reasons we see those guys struggle. So I don't know if we can say, Hey, Kevin O'Connell now doesn't know what he's doing because Jared Hall struggled, or is he a genius? If he succeeds, I mean, maybe I guess if there's a ton of success, then of course we're going to give O'Connell a lot of credit, but if there's failure, I look around the leak. Like how about Green Bay?

Good example. Matt Lafleur, genius coach, Aaron Rogers leaves. What a dummy. What did I see today? What team did I see today? Somebody was at new Orleans, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh. I saw someone in the Pittsburgh media talking about how bad of a head coach Mike Tomlin is now like what Mike Tomlin is a great coach, but he does not have Ben Roethlisberger. And then he looks like less of a great coach and they want the offensive coordinator fired. But I watched Kenny Pickett over, you know, under throw, overthrow, miss time, a bunch of throws. Cause he's probably not very good at that's, that's where it gets very

tricky is trying to draw conclusions. I think we could draw much more conclusions by what Kirk Cousins has done and then trying to factor in if someone was equally as talented as Kirk Cousins and cheaper. And we'll get to that discussion a little later. I am curious about your guys' thoughts on the expectations for Jaron Hall. Anthony says our offense needs to stay on schedule, avoid second and long and third and long as much as possible. Hall needs to give us a few first downs with his legs to help with our time of possession. No disagreement on any of those points. It's just, I think that the short passing game will probably have to drive them to those second and short, third and short situations,

because there's not a lot of trust in the running game and one area where Ezra Cleveland at least by PFF and usually their offensive line evaluations are pretty strong pretty accurate and this doesn't just come from me and my book and everything else but actual offensive linemen as well not necessarily current players who always think their grades are wrong but former linemen like Jeff Schwartz, Ross Tucker, and these guys have talked about this, that they have graded Ezra Cleveland as a quality run blocker over the last two years.

We can certainly debate other parts of his game, the grit element, the toughness element, but as far as a run blocker, he's a really good athlete, and he, I think, did a pretty good job overall in the last two years. I don't see the same run blocking ability in Dalton Reisner, and the grades are pretty different. And last week, Reisner had a pretty rough week. As a pass blocker, he was okay, but as a run blocker,

that's not really his strength. What do you do? How do you find ways to get this run game going? I don't have a great answer because Robert Smith is not walking through that door with his four, two speed. This is four, seven, four, eight speed of Alexander Madison. And even cam acres couldn't find a hole last week in one play that looked like it was going to go for a big gain. He got tripped over his own guy. So it's been a rough ride when it comes to the blocking. And I think this is where it's going to be a lot on the shoulders of Jaron Hall. Skull Vikings says 16

for 21 with 210 yards, two touchdowns and runs for another. If they put up 21 points on a stat line like that, that will be a massive success. What I've seen out of Jaron Hall as far as accuracy-wise and the consistency of accuracy, I don't know that he's really a guy that's going to complete like 70% of his passes. I just don't know if that's there. I think it's going to be a little more erratic from what I saw in preseason.

Got this right here. It was only 54% completions. And you could say, yes, there's backup receivers. First, the Vikings have good backup receivers. Also, the defenses have backup corners. It kind of evens out. And that's not the greatest indication of accuracy just from what i've seen from uh jaron hall i i don't think it's going to be this

consistent drop back perfectly accurate i think it's gonna be a little more sporadic and dependent on kind of the situation and and how how stable his base is, that kind of thing. We'll see. It's a reasonable best-case scenario stat line, though, from what you're saying. Mike says, Matthew, have you ever seen a pattern in what coaches do to make rookie quarterbacks successful? What should we look for if Kevin O'Connell is successfully manipulating a tough situation?

Yeah, it's not that complicated. In fact, one time I did a story with Kirk Cousins about the first start of his career where Kirk took me through a bunch of his throws and plays from that game. And that's somewhere on purpleinsider.com if you want to go find it from, I think, maybe like two years ago. And one of the things that he talked about a lot was Mike Shanahan. Kyle Shanahan was there. Of course, Sean McVay, that great coaching staff, that they set him up with a lot of play action. And when I looked it up, I mean, what an incredible memory this guy has.

I don't think he did any prep for the interview. action. And when I looked it up, he, I mean, what an incredible memory this guy has. He was, I don't think he did any prep for the interview and he remembered plays one of his reads on a throw that went for a touchdown. And the percentage of play action that he used is wild. Like there's a reason why he is who he is, but they use like 50% of the plays were play action for Kirk cousins on that day. That's one of the things I think can make a rookie quarterback more comfortable is when you're running play action and you're drawing the defense in and you're creating space, there's a lot of easier reads that come from that. That was really like Gary Kubiak's main philosophy was if you're succeeding in the run game and you're running

play action off of it, there's a lot of space that gets created by those play actions. And the Vikings have these in their playbook and they've used them. I can actually look up right now what their success has been with Kirk Cousins in play action. Typically, he's very good at it. Last year was less so. And that was something that they tried hard to improve. So I'm going to pull that up right now, and I'm assuming Kirk is at the top of the list. He is indeed. Kirk Cousins this year is the fifth highest graded play action quarterback so far this season. 30% of his dropbacks have been play action 70 completion percentage and 108.2

quarterback rating a lot of that stuff is not special from a quarterback perspective a lot of times you're rolling out got crossing routes and guys get open so i mean i think that you know you see this with shanahan and brock purdy and a lot of times it's just the players around the guy. Can you protect for him? Can you get people open and then allow that guy to have time to throw? Because the biggest, the biggest thing, and this is where the play actions come in, but the biggest thing is time to throw. In college, you have all day.

You could just sit back there four seconds. Let's see where everybody is. That's why I'm calling it T-ball versus the majors, because it's just so, so, so much easier for, um, you know, the quarterback to sit back there and find his guy. So if you can create ways to get him on the move, get extra time and not have to deal with the pressure of blitzes and things like that and trying to get the ball out quickly, that probably correlates quite a bit to success. Tang says, do you think KOC will allow Jaron Hall to audible? Yeah. I mean, every quarterback on almost every play has the ability to change the play. That's going to be built into the offense.

