Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - What do the divisional round results say about the Vikings?

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Matthew Coller and Paul Hodowanic discuss the divisional round games, including whether the Giants' loss to the Eagles told us something about the relative strength of the Vikings and what would have happened to them in the divisional round. Plus how the 49ers and Eagles were built and what it says about the Vikings' direction, the Vikings' defensive coordinator search and even some Trey Lance future talk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider is presented by Liquid Death, delicious water that's bringing death to plastic. Learn more at liquiddeath.com slash insider. hey everybody welcome into the post-divisional round purple insider podcast matthew collar along with paul hodowanek paul many sundays into the night we have been podcasting and going live on YouTube to react to Vikings games all season long. It's kind of been our thing and now, well, we didn't get to do that this weekend, but we were, you know, we just couldn't stop. So we're going to do the same exact thing. And for this, I've written, you know, some hot route style questions because there is so much to get to from divisional round weekend but why don't we just start with takeaways from today's action uh if you just want

to laugh hysterically at the end of the cowboys game although it wasn't worse than last year they did not run the clock out on themselves but But you have to say about the San Francisco 49ers, an unbelievable story for Brock Purdy. He showed up in this game. And more than anything, D'Amico Ryan's defense, Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers, we're talking about going to a Super Bowl in 2019. Last year, they're within one drive of returning to the Super Bowl.

Here they are one more game away from returning to the Super Bowl. Here they are one more game away from returning to the Super Bowl. They have just put together an incredible run here that even through quarterback injuries, defensively and offensive creativity, the 49ers are just an absolute house of a football team. And now they have a chance to go back to the Super Bowl. I mean, I think that's amazing that the way their defense has stepped up and the way they shut down Dallas today I mean I don't think there's anything else you could say about San Francisco other than like the the thing about oh were they really for real they had an easy schedule down the stretch and all that like they showed up in this playoffs and I'm kind of blown away by what they were able to

do yeah this I mean it's got to be one of the greatest examples of team building that we've ever seen not just roster but coaching staff wise to have Kyle Shanahan there to have D'Amico Ryans back for another year when it looked like maybe he could get a head coaching job he just had the defense firing on all cylinders all year. That was certainly the case today. And then just putting together that collection of skill players to really make your team like quarterback proof. Like I think everyone hopes to get there, but the reality is you really can never do that. And they have the perfect combination with Christian McCaffrey, Debo Samuel, Brandon, I, George Kittle, a decent enough offensive line combined with Kyle Shanahan and everything that he's able to do that you can throw in pretty much any quarterback and Samuel Brandon, I, George Kittle, a decent enough offensive line combined with Kyle Shanahan and

everything that he's able to do that you can throw in pretty much any quarterback. And Brock Purdy did not play well today, but he played well enough given the fact that they have those skill players. They have George Kittle to make an amazing catch there to set up that final touchdown. They have a defense to kind of hold the, hold, you know, the other team down while your offense kind of sputters. So it's one of the most amazing collections of team building. I think I've seen in recent memory that I can think of, and it's, it's more impressive than building a team around Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen, because you have those guys and they make up for so much.

Like they've created a margin of error that like the quarterback has a chance to like around the quarterback, instead of the quarterback kind of increasing your margin of error just by his play alone. It's, it's really astounding. And then on the opposite end, I mean, maybe they knew we were doing a podcast, the Cowboys did. And because we podcast after every lunacy Vikings game that we've had this year, they just needed to throw a weird curve ball into us. Like Zeke Elliott,

snapping the football to Dak Prescott and then getting absolutely blown up by the defensive lineman I don't know how anyone thought that was going to go any different were they just going to let Zeke stand there I think they were going to bowl him over the lateral doesn't even become a lateral Dalton Schultz doesn't go out of bounds or doesn't make a catch he step only brings down one foot in the play before that he's going backwards the play before that he almost went backwards the play before that he almost went backwards just an absolutely dreadful dreadful performance by the Cowboys late in games with game management that's now the second year in a row they've done that so

just some classic classic Cowboys just falling apart uh but also just so much credit to the 49ers to just even be in that position. When you go to Mr. Irrelevant at quarterback, it's not supposed to happen. This is not what is supposed to happen. He's not supposed to be six and oh, or seven and oh, whatever he is in his career. And they've done it. And that's just a testament to everything that team has built around him. Yeah. And when you get to this point and you lose by a single touchdown, I mean, it's hard to say like, wow, Dallas, really? But there were a lot of moments in this game where you had to say, wow, Dallas, really? I mean, the Dak Prescott interception, I mean, really both of the interceptions were just bad decisions by

Dak Prescott. And he's always been a guy that has great regular season statistics. This year, maybe a little down in terms of the interceptions, but has never taken this team deep in the playoffs. And it's very Tony Romo-ish, honestly, because he's a popular quarterback who's very talented and has great regular season numbers and then has not been able to have a whole lot of success in the playoffs. And even though you were right there,

and even though they've had great offenses the last couple of years under Mike McCarthy, still coming up short here against a quarterback who was drafted in the go into the offseason remembering that they scored 12 points and they had some bad picks and they couldn't move the ball. And particularly when Tony Pollard went out, he was really the linchpin to this offense. And now you start to ask those questions that we do in post games. Right. Which is like, man, you remember when you guys paid Zeke Elliott all that money to not be as good as Tony Pollard, right? Like remember when you let Amari Cooper get away, really could have used that second option. And I think what we've seen from San Francisco and Cincinnati is a good example. We'll get to that. We've got some questions about some of the other games is that having multiple wide receivers is just

such a big deal when it gets to the playoffs that San Francisco has about four guys that can do so much. And you know what? I have to go back on the Christian McCaffrey trade that I thought was not going to work out for them and say, I guess it did because he's such a good receiving option for them. He ran powerfully in this game when they needed him to, but you can throw the ball to McCaffrey, to Kittle, to IU, to Samuel. There's just too many guys to stop for these defenses that even Brock Purdy, an inexperienced seventh round pick, who I think does have a lot of talent, by the way, and has some playmaking ability. He's not just like stand back there and

completely dink or dunk, but it gives him so much to work with. And you go to the other side and it's CD lamb is unbelievable. The catch he made down the sideline was absurd, but there were too many times where San Francisco could just key in on CD lamb and and pressure dak prescott slow down zeke elliott on the ground and they didn't really have a counter punch in this game so it is a little bit of like defense doesn't exactly win championships but sometimes defense wins playoff games and you probably need your defense to play unbelievable football as cincinnati's did too in one or two playoff games if you're going to go deep and you know the most complete teams now are the ones that advance and I also had just another overarching thought Paul that last year when two number four seeds went to the Super Bowl I think even I reacted

to that and said do we have like a more random league now than we've ever had before? And when you watch this season, we had more close games than we ever had before. And many of them were played by the Minnesota Vikings. But now you look at who's left like, okay, all right, well, maybe that's not the case because the most complete teams, I mean, even Buffalo, and I know I'm jumping all over the place a little bit, but even Buffalo, they had their weaknesses. And we saw it throughout the season that they had injuries on defense and were not perfect when it came to getting after the passer. And their offensive line wasn't perfect. And once again, the opponent was able to key in on one wide receiver, Stefan Diggs, who got pretty upset at the end of that game maybe sensing that they had missed their shot last

year when they had the 13 seconds thing which also speaks to how difficult it is to keep winning windows open even when you have a great quarterback so i think that if we were just going to take some sort of overall lesson from this is that all season long we talk about well this team you know they're pretty strong at this and pretty weak at this and everything else. And, oh, this team lost this week. They must not be as good as we think they are. But then we get to the end and we look at these teams. Tell me there's a better collection of top to bottom complete teams.

