Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - What can the Vikings get back in offseason trades? (A Fan's Only pod)

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Matthew Coller answers fan questions, starting with a plot to get Caleb Williams next year and then a look at the trade value of different veteran players and whether the Vikings' ownership should be considered "good" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider presented by Liquid Death. Go to liquiddeath.com slash insider and learn about the Tallboy can, which actually has water. Find out where you can get it near you at liquiddeath.com slash insider. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. This is a fans-only episode of the show and trying something a little bit new here, streaming this live on YouTube.

And I know some of you have sent me messages asking, when do you go live on YouTube? What are you doing with it? Well, just figuring that out now. This is an off-season project to try to get more people involved, get more questions, get more conversations going. So streaming on YouTube is one way we're going to do that. And I guess the best way to find out what's going on is to go to YouTube if you're listening to this on the podcast version or if about the Vikings offseason and the overall direction that, you know, I think it's a give your answers and what you think of some of these questions and also ask questions of your own as well. So I've figured out how to do the screen share and all the other things that it takes to be officially a YouTube streamer here for Purple Insider.

So a big step for the company, I guess. So let me just begin with, I've got the Google doc and I can show you guys the file of the questions that I've gotten and I've made them big. So you'll be able to see them and we can start with the first question and go forward. I did want to say just as a little opener to the show, by the way, that I am amazed at how wild the discourse has gotten about football in general and everything happening just one day after championship weekend. We've got people thinking the NFL is rigged, even though there probably wasn't a holding on the play and maybe nobody did block anybody in the back. It just kind of looked that way. And maybe the league didn't care whether one or two of its superstars was going to the Super Bowl at quarterback, but we've had some

crazy things. Also with Brock Purdy, he gets hurt. So now he's going to be out six months. It's unclear what his future is going to be like in San Francisco. And guess whose name gets popped up is Kirk Cousins because Kyle Shanahan has always had a love affair with him, which is very, in my mind, far-fetched, but who can predict football? So I don't know.

Maybe there'll be some questions about that. I agree, Nathan, with your comments that is bad refs as part of it, but also an unrefable game. That's another, that's another issue is the rule book is so deep and thick and absurd. And also, I mean, we have the capability to have an eye in the sky that they don't really

use. And when Devante Smith did not catch that ball for Philly and it hit the ground, they could have stopped the game, did a quick review. And like that's in the rules that they're able to do it, but they only pick and choose when they're going to be doing it. I mean, I think that solutions have been there for some time that they have chosen not to use, and that's what's gotten them into this place. I really don't think that they go out of their way to try to set up certain matchups.

And if that was the case, I don't know that Cincinnati would have been in the Super Bowl last year. You know, such huge markets as Cincinnati and Kansas City. Like, what? That's never really – I've never really thought that. There are some times where there's a penalty that keeps the game alive when maybe if a team scores, it's going to be over. And, you know, I don't know. You raise an eyebrow. Maybe it's just human nature to try to give one team a chance or maybe somebody actually just committed a penalty but uh rigged no could there be improvements yes that is for sure um even there

it turns out that there's a chip in the football but it doesn't really tell you accurately enough for them to use it like that just this is the greatest sports league in the world folks and yet still at the same time we have all these frustrations coming out of championship weekend so it's uh it's been a crazy two days here since we got our super bowl matchup but lots to discuss uh as far as the vikings go so let's just get to our first question here. And these are coming from either my Twitter, at Matthew Collar, or at purpleinsider.com. You can go there, use the contact us, send me a message if you want to get on one of these shows,

or if you're live, of course, you can ask questions and respond as well in the comment section. So this one comes from, at JRG, hi Matt. Question for the fans only podcast. Can you give me a good reason why the Vikings don't trade away everybody this offseason tank next year and select Caleb Williams pair KOC and Caleb? And we finally have a franchise quarterback for the next 10 years. Now, I think that if you are a Cincinnati Bengal fan and you

see that question, you're like, yeah, works great because they landed Joe Burrow and they have a former McVay head coach. And you're kind of like, Hey, we could be them. But the problem with that for where the Vikings stand right now is kind of obvious, right? It's Justin Jefferson and Christian Derrissaw and the other good players that they have. I mean, it's a little bit problematic when you have players that are elite at their positions. You would have to go really far out of your way to lose that many games. And not only that, but you would also have some pretty darn unhappy players and usually when you're drafting a quarterback at the top a it means you have a ways to go uh and and b like it takes time to develop that player it's not just your roster but it's also that quarterback

and of course there's the risk of it not working out but that goes with everything with every scenario that goes into drafting a quarterback there's a risk it it not working out, but that goes with everything. With every scenario that goes into drafting a quarterback, there's a risk it could not work out, but it usually takes a number of years. So if you've just won 13 games and then you're saying, okay, well, we're going to tank, we're going to tear it all apart. We're going to lose a ton of games and it's going to be horrendous. In theory, that sounds great. And if you were playing Madden, that would be super easy. You put the punter in a quarterback, you sim all the games, and then you go on to the next year. But tanking is hellacious for everybody involved. And if you want Justin Jefferson to sign a long term contract extension, and if you want Christian Derusaw eventually to do the same, he was only

drafted one year behind Justin Jefferson. These guys need to be long-term parts of your team. If you're going to go to a Super Bowl, normally teams that go to the Super Bowl, you'll be amazed by this take, have superstar players on their teams. You don't have to look much farther than Philadelphia. And if you're going to manipulate two of those guys to make them absolutely miserable and lose every single week, it's going to be a lot harder to keep them in the future. And those are not easy players to replace. A franchise left tackle, a megastar receiver who sets records. Those are

guys that you want to keep on your team. Also, are you going to be the one that tells Kevin O'Connell, hey, 13 wins, great debut. Love to have you here, but we're going to take away all of your good players. And would you mind starting Nick Mullins a quarterback for like the whole season? Now it's worked. It worked in San Francisco. They had a couple of years where Jimmy Garoppolo got hurt. They drafted high, they drafted premium positions and it honestly helped them get to the position they are now. Just ask Nick Bosa.

But those things for a team in this position normally have to happen organically. A quarterback has to get hurt or whatever, like a bunch of injuries, a crazy bad schedule or tough schedule or something like that, it would be very, very difficult to go from 13 wins to completely tanking with the talent that they have. They would have to trade away Kirk Cousins, which maybe we'll get to a discussion on that one and convince Kevin O'Connell to go along with it. And this is supposed to be the team of collaboration. And if you're telling Kevin O'Connell, Hey, you know, we got to collaborate on losing all the games. Well, you kind of saw how that went with Brian Flores, right? In Miami, where the ownership wanted to pay him extra money to lose the games. And I know you can make the

counter argument that Miami is in a pretty good position and has been a competitive team the last few years. And if Tua doesn't get hurt, maybe they're a legitimate contender. And I would agree with you, philosophically tanking, it works, but you have to really be in a position to have it happen. Or had they hired a terrible head coach that they didn't, they hired Kevin O'Connell and he's a good head coach. I think from what we saw this year had they hired Urban Meyer this would be a much easier conversation to have you would just say there's no way they're going to be good or their coach is going to ruin everything and end of story if they had had Mike