So a lot of times when you see Kirk Cousins going like this, and if you're listening, I'm sticking my hands up near my ears. So you'll see him do that. Like he's switching to another play. He's checking to a run. He's checking to a pass out of a run. And they've got the play, like the players in the huddle have those two plays. So like that's now built in to pretty much every offense

all the time. He's going to of course have that. And it's going to be based on what he sees and everything else. The other thing is too, that Kevin O'Connell is going to be in that headset and you know that he's going to be looking at the defense and how they're lining up right until the very last second, trying to give Jaron Hall as much as he can to help him out. Blantosa smashed the over on Hall for your picks this week. Does that mean a hall picks like hall interceptions, or you mean the over for, they're going to put up a lot of points. I, I don't know. I mean, it's the Atlanta Falcons. This is not the 2000 Ravens, but it's also not a joke team and it's going on the road. And it's, I assume you meant the over for like like actual points i'm just joking about you

know picks as in interceptions but yeah i mean i i think that there's an opportunity here for any quarterback who steps into this vikings offense to have some success uh miles says looks like we're going back to the bootleg playbook from Kubiak. He will be proud. Oh, yeah. Gary's at the ranch sitting back watching TV, and he's going to be like that DiCaprio meme where he's pointing at the television. Gary says 16 for 25, 163 yards, one touchdown, one interception, 45 yards rushing, one touchdown. Gary, I think you're being very realistic. That's about where I would put it as

well. I like that stat line. I mean, if it's better than that, then that's great. But I like that stat line is I don't think that we're going to be talking about 200 something yards and 10 yards per pass attempt. It's going to be much more of a quick passing game to try to get the football out of his hands. That's what I think. Yeah. And Gary, what type of scheme? I really think it's going to be a lot of that play action stuff. A lot of the quicker passing, trying to get the ball into Jordan Addison's hands. And I don't think and this is where it's going to be difficult for Kevin O'Connell and where you can evaluate. How much are you going to ask him to step back, seven step drop and let these long developing routes happen? Because with Kirk, it happens all the time.

It's one of the reasons he gets mashed all the time is because he hangs on to the very last second and then lets it go. I don't think you want to ask Jaron Hall to do that. That's where TJ Hawkinson might be really big for this game is quick little slants and curls and option routes, stuff like that, where you're just talking about get seven yards. And what Kevin O'Connell likes to say is put the ball in play. It's a good way to put it. Is Jaron Hall pretty big? No, he's actually quite small. And I don't think he has a big arm either. Like, I think he's a decent thrower of the ball, but we're not going to see like John Elway out there. This is a smaller quarterback. I mean,

even if you look at some of the pictures from today, because everybody's tweeting out pictures from the locker room. So I tweeted one out as well uh jaron hall smaller than me um so he is not a big guy at all and that's one of the reasons why along with being like old now that he wasn't a high draft pick because he was extremely productive he's extremely mature and you could tell that he has a lot of confidence and a lot of poise but size is definitely a factor when it came to why he wasn't a higher draft pick. I will get to more of your comments and questions momentarily, but I want to remind you guys to make Little Caesars, the official pizza sponsor of the NFL, part of your game day.

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I am headed to Las Vegas to see whatever is left of the Vegas Raiders. My gosh, what a purge by Mark Davis, but there's still a football game to be played in Las Vegas. And if I have a chance to get out of the Minnesota December and go there, I will. So you can join me at Circa Las Vegas, where I'll be hanging out doing this very show for a couple of days leading up to the game. You'll be able to find me outside of in stadium swim, watching games on the giant TV leading up

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All right, back to your comments. Let's see. Dennis says, 210 yards, one passing, one rushing touchdown. Very fair. What about Bob says, without a running game, Hall and Dobbs will get pressured and tricked into bad throws. Nine games left. I say we go four and five unless they bench Flores and go one and eight. Yeah, that's another thing I'd be interested in your guys' takes because when we talk about expectations for Jaron Hall, that kind of includes the possibility that he earns the job and keeps

going. If they go four and five and finish eight and nine, and we will get into this, I think that that would be a hard one to evaluate. Is it a success or not? I mean, you gave your team a chance to be in the race to the final day. At eight and nine, you're very unlikely to get in, and you did hurt your draft stock. But the question would be how much did you hurt your draft stock? And I will get into that in a minute, but benching Flores is a very, a very funny idea. Tang says Reisner was brought in to replace Ingram and not Ezra. I don't think that's necessarily true. They had him playing in both spots in practice leading up to when he eventually came in for Ezra Cleveland. I think they weren't happy in the first couple of games with either one of those guys and were basically willing to let them fight

it out. Now, I know Ezra has much better PFF grades, and I think Ezra is a better player, but also Reisner's whole career was at left guard. So I think that they were really willing to let that whole thing just play out in practice, and eventually it sorted itself out with the Ezra Cleveland injury. But I don't get the impression that it was purely to come in and play right guard. I think they were, and you remember how bad the guards were in the first couple games. I think they were very displeased with the guards and wanted that whole situation to kind of be a battle

on a week-to-week basis. And, you know, it ends up just going the wrong way with Ezra Cleveland, and now he is a Jaguar. Bradley says Hall needs to go through his progressions. Run game needs to step it up. Also, Akers and Madison could be productive. It's important to convert third downs 50% or greater in time of possession. I mean, that's all the ideal world.