I mean, Cincinnati did it all today. They ran the ball. They sacked Josh Allen. They covered well. They did everything. So I think that's what it is to me is that it always ends up being who has the most complete teams at the end. And they're the ones that have the edge and they're the ones that are going to play for a chance to go to the Super Bowl. Right. I mean, and you saw one of the like the the least and the least complete team was probably the Giants.

And you just saw them get immediately exposed. They were ranked, I think, 29th in the NFL in rush defense. And oh, boy, did the Eagles take advantage of that? And that's what you just talk about is you get deeper and deeper into the playoffs. Like your smallest of margins of error, the the the just tiny weaknesses hit you the hardest at this point. And so the Vikings weren't able to expose that against the giants, but the Eagles certainly were. And they just did it over and over and over and over and over and over

again. I think Jalen Hurts only had what, like 150 passing yards and they put up 38 points. Like they did that because they saw the weakness and they said you can't stop it there's no sense in us starting to throw the ball we're just going to keep hitting you where it hurts and they did that in this game and like in this cowboys 49ers game it was just two really really good defenses going blow for blow and surprisingly the quarterback's deck prescott flinched first he had the turnover which, which a couple turnovers. One may not have been his fault. One certainly was.

And then in that last drive, just had a bad, I mean, second to last drive. I don't know if I really count that last drive as a final drive, but he almost throws a pick six on that first play of that second to last drive. The second play, he misses an open receiver on a post route. And then that third play, he gets sacked, but he's just holding on to the ball forever and ever and ever. And so he did not play well at all today. They had a 41% success rate passing the ball,

27% averaging first downs on their pass plays. Just very, very dreadful numbers. Just not a good performance by him at all. And so you just see Dak kind of struggled at different points this year. And it's just the playoffs just expose those weaknesses better than any other team or like at any other point of the season, that's when your weaknesses really just get weeded out. And that certainly happened throughout the day today and through yesterday.

And you're right. You're left with the teams that have immense, immense strengths, but I would argue just have the least amount of flaws. And that's really what it comes down to at this point in the year. And there's another point to be made here. If you're looking at who's playing in championship weekend and comparing it to where the Minnesota Vikings stand, that you have to look at the quarterback situations. Okay. One of the teams has maybe the greatest quarterback in the history of the NFL. How about this?

Five straight championship trips for Patrick Mahomes. Do you know how many times the Minnesota Vikings have been to championship weekend since 1980? Is the answer five? I mean, holy cow. So, all right, put that aside, right? They drafted the best quarterback ever he can do no wrong and Tyreek Hill went and played for another team his best wide receiver it doesn't matter he just found other wide receivers oh they ripped his leg off that doesn't matter either

just incredible and now he's going to play through a high ankle sprain which is almost impossible for any other position except for quarterback but he's going to hobble around and give it a shot. And I wouldn't be surprised if he finds a way to win. So he's a freak. He's an alien. You can put him aside. You can't just say, Hey, other teams go get my homes. Cause that's once in a generation. However, Jalen hurts was a second round draft pick who the Philadelphia Eagles brilliantly stacked draft capital around, made a great trade for an elite wide receiver, drafted a very good wide receiver, stacked up the offensive line, stacked up the defensive line, and they are probably the most complete team, if it's not San Francisco, around a quarterback on a rookie contract. San Francisco. Now it's not

this quarterback that they expected to be here. Similarly to Nick Foles with Philadelphia and Carson Wentz, but it was Trey Lance. And then Jimmy Garoppolo had to take a pay cut for them to be able to fit everything they wanted under the salary cap. And so we've got rookie quarterback contracts abound. And of course, Joe Burrow, who also might be here for another 10 straight seasons. He's that good. But again, Trey Hendrickson didn't come from nowhere. DJ Reeder didn't come from nowhere. They also drafted a wide receiver.

If you remember the discussions about, well, should they draft a tackle? Because you got to protect the quarterback. They played with three backup offensive linemen and still found a way, in part because people were open in those quick passes to Jamar Chase, who's one of the best players with the football in his hand. And that's another observation I had this weekend too, that quick passing game just dominated. I mean, the teams that passed well on short and quick throws and got yards after catch. Jamar Chase, Debo Samuel, George Kittle, Travis Kelsey, like these guys who were able to succeed with continual screens and slants and underneath stuff, they had the most success.

I think one of the problems with Buffalo was that they relied so much on deep balls all the time that playing in the snow was not advantageous. They also don't have a great running game to be able to grind out even if they had been ahead, but they really relied on a lot of those deep shots. And it seems to me like teams that were consistently succeeding on short throws and then every once in a while going downfield were the teams that had success. And this does tie back into the Vikings who were just horrific for most of the year when it came to the screen game in particular. So we saw a lot of that. But I do have hot route style questions here for us. And maybe we can, it's a little out of order on your list, Paul,ants. Do you buy into the idea that that means something about the Vikings, that they were never legit, and that if you lost to the Giants and that team got crushed by the Eagles, that's further evidence,

because I saw a ton of tweets that said this, further evidence of the Vikings never really being a contender. So now that we've seen everyone play, would you add that into the pile? Would you say that about the Vikings after having seen this, that they were never really a contender? Or do you think that that's unfair? I don't think it's completely unfair. I mean, I think you look at the Eagles-Giants game,

the Giants were just outclassed, plain and simple and that was a very competitive matchup between the giants and the vikings so just from a talent perspective from a holistic like is your team well-rounded enough the giants certainly weren't and the vikings were you know a very similar team to the giants in a lot of respects in terms of having one side of the ball in certain areas of the ball or certain areas of your defense and your offense that just don't work. That's a similar trait that the Giants share. Now, sometimes you just get bad matchups, and some of these things are just matchup-based,

and I certainly think the Giants didn't match up very well at all against the Eagles, so I think that can make it look worse. But I think there is some truth to that. And then you go to this Cowboys and 49ers game, and you just watch the way that those two defenses played and you then stack up what we saw week in and week out with the Vikings defense. And you say, if the Vikings were forced to play a low scoring game where they had to

just muster stop after stop after stop, they weren't going to do that against certainly against a 49ers team with all those weapons, probably not against a Dallas team with Tony Pollard if he was healthy with CD lamb like I think you just look at some of these other teams and what required them to win. And you say I don't think the Vikings had those certain characteristics. Now, I think maybe we could have seen that coming regardless of this Giants game I mean they got blown out by the Eagles in the regular season, I got blown out by the Cowboys in the regular season. So I don't think it needed, didn't need to look far to look at reasons why they couldn't stack up against some of these teams. But I think the fact that the Giants got absolutely destroyed, they looked like they should not, they didn't belong on the same field as the Philadelphia Eagles. Like I can't, I can't say it means nothing, but I, it's not a one-to-one. That's exactly how the game would have gone if the Vikings played that game.