Zimmer go this year and go eight nine and then they were to the point where they are with the salary cap now then it might have been easier to say, we're going to clear everything out. If they were going to do this, it really had to be last year. It just, and there were quarterbacks to tank for, but how can you say that that was the right decision if they won 13 games and the division? It's a very, it's a very complicated question, but I appreciate it because I think a lot of people look at what goes on in all sports and how front offices handle these things. And they say, why have we never done this? And it's remarkable in Vikings history, how they're always a middling team that has a pop-up season once every 10 years or so. And in this case, it was kind of once, what, six years ago in 2017 and then 2009

before that. But they've never been that team. I mean, they drafted Dante at what, 11th overall, I think, way back when. But the other quarterbacks that were drafted were middle of the first round, late first round. They've never been that team that drafts Trevor Lawrence and goes forward. I would also say, though, that I think that there are other ways to get to where you want to go that don't have to involve tanking, and they could involve drafting a quarterback. The Kansas City Chiefs are the AFC Vikings throughout most of their history. Both of those teams, I mean, they had the quarterback carousel that was very similar. Think about Elvis Gerbach, Steve Bono, Steve DeBerg, Dave Craig, Joe Montana,

all those quarterbacks in the 90s, Trent Green in the 2000s. And then they get to a point with Alex Smith where every year they're competitive and they're always in the playoffs. And they just drafted the one guy and put him into a great position in Patrick Mahomes, and then they went from there. Now, that's a great position in Patrick Mahomes. And then they went from there. Now that's not me saying just draft Mahomes. The point is that they were able to trade up. And so there are other ways to get your hands on a draft pick quarterback. And sometimes you can just wait. And the Mac Jones thing has been a wild ride to discuss, but you know, Mac Jones was

kind of there for the taking. This is nothing against the Derrissaw pick and the trade down, which worked out amazingly to take Christian Derrissaw, but that was kind of one of those opportunities that just presented itself. And you can't tell me that there's no opportunity in a draft that might have six first round quarterbacks that won't present itself this year if they want to make that move and uh you know bradley makes a good point in the comments that the chiefs took a big risk by trading up giving up the next year's first round pick and had it not worked out they would have been criticized for it but at least it would have been a shot at getting to that next level uh as opposed to kind of staying

there and oh by the way that um person there who wanted the diet, Dr. Pepper introduction, I got it here. It is with me. It is with me, but I opened it before the show. I'm never sure how loud opening a soda comes across in the microphone, probably pretty badly. So it's, it's something in terms of the tanking that I think is on a lot of people's minds after seeing the success of some of these teams. But, you know, I go back to Buffalo as well and think about how, you know, with Buffalo, they had Tyrod Taylor and he was a middling quarterback and they decided to not extend him and move on and get Josh Allen. And they've built a really good team around him. And yeah, Bradley, when it comes to Mac Jones, Mac Jones did not have a great year this year.

He did have a very good rookie year and was in the playoffs. But think about Mac Jones with Kevin O'Connell, as opposed to Matt Patricia, with Justin Jefferson, as opposed to Kobe Myers. Remember that Mac Jones was compared to Kirk Cousins coming out, which I didn't think was the most fair comparison. but let's just say that there's some similarity there as a guy who's not a supreme playmaker, not crazy mobile or anything, and just is able to take what's given to him. So take Kirk Cousins, now take $30 million away in cap space and put it into other parts of the roster. It doesn't have to be Mahomes

necessarily. It can be someone like Jared Goff who took his team to the Super Bowl. And it can be someone like Carson Wentz who got the Eagles home field advantage in 2017. If that player is cheap, then even just being good, but cheap can result in having a great roster. And you can't tell me that Jalen Hurts is not helped out by his rookie contract and that roster that they have, because I noticed AJ Brown is pretty good at football and he costs a lot of money. Digits wants Anthony Richardson. I feel similarly about Anthony Richardson. I wonder if teams will see his physical gifts and just really fall in love with him. I watched a couple of his games at Florida, and I was very impressed by his physical ability. He has a huge arm.

He is an incredible runner. Like, I think the NFL has got to be done making mistakes with those guys, right? You know, Lamar Jackson, the same sort of thing like we oh he can't throw jalen hurts can't throw and then they develop their throwing abilities add the athleticism add the rookie contract and all of a sudden you have super bowl contenders you could see that path that's no guarantee with anthony richardson but you could see taking him having him sit for a year behind Kirk Cousins, let Cousins' contract run out, do the best you can to win, and then have that plan to move on.

It's very Mahomesian. And again, sometimes it doesn't work. But one thing that that does do for you is it gives you a year to evaluate the guy behind the scenes. Is he really going to be the guy? Is he really going to be a franchise quarterback or not? Scott, good to see you there. Scott in the comments says, Kweisi has three more years. If he gets pushed into abandoning his vision, it should be pretty clear this off season. If he kicks off or if he kicks all the cans and drafts and drafts a running back in the first round, well, he's not going to do that. We know that the runner, that the owner's meddled. No, I don't think he's going tos a running back in the first round. Well, he's not going to do that. We know that the owner's meddled. No, I don't think he's going to draft a running back in the first round,

even if the owners say that's a good idea. Where I wouldn't be surprised, though, is if the owners said they wanted to keep Delvin Cook. And that's where we're going to know is if those players that I think it's pretty clear where it's time to go for some of these veteran players, and yet they still stay. I mean, this happened numerous times before. Kyle Rudolph is the best example. All the respect in the world to Kyle Rudolph, a tremendous human being and all the things that he did for the Children's Hospital.

So put all that aside. I'm not critiquing his personality, but as far as his play, there was a clear crossroads that they reached with Kyle Rudolph. He's no longer a Pro Bowl guy. They drafted Irv Smith, and he was playing kind of replaceable football at that point. And it was like, no, we've got to give him a big extension. Why? And I'm not saying that for sure the owners stepped in on that, but just nostalgia factor with these players. I think they've had a lot of trouble with that in years past. And this year is going to be a great litmus test for that because there's so

many of them that you could make an argument for getting rid of. I mean, it starts with Delvin Cook, as popular as he is, did not have a great year. And here I am watching Kansas City's seventh round running back catch screen passes and Jarek McKinnon out there. It doesn't take a high draft pick of a running back in a first round or second round. It's, you know, just find somebody who fits with what you need to do offensively. Plus the Vikings throw 65% of the time anyway, but if Cook is back and Kendricks is back and harrison smith and adam thielen i think we're all going to look around and go how is this different how is this a plan

that's going to work and by the way we kind of said that last year and most of the players that i named were not the best versions of themselves because their primes were in the past that's football is that it moves forward pretty quickly um mat says, not me, Matthew in the comments, although I could do the show in third person. That would be pretty weird. Being a GM in the NFL means taking risks. Anyone who is too afraid to draft a top-tier quarterback and settle for a good one shouldn't be in that position.

Yeah, I mean, so I tend to agree with you. Here's the one thing, though, from if you put your actual GM hat on, everything's easier, just like refereeing, everything's easier from home. And I want to recognize that because, so Thomas Dimitrov, for example, I know he's doing a podcast that I've been listening to lately. He was the two-time GM of the year and did not get another GM job right away. Rick Spielman built a team that went to the NFC Championship and was competitive for a long time. And you can bet that he's doing videos on Twitter and stuff in part to keep his name out there. Did not get another job.