Converting more than 50% of your third downs with a backup quarterback would be very difficult. That's very difficult with a backup quarterback would be very difficult. That's very difficult with a starting quarterback. To me, it's usually when you have a quarterback like this, it's all about just stringing some first downs together. Every drive doesn't need to be fantastic to give yourself a chance, but you can't have these three and outs, which start often with first down runs. I mean, this is where I feel like half't have these three and outs, which start often with first down runs. I mean, this is where I feel like half of the Vikings three and outs are handoff one

yard handoff minus two yards. And then you're behind the sticks already. And I do agree with you, Bradley, that time of possession is absolutely critical for Jaron Hall to be on the field and not leave the defense out there because you are playing a team that will just run and run and run and run. Atlanta has an excellent offensive line. This is going to be a real test for this run defense that's been a lot better of late. Miles says 13 for 28, 197, two touchdowns, two two picks 64 yards rushing a very very reasonable very reasonable could definitely see that uh i i don't think that there's anything more in the cards than like

you know about where you're at with yardage unless atlanta totally melts down and jaron hall totally goes off and has a will levis day. It's not that it can't happen. But if you're taking a guess based on history, it's probably around 50 to 60% of the pass is complete and not a massive yardage total. But if you can hit on a couple of decent sized plays, you can give yourself a chance. All right, let me look. some of you are already wanting to talk about the future and i want to get to that as well because there were all right why don't we get to that and i'll pop in with any other projections that you guys have so let me read a few comments then i'll play what quacey had to say and i'll react uh to what you're saying so wrigley says the vikings have to move on

at quarterback really like Kirk, but doubt Rogers will play after his Achilles. Kirk has gotten better every year, but he's old getting 24 million and can't win a Superbowl. Okay. Let me move down to what Bob had to say, which is, do you think Quasey seemed a bit more open with his ideas about what's ahead? My takeaway was that Quaseacey wants a good young quarterback so bad to handle the other contracts coming up so let me play you what quacey dafl had to say on that matter and i'll continue to read your jaron hall tweets as well so here is quacey and like i said when we you know when we broke off talks the first time every option was

still available to Kirk. And coming back was one of the really good options we had. So him playing this well the last four games, I talk about the last four games in terms of offense and defense efficiency, we're top ten in the league, right? And so the teams that play in the end typically are in that ballpark. So, again, an unfortunate happening that it happened when it did. But, you know,

we expected in year two for him to take that step. I think Kevin and I have said that in the past. So seeing it happen was more just our expectation of a good player getting more comfortable in the system and taking ownership of it. He actually even said it himself. He's understanding why Kevin game plans the way he does and in his process and different things. So really unfortunate that it happened. But again, our all options are open as they were before the injury so do you want kirk back next year i mean kirk played great um i think my want for kirk to come back isn't just a me it's not like a me thing you know it's a negotiation you come together at a table and you try and see if everything works together and we'll have that dialogue when the time is gone so that was interesting in the fact that the door was definitely left open um for kirk cousins to potentially return certainly was at the same time there was no absolutely we want kirk back because

you can't really say that and then give his side you know more uh ammunition when you go into those negotiations to say hey i mean you guys said you couldn't live without kirk um but i i did and if we're gonna pick it apart which we should because that's what we do i mean when he says like this is what we expected he's saying is, even though we didn't sign him to an extension, this was still what we thought was going to happen or what we projected. So they're not going, wow, Kirk was so much better than we ever dreamed. Here's all of our money that they, it sounded like to me, they weren't planning on doing that anyway what i have noticed from quesadilla fomenta in the time he's been here is that there seems to be a price tag for every player and they don't go beyond that price tag and you look at the way that they negotiated with

tj hawkinson yeah technically he became the highest paid tight end, but look at the way that thing is structured. Pretty favorable for the team. The way that they went to certain veteran players and said, if you take X pay cut, we will keep you here. And then when they didn't, they moved on from those players. And even with Daniil Hunter, where Hunter wanted a massive contract, they clearly had a price, didn't go over it. And even the way they handled this. Now, there was a report, and I'm not saying that I've heard anything on this, but there was a have been the Vikings not going over a sixth round

pick to get Jacoby Brissett I don't know that it was so don't like you know quote me that I said they were trying to get Brissett but when I saw the Washington reports that someone offered them a sixth I thought okay well I guess I probably would have done that for Jacoby Brissett because he's a better quarterback than Josh Dobbs. And it certainly gives you a chance. But if your whole goal was to not go over your price, my point here is they will have a price tag on what they think Kirk Cousins is worth coming off this injury at his age. And I doubt they're going to go over that. And so if Kirk Cousins wants a multi-year extension at X number of dollars and points to the way he was playing before he was hurt,

I don't think that they'll go over what they think it's worth. But if they could still draft a quarterback and bring him back on a one-year deal, that's cheap. Maybe that would be something that they would consider. i have not really gotten a great read on this situation because it just happened and my initial thought was okay well that's that's the last of cousins in minnesota he doesn't have a contract but then there's the other part that feels like he was playing so well that they will get you know kevin o'connell wanting to return a quarterback he can win with especially with all the progress that they will get Kevin O'Connell wanting to return a quarterback he can win with, especially with all the progress that they've made as a roster,

like with Brian Flores, with the defense. It's better than we thought it was going to be. And look at the way Jordan Addison emerged. If Addison was terrible and the defense was 32nd, you'd be thinking, well, it's going to be two years or never that they compete. But now you can kind of see why they might want Kirk Cousins back potentially. But there was no commitment. And you heard at the end when Kevin Seifert asked, you heard it at the end.