Like, that's where it takes a step too far, and you start looking at matchups and all the different things and ways things can get exposed. But I think it's hard not to look at that game and say, man, these teams were just better than the Vikings flat out. I think maybe the Giants game could have gone either way, but I don't think they're winning one of these games, And I think you saw that by the way, all these teams played this week. Folks, it is time once again, for us to have a discussion about liquid death. Now, here's the thing. My wife has been one of those people for a really long time that has carried

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it wasn't just weak it was obliterated it was nothing there was there was no chain connection there with the vikings defense and that was the daniel j Jones that I had in my head before he played in front of me and looked amazing several times. And I spent the entire week reading about how Daniel Jones was suddenly a different person. And he was amazing now. And he's a $40 million quarterback now. And I kept thinking, are you sure you know who he played? Because his best games came against the Vikings defense and against the Indianapolis Colts, who, you know, didn't have a horrendous defense, but they were going to give you the football a bunch of times

because they were so bad on offense. And it wasn't that hard to have a really good day against the Indianapolis Colts on offense. I think that it was funny. They gave up like way more points than were expected. That's probably because they just had, you always have the ball on offense against that Colts team. And when Daniel Jones played anybody else, even during the regular season, it wasn't all that impressive, which really showed you it was the 28th ranked defense, but it might as well have

been 32nd. And I went back and did this comparison. I looked in Vikings history because someone said, I've been watching since the seventies and that's the worst defense for the Vikings I've ever seen in my life. There was one time where they ranked 32nd in points and 31st in yards, but their quarterback schedule was way harder. Like it is legitimately for a lot of Vikings fans, maybe the worst defense that they've seen in their entire lives that would be very hard to convince me that they would have gone to San Francisco and slowed down Debo Samuel or Brandon Ayuk or that they could have beaten anybody else and when you see defensively what San Francisco did to the offense of Dallas well that

Dallas offense was better overall than the Vikings and the Vikings had a good offense, but I would say Dallas's was better throughout the season. Both of them lean pretty much on one wide receiver. Both of them have inconsistencies, both take sacks and have interceptions. Would you have been surprised had the Vikings gone out to San Francisco and scored 12 points? Like, of course not. That's probably what I would have predicted. I don't think that it says anything we didn't already know, which was that the Giants weren't that good of a team. And if you were legit, you should beat them at home for sure. When the Vikings drew the Giants matchup, it's why I picked the Vikings to win because I thought

like, oh, well, that Giants team, they're not all that good. And then Philadelphia just blew past them. So I think that there's like an intermediate good level that the Vikings were. And then there's the, this team is a bus that is about to plow through ahead of anybody that's in front of them. And that's the teams that are now playing in championship weekend. This is kind of justice really like these are the best put together football teams and this is what i like about it actually the matchup is these teams have made a ton of smart decisions and they're getting rewarded for them they've drafted well they've built their rosters well it's not like somebody had something fluky and weird happen and then oh they're in the NFC championship game

and it's never really legit like these teams earned it through building complete rosters so I didn't think anything different about the Vikings with the fact that the Giants got crushed in Philadelphia probably the outside world that had been keeping maybe like a little bit of an eye on the Vikings and had seen the point differential or heard this, that, or the other thing, then they were like, oh, wow. Okay. So that means the Vikings were basically equals with that team or less. That means they were never really that good to begin with. But for us who have been watching it and covering it, we knew the weaknesses of the Vikings. And I think that no matter what happened, they were not getting past this divisional round. I don't think that makes anybody feel any better about this whole thing, but you probably couldn't feel

worse. Maybe the fact that it was 38 to seven, though, I, they made the fact that it was 38 to seven probably didn't make people feel worse. And I noticed that Eagles fans, they didn't miss that one. They, they took notice of that on the internet. Yeah, I mean, you'd think they'd just be the Giants. That's a rival. You don't have to come for the Vikings fans five years later. No, they still found time to throw a little salt in that wound. I think, yeah, the fact that it was 38-7 certainly doesn't make you feel good. And I think just generally, week after week, I've started to kind of realize,

I think midway through the season, that Bills win we wanted to treat as some like marker that they were a contender and I think that was kind of a smokescreen I think honestly the games that told us whether they're not were contenders or not were was the Cowboys game it was the Eagles game it was the Lions game when the Lions started to play well it was the Packers game like the Bills game was really the only one against a team that you kind of just put up as a playoff caliber team where you go hey like that was a really good win that was super impressive like they they took down a really good team and I think that kind of clouded maybe the national focus on them or even our focus on them for a while and saying you win win this game, you're a contender. I think the more we look at it, that was, you know,

one of many regular season games that can kind of go either way. And a lot of fluky things happened. And I think now we're seeing week after week. And I think this Giants Eagles game just reinforces. They were never quite that team and they were closer to the team. They consistently were against some of those top teams, which was constantly losing and coming up short. And I think that was just even more reinforced this week. Okay. Before I get to

my next question, just a couple of the comments. Nick is funny saying that the Vikings should hire back at Donatello to fire him again. Just, just after watching all of this, like, no, you're fired again. It was really that bad. Derek mentions the physicality of the teams. I would say that's absolutely true. And the, we can't forget really the interior of the offensive line for the Vikings, which did cause the final play. And you could also bring up mobility of quarterbacks, which is brought up by Derek as well. Noticable that even when Brock Purdy is asked to move a little, he can when Joe Burrow needed to run for a first down, he did like,

these aren't running quarterbacks, but on the last play that's going to stick with everyone forever, the fourth and eight with Kirk cousins, it's like, yeah, well, during a playoff game, a lot of times someone breaks through the offensive line, right? And you have to make a play around that and it's not to say that he should have done this or that on that specific play it's just that they allow a player like Dexter Lawrence to just wreck their day and who are you going to

face in the playoffs physical teams that have freak pass rushers that are going to cause problems and so either you need to be able to block them up like crazy, or you need a quarterback who's able to do something around them and block them up like crazy. And mobile quarterback are two things that did not happen. And it should be a consideration for the future when you're talking about the quarterback position that every one of these games you watch,

the quarterback has to make a mobile play somewhere unless you basically have the greatest offensive line of all time. Willie mentions the schedule for the next year of the Vikings, and we'll have plenty of time in the offseason to get to it. But when you go first place, you play first place, and it could be very difficult for them next season. So the next question I have could be, yeah, it could be very difficult for them next season. So the next question I have for you, Paul is who do you think will be back to divisional weekend next year and

who will not be back? Yeah, I went back into just the last couple of years to see how many teams had made it back. Uh, this year, four teams had made it back three in the AFC one in the NFC two years ago, five teams had made it back. So it AFC one in the NFC two years ago five teams had made it back so it's always kind of I mean I can't say always the last two years it's been about 50 50 give or take so I generally I think three teams in the AFC will be back it's you're gonna have to tell me something weird happened if Patrick Mahomes the way Joe Burrow played today and Josh Allen aren't back there uh and so that's hard to predict because they could be going against each other in the first round so that's obviously something you

have to consider but I think all those teams for the foreseeable future uh just have to be penciled in there until they prove to me that they're not and so I think think, you know, the Chiefs obviously have Patrick Mahomes. They have a stranglehold on that division. As far as I'm concerned, I think the Bills and Bengals are right there with them too. And then the NFC is where it gets a little trickier. I think in my head, I went to two, just the Eagles and the 49ers.