A lot of times with these GMs, the next guy in waiting is the Kweisi. And it's not the other GM. And a lot of times they're afraid to make that move because they know they've only got one shot at being a general manager. And if you blow it, then you're probably not going to get back to that position. Now, of course, you and I probably look at that the opposite way, that if you don't take that risk and you do ride the thing that you know to the place that you know it's going then you're probably going to get fired anyway right if you don't take those risks you're not going to win and it's just going to start you know going down and down uh digit says these extensions the vikes made are often sentiment not performance

root cause of zero super bowl wins i'm not sure if it's not performance root cause of zero Superbowl wins. I'm not sure if it's exactly the root cause of Superbowl zero Superbowl wins. Uh, one is a field goal that went wide to the left. Another is knees quarterbacks knees, but these extensions at certain times made sense, but they weren't really what's the right word like frugal enough or just discerning enough when it came to a lot of those extensions um you know i i think that they needed to be a little more harsh a little a little less sentimental anthony bar someone needed to tell mike zimmer no and and anthony's another player that i have the greatest respect for, but his contract did not fit what their situation was. If you have a quarterback as expensive as Kirk Cousins, then you have to be very sharp around the edges.

And this is Kansas City. Kansas City needed to know exactly to a T whether they could get rid of Tyreek Hill or not. And the answer was yes, that they could build an offense that had numerous weapons that Patrick Mahomes could use and lean on Travis Kelsey, get some running backs who could pass block and catch out of the backfield. They knew exactly what they could replace, and they did not pay Tyreek Hill. Is there any doubt that in that same situation, the Vikings just hand out the money? Like they would have probably, but sometimes when you are in the Patriots position

with Brady or with Mahomes and you're in your Super Bowl window, you also have to be very, very considerate of who you pay because down the line, you won't be able to have a complete roster. And if this year tells you anything, but it always does, it always tells us something about how teams are built, is that complete rosters are what wins usually. I mean, every once in a while, a great offense and a mediocre defense

will get there. But a lot of times it's the most complete rosters that make it all the way through the playoffs. On Mac Jones, I think that's right that he is average, but is he average if he has the best receiver in the NFL? That would be my question because I think we see that a lot where, I mean, how about Aaron Rodgers this year? He gets the best receiver in the NFL taken away from him and then his performance dips quite a bit. I think everybody who isn't Mahomes is susceptible to that, but also can be boosted by that. And also maybe they'd pay a guard and put together a great offensive line as opposed to trying to draft one. I agree digits that if Richardson doesn't work out, you just try again

and you keep taking those swings. And Clark that says Richardson has no touch. See, this is a fallacy that teams fall into and it's a fallacy that fans fall into is that we can watch these guys play college football and figure out what they'll be when they get to the NFL. And I think it's become very clear that we can't that they have physical talent that matches the NFL and character makeup. And then it's all guessing. And if it wasn't, then they would have been right about Lamar. They would have been right about Josh Allen, who wasn't the first quarterback drafted.

They would have been right about Mahomes or Watson, who weren't the first quarterbacks drafted. I think, I mean, if you go back, and I did just for fun, and you look at the draft analysis of Jalen Hurts, there's a lot of comparisons to Taysom Hill. I mean, people thought he couldn't throw the ball at all. And now he's in the Super Bowl and even has some of the best numbers throwing the ball on third and long. I mean, we just don't know how someone's going to develop.

Folks, you've heard me talk about liquid death, and I'm glad to see that some of you are getting on board. I got a great tweet from a listener the other day talking about how liquid death has helped him kick sugary drinks and slim down. And also for the longest time, my wife was the type of person to carry a water bottle everywhere because she didn't like the idea of buying so many plastic bottles. Well, that's the reason it's called liquid death to bring an end to plastic bottles and instead use aluminum cans, which are easier to recycle for profit and do not end up turning into trash. Liquid death is even donating 10% of its profits to kill plastic usage. So you're going to want

to look for Liquid Death Mountain Water and Flavored Sparkling Water in the water section. And here's how you find it. It looks like a beer can. It's the only water that looks like a tall boy. So whether you want to use it to drink more water or confuse your coworkers by bringing in something that looks like a beer can to work,

you can find Liquid Death at Hy-Vee, Target, Walmart, 7-Eleven, and many more stores. Find out where liquiddeath.com slash insider. That's liquiddeath.com slash insider. Bradley mentions Brock Purdy being out and the Niners calling Kirk Cousins. I just, I guess if it happens, then everyone can come back and be like, ha ha, you were crazy. And it was always there. The writing was always on the wall, but San Francisco only has a couple million bucks as far as cap space goes. And they've got some extensions to give out. I just don't really know how they make that work without sacrificing the roster, which is what makes them.

How they would make a Kirk Cousins trade work out. Doesn't it make more sense for them to keep Brock Purdy and let him heal? Six months is not when the season starts. And also they still have Trey Lance, who they don't have to trade. We've acted like they have to trade Trey Lance, but they absolutely do not have to have Trey Lance, who they don't have to trade. We've acted like they have to trade Trey Lance, but they absolutely do not have to trade Trey Lance. They could go back to him. He'll be healed and ready to go, and they can go forward that way.

That makes them much better in terms of the salary cap for their immediate and their future. And also, if you're the Vikings, do you really want to give them that quarterback? If they can win with Brock Purdy and they can win with Jimmy Garoppolo, would you want to say, yeah, actually go ahead and have our quarterback and win some more? I mean, maybe, I mean, that's what Detroit did with Los Angeles, but they really had to be in that position where they were ready to go all the way to the bottom. And I don't know if this team is that because Detroit did not have a Justin Jefferson. They did not have a Christian Derusaw in place as guys that were hitting their prime.

They didn't have that on that roster. They had nothing on the roster. Something that comes up all the time is the idea that the Wilfs are to blame. And well, and that I guess not enough people call them out. I don't know. Well, we have talked a lot, at least on this show, about the relationship between ownership and their direction. And this is another thing that I think falls under the category of being a lot easier to say than like to try to put yourself in their shoes a little bit that along the way there was always a reason for them not to pull it apart entirely now I think we can all look back at 2020 and say Philadelphia let their team go to

a four-win team the Vikings scratched and clawed after starting one in five just to get to seven wins, and they should not have done that. They should have at that point admitted where they were and gone forward. Or even the 2019 to 2020 season, not extending Kirk Cousins, not extending Mike Zimmer. And that was maybe a first guess for a lot of people that they had run to the end of the line similar to how it feels now but you can see if it was your team and you owned it why you wouldn't want to accept that why you'd be like we just had a good team that year they had a good point differential by the way uh we were able to beat new orleans in new orleans why don't we just get x y and z and we'll be back and maybe we'll have one dip year,

but we'll bounce back and we'll have cousins ready to go 2021 with a good team. Like you can see why they talk themselves into it. I don't know where they stand on this off season because they don't put a lot out there. And so all of us are kind of left to guess what the owners think about where they are. Like, are they being told that they can do this again next year if they get a new defensive coordinator? Or are they being told, hey, like, guys, we gave it our best shot, but now we have to make it our team. And I think that the latter one would be something that a lot of fans would prefer is like admit kind of where you are and start heading toward the future. And maybe in two years, then you could be back and i and i think they can if they keep you know jefferson in place