It's kind of like, it's not a matter of whether I want him back It's a matter of And he didn't say exactly this But price tag What they think of the Achilles injury The thing that would concern me is That Kirk Cousins has to have That drive off of his back foot

And is it going to have the same stability As it did before an Achilles injury If he was 22, I might say, well, whatever, it's fine, but he is not 22 years old. All right. Let me bounce around here with your comments on all of these matters. Javier says, I'm scared to be excited about Hall. If he's decent, narrative is that they got a good team. Let's reload this defense and run it back. If he's bad, we need Kirk desperately no narrative is safe yeah uh you know I think uh Javier if Jaron Hall plays just okay or struggles at all then

they'll put in Josh Dobbs and they'll assess what you're talking about at the end of the season and probably still land on drafting a quarterback there was a comment today from quacey where he said something to the effect of like i i forget gosh i'm trying to think of exactly the phrasing like winning now would not like destroy our future or something something like that like how much i project us to win is not going to crush our future, which probably means the best outcome he can really project with backup quarterbacks is this team just being in the hunt, which doesn't eliminate their chances from potentially drafting a quarterback. That's how I took that. And I would mostly agree with that. I mean, if Jaron Hall plays really, really, really well,

then maybe you've got a Brock Purdy or a Dak Prescott situation on your hands. That would be pretty surprising. If he plays like a backup quarterback, then you've got a backup quarterback, and that's good for you, and that's the most likely outcome. If he plays terribly, then he's probably QB3 next year, and you draft higher or you go to Josh Dobbs. I don't know. Like, I don't think that there's any scenario where something can happen with Jaron Hall that severely alters what's going to happen in the future. All right. Let me,

let me scroll. Give me a second. Um, uh, Jeffrey, I don't know about this one hall style of play reminds me of vince young um now i don't i don't i don't see it i don't see it vince vince young was like one of the greatest athletes to ever play that position uh could not really accurately throw the football and had no interest whatsoever in learning anything as an nfl player thought he could just kind of ball out like he did in Texas and that's why he failed but physically speaking two very very wildly different players Vince Young could win NFL games on his athleticism alone Jaron Hall will not uh Jaron Hall's not going to win games based on his athleticism he He's a decent athlete, but in this league, you have defensive linemen like

Daniil Hunter ran down Justin Fields from behind. Like, that's the type of... That's the type of athleticism you have from defensive linemen in this league. Gary, Matt, your football knowledge is strong. Thank you, Gary. You play college ball. How did you become so versed? Oh, I did not definitely did not play college football. Um, it's all,

it's only because I've just covered, I've covered the game for a long time. Uh, I played junior high football and they stuck me at, uh, well, I safety, and then I was like a defensive tackle as a little kid. So that's where that ended. But I've done this for a long time. I mean, I've been covering the Vikings since 2016, and it's pretty helpful to spend a huge part of my life doing nothing but asking football questions to football people. So that's where it comes from. A lot of even great coaches didn't play the game. So that's one of the cool things about this sport, I think, is that you can learn a lot

of the stuff that goes on without playing. But also, there's a never-ending amount of knowledge to be had. So there's always questions to be asked. 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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and had been an issue for a while getting calls in what percentage of those plays get removed from jaron's wristband yes i totally agree with the wristband it probably should have happened earlier because that just seemed to be a problem with the operation and i don't think cousins had ever really used it before. So he probably didn't like it. I mean, if you're 35, 36 years old and someone's asking you to do something that you've never really done in your career with the wristband, or at least not maybe in a long time, you're probably going to be a little hesitant, but it worked out. I think really well with Jaron Hall. It's probably, I mean, they're going to reduce this game plan, but the thing that they're going to do with Hall is they're going to get his

feedback because he's known this offense since OTAs. He's practiced this offense for a long time. They're going to get his feedback on what he likes. And I think this is where Kevin O'Connell can be as helpful as possible is the communication between former quarterback, starting quarterback on what's going to work for him, what he likes. I doubt it will be anywhere near as big as what they would put in for a game plan for Kirk cousins, but the wristband is going to have a lot on it. I mean, you can't, you just can't play an NFL game with half a playbook. I

mean, it's, it's just, that's not at the level that you can do it, but I don't think that's going to be the issue for Jaron Hall. Jaron Hall strikes me and carries himself very professionally. I thought that from the day he was drafted, maybe it's because he and I both remember 1994 NFL. I don't know. That's a Jaron Hollis old joke for anybody who was listening during the Hendon Hooker time where we discussed him. But, you know, he's just very, very mature and very professional. So I expect that he's going to know the offense and that, yeah, it can't be quite as thick as with Kirk Cousins. But I think it's not that's not going to be the hold up. The hold up is how dang fast the game is. The holdup is how quickly the rushers get to your face.

And I think that's an adjustment that is going to be very challenging for Jaron Hall. Before we move on, I want to remind you guys about PrizePix. And tomorrow night we'll do our PrizePix segment. But for now, just want to remind you to go to prize picks.com and it is very simple and very fun way to play fantasy sports. You just pick more or less on projected yardage totals or touchdowns or sometimes field goals and lots of different sports have different options, but we usually do yardage totals.

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So go to prize picks.com slash purple. Use the code purple daily fantasy sports made easy. All right, let's see. Morgan says at eight, nine, you keep yourself in purgatory. Just lean into losing for one year. And so this is important to them that they did not go out and spend a lot of capital knowing that the future is important. So they weren't even seemingly willing to spend a lot to try to get Jacoby Brissett. And Washington was for sale.

So if they wanted Brissett, they could have gotten him. And they did not do that. They instead went with Josh Dobbs, who is not as good of a quarterback as someone like Jacoby Brissett or anybody else with a lot of experience like a Jameis Winston or like an Andy Dalton. And I think that tells you that the future is very much on the minds of this team as they made this decision, that they were probably looking at their Super Bowl odds going from, hey, it's starting to tick up a little bit. You're the hottest team in football and then or one of them. And then, you know, your quarterback goes out your odds go

very very low uh unless you had the nick foals philadelphia uh eagles team or the st louis rams greatest show on turf which they don't and i mean they have a good team but not like of that level and so i think they wanted to give their team a chance. That's fair to Kevin O'Connell. It's fair to the locker room without, like you said, leaning into losing, which I understand from a practical perspective. I don't think that 8-9 keeps you necessarily in purgatory, though. Because, okay, if they lost every game from here, yeah, they're going to get a top seven pick. There's