I think the Cowboys will probably have a similar roster to what they had last year, but they're likely going, I'm, I'm very high on the Eagles this year and into the future with more picks and just a lot of room to work with. Like, I think they're going to win the division. So that requires Dallas to win a road playoff game against someone to get back there. Uh, and so, and then the giants, I just, I don't know. I, I, I can't imagine they're there again in a year. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I, if I'm a

betting man, I say someone else is in there somewhere. So I go five again this year, but the one team I wouldn't be surprised, and this is Hot Routes. This is the first Hot Routes we've done in a while. So I have to bring a hot take. I think the Bills, I don't know. If I was going to pick an AFC team,

it would be the Bills because really their window that they set up was for this last two years. And it's kind of remarkable. I went through the cap space today in terms of how much they had committed this year and how much they had committed later. It's stark how much they put forward for this season. Josh Allen's contract, I think, let's see, I have it up here. He counted $16 million against the cap. That was 7% of their cap. Next year, $40 million. 17% of their cap is Josh Allen. Diggs' cap number goes up, I think, like $9 million

from $11 million against the cap this year to $20 million next year. Von Miller, their big signing, goes from $5 million, that's all he counted against the cap this year, to $18 million next year. Deion Dawkins, 7 million to 14 million. He's already got two void years on his contract, so you can't keep adding void years there. Matt Milano, 5 million to 13 million.

He has void years. It's just they structured this because Josh Allen, this was kind of the last usable year of Josh Allen's rookie contract and the flexibility that that big time contract allowed them. And now they push it back and they clearly have some holes they need to figure out. I think they could benefit from another wide receiver after what we saw in terms of the pass catchers, or at least another weapon that they can use in the passing game or in the

running game. They still need some help along the defense and some of that'll just be getting healthy. But if I'm looking at one of those teams, that's a surprise, especially in the AFC that you're not expecting, it might be that Billills team because they really pushed all their chips forward. And it's the second year in a row that I think a lot of people entered the playoffs or at

least midway through the season and thought that's the best AFC team. And neither year they made it out of the divisional round. They did not make it to the divisional round the last two years with that, with the last of Allen's flexibility. So if I was going to put one team that I think a lot of people expect to be back there to not be back there. I think it might be the Buffalo bills. And that's weird with Josh Allen to say with Josh Allen, but I think just the reality is their margin of error gets so much,

so much slimmer now with the contracts that they have to work with. And Josh Allen can certainly still fit through that, you know, that window of contention. It's still open. It's always going to be open with them there, but it got, it closed a little bit today just because of the flexibility that they lose. And so I think that's an under-the-radar one. No, I agree with you. And, you know, you could see some other teams taking a big step in the AFC ahead. Cleveland is one of them with a full year of Deshaun Watson.

I don't think any of us want to see that, but that's the reality of it. There's, I mean, Miami, if they stay healthy is a pretty darn good roster and they just got kind of screwed over by the quarterback injuries, but they almost beat Buffalo. And so they're coming New England. I think it's a bunch of money off the books. They'll get an offensive coordinator who knows what he's doing. The jets are going to move heaven and earth to get a better quarterback and look at that roster. I think it does get more difficult for Buffalo and when I look at Jacksonville I also look at hey that team's going to be right there too because Trevor Lawrence year three like that's when a lot of these quarterbacks take that big step forward and we saw that in the second half

of the season look at their division though would you be surprised if they won 12 games next year or 13 games if Trevor Lawrence is more consistent on a week in and week out basis as he continues to progress that AFC. I mean, it reminds me a lot and I'm actually happy about this because you know what? As a as an old now, I wish good things on the youth. I don't wish bad things. I don't understand everything that the youth does. I don't get tick that the youth does. I don't get TikTok or whatever. But, you know, the quarterbacks that they get to watch is very similar to my upbringing, which was Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Brett Favre, like year after year, them going to the NFC playoffs and the AFC, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino.

And then the next generation after that with Brady, Roethlisberger, Manning like every year year in and year out and then now they get Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen still belongs in this conversation but we're going to find out how much and I'm not taking anything away from him I thought he gave everything he had they didn't run the ball they didn't catch the ball they didn't block very well for him today. But I think that there are some weaknesses in Josh Allen's game. And when you compare him to Burrow and you compare him to Mahomes, it's just that little slight behind. And I saw a Bills fan on Twitter say like, is he the Phillip Rivers of the future? Where like, I just mentioned those three guys who went every year and there was Phillip rivers just behind them. And remember when Phillip rivers wasn't a rookie anymore,

and he lost some of that talent around him. They were a lot of eight and eight, nine and seven type seasons until they were years later able to build it up. And I think that that's every bills fans. Biggest fear is that they did miss their window that 21 team. I mean, you're going to struggle to find a more complete team than 2021 Bills. One of the top defenses in the league, if not number one, they had multiple receivers instead of the ghost of Cole Beasley. It was actual Cole Beasley. It was Emmanuel Sanders is on that team.

And Gabe Davis is the fourth receiver instead of the second receiver. And their offensive line was better. is on that team and Gabe Davis is the fourth receiver instead of the second receiver and their offensive line was better and now and they kind of had those injuries on defense as well Trey White at one time was Darrell Revis and then now he's not because he went through some injuries and he's not the same guy so that Buffalo team I think has to be looking at their future wondering are we going to be a Super Bowl contender or just a good team because they're not going to be horrible with Josh Allen but it gets way harder from here with the route as far as teams that won't be back so I think Jacksonville Kansas City and Cincinnati

I think they all should be there with somebody else I don't know who and the NFC Dallas is a tough one because these last two years I mean they had one of the best offenses in the league you can repeat that year in and year out but I don't know like that's another team where every year you're not quite sure like is is it enough with Dak are they going to keep McCarthy or does Jerry Jones lose it and fire Mike McCarthy because it's another no-show against San. That's kind of their kryptonite. I'd be surprised if that ends up happening, but I also wouldn't be shocked if they're not back. Cause they're a team that kind of lives on the edge, sort of like the Vikings in

some ways where they've been good for a long time, but every time they sort of edge toward greatness, they have one of these big meltdowns, San Francisco, hard to say. I mean, if Brock Purdy's their quarterback and we'll get to the Trey Lance thing, they move Trey Lance, Jimmy Garoppolo's off the books. They're going to have to sign Bosa, but his contract won't kick in for another year or two. I mean, they could get better. Philadelphia can get better. How are those teams not going to end up back in this weekend? So I think the Giants and the Cowboys could be swapped out with other teams. But as far as the 49ers and Eagles, I mean, there's a good chance that a lot of the teams from this year end up being back. But let's talk about the Trey Lance

thing while we're on the discussion. So there's a report from Michael Silver, which is still, I mean, way premature, of course. I mean, what are we talking about here? How do you know? The San Francisco 49ers were reportedly going to draft Mac Jones. Everybody was reporting, they're going to take Mac Jones. They're going to take Mac Jones. And they just don't leak stuff. So they took Trey Lance and surprised everybody. No one knew when they were going to do that. So after that, I haven't believed any insiders on San Francisco