and some of the young players that they have now they've got a good chance to be able to do that but if they stay in the middle and they think they can run it back and just blame ed donatel i think we're probably sitting here at the same time next year talking to each other about the same subject about oh are they going to draft a quarterback this time? But as far as other things go, the Wilfs, I think it's really hard to say that they're a bad ownership when you actually look at some of the bad owners in the NFL. How about the Cleveland Browns, one of the worst organizations, just a complete joke of an organization. You have a top tier stadium. You have a top tier organization as a whole. They did make the change that they needed to make at the right time last year. They didn't keep

trying to go forward with Zimmer and Spielman. So they proved that their finger was on the pulse enough to make a change there. I mean, I get exactly what everyone's saying is, hey, this desperate attempt to keep winning and falling in love with players, like it's really costing them. And I think that's right. But I also think like bigger picture when you TCO performance center and how much money they've paid out, some of the moves have been wrong, but how much money they've paid out to keep players, Not every organization and ownership has that amount of cash or is willing to put that down. And so I think that trying to win is a hard criticism for me to make about an ownership because there are also ownerships that probably don't care. And you really see this in baseball is like where there are some ownerships that do not care

at all. So when you're saying like trying to win is your biggest critique of the owners. And it just sounds weird, right? Like, I mean, even though they have maybe missed some of the bigger picture and, and I think it's also Kweisi Adafo-Mentz's job to make sure that they understand the bigger picture here. Now, I don't know how he feels either based on his press conference. It was like, not really sure to tell you the truth. When he called the team in transition, like a stock in transition, I didn't really follow the metaphor exactly. But, you know, I think that even just saying competitive rebuild again and calling them in transition is a bit of an understanding when it comes to they're not a Super Bowl contender right now.

I think that if you come out in a press conference and say, we're not a Super Bowl contender and won't be next year, pretty bad look. Those are things you can't say. At the same time, calling it transition to me was like, oh, does he get it? I think he gets it. And if he does get it, then it's his job to convey it to ownership to make sure that they get it. And I like to quote Zach Lowe on this from ESPN. He said that sometimes the best GMs are just the guys that can handle the ownership and their whims and their wants and needs and convince them to go in the right direction. So I think that that's on him to do, but also, you know, it might involve convincing

Kevin O'Connell as well. And that's where there's a lot of these situations, you know, that are more complicated than we all make it. You know, I mean, I'm definitely part of this as well. You know, as far as like, hey, I've got all the answers like that, right? That's my job. But it's more complicated when you have a meeting and sit down and say, I want to get rid of Harrison Smith and Adam Thielen. And these are still good players, but they're too expensive and so forth. And the question from the head coach is going to be, well, wait, wait a minute. How are we going to do that? And Bradley, I'm not making excuses for the Wilfs as far as what they've done in terms of not getting a quarterback at the top

of the draft, not ever taking that real setback. What I'm saying is that, as Ron says in the comments, you could have Daniel Snyder. You could have owners that don't care about winning at all, as opposed to ones that maybe didn't make the exact most savvy moves to get there. And we all can sit here and say that paying a running back was a bad idea. And we could say, aha, we knew it. But why did they sign off on paying Delvin Cook? Because they thought he got him closer to winning, not just because they had his jersey or something. Right. And I can understand that is my point that I know that everybody is frustrated, but I can understand when an ownership is saying, I want to keep Delvin Cook because he's a good

player and my head coach loves him. Right. That's, that's the point. So, you know, I'm not saying that they've made the right decisions all the time for sure. Let's see. Bob says Kevin O'Connell could be a QB whisperer. Well, that's another point to be made about drafting a quarterback is sometimes what you hear is that, you know, who are you going to replace Kirk Cousins with? And then, you know, I kind of watched Geno Smith with great wide receivers and he was able to put together a team that also lost in the first round. Right. There's a lot of quarterbacks who can probably play well when they have Justin Jefferson and a great system. And I think that what Kevin O'Connell proved this year is that he needs work on play calling, and there are times where he overthinks it. And when you have Justin Jefferson, you don't need to run trick plays. You can just have Justin Jefferson.

But those are things that can be fixed. I think it's creativity. I saw the other day that the Cincinnati Bengals stole a play from Kevin O'Connell that Zach Taylor talked about how one of their touchdowns against Buffalo was just straight up stolen from a Vikings play that was successful to TJ Hawkinson. And then they ran the exact same play and we saw a lot of open wide receivers and we saw a pass first offense that was a really really good idea to throw all the time and and try to lean into kirk cousins and and see how far you could push the pedal down in the passing game as opposed to just always trying to run so if you take a rookie quarterback and i think circumstance matters a ton andy reed and patrick mahomes it does help right joe Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, it does help,

right? Joe Montana and Bill Walsh, it does help to have a great situation for your quarterback. And the same thing goes for Jalen Hurts. As much as I think Hurts is a very talented quarterback, he's got the best offensive line, a good offensive coach, and he's got good wide receivers. And you can give a lot of these things maybe save for the offensive line part but even two tackles that are excellent you can give these things to your next quarterback and if kirk cousins was 27 years old and didn't cost the money that he costs i would say this is a this is a great situation to build around, go forward. But he's not, right? That's just not the case.

And yeah, Bradley, in the comments, I'm not saying that it was the right idea to sign Delvin Cook. I was against it at the time completely, signing Delvin Cook to a long-term contract. And my prediction was that a couple of years into it, he would be a fading. And that's exactly what happened because that's exactly what happens to every running back.

My point was that when the owners sign that guy, then I get it. Like I get why they did. I get why they wanted him. If your head coach said, I want him, I need him. You have to sign him. I understand why the owners did. I don't look at that and say, how did they not know what i knew um and and as far as what if a quarterback that you draft turns into josh rosen which is always going to be the question uh this this is

a similar to the fourth down things the arguments where it's like well what if you fail on the fourth down it's like right but what if you succeed uh i mean you're the the chance that you succeed is um i mean probably equal to the chance that you fail you could become the jets and then it's bad for you or the jets might end up with aaron rogers and win a bunch of games i don't know uh didn't you know kyler murray get picked after that and look they their general manager and head coach botched that situation but it was one year ago that they were halfway through the season with kyler murray talking about him for mvp and that team was on the upswing and they were a legitimate contender and cliff kingsbury's total failure um to adapt his offense around Kyler Murray and adapt throughout a season really hurt them.

But I think we all agree Kyler Murray is a very talented quarterback, right? If you fail with a draft pick, it hurts and it stinks for everybody. But what's the alternative? Is the alternative staying with a 35-year-old, very expensive quarterback and having the same thing happen is the alternative waiting for the next Russell Wilson or next Tom Brady. And those can go either way too. Was there no risk in getting Russell Wilson? Apparently there was more than any of us thought there's risk in everything. I think it's more risky to run the same thing back because you risk getting stuck in a rut where five years go by and you've won one playoff game. To me, that's more risky than getting a Josh Rosen, quickly assessing that he's not the guy and getting another one and

moving on. It kind of happens all the time in the NFL where even the Eagles are a good example of this too. They draft Carson Wentz, they go somewhere with him and then they realize, oh, well, he's not really the guy. So we're just going to move on here. And of course they got criticized a lot. It wasn't Carson Wentz's fault. It might not have been, but that doesn't matter. He was about to be expensive and he wasn't good enough to justify it. So, you know, I think that we kind of go round and round on this all the time, but that's always the biggest fear. What if he's the next ponder? And I think it's like, learn to accept the fact that you might draft Christian ponder.