a lot of bad football this year, five to seven pick. But if they go eight, nine, you're still probably looking or seven and 11, seven and 10, seven, how many games other seven and 10, then you're still looking at being in the range of the ballpark to draft a quarterback. And when we look at recent history, a lot of good quarterbacks or great quarterbacks are picked somewhere between five and 15. It's not that it always has to be that top,

top, top guy that's favorable to get Drake may or Caleb Williams. That is favorable. I'm not going to disagree with that. But I agree with Kwesi though, when he says it does not ruin the future to give yourself a chance here to compete. That's the way I would look at it. Anthony says, I've got us going six and three, the rest of the season to put us at 10 and seven. And that includes taking at least one of the games

from Detroit. Will that be enough to win the division the games from Detroit. Will that be enough to win the division? I don't think that will be enough to win the division the way Detroit is playing outside of that Baltimore game where they just no showed, but they're a very good team. They don't have a hard schedule. I don't believe the rest of the way. The thing about making projections here about what they're going to be, you know, one of you says four and five, another one says six and three, another one says lose every game on purpose. I mean, we don't really know because we haven't seen Jaron Hall play in an actual game.

I'm going to try to make assessments based on what he did in college and his numbers, what he did in the preseason. And as I mentioned, I look back at that game in the preseason and I saw some erraticness to him, but I also saw him drop some dimes and show some really good mobility and even some really good pocket presence. I liked a lot of things that I saw from him in that game, but I don't know.

I mean, it's so different. It could be really good or it could be really bad. And then with Josh Dobbs, you probably have to limit your expectations there because he had two really good games with Arizona and the rest were well below average. This team is better than Arizona. But, I mean, it's going to be still very hard. You've got to beat teams that, aside from Vegas,

that's a just complete disaster. You have to beat teams that aside from Vegas, that's a just complete disaster. You have to beat real football teams. The schedule is easy, but they're real teams. I mean, Atlanta has the same record as you. New Orleans has one of the best pass defenses in the league. So it's not going to, it's not going to be easy for them. Six and three, I think is very ambitious. That's, that's higher than I would go. I wouldn't be shocked. It's just higher than I would go for a projection. Horse Feathers, nice to see you, says not saying Hall is going to be Brady or Montana,

but if he can make connections with Addison or JJ, move the ball down the field, they have a chance. I agree with that. I agree with that. And especially because, and this is where they do have a shot to go six and three, as Anthony mentioned, is I expect Brian Flores' defense to continue to be good because they're not exactly playing Brady and Montana these next few weeks. If they can slow down the run a bit against Atlanta, then they've got a decent chance

to play some low scoring, kind of fight it out games. And if there was ever a year to win a bunch of like garbage games that look ugly and just require a throw here or there it's this year, there's like six good quarterbacks in the whole league. And the Vikings play like two of them, the whole rest of the way I get, I put Jared Goff into a good quarterback. Burrow is a great quarterback. That's way. I put Jared Goff into a good quarterback. Burrow is a great quarterback. That's it. I think Russell Wilson's playing better, so he could still do something.

But there's nobody that really scares you outside of Joe Burrow. Sorry, Dante Culpepper's name is coming up in the comments. I'm not sure why, but if Dante Culpepper's name is coming up in the comments. I'm not sure why, but if Dante Culpepper, that's the last time they drafted a quarterback in the middle of the first round, it was pretty good. Probably should have won the MVP in 04, if not for Peyton Manning. So it can be done. Lots of quarterbacks that are good taken between five and 15. That's why I would continue to say that

it doesn't demolish their future if they're good Guns Donovan says I love armchair quarterbacks telling everyone what Hall needs to do Mr. Donovan, if we couldn't play armchair quarterback, what would be the point of enjoying football? That's what we do here

That's what we do. Why are you here watching a football show if you don't want to hear about us talk about what the football players should do? What about Bob says, what's cheap for cousins on a one-year deal at 36 off of injury? 25, 30, 35, more. That's a very difficult question

because I don't know, does somebody got a comparable for that of a quarterback who was playing at an extremely high level? He was playing at a forty five million dollar level. Right. How much does that fall off when you are coming off of an Achilles injury? You know that Kirk's going to work like crazy to come back and try to prove by OTAs that he's back to 100%. But that decision has to be made before that. You know that he's going to have his agent giving medical updates to Kweisi every two seconds saying he's fine. It's going to be great.

He's all good. No problems here. And, you know, Kirk takes care of his body as well as anybody. That's what they're going to say right and even quacey talked about this today where he said look you know kirk is a younger 36 which is a weird thing to say coming off a catastrophic injury that older guys have but uh you know he's a younger 36 because of the way he takes care of his body and so forth or will be 36 and i understand what he's saying like he said he's been very very durable throughout his, but the price tag is extremely hard to figure out.

The way I look at it is when once Daniel Jones got 40 mil, there is no world where Kirk cousins can accept less than that. There just isn't. I mean, even coming off of an injury. And when you look around the league, look at the number of teams who think they're pretty good that think they're a quarterback away. There's a lot of them. Even with this injury, there will be competition for Kirk cousins. I, I, I totally, totally believe that there's going to be, I don't know, five, seven teams that are really desperate for a quarterback. I mean, look, Derek Carr had a terrible year last year, terrible, and still got something like 38, 38 mil a year from New Orleans. And he's been bad since. But even when a quarterback is coming off

his worst year, if he's got a chance to take a decent team and make it a competitor, someone's going to pay them. So that I think is what Quasey's talking about is there can be a scenario where everyone in the organization wants Kirk back, but somebody else says we'll give you 42 million a year over two years. How can you do that? If you're the Vikings, you can't. And instead you probably have

to draft a quarterback. Um, so someone asked, Oh gosh, I missed it. Oh, Gary, uh, can you share realistic favorite quarterbacks, uh, in the first three round crushes? So I don't know. One thing is I don't know who's coming out is quinn ewers coming out is shadur sanders coming out um both of those guys have reasons to like them reasons to be concerned about them sanders gets sacked a lot also has a terrible offensive line um i think he would need some development because it's a very very different situation ewers is very physically talented could stay in college for another year Bo Nix is playing with an unbelievable team but he looks like a good