because they were so wrong about Mac Jones. But Michael Silver says that they're good with Brock Purdy going forward. When you consider his price, you totally understand. And the fact that he really operates that offense well and you can win with him. But if they're trading Trey Lance, should the Minnesota Vikings be interested in trying to acquire Trey Lance? I think you have to kick the tires for sure. I mean, this is the age old question that we debate every year about Kirk Cousins, but I think Trey Lance still has several years of that rookie deal. That's important in this conversation because that's freeing up.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't have Trey Lance's cap number right in front of me, but I assume that's freeing up at least, you know, $20 million per year. That's already gets the Vikings in their cap situation back down to basically even, and they've got some pretty obvious cuts that might be coming that it frees up a ton more space to where now you are going and you're adding out, you're adding, you know, a lot of good players to put around trey lance in that offense and so i think we're two years removed from this guy being the third overall pick he gets hurt he doesn't play you know the year before he's not

playing like it's just we we have like no tape on this guy to know whether he's a long-term solution and he had even less almost pretty much less tape at ndsu he barely played any games there like he's a long-term solution and he had even less almost pretty much less tape at ndsu he barely played any games there like he's so young and inexperienced and so i think that can be used against him and say well you know he doesn't have the full rookie deal so are you really going to get the best trey lance at this price but i think this offseason is i think really when the vikings are going to have to start considering even if they want to keep kirk cousins for the next year or two a life after kirk cousins because he is now one of the oldest starting quarterbacks in the NFL. And he has still been, you know, holding up well in terms of injuries, but you just,

at this point, you have to at least start planning contingencies of how this is going to work. And so I think it can be accelerated or slowed down based on the scenarios that are presented to you. And if Trey Lance is presented to you, that's one where you maybe speed up your transition plan, because I think you certainly have to look at it. You have to see what their price is because it does lower your cap for a considerable amount of years or for three years. And then you have kind of the, whatever you attach to his extension,

if he played well enough to have an extension, you can kind of manipulate the first year or two to bring down the cap. So that's a lot of years of cap flexibility for a team. And it instantly kind of resets your timeline and your clock right now. As you're trying to right now, you're pushing towards the end of Kirk Cousins prime. You're trying to get out what you can of that. This resets that quite significantly. So I think you look at it.

You you're probably not the most desperate team to go after him, which probably would make it then you're not going to be the team that gets him. But I think to not kick the tires is just not doing your job right. And the Vikings only extended Kirk last year for one year for a reason. They weren't fully bought in on him as the long-term solution. And I think after you lose in the first round, that has to be the mindset. That doesn't mean you have to get rid of him. It just means you have to consider it. And so I think Trey Lance should just be one of several considerations they make. Yeah, there's a few things to talk about here. One is the Trey Lance discussion. And over the years, we've had many of these that falls into the theoretical versus realistic. And you know,

another quarterback, and I'm not patting myself on the back, but another quarterback who this came up with was Lamar Jackson in 2018, where we had the discussion like, should they just draft him anyway instead of Mike Hughes? Because the contract for Kirk was short and Lamar Jackson was a developmental quarterback. Totally unrealistic. It was never going to happen after they just signed this huge quarterback contract. But it would have made sense in theory. Jalen Hurts was another guy where they had a ton of needs.

And so they had to draft a receiver. They had to draft a corner, but Jalen Hurts was a discussion where like, well, shouldn't they just pick the quarterback anyway? And the Eagles actually went for it, took a ton of heat for it. And now here they are because of that rookie contract and Hurts is a hit, like he's a good player um but still like you you never know who's going to be a hit or who's going to be a miss but theoretically it made a lot of sense and i think that with this discussion it feels the same way where it's like theoretically it makes a lot of sense to trade away kirk cousins and to try to acquire trey lance or to just draft someone to trade up to draft someone,

those things make a lot of sense. But is it actually going to happen? Is it realistic? And that's where it feels like it's not. But let me throw this out to you because you mentioned his age. And he's been very durable. So I'm not saying this is like a guarantee this happens. But similar quarterbacks to him, Russell Wilson and Matthew Stafford are about the same age,

and you kind of saw what happened. Matt Ryan went 4-12 in his age 35 season. Joe Flacco was a Jet by age 35. Donovan McNabb was a Viking. Drew Bledsoe and Jay Cutler were retired. And these are all quarterbacks who I would say are somewhat in that category of cousins of not elite, elite, elite. And Russell Wilson just signed last year, a deal worth 124 million guaranteed and 245 million overall. And if you're Kirk coming off a 13 win season, why are you not asking for that deal?

I mean, I think you have to, right. And, you know, I looked up the age 35 quarterbacks after Rich Gannon did it. I mean, everyone knows Rich Gannon after he won a bunch of games in 2002 at age 37. I looked at all the other quarterbacks after who won 11 or more games after the age of 35. And it's Peyton Manning, Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, Carson Palmer, Brett Favre, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning. And if you extend the sample size a little bit, you get Trent Green. You had a 10 win season. I mean, those are the legends of the game. So when you sign someone to an extension, it's looking toward the future. And so if they sign Cous cousins toward the future, they are saying that that history, even with similar quarterbacks, we don't care about that history. It's going to be different

with us. That, and that's, that's a very big risk. I think anytime you try to buck history, but it doesn't have to be Trey Lance in my mind. I don't know that they could put the top offer together after trading a second round pick for TJ Hawkinson. I mean, you're having to give up this year's first, probably next year's first, because there's so many teams you'd love to say like, Oh, we'll just trade this or that. The other thing too, is that Trey Lance has used two years of his rookie contract. That's the goal right there. Is Trey Lance that good? I don't know. We've barely seen him. But I know that the rookie contract is gold. I know that his mobility and his arm strength are gold and that he

is a playmaker from when we've seen him in a small sample size. But you only get really two or three of those cheap seasons. So if you're going to do it, those are the years that you have to be able to stack up. Do you have enough to stack up very quickly around that player to be good enough to compete for a Superbowl? I mean, I think that's not impossible when you have Derrissaw and Jefferson, I wouldn't say it is, but there is a lot of work to do on the roster in a very short period of time. And if you miss that window, well, then you end up in Baker Mayfield land with Cleveland, where you're just like, I guess we just wasted the whole rookie contract

and we never really knew what to do with them. I would theoretically be in favor of that option because it's all about looking forward instead of looking to the past. But I would be absolutely stunned and impressed if they even considered something like that, because you can just hear the conversations. Wait, we just won 13 games. Why are we doing this? Why are we, why are we looking toward the future? That would be very surprising.