And then a couple of years later, draft Teddy Bridgewater and build a team around him, had his knee not gone down, but even build a team around him by 2017, that was this close to going to the Superbowl one game away game away and and how did they do that they drafted well and they also hadn't paid a lot of those players yet and they didn't have Sam Bradford was expensive I think in 17 but had Bridgewater been the quarterback and not gotten hurt they would have been in a in a tremendous position to go deep in the playoffs year after year with him on his rookie contract so it's it. So it even works that way that it was miserable with Christian Ponder and you end up with Matt Castle in here.

And I know that nobody likes wasting their Sundays. That is for sure. But we're talking about how do you get somewhere serious, not the first round it out. And the answer is probably not to sit on your hands and do the same thing over and over again and keep running it back. Let's get another question from my emails here. Let me pop that up. Let's read this from Sean. Fan from the UK wanted to ask your opinion on trade value for some of our older players. Clearly, the Vikings need to move on from some

of their bigger contracts they have. But if I was Kwesi, a large part of my decision would be based upon the offers I get for my players. In my opinion, Cook, Hicks, and Kendricks should be moved on from regardless. But then there's a group including Cousins, Thielen, Harrison Smith, Zedaria Smith, that I think it should come down

to what type of offers they receive. Well, that's a really good question. So let me look again. Let's see. Cook, Cousins, Phelan, Harrison Smith, Zedaria Smith. My opinion on trade value is it's like a yard sale. So there's an episode of Golden Girls, anybody else a Golden Girls fan, where they have a yard sale and everything that they have, the Dorothy and so forth, the Betty White, they all think Rose is her name in the show. They all think that their stuff is worth way more and they never want to part with it. And that is how it works in trades. And Jeff in the comments is right. There's not a lot of trade value there.

There just isn't. And thank you. Thank you. Golden Girls is a great show. I agree. So there's just not a lot of trade value there. Now, I mean, Cousins aside, Cousins is a different conversation. But when it comes to Thielen, Harrison Smith, Zedarius Smith, other teams know that you have problems with your

salary cap. They didn't miss that. They also have overthecap.com. And if you look at, I mean, the Amari Cooper one is kind of the deal that I keep going back to where when you look at, you know, Amari Cooper getting traded for a fifth, he's way too good of a wide receiver to get traded for a fifth. He's better than Adam Thielen is now, and it's not particularly close. But everybody knew that Dallas was in cap trouble and was trying to get rid of him, and so they offered a fifth. And Harrison Smith is a borderline Hall of Fame player, but he's set to make $19 million on the salary cap. And even if you restructure, it only goes down to 10, which would still make him one of the higher paid players

at his position in the league. Well, who is giving you big money for that when they know you have to move on? I think that Daniil Hunter is really the only player with significant trade value. And then there's the Cousins conversation. One part of this is this is that cousins would have to waive a no trade so you're not trading him to anybody that he doesn't want to go to at the same time like any team that's trying to trade for kirk cousins is probably thinking they'll win so let's say it's

carolina or something uh even though i don't know if you want to trade him in the nfc but let's just say it's carolina i don't know who cares and all right so if you're carolina you just got frank reich your franchise has been a disaster over the last few years you've tried picking up other people's trash it hasn't worked so now you're saying let's get this established guy and there were rumors by the way that indianapolis wanted to trade last year for Kirk Cousins. So let's just say, I think you're looking at probably something like a second round pick, and then they would potentially, you know, maybe sign him to an extension when he gets there. And that comes, you know, for him, you know, making the deal and saying yes to the deal. All these things would have there's moving parts but i think that as far as his trade value it's probably higher than what matt ryan and carson wentz were

traded for and they they involved third round picks so i would think that it would be a third or maybe even a or i'm sorry a second or maybe even a first depending on who it would be probably would be a second round pick is what I would think Kirk Cousins could get traded for if he were to agree to it. And that would go into a major rebuild for this team, which might be the right way to go. That again is, do you get that past Kevin O'Connell after they just won a lot of games with Kirk Cousins and then tell him, all right, you know, that guy you just won a lot of games with Kirk Cousins and then tell him, all right, you know, that guy, you just won a lot of games with and who played great against the giants, by the way. I mean, he had, I know how it ended, but he had a great game against the giants. As far as Daniel Hunter goes,

I understand and Zedaria Smith, why no one would be interested in trading defensive ends when you just had a really bad defense overall. And those were the good parts of it. But I wrote a little about this yesterday. The second half of the season for Zedarius Smith was totally different than the first half. He dropped off by quite a bit. And I've got to imagine that they understand where his health is at this moment. But the problem with even trading someone like Zedarius Smith is once again, the contract where it's, it's a difficult contract to take on. Maybe now a team with a ton of cap space could do it, but it's still like a $16 million cap hit. That's one where other teams will kind of know where Hunter comes into play is he's still young

and he's still very good. He was a top 10 defensive end by PFF. I think that people's first impression of him this year in the system was that he didn't fit and was having a bad year. But when you look at his numbers through the second half of the year, he really picked it up and played the same way that he has through his career. 10 sacks, I mean, maybe 10 and a half. Really good season. I mean, that 10 and a half, really good season.

I mean, that's something people will pay for. Khalil Mack got traded for a second round pick last year. You could see that happening and then, you know, an extension, but then as, you know, everyone would obviously bring up, well, who's rushing the passer if you're moving on from these players and they haven't really developed those guys and this is this is why they're in the position that they're in is really because over years of drafting they have not put guys as the next man up like Daniil Hunter was the next man up when B-Rob got old he was there third round pick star I mean how about a wide receiver like drafting a fifth rounder in Stefan Diggs who becomes a star it's not something that happens every day, but that's one of the formula. The formula is Daniil Hunter is going

to make between $23 and $28 million when someone has to sign him to a contract extension. Can you replace that with developing other players? And by the way, you draft a guy in the third round who becomes Daniil Hunter. It's not like no one could ever become him again, or that you can't stack up multiple rushers or develop them over years. But when you have all that money, you can go out and get extra pieces and extra players. And Philadelphia has done that. They've done that quite a bit. I mean, Ndamukong Su, Linval Joseph, these are guys they had money for. And if you can create a deep pass rush rather than just one guy who costs a lot of money, I mean, it's all kind of an economics problem. It's not just Daniil versus the second round pick.

It's Daniil versus the second round pick. And oh, by the way, $20 million in salary cap space. So we always talk about this um through the lens of the quarterback but it also has to do with um you know the the rest of the expensive players as well so when you have justin jefferson jefferson and 25 million dollars on the cap is absolutely worth it it just is i mean unless you have patrick mahomes it's worth it but a pass rusher when there's a lot of pass rushers coming through the draft that are freaks and have been developed and also are younger and don't have the injury risk that

daniel hunter has like it becomes a lot easier to make that conversation work uh even though it's not fun right because hunter is a great great player. But this is what makes the NFL to me so interesting, is that it's a puzzle more than a baseball, where it's just, whose owner wants to give out a bunch of cash? Okay, San Diego, there you go. Like, this is true, and this is why they hired Kweisi Adafomensa. This is true economics, right? Like true, like valuing, valuing your products, valuing what they give to you and so forth. What is this guy worth? How many wins is he worth? His health situation, like all these things, what can you do with that money otherwise? And Jason, you might be right that Jefferson, it's going to be over $30 million a year, probably.