quarterback JJ McCarthy apparently had all the other teams signals so maybe that's helped him look better than he is Penix can really throw the football it's yeah there's there's a lot of options there none of them are perfect we're all going to talk about them outside

of like Drake May and Caleb Williams we'll have to kind of figure it out as we go along who are really the first round quarterbacks and we'll know that better as we get to the end of the college season i think but i also think that you know when you look at the situation, how many times has a quarterback dropped into this level of situation? And oftentimes it works. And we also can't dispel other potential options. I mean, OK, Kyler Murray, I don't know if that's possible or not, but also, you know, I mean, there's always quarterbacks who are surprising us and becoming available that they might consider as well outside of just those draft picks. But obviously my preference is going to be drafting one of those guys and looking for a Dak Prescott or a Ben Roethlisberger situation where the guy can come

in right away and have some success. Rob says, how much of Dobbs ability to run weighed into the decision? Yeah, he's a real he's a good athlete and he can run i would say a little bit a little bit what o'connell's gonna want is someone to be able to really understand what he wants him to do on offense quickly and that's what you get josh dobbs for i don't know like this the situation with nick mullins is weird i mean if if nick mullins is 100 healthy in a few weeks and they don't like what this situation with Nick Mullins is weird I mean if Nick Mullins is 100% healthy in a few weeks and they don't like what they've seen from Hall it could be him I mean he's been in this office for two years and is proven so I don't know like that that could also

be you know an option as well it's it's very hard to say where this thing is uh you know gonna gonna go over the next few weeks i could i could absolutely see nick mullins i could absolutely see josh dobbs or i could see jaron hall playing out the rest of the year i mean if hall plays well over like two games or three games they should just stay with that and let him continue to play and let him develop. So it took this long in order to have the Kweisi 2022 draft take. So this is a new record, which means things are going well. Steve says if Kweisi can't get enough compensation, he should stop trading down in the first round. They didn't trade down last year in the first round, by the way. Rumor is he was going to trade down again. I don't care if there was a rumor he was going

to do something. They drafted Jordan Addison. So I don't know. Who cares? They drafted a great wide receiver. But it did take quite a while to really stretch on a criticism for Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. I mean, I think the biggest thing is with the way they've handled this roster and the quarterback consideration is that it looks good going into the future. It's far from perfect. They need more pass rush. My God, they need more pass rush. Like, it can't be a DJ Wanham has played well the last few weeks, like it can't be a dj wanham has played well the last few weeks but it can't be that level it can't be a defensive line that has only jonathan bullard harrison

phillips they're going to probably need to replace jordan hicks at some point he's on the older side the cornerbacks i think have done okay but you can add to that position as well the secondary is much better than we thought, I think, because of Josh Metellus and Cam Bynum. They've got the bones of things to work with. They've got to make a decision on Daniil Hunter. They've got to make a decision on some guards for next year. But the core of this thing has a lot of talent to work with, in part because you nailed a Jordan Addison pick. And hey, Mekhi Blackman looked pretty good last week. Andrew Booth jr. Is getting into this thing.

Maybe there's some more depth there as well. And if you could keep Brian Flores around. So this like accelerates maybe what you would have thought. Like if things went wrong with the draft for this last year, and there was no players who emerged, like I didn't even mention Ivan pace. He's not a superstar but he's a guy he's a guy who could play and you know you've got these things that have kind of emerged

that are going to be pieces for the future well that matters to your timeline right if jordan addison had been a bust and couldn't play at all well oh and i didn't even mention running back don't draft one in the second round, but you need one. There's some things to be replaced in order to be a great roster. But there's also, you're going to need a quarterback who can come in and give you a chance right away. It's not a total rebuild situation if you draft a quarterback for next year. And they may factor that in to the decision about Kirk Cousins and whether to try to bring him back on a short-term deal. But now after this Achilles injury, the one thing is you cannot do it for more than like a year. It's got to be year

to year. And there's always going to be concern with more injuries that come along with the amount of mileage that's on that guy's body. I was thinking about this today. We were talking about it in the media room with a couple, you know, Kevin C for a couple other reporters. And it just blows me away that at Kirk's age, Joe Flacco was a New York jet at the same age. Like I think about them as being similar, not in their style, but in their like mid NIS, like no one ever thought that was the whole joke is like, is Flacco elite. There was a debated quarterback who had his good times and bad. And yet Flacco was already done by like this age. And even like, even, you know, a singular injury can change the trajectory there. Uh, and, and that's something

they have to consider. And, uh, you know, Bob says Hunter is 29. He won't be back. I'm not so sure about that. That's possible. It certainly is possible that, um, he will not be back because of the price tag that we talked about where there's like, there's always that, that line that they're not willing to cross. And it might depend on how much Montez sweat signs for. If he signs an extension anytime soon, Rashawn Gary's number is going to matter there, even though Rashawn is younger,

but hunters lead in the NFL and sacks. I mean, the guy's been an absolute beast. Now this is going on two years. So, you mean, the guy's been an absolute beast. Now, this is going on two years. So, you know, two years of being an absolute beast for Hunter, healthy, completely healthy. If he gets to the end of the season still healthy, they have to consider one of those five-year deals that's actually three years to keep him. And you know who's going to fight hard for that if he's staying here is Brian Flores. I don't think anybody loves him more than Brian Flores. Um, Scott says is Murphy,

the worst starting cornerback per PFF. He has been awful. Well, I can look that up. Yeah. The interesting thing about the corners is that neither one of them is graded well by PFF. And yet what the Vikings defense has done really well by the numbers is not allow explosive plays and i i guess that's part of the trade-off of the way that they're playing is that and yeah byron murphy has the seventh lowest grade by pff and let me look at his uh target numbers here uh he is allowing 124.1 quarterback rating into his coverage and 13 yards per reception those numbers are not very good i i agree with you uh but but i've been thinking about how they just haven't allowed many explosive plays and so part of it is that they've allowed a lot of completions in front of them which are

going to get dinged pretty hard by pff and understandably but they also haven't let people get behind them very often and that goes into what they you know a lot of modern defensive philosophies are which is if you can avoid the explosive plays, you can give yourself a chance. But yeah, no, I mean, Byron Murphy. And the one thing about him is I thought he was going to be a nickel corner, but it turned out that Josh Metellus is their nickel corner. So they're playing Murphy at a position where he's never really been good. He's been much more of a, of a nickel. And you know, I think that that's a better position for him, but he's got to play the outside based on what they have.