Yeah. I think, you know, I think the people that aren't in favor of Trey Lance and say, well, Vikings just draft a quarterback where you're at. I mean, they aren't drafting someone with the talent of Trey Lance at where they're at in this draft and to get high enough in a future draft will require the bottom to fall out from under Kirk cousins. And then you enter a spot of desperation of, of like sheer desperation that everyone around the league knows, you know, you need a quarterback

and that's when you maybe reach on a guy that you don't think you like it is good enough and so it's it's one of two options you either take a back end of the first round or a middle round guy and you want that to be your best outcome but history shows that's not a good outcome at all or you just wait until you're bad enough. And, but that's going to be when Kirk, that's going to be when his age finally hits him. And then you're just operating from a, a spot of desperation and like not at a spot of strength. Like you are, you're chasing it. And at that point, the coaching staff and the GM has just gone through a bad season. Like they're going to be pushing it. So it's better to try to make these moves. If you can proactively ahead

of schedule, like you mentioned with Jalen hurts and you got to try to do something like that. And so that's where the Trey Lance of it all comes in and you say, well, this is a guy with the immense talent where his value may be a little bit lower than expected just because of the injury and a couple of the years off that rookie deal kind of, you know, unusable to you at this point, that's when you want to try to jump on it. It's just, it's been my kind of comment about Cousins and the Viking situation at all points. Like Cousins provides you a level of security where you're never going to be the most desperate team. That's just willing to throw three first round picks at a problem because you look at it and say, okay, but is it truly worth three first round

picks? It might not be when you have Kirk Cousins because Kirk Cousins is good enough to do something for you. And so it just, there's so many more teams. There's probably a dozen more teams that are gonna be more desperate for a quarterback than the Vikings. And it's going to be those teams that throw that extra first round pick that throw the, those extra two first round picks that the Vikings just aren't able to offer. So if that happens to Lance and that's probably not where they're going to go, they have to

try to take advantage of maybe one of these assets that's a little diminished and maybe they shouldn't be. And that's kind of where, you know, you expect Kweisi or, or Kweisi was to be the guy that can come in and kind of try to find those, you know, those intricacies and those, you know, those chinks in the armor. So as far as the, uh, the comment section goes kofi asks so can we fix the defense before we talk about the future at quarterback those two things are tied together that's the problem is that do you think if they had 30 more million dollars this year they could have had a better defense i tend to think that you wouldn't have gotten chandon sullivan and jordan hicks that you would have gotten better players like that's the whole point of this. Like, I don't know if Trey Lance is good.

You don't know if Trey Lance is good. We've seen quarterbacks in the past take a big step forward, but what usually goes along with a big step forward? It's usually when the team builds around them. Like Jacksonville, Urban Meyer was a laughingstock, but Jacksonville also spent huge money this off season to put around their rookie quarterback. And with every contract they signed, what did we see from all the analysts? Well, Jacksonville spent too much on that receiver.

They spent too much on that tight end, too much on that defensive player. And yet they had a really good team because it usually does take overpaying and free agency to get these players because there's always going to be a Chicago Bears out there next year that has a ton of cap space. So if you want to fix one side of the ball through signing players, which is basically what they're going to have to do if they're going to do it anytime soon, because they haven't drafted well. And we don't even know if next year's draft class, if anyone is going to be a player, we've seen a tiny bit of Asamoah, which I've liked. And we don't know about scene. We don't know about booth. We don't know about

a Caleb Evans. All those guys had major injuries, not just like bumps and bruises, but out for the year type of future in jeopardy type of injuries for all three of those guys. So it is a bear cupboard on defense with so many positions to replace. It's not entirely clear Zedaria Smith's future. It's not entirely clear Daniil Hunter's. And I saw, of course, why not? Zedaria Smith like cleared out his Instagram or something. I don't know if that's anything, but they can cut Zedaria Smith if they want. If they think that his knee is not going to recover, the one that held him from getting basically any sacks in the second half of the season, and he kept telling us he was fine, but he never really looked fine. So if they're looking at his

health saying we got the best we could out of him, he's going to be moved. I mean, you're talking about so many players that you need to replace on the defensive side. You're not doing it by creating seven more million by extending Kirk Cousins. You're really only doing that if you can create a huge amount of cap space, then you can start to do that. Lemmy wants the Vikings to draft a quarterback to develop him. Now, you know, the Brock Purdy thing is a complete outlier. We've seen it many times where, I mean, teams have drafted dozens and dozens of mid to late round picks. If you're going to do it, draft one in the first round. You don't have to look that far. Look at the AFC, look at these free quarterbacks.

Almost all of them came from the first round. The Purdy thing is a total aberration. And you know, at one point, sort of funny that Purdy was being talked about as a first round pick at one point, and then didn't have great numbers in his last year and just sort of fell out of the conversation and ends up at the back of the draft because teams don't like to draft these guys in the middle rounds. But even then, it is a complete aberration with one of the best teams top to bottom that I remember for a long time. I mean, this team is so good.

Those are teams like you used to see before free. I mean, this team is so good. Those are teams like you used to see before free agency that have every single position is really good. I don't know how they've done it, but I mean, that's what he's got around him. That's going to be hard to do for just about anyone. Normally it has to be in the first round that you take somebody. So, I mean, that's, that is the fundamental question for the Vikings, what they're going to do. But as far as a theoretical conversation about Trey Lance, you know, last year they considered Deshaun Watson. They considered trade options for cousins. And if you took away that number 13, and really it's kind of 12, but if you looked at the number 13, took that away,

13 wins, take that away. And you, but I can give you every bit of information about the Vikings season, their point differential, their offensive rankings, defensive rankings, everything else. Would you have thought the season was different? Like it was different in that those wins were really fun for the fans. But when you're judging how good can you be going forward, I just, I feel like you need to consider all the things that said who you really were as a team. And then there's another part of it.

You know, Skull Vikings brings this up in the comment section about Justin Jefferson. I think you can look at this either way. And I'd love your opinion on this, Paul, just while we're going down this road. And I do have another question about the playoffs, but like, while we're going down this road, do you think think and i have no way of knowing this like would justin jefferson rather see them extend kirk so he knows who his quarterback is going forward or does he look at a joe burrow his best friend or whatever and just be like i don't know man he threw it into double coverage in the biggest moments in

that game he looked at his star receiver and i know it wasn't a catch, which we could angrily rant about all day. This whole thing where if the ball moves the tiniest little bit as the guy's going to the ground, it's just bogus. It's just bogus. The Vikings lost some catches on this this year. KJ Osborne had one against the Colts that was taken back. It's totally bogus. The ball should be allowed to move if the guy holds it. You should know a catch, for goodness sake. But that's not the point. When I watched that play, what I saw was Joe Burrow throwing into double coverage to his best receiver. And I had to think, I know Justin's watching this somewhere, but that's not to say that he doesn't like Kirk or whatever, because he's put up such huge numbers. He has to play into this though, with his situation and signing

a contract extension, they have to know where he stands and his opinion of what they're going to do at quarterback as well. Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's really like, what is Justin Jefferson looking at? Is he, is he solely focused on having success next season or does he have kind of a long-term view of this? because we know historically like coaches players they want to win the football game when they're out there they want whatever gives us the best chance to win this week that's what we want to do it's it's normally for fans and the general manager and the management to decide what's better two three four years down the line like most likely if the Vikings move on from Kirk Cousins the option they have behind

center next season isn't better than Kirk Cousins as a player. It's just, that's the likelihood. And so that probably means less catches for Justin Jefferson, maybe less yards, less touchdowns, maybe a little bit less team success for this year. But what it might mean is better success long-term, more sustainable success. But he's watching like two of his best friends from college, Joe Burrow and Jamar Chase, just continually go to the playoffs year in and year out. Like there's probably if I was in that spot, like only so much patience I have for we should be in those games right away. So it's really like, where is your time horizon looking at? And even though it could get better down the line, like you could end up in QB purgatory, although I'd argue you might already be in QB purgatory, but it's, it's,

it's really kind of how he views it and what kind of approach he wants to take. Is that a short-term approach that a long-term approach, because we know the Vikings are probably going to give him whatever he wants in free agency. It's just up for him to sign it. And the history of, you know, rookie wide receivers is he's going to sign that more, more than likely. But if anyone was ever in a position to say, nah, I'm good. I'm going to try to play this out. It's probably someone like Justin Jefferson. So you certainly need to make sure he's on board with whatever move you make, because he is the most important person in that franchise bar none.