And the cap's going to continue to go up. It just went up today. It'll go up even more. But I think that that's a rare guy who is worth it because you need stars to win. So the Rams win the Super Bowl last year. Well, they paid Aaron Donald. I don't think anybody would have been against paying Aaron Donald because that man is worth it. If it's a B plus guy who wants that kind of money, then it might not be worth it. Also depends on exactly how the rest of the roster works. So when you have, you know, Daniil Hunter at his age and his injury history, by the time you're really good again, where's Daniil Hunter at in terms of price and in terms of health and in terms

of production. And this is something we've gone through with like when they signed Harrison Smith to this insane contract, like Harrison Smith is amazing, but like, what's he going to look like, you know, a couple of years down the road.

And, and I was just looking this up today that by this age, Ed Reed was leaving the Ravens. Troy Polamalu was retiring. Malcolm Jenkins just a couple of years ago retired after his age 34 season. And that's where Harrison Smith's going to be. And that's a bet that they made that Harrison Smith would still be a top form and deserve to be one of the highest paid players at age 34. So all these things are probably why I like football so much is that they're a fascinating group of decisions that all are interconnected and all complicated. Let's have another look at a question. We'll keep

rolling here as long as I have battery power on my laptop. So we'll go for a bit longer here. Let's take a look at another question here from Douglas. Could you discuss recent trades in the first round where teams traded up for quarterbacks and how those trades impacted the team's short and long term? Let's see. Well, a couple that I can think of off the top of my head, and I can pull some up here while we're talking is Jared Goff and Carson Wentz. Didn't they both teams trade up for those guys? And they are, I think one of my favorite examples to make this point about drafting a quarterback is that neither one of those quarterbacks were Patrick Mahomes. Neither one of them were even really good. I think that Goff is pretty good, but neither was a star.

Carson Wentz is flat out bad at this point. And yet, both of those franchises had a lot of success. And I think that tells you how big the advantage really is. I don't remember. Some of these going back, I don't remember. But Patrick Mahomes was obviously one of them that Kansas city traded up for. Scott reminds me both Trey Lance and Justin Fields,

right? The trade up for Justin Fields was, I think what a first round pick for the next year. And the Lance one was multiple first round picks. And one of the reasons that San Francisco can survive that is because they drafted so well before. And this is another discussion to have that I think is very reasonable. So when Philadelphia traded for Wentz or say with Mahomes with Kansas City, what they were able to give those guys is a great roster right away.

And if you're against the idea of the Vikings drafting a quarterback this year, I think that would be part of your case. It's like, OK, you can give him Jefferson. You can give him Derisaw. You give him O'Neill and Kevin O'Connell. That's a good setup. In my opinion, that's a good setup. But are you ready to win with that guy pretty quickly? Well, maybe not when you have to rework a lot of different places on your roster, including adding receiving options though hockinson would be nice for a young rookie quarterback so i in working

through the argument would be maybe they're not quite ready to do that at this moment because they are going to have to go through a revamp i personally think that they are ready and that they could be similar to something like the Wentz or Goff situations where you drop these quarterbacks into really phenomenal circumstances. Remember the Rams, they got McVay, but they also got Robert Woods. I think Sammy Watkins wasn't bad then. They picked him up. Andrew Whitworth in free agency was a big shock signing that they paid him. But remember how valuable he was to Jared Goff when he was protected. And I mean, that's part of the thing when you look at Philly and you look at the Rams and you look at a lot of teams that succeed and Kansas City is just going

to be the exception to the rule. But even they invested a lot on that offensive line. And what's been one of the biggest problems year after year, the offensive line. And so Fields, the jury is still out very much on Justin Fields and whether that will work. And they may have botched the timeline around Justin Fields. I think he showed flashes last year, but there's also reasons to be concerned. But with Justin Fields, they were not able to bring him into a situation where he could thrive. That's why it's so disturbing what happened with Zach Wilson is because he probably wasn't a situation where he could be pretty good and he still wasn't. But if you're going to do it as the Vikings,

you want to consider that you are closer to a Jared Goff Rams situation than you are to a Fields Bears situation where Matt Nagy was about to get fired. They were drafting a quarterback to try to save their own butts, like that kind of thing. And the Trey Lance one is strange too, because teams that are that good usually don't draft a quarterback like that and go all in for him. That is unusual. But the point just being that when you can give those rookie quarterbacks a great situation, then that's a big deal toward whether they succeed or not. Just to go off a couple of questions or comments that you guys had. Yeah, the first draft for Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. Now, I want to give that, I do want to give that time is it too early yeah the question is is it

too early to say that it was abysmal uh yes i think it is too early but i also think that you know some of the stuff on draft night was pretty questionable right away and that's where you can kind of go back and be like a safety a corner with a lot of injury issues a guard like were these really the best ways to spend the draft capital and i remember talking about it that night and having a lot of fans be really unhappy because they wanted to like the draft every team wants to like the draft it's the offseason super bowl so if somebody doesn't like your draft then hey sometimes if you don't like a draft, it works out to be amazing. And that's why I want to give it time, because there were people who gave the Jalen Hurts draft a D minus, and now they're in the Super Bowl. So sometimes

we never know. But if Louis Seen and Andrew Booth Jr. are healthy, and Caleb Evans, I'll throw this into as well. And Brian Asamoah takes the hundred snaps or so that he had and develops like we don't know until year two it's just been my experience in general that we really don't have a good sense for what someone's going to be until the second year look if you asked after the first year of Christian Derrissaw I would have said I really have no idea I needed to see his second training camp. And then I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about his off season and everything else. And then you started to get the feeling like, okay, this guy's about ready to take

off. But Christian Derrissaw missed his whole first training camp. He missed the first couple of games. And when he was in, he was pretty good, but he wasn't a star yet. And then he had the full off season, got to a hundred percent healthy and was absolutely phenomenal. Now he's a franchise piece. If I had told you at the same time last year, is Christian Derrissaw a franchise piece? Or if I had asked you that, you would have said, I got to wait and see. So I don't want to judge their draft yet. Part of it is also judging the players that they gave up, Christian Watson, Jamison Williams, and we don't really know with them yet either. I think Watson looks like he's going to be a pretty good player, but we're not sure if he's going to be okay or great or not

that good. There have been other guys who had nice little debuts and then sort of petered out. So we're a little ways away from it, but I think at this moment where they might have some regrets would be Jameson Williams because the way that Adam Thielen has played out, I mean, he had an okay year, but it's clearly not the same as it used to be. And when I look at someone like Cincinnati and what they've done to support Joe Burrow with their weapons or look at Philadelphia and their weapons, they have a great tight end, two wide receivers. Like that could kind of be you with Justin Jefferson, player X draft pick receiver, and then TJ Hawkinson. And they decided to move down, take a non-premium position but a lot of it just really rests on those two guys in the secondary because the viking secondary it was flat out abysmal i mean there's nothing there's no other

way you can put it this year aside from patrick peterson and some of duke shelly but mostly abysmal and if it is suddenly good because lewis seen and uh andrew booth jr like those guys are ready to go well then we're talking about something totally different because i always thought that drafting a secondary was not a bad idea um that you know safety is not a position that i love as a first round pick but when you combine that with three corners in the first four rounds or defensive backs, I mean, in the first four rounds, like, okay, this is probably a good way to go. And like Kansas city, they hit on their guys and their guys have made big plays for them. That's some of the draft luck. If the Vikings had gotten the same performances as some of Kansas city's guys, they might have been playing in the

divisional round. I don't know. Um. But that is sometimes the luck of the draw. So I don't want to say Kwasi's draft totally blew up, but there are some pretty big concerns going forward. And even about the health of all three players, whether they can actually play next year. Jason says, I hope we let Garrett Bradbury walk. I would think that signing him long-term would be a bad idea. Yeah, I think so too. He certainly played better. And when you compare him to other free agent centers, there's only a handful of free agent centers that are on the same level. And that makes it maybe a little tricky for them.