If it continues to go this way, though, we might see more Booth Jr., more Blackman mixing in. And I think the numbers have not been super nice to Caleb Evans either. He's allowed 115.4 rating but he's only averaging 10 yards per reception into his coverage which is pretty good which means it's a lot of stuff in front of him so you've got cam bynum has played well metellus has been a huge weapon for them and then at least caleb evans i think has proven to be a starter blackman has shown flashes booth jr has been in the game without any sort of disaster i haven't really noticed them which

is probably a good thing they've got things to work with it's not durell revis and and ed reed quite yet but that's where they have to factor because if you give if brian flora stays and you give him 30 million dollars to go spend in free agency, I mean, this is going to be a pretty nasty defense. That's exactly what happened in Miami, by the way, when they became an elite defense under Brian Flores. Uh, let's see, would they bring a Dustin says, would they bring Hunter back? If they draft a quarterback, very, very possible that, that, that if Kirk is moving on that that could factor into the hunter decision very possible uh Jeffrey says do you think that Mullins with his experience with the

offense and his overall winning record he'd be a better fit I don't know if he has an overall winning record but uh is he a better fit for the offense when he comes back if Nick Mullins was healthy they wouldn't have made a move. He would just be the quarterback. That's what happened in San Francisco when Jimmy G got hurt. Mullins is reasonable. He's a reasonable quarterback who definitely knows the offense, throws the ball pretty well. I think that they're concerned that it's not going to be a quick,

right off IR and then ready to go for Nick Mullins. All right. Well, we've cleared nine o'clock. So if you got anything weird, then we can answer that before we wrap up for the evening. Very energetic conversation. I was scrolling as fast as I could. And if I missed some of your comments, I apologize.

I try to get to as many as I can. Gary says, can you share some of us your favorite press conference with each head coach you've attended? Oh man. There's probably too many Mike Zimmer press conferences to even run down. I would need like a top 25 Mike Zimmer press conferences to run down. There's a lot running through my head at the moment with, with Mike Zimmer that were a lot of very memorable moments. You know, him saying that he doesn't need Kellen Mond to play because he sees him every day in practice.

Him talking about, well, I'm not even going to get into it. Some things with Kirk Cousins and medical decisions and so forth. There was a lot of classics from mike zimmer but you know one of the things i will say about mike zimmer is that i learned a ton of football from him you talk about knowing football like the thing that was cool with mike zimmer is every thursday four or five of us would talk with zimmer away from the cameras and it was, you know, it was on the record. So like, it wasn't like he was giving us some crazy scoops behind the scenes, but it was more of just a sit down with us as opposed to the big press conference and cameras and everything else. And that's where we would always ask him football stuff. And what I really learned from Zimmer

through those was how to evaluate players and what to look for with all sorts of different positions from quarterback, especially defensive backs, corner specifically. much less cantankerous with those. I think sometimes he would intentionally be that way to send a message to players, like through the media kind of thing, Bill Parcells style. But when we would do those sit-downs with him, they were usually very informative about the game and about the team and stuff. So, yeah, there's a lot of funny Mike Zimmer moments. When they cut Daniel Carlson after missing the kicks in Green Bay,

someone said, what went into that decision? And he said, you see the game? There's a lot. There's a lot. I bet you all could make a case. Keenum has yet big balls. Yes, it's past nine. We could say this.

That was his exact quote. Case Keenum has big balls. Matthew says any more hugs this week. They were not in a hugging mood today. I was not going to go there. One thing I try to know is the line. I like to joke around with everybody and keep it light, but you lose your starting quarterback.

The whole franchise is not in a hugging mood. So that was weird, though. That was unexpected. So Mike Zimmer, time, he said, Richie Incognito had claimed that Zimmer had told him that the Vikings were going to sign him. And then he said something like, Richie Incognito's a liar.

Tweet that. Oh, man. So funny. So anyway, yeah, there's a lot of them. Miles, you're right. Mike Zimmer was as transparent as it comes. What did he say about evaluating players? I mean, that could be a next book,

all the things that he said about evaluating players. I mean, there's one of the things, I'll tell you one, just one example comes to mind. And things that he taught us over the years are on my mind all the time when looking at this team. But that when you're trying to figure out in training camp, whether somebody can play or not, you start to really focus in two weeks into training camp on the younger players. That's when you really start to focus on them. Like they'll come out and they are shot out of a cannon and they'll be doing well in, you know, shorts and shells.

And then even when the pads first come on, everybody's real rambunctious. They want to go get it and everything. But once you get to, you know, the couple of weeks in, that's when it gets really hard like really hard on players day after day after day body sore long days it's like you're going you know it's like you're going to school every day trying to learn all this information then go apply it and even for reporters camp is long imagine for players that's when you tell how much somebody

loves the game as a player and that's when you can how much somebody loves the game as a player and that's when you can figure it out i thought that was a really really good lesson to not overreact early in training camp to really hone in a couple weeks in and and start to see how they're performing in training camp but there's i mean all sorts of great details and things that i learned from him over the years mike zimmer was, I mean, brilliant when it came to player evaluation. Straight up brilliant. I don't know who he ever missed on, honestly.