So you got to make sure he's on board with whatever it is. It's just, it's hard to ask a player to, to take the long-term vision on this because they're only promised so many seasons, so many seasons in their prime, so many healthy seasons. They want to win right away all the time. And so you move on from Kirk, that probably it means at least, you know, a year, maybe two years where you're not winning 13 games. Yeah. Todd in the comments says he would rather see us draft a young quarterback i promise that um i think that there's just moments that are going to stick with them when it comes to not

being a playmaker and you can't tell jefferson oh you had x number of catches so you should be happy like i think that he's going to want to win and if he sees this locker room completely come apart they're a different team they're not as good next year i mean i i know that they're trying to get him to sign right now, but if he doesn't sign right now and says, I want to see what you guys are going to bring in the future, then it gets very hairy for them because then it's almost like, oh, well, we have to cobble together another competitive team. And that's just playing with fire. He's also seen other receivers like him. Who is in the conversation for best receivers in the league? Dev Adams forced his way out Stefan Diggs forced his way out those situations were different with their contracts but receivers have done this they've sort of taken their own futures in their

hands I think that he probably would sign an extension either way because it's just so much money but like you said I mean this guy's a little different i think that he knows he's going to get money and catches no matter what it's really winning uh that is the thing that he's got to decide whether they can do um this from uh 2a d telly says we should have moved on from our old players two seasons ago i'm in the boat of believers that the wilfs are holding this team back i i don't think that's an absurd opinion at all. Considering that they admitted to deciding on the direction of the team and that, yeah, they should have moved on from some of these older players before. Now contracts made that a little difficult. Like before last year, you could

have said, Hey, guess who's going to really fade in his age 27 season at running back Delvin cook, but it didn't really make a lot of sense. It wasn't really great for the salary cap to move on. So they just said, why not keep him? But there were other ones where there were trade offers out there that if you moved on, maybe that would have been a better idea. And there does seem to be a sentimentality that has hurt this team repeatedly when it comes to players. And that's one thing that over the long haul of Tom Brady's greatness, you have to give Bill Belichick a lot of credit for, which is, you know, the fact that they would always move on from guys at the right time. And Bill Walsh going back in the day would do this as well. It's in his football life where they talked about how as soon as

somebody wasn't going to be as productive, they would move on. But I don't necessarily agree with the characterization that the Wilfs are like a problem as far as ownership goes. I think there are much worse ownership groups. They put down a lot of money. And I think that they've put together one of the best stadiums in the league, one of the best organizations overall in the league. So I think that them wanting to win has probably hurt them and them loving their players has probably hurt them at times. But I don't want to say that it's a bad ownership. Like there are bad ownerships, Cleveland, Houston. Oh my gosh. Like there are some that are just total disasters. That's not

you. That's not them. But I think that are they, are they like the most unbelievably pragmatic, like maybe Philadelphia? Probably not. I think that they're, they're fans that want to see their team win. And one thing that I just have trouble criticizing owners for is trying to win. Like, even if I sit here all day long and say, you should have done this, this, this, this, and this, and we set it from day one and on and on and on, there's still like, I don't know if I own the team and I spent that much money on it and I loved this player, that player, I would probably do some of the same stuff. Uh, and that's where, what we don't know is, uh, are they really, really in love with Kirk cousins to the point where they're going to put down any amount that he asked for?

Or have they reached the point after this and seeing this to being like, OK, I mean, that was a really fun season, but we get it. And only they know. We don't know that. They don't send me a press release to tell me their feelings. And we've never really known how they feel about stuff because they don't leak things and put things out there. But I just don't want to get too twisted and say like, oh, well, they're the worst owners. Like,

I don't think that that's the case. But I did want to ask you, Paul. I got to go on the Wilf press release media list. I'm on it. I don't know. Oh, okay. So you know what they're going to do then? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know where you've been, but I'll get you added there. So a good point by Aaron in the comments about, you know, Brady playing below his market value for those years and in New England, and that helped Belichick be flexible and help them bring in players at the right time. That's never been Cousins, that he's always one of the top paid and he is scheduled to be, I think, the sixth highest paid next year, was the third highest paid this year.

Even if he takes a pay cut, he'll still be top 10. So the Vikings also have interviewed three candidates from what we've seen from reports. Brian Flores, Sean Desai of the Seahawks and Ryan Nielsen of the Saints. Now, one of those guys has a sample where we know something about how they would do the job. The other two, we really don't. We know the Seahawks didn't have a great defense, but I don't know. Boy, if you thought Donna Schell and all that stuff, well, you're not going to get a Schell defense from Brian Flores. He's going to be super aggressive. So they have to look at that.

Then the other guys, who knows? But ideally, if they're looking for a candidate, what do you think is not only what they should look for in a candidate, like if you were to take one trait but also how do you convince any of these guys that they should do this how like this is one thing i wonder about someone will be the dc i guarantee it but like if if it's the top candidate and he comes in he says well so what do i got to work with boys let's take a look at the old roster oh my god where are the players uh i i wonder about that it's a good coaching staff to join

it's a good organization to join but it's not a good roster to join so i wonder how you feel about that yeah i think first off like how we go about determining fit uh you know you can chase scheme i think that's kind of what they did with adonitel they said oh you know that vic fangio like cover two thing that everyone's too high thing that everyone's been doing let's get some of that let's hire the old fangio assistant and let's hope that works and it's worked for other teams in certain situations and so that's certainly a way you can go but i think one thing that kind of became clear throughout the season as the defense struggled is, you know, we heard Kevin,

Kevin O'Connell kind of consistently say, you know, we need to be more aggressive or we need to look at certain things. And it, it just felt like maybe they weren't on the same page. A hundred percent of the time they weren't in agreement about the way exactly they wanted to do things and how they wanted to move forward. I think no matter who this guy that they bring in to be the defensive coordinator is, like him and O'Connell have to be aligned in terms of how they want to play defense, kind of the, the nature of the team, like what is going to embody the defense?