But in a situation where you just don't have a lot of money to work with, you're going to have to have another answer. On the roster, Chris Reid's going to come back. I don't think anybody's signing up for that. Kyle Hinton got signed by Atlanta, so I'm not sure that he's the next answer either. They'll have to find somebody. This is where you got to be savvy in some way.

Normally, if you're going to create a complete roster, sometimes you have to hit on guys you don't expect. And look, they actually did that with someone like Kairos Tonga or Duke Shelley, but they need that as a starter, not a rotational player at center. So who's got eyes on centers? Like, because I don't think that if you put out a guy next year, unless you're totally rebuilding, then it's fine. But put out a rookie next year, you're totally rebuilding then it's fine but put out a rookie next year you're not going to get improved play from what bradbury did and i think bradbury is also a great lesson in why it's you know unless somebody's a left tackle or right tackle where

it's the more premium position you probably should just fill those positions out with middle picks so you develop and guys that you sign in free agency, because by the time they've gotten to be good, because the NFL is so hard by the time you've gotten to be good as Garrett Bradbury or decent. Well, now it's time to leave and go sign with another team. So I don't think that they will resign him, but there's not a ton in free agency where you could be like,

oh, well, they'll just fill it with this guy. They've got to have it filled on the cheap. And then, you know, then you're asking the center who operates the offense and the protections to be maybe a guy that doesn't have as much experience. This is the tricky part about playing with the salary cap, uh, from, uh, let's see from Danielle. Does it seem like Brian Flores is the obvious choice of defensive coordinator and they're just waiting on Arizona to make a hire?

I'm not sure if he's the obvious choice or not. It's hard to tell. I mean, they brought in a number of people. One of them got hired by the Atlanta Falcons, Ryan Nielsen. Flores, to me, though, is the exact opposite of Ed Donatel in that his defense in 2021 was the single most aggressive defense in the league and that is always a dangerous game that you play which is if you blitz you can allow big plays against you and it wasn't like the Giants who blitzed all the time shut down the Vikings offense the Vikings offense was actually good against them and it's

not like the Giants had a great defense either, but what they did was they caused some havoc and turnovers and mistakes. And I think that sitting back the way the Vikings did and just letting teams throw underneath all the time after watching that for a year, they could be very much ready to move to someone who's a lot more aggressive. Flores has great experience. Do you want as a younger coach, there's always these interpersonal dynamics I wonder about. Like, do you want somebody who a lot of people think is a good head coach being your defensive coordinator or not? Like, cause if you're, if you're Mike Tomlin, you're Mike Tomlin, you can bring in Brian Flores. It's like, Oh, it was my show. I'm Mike Tomlin. But with Kevin O'Connell still young in this game, is he going to want to bring in someone that if

you struggle, people are going to say, why isn't Brian Floris the head coach and so forth? Like, I don't know. Maybe those things don't factor in as much as I think, but it might be an issue that they want somebody who's a little younger or less experienced that they want to grow with and kind of meld as opposed to having their way of doing things. But if you're talking about an ideal choice, someone who's proven and turned around a defense, go look at Brian Flores' first year in Miami when they were tanking. Oh my gosh, horrendous defense. They went from, I think like 30th to

number six in the NFL in a year, which kind of tells you about like how you can rebuild quickly. But I think that Brian Flores is a tremendous talent and he knows what he's doing. So I think he should be in top consideration and they do have to wait around to see if he gets a head coaching job. Yeah, Scott, this gets brought up a lot that Scott brings up about the scouting staff with mediocre draft results and the scouting staff. You know, I always struggle with this one because the scouts jobs is to go watch a player. And oftentimes they meet with the player's coach and they lay out the facts about the player.

Like they are like, when you think about like what a scout was in wartime, go like way back in the day, like what a scout was. They were somebody that went out into the forest and tried to learn where the other team's army was, whatever other country's army was, whatever other country's army was. You follow me though. And they learned as much information as they could,

and then they brought it back. And that's what scouting is. Scouting is going out, learning as much information as you can, writing it down and bringing it back. And that doesn't mean that they have no say over what happens next, because I imagine in the draft room, they're asking, what do you think of this guy? Or what do you think of that guy? But that's, I think a job that it's very hard to say, like, are they getting wrong information on this guy or the players that they are looking for to fit a certain mold that their coaching staff or general manager wants they're bringing those players back and they're saying here's the guys that you were kind of looking for and now you look at them and they talked about this process changing a little bit for what they wanted in this last draft from

what rick spielman wanted which i think is how you end up with like DJ Wanham, Jalen Holmes. Like they're presenting them to you. Here's the players that fit what you're looking for. And then the general manager is going to pick and the coaching staff is going to pick from those players. So I don't think that it's hard to know like who's doing which scouting in the front office. But I think that most scouting departments are probably coming up with a lot of the same answers about a lot of players.

And then it's on the decision makers to look at those players and decide who's the best fit. And what it comes down to a lot is do you hit on the right positions and get lucky a lot of times. I mean, that's what it often comes down to is do you make sound decisions as far as playing the odds, but then just sometimes get lucky enough to kind of hit on the right things. Like they used to tell great stories about how they found Stefan Diggs and Daniil Hunter, but then they tried to repeat that a million times and it never worked. It's like, well, they just kind of lucked into it and they found the right, they picked the right guy out of the hat that fit the description that they were looking for, that the scouts gave them, if that makes sense.

Question from, not sure how you pronounce your name, but T-X-Y-U-K-E-F-U. Realistically, should the Vikings trade up for a quarterback this year? I would say that the answer is probably yes. That if you're talking about the situation going forward, you are drafting for two years from now, three years from now, four years from now, and where you're going to be. That's where I think you start that now. When the Eagles drafted Jalen Hurts, no one thought they needed a quarterback, but they were looking multiple years down the road. And that's what you have to do with drafting is one of the issues that I think we're talking about bad drafting and good drafting and whether it's the scouts. How about Garrett Bradbury and Irv Smith Jr.?