E-Felt says, maybe you should stay off the podcast. I think it was that. So I think that was, Kirk did a podcast after a loss and he was talking about apologizing to Adam Thielen and we asked him about it and then he said maybe he should stay off the podcast that's good was Zimmer right on Cousins yes and no just like all of us just like all of us I mean it's a longer explanation but that's really what it is right all of us are right and wrong on Kirk Cousins all the time. Mike Zimmer was right that Kirk Cousins' money made it very hard to rebuild the defense.

That was absolutely true. He was right that for a while, Kirk Cousins did not make it his team. And I think Cousins even expressed this at one point, that he felt like there were so many other leaders that he didn't take that role. At the same time, whatvin o'connell showed us was leaning into kirk cousins in the passing game was more valuable and leaning into cousins personality and the quirks of his personality and encouraging him and showing belief in him had some tangible results. So at the same time, didn't win in the playoffs last year, 500 team this year.

I mean, so, you know, as always, everybody's sort of right. Everybody's sort of wrong. Lee says Zimmer's influence on defensive draft picks was not good. Well, that's not true at all. I mean, Anthony bar, Daniel Hunter, Eric Hendricks, Xavier Rhodes. Well, no, not Xavier Rhodes, not Xavier Rhodes. That was the previous regime. Um, no, that's, that's not true. There,

there were a run of draft picks that did not work out toward the end of his era. And that's why they weren't able to rebuild the defense around Kirk cousins contract though. That's that is true. But in the first half of his regime, they picked a lot of really helpful players on defense that helped them build that defense together. But what I mean by player evaluation, isn't that he was a draft genius. That's not what I'm saying. No, no one is ever perfect on the draft. I don't know. I like all the time. I have to explain this like a million times in a row and that's okay. Cause that's my job. But every team misses on draft picks. Drafting's hard. A few years ago, people were talking about how dumb

the Seattle Seahawks were because they missed on draft picks for a couple straight years. Now their team's great again. Cause they hit on draft picks. It's very hard to do. But when we're talking about when they get a player in the building, because Zimmer's job is not to draft the players. He's the head coach. That was the front office. That's the scouting department. He's going to give his input.

But with Zimmer, it's evaluating what you have. And when he gave an evaluation of a player it was dead ass accurate and especially when they decided to move on from somebody it was always right the only guy that they've moved on from who has become something is jayron curse and that was more personality driven and not not a physical issue so yeah i i mean i i think that uh he he was very, very, very good at evaluating players. So, yeah, Trey Waynes was another guy they drafted who was helpful. So, yeah, I mean, Ken says Zim failed to accept and lean into Cousins. That was his downfall.

Yeah, there's definitely some of that. Also, Cousins was his downfall by not playing well enough. I mean, that's another part of it too, right? I mean, there's a lot of games in there where they just need a big game from the quarterback that they didn't get. And so it's not, it's like, it's just how we always want to do everything in the world, which is decide on the easiest possible route to the conclusion. The conclusion's complicated. I believed from day one that if Mike Zimmer fought the Cousins thing, that he would, you know, it would be his downfall if he fought the Cousins thing.

And he did at times. At the same time, he brought him Gary Kubiak and Kevin Stefanski, and he had the right offense for Kirk Cousins in 2019. The guy had 107 quarterback rating for like for a guy whose head coach supposedly was dragging him down. He put up the best numbers of his career. So it's hard to say that it was like completely Zim not leaning into him that destroyed Kirk Cousins he wasn't destroyed he played very well but he played just like he did in Washington except for probably a little bit better and and he still plays this way like he look the guy tore his Achilles so you know

and he did it after an incredible game what were were we saying after Chicago? Like, this is kind of how it goes, right? The roller coaster. So it's a complicated thing with Zimmer and Kirk Cousins. But had Zimmer been more encouraging? Had he said to his leaders, this is our guy? That might have helped. Bob says Barr was over, I assume you mean overrated, didn't love football, uh, too smart to be a great gladiator of the game. It's hard to say someone doesn't love football,

um, without being sure of that. I don't, you know, the thing about Anthony bar was because of the way he debuted, I think everyone thought that that was going to be who he was, like this Micah Parsons type player. And he never became the Micah Parsons type player. But I also believed Mike Zimmer, and I saw the same things on tape, of how valuable he was to the defense. He was the green dot guy. He was the play caller on the defense.

And you saw teams avoiding him. You saw teams factoring for him, which made it really difficult on the offense. And he was really excellent at blitzing, really excellent at making decisions of when to blitz. I mean, that, that, that's not a bus draft pick. Like, yeah, if you went back in time, you pick Aaron Donald. That was not, that was a not a bus draft pick he was he was a huge piece on a number one defense and all top five defenses and then when he goes out in 2020 they were terrible on defense so i don't know i i always gave uh anthony Okay. Anyway, well, here we are. An interesting situation for the Vikings as it always is. One that I did not expect to be talking about this week, but that's where we're at. prove himself. They're trying to stay in the playoff race implications every week of what it's all going to mean for the future. We wouldn't have it any other way, I guess, except for if Kirk was playing, I would have it that way. And then it'd be a real playoff race.

But I just mean from a storyline perspective, we would not have it any other way as the Vikings. So I appreciate all of you jumping on and watching the stream or listening by the podcast. Things are only going to get more fascinating from here. And I'm here to break it down all the time. We'll be back tomorrow night with Manny Hill, as always, on Thursday night. It's Thursday, right? It feels like it's been two weeks since Kirk Cousins got hurt. And make sure you read everything purpleinsider.com everything else. And we'll be here for you. And then, uh, I'm doing the ragged round table. We'll run that on the YouTube channel Friday night. It'll be on the podcast feed. So lots of stuff,

Eric Eager is going to come on. I know some of you guys are big fans of his. Um, so it'll be a good week. Thanks everybody. And we will catch you all soon.