That is a great example. The scouts brought them a zone blocking center, which is what they wanted for their zone scheme. That's the scouts did their job. He was his own blocking center and they got one and a tight end that was faster and could go down the field because Gary Kubiak system loves tight end. Now, neither one of those picks worked out. It's not the scouts who did that. They decided to draft two non-premium positions with top draft picks, and they tried to do

it for right now, as opposed to a couple of years down the road. These are the real positions that are going to make a difference. And so they passed up on A.J. Brown, who was taken right after Irv Smith Jr. because they were like, no, we need a tight end, not a wide receiver. Well, I mean, there are many times where they drafted corners because they needed corners and didn't draft maybe something that would have worked out down the road. So I think that if you look at like, hey, right now they don't need a quarterback. They have a good quarterback. You're right. But a couple years down the road, next year, we're talking about Kirk Cousins will be 35, and then we're talking 36, and then we're talking expensive, right?

So that's why I think it makes sense mostly for this year. And there's first-round quarterbacks. You know, it's funny. Enigma comes in and asks the question, which is where we started an hour and 10 minutes ago, about tanking for Caleb Williams. I love this second wave of people that we've had come in and join the conversation. So welcome to everybody. I think that the tanking is probably not a necessary step is the way that I would like to phrase that is when you have a situation that you can put a quarterback into on offense that could be instantly good.

You don't have to tear it all apart. Now, I know you want Caleb Williams. Of course, he's talked about as the great prospect. And, you know, Jamarcus Russell didn't work out, but a lot of the generational quarterbacks prospects have like, you know, I think Trevor Lawrence is well on his way to working out. Andrew Luck absolutely worked out for that team and probably would still have them competitive at this point. So, you know, if, yeah, Caleb Williams is going to give you the best chance, but I also look at the history of drafting quarterbacks.

It's not always the first guy. And there's debates over even this year, like Mahomes is not the first guy. And Josh Allen's not the first guy. Josh Allen was the third guy taken. And he's unbelievable. And Lamar Jackson was the fifth guy. So I don't think that tanking for Caleb Williams is a necessary step. Now, I would put it this way, though.

If they don't draft a quarterback and they start one in five next year, now we're talking about tanking. Now I will change my opinion if that were to happen. And that's the natural tank. That's where you didn't expect it. And yet it happened anyway. So there is a situation. I just wouldn't say it's right now.

I would say that if you get to that point, then you have to understand the moment. Understand that when you're one in five and you don't trade away Riley Reif or anything else that isn't nailed down and you keep playing Kirk Cousins, that they'll probably get you to seven wins. They really should have understood that in 2020.

And instead, you know, look, I understand Mike Zimmer, older coach, he was going to fight to the very end, but that was a bad football team. And they played some bad teams and got a handful of wins, but they were never competitive. You have to understand when the moment is really to just pull the plug. I don't think that that moment is right now. I think they could be a team in transition and transition nicely to a quarterback that they take this year. And then onto next year, you play inexperienced and young players on defense, try to develop them with your new defensive coordinator, probably going to have some Rocky moments, but maybe you find something as

well. We didn't know Anthony Harris was going to be a good player for the Vikings until he got to play. Sometimes, like, I don't know, Troy Dye. I don't know. I don't know if Troy Dye is going to be anything. Josh Metellus. Who knows? But can you play them and find out, right? Like, that's a part of it that I think this year they wasted some of their time and didn't get great production.

I mean, would it have been different on defense? Could it have been worse had they played Brian Asamoah the whole year and played Troy Dye instead? Again, I don't think that that goes well, but it couldn't have gone much worse in coverage. And you would have learned about those guys. Maybe you're surprised and you find out. But instead, desperation to win, you're filling it with expensive players. And so I think that if you take that, that broader view into this year, it doesn't have to be, let's try to

pull everything apart and win one game. Heck. I mean, I think that with, I think with Nick Mullins, they probably wouldn't even be the worst team in the league next year because of Justin Jefferson. And because of their tackles, they'd probably win like four games, five games and draft, you know, fifth overall or something. So I'm not sure that that's the right way to go. Let's see question from Scott about going back to the four, three. I don't really think that the four, three, three, four thing is, I just don't think it's like really the same discussion that it would have been years ago because third linebackers just don't play that often. I do see teams, and this actually worked the other day for the Eagles using five defensive linemen. The Vikings did it sometimes, but I see

teams do it a lot against the play action systems and it can work. It's kind of boom or bust. But I think that with this defense, the front and what the personnel package was, was not the issue. It was really just the fact that they kept doing the same thing over and over again and just never seemed to change it. It was either one look or the other from the secondary and they would line up and show no deception whatsoever. They weren't bringing people up to the line of scrimmage. They weren't loading up the A-gaps or the mug looks where they put everybody up at the line of scrimmage. Some come, some drop back, you know, all that thing. They just didn't do a lot of that, and I think it made it very easy.

And the other thing, too, is Eric Hendricks is a man coverage type of linebacker, in my mind, where a running back comes out of the backfield he'll chase him down a receiver goes across the middle he's running with him a tight end he's on him I I don't know if just dropping him back 10 yards and having him stand there all the time was really the right way to do it uh so I think that system played a big role in that more than maybe whether it was three, four or four, three. And clearly what Fangio does works. It's just that it didn't fit this personnel, I think, and maybe wasn't coached the best.

And also, I think everyone would tell you that is involved with defense. It's really about how much you change things because offenses will figure you out. And how much are you able to change and that's why adonatel does not have a job that if you look at 2018 where they were getting smoked a little bit on the defensive side that rams game where you know goth had a perfect passer rating like they came back and changed after that teams tried to do all the same stuff but it didn't work because they made a lot of changes and that did not happen. And now it's just not really possible to run back the same personnel and try it again because every year is different. Right? So, you know, that's kind of, that's kind of how it

goes where if they could hire a different defensive coordinator, run it back with a four, three, and maybe it fits better and a different system, but they can't do that. So now they have to try to, I think, bring in someone who they believe can be a developer. You know, I think that's one of the things is, can you evaluate the talent you have and improve the talent you have and meld your system to what you have? Those things are easier said than done, but that's what they need to be looking for. So I am running out of not only battery, but also could probably use some more Diet Dr. Pepper. Man, I've just been going, you guys have been the best, just been firing away here with great comments. And I'd like to do this maybe even a couple of times a because it's so much fun uh every time that we do

it so let's let's say this that uh probably like nine o'clock central will be about the time that i'll do it i'm not sure what days monday night seems pretty good to me is today monday um and you know maybe i'll do a couple other times sunday night tuesday whatever we'll do it there's going to be a lot of stuff that's going to happen um as far as uh the off season that we'll have to react to we'll have lots of news well let me get in one more question here from jay could could i see the vikings trading up into the high teens for a quarterback um the chiefs for example moved up from 27 to 10 by giving up 27 91 in a future first yes yes i think that that right there, what you're describing,

if you talked about one scenario that I think that the entire fan base would cheer on, it's probably that it's probably like, just, just go for it. Just take the big swing because I think that there's a lot of fans who have just gotten exhausted of watching the same thing over and over again. So anyway, great, great to do this. I'm going to run, but it was,

it was a lot of fun and we'll definitely do it again soon. So subscribe, keep your eye out. And if you miss one, they're all going to be on the podcast feed. Plus it, by the way, the podcast feed will have lots of interviews with people. Jeremiah Searles, Chris Trapasso from CBS Sports is always with us through draft season. So lots of fun stuff to come as we go along. Make sure you're following along with Purple Insider. And fans only questions, purpleinsider.com or to me, DM on Twitter at Matthew Collar. And thanks, everybody. You guys are the best.

Had a lot of fun. Take care.