Like that has to be a shared like value and idea between the two, because if you can get them both kind of rowing in the same direction, kind of, kind of, you know, looking at this from the same perspective, I don't, you know, you don't want just a yes man that's going to do whatever O'Connell wants, but you want someone that kind of is wanting to do things as O'Connell wants to do things. You want that to meld. And I think what we found from Donatello is he probably wanted to be a little less aggressive than O'Connell wanted him to be. And there were probably certain things that O'Connell wished happened that just didn't happen because they didn't mesh well so I think that's where the interviewing comes in of

where are these guys kind of gonna fit for you and so that could be Brian Flores obviously he kind of when he was a head coach he had some issues with like turning over offensive coordinators so you got to make sure that you're kind of aligned with him there and that you guys can agree on a structure but I think you've seen what his defenses can do and the players that have played for him have loved him. So he's certainly a top option. And then when you come to kind of making the case, at least for all three of the guys that they've interviewed so far, they're all kind of defensive assistants, defensive coordinators for guys that are under head coaches that are defensive guys and so I think part of

that is you're kind of always in the defensive shadow of your head coach you've got uh Brian Flores Mike Tomlin you've got B. Carroll with Sean Desai and you have um why am I blanking on the the Saints coach right now Dennis Allen with yeah yeah so it's you know you this gets to be your thing like you get to figure it out and that's kind of what I would tell them. Like, you have a blank slate here. Like I, we ain't kidding. Like we ain't kidding ourselves that we have some room to improve here. So who do you want in the draft? Who do you want in free agency with the money that we have? Like build this thing out in your vision and you have control of it. Like you, like we want to build this the way you want to build it. You're now the defensive coordinator kind of out build this the way you want to build it you're now the

defensive coordinator kind of out from under the you know the the shadow of your head coaches that kind of have run those defenses for a really long time like take this and run with it and see what you can do i think that's kind of the only pitch you have at this point because you can't make it off the backs of zadaria smith and daniel hunter and harrison smith and eric kendricks like that's a bygone era the the defensive coordinator that you're hiring, you hope, is here for the considerable future when all those guys are retired. So you can't build your plan off those guys. You have to build it in, hey, you can help establish the next step of this Vikings defense. And also, you don't have that high expectations coming in because you're going to get a group

that's old, that is going to get a group that's old that is going to have probably a lot of turnover that wasn't very good next year. Like you're going to be probably have a little bit of leniency for you. So that's the case I would build for them. Like this is yours, build it and kind of mold it in your image. Okay. That's my question though. If I'm candidate X is how do I know that we're not going to finish 28th and I'm going to get blamed because

Kweisi Adafomensa and Kevin O'Connell sat 12 feet from me and gave a press conference in which they took no responsibility for the defense. I heard zero words of I accept responsibility or I could have done this better from Kevin O'Connell or Kweisi Adafomensa. And then the next day they fired Ed Donatel. To me, that says it was his fault. That's the bad man. He's the one who did it.

So if I'm on the outside, I'm looking at the way they handled the defense, handled the firing of Ed Donatel. And I'm asking, wait, why is that not going to happen to me? And it's a great question. And I would love to know their answer to that. Because, okay, well, if we're going to have Superbowl expectations next year, despite any of the regression things we know about, and I, and I can't get my unit, that's just not going to be that great because

of the roster. If I can't get my unit to the top 15, are you guys going to can me too? And I mean, I think that that's a great question. But I do think part of it too with Ed Donatell was, I have a friend who has a theory about people who are in management and working with like different age groups. So if you're Sean McVay working with Wade Phillips, for example, like Wade Phillips is way older than Sean McVay, but their defense was good. So that can be amicable.

But if it's not, it's much harder for McVay to tell Wade Phillips, you have to change something about your defense because he's been around for a really long time and he's going to believe that he's got the answers. And I think that was part of the trouble here. I think that they really should hire someone younger so they can be on the same page and if there's something wrong that kevin o'connell doesn't have as much trouble convincing the person that you have to make adjustments because it seemed like that was a major issue and that might be just a donatelle thing in general but it also might be like this guy thinks he knows his system and he's taught it in denver and he's taught it in green bay and all things. And he was never willing to admit that the system might have some weaknesses

or that some guys weren't being used well. And so I think that you need someone who's a little more malleable when it comes to their system than him. But I still have some, I mean, big concerns if I'm one of these guys interviewing about how in the world we're putting something together. So what I want is guaranteed money for three years. Like, let's make sure that I'm getting three years where I'm going to get all the money here because otherwise I would be very concerned that I'm just going to get canned after one season, because I don't know how they can make an argument that it's going to be suddenly way better. And I think as far as from their perspective, not only younger because of that, but also

someone who can show me development. And that's hard to do because a lot of times it's just on the players. But what is your development plan for corners? What is your development plan for linebackers, for pass rushers? What is your vision for who we should draft and how, and how that's going to fit and how that correlates to success. But it's a, it's a difficult position to be in. I think they're probably going to end up with somebody who is inexperienced in that job. And then you're having a guy who's inexperienced as head coach one year, one year as a play caller

and one year, or, you know, someone who's never been a defensive coordinator before and trying to operate a team that at least if they take the direction, I think they will is going to have high expectations again. They could totally surprise me with that and have a step back season and have a reset season. But I think this plays into it as you should be looking for whoever can make the future better for your defense. Not just, hey, this one year, we're going to have to fix it and we're going to have to make it better because Donatello ran into the same problems Mike Zimmer did.

Mike Zimmer is a great defensive mind, but what happened when the players fell apart? He fell apart. There's nothing you can do when you don't have good players. So we've been at this for a while and i appreciate we have so many people watching right now that i wanted to keep going usually we have like 45 minutes or something but we're having such a good discussion here and everybody in the comments really appreciate that but we have to stop talking at some point so let's let me just throw this out there

um who do you think is going to win the Superbowl, Paul? Man, the, the Patrick Mahomes ankle turn really, really throws a wrench into that. Doesn't it? Uh, I mean, if Mahomes is limited, like we think he should be limited with that high ankle sprain. Uh, I think the Bengals win that game pretty easily based on the way that offense played today against the bills. They were doing whatever they wanted, even with an offensive line that had massive, massive injuries. And so I'm going to go with the Bengals at this point.

If my homes was healthy, I think that's kind of the easy answer at this point. And I think the Eagles looked really, really good, but I'll be interested to see them play a team that kind of feels like it belongs there. Because I'm not sure the Giants necessarily belonged at this point in the playoffs. They were a nice story, but they had severe talent deficiencies that even a really good coach in Brian Dable couldn't, you know, couldn't counter.

So I want to see another week from the Eagles to really feel like I'm there with them. The Bengals, I feel like I've seen all I need to see with how Joe Burrow played and how that defense continues to play, holding that offense, who had shown some cracks last few weeks, but that's still Josh Allen and Stephon Diggs on that other side. And they shut them down

and made them look not good whatsoever. So I think it's the Bengals for me at this point. It's Joe Burrow, who is just remarkable, a remarkable, remarkable quarterback that I don't think we've given enough for me at this point. It's Joe Burrow, who is just remarkable, a remarkable, remarkable quarterback that I don't think we've given enough credit to at this point. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's a fair pick considering the health issue. It's also, you know, considering the overall roster, the weapons that Cincinnati has. I mean, their third best receiver might be the first best receiver on Green Bay on a good number of teams, honestly.

He would be a number one or number two. And heck, they're fighting Hayden Hurst out there who's developed as a tight end over the years. Joe Mixon was great. Their running game was great. The thing I would be concerned about with Cincinnati is the Bills and the Snow did not make them pay for the offensive linemen being backups. Kansas city will make them pay for that. I think, and it's going to be in Kansas city, their home, Chris Jones up the middle. I mean, they really know how to pressure the quarterback. And so I think it'll be a little bit harder there. I am not going to count out Patrick Mahomes because of his ankle. I mean, that man did unbelievable things. And that's, that is why Mahomes is the greatest because

when he goes off structure, he can do things that have never been done before, but from the pocket, he's still an elite quarterback that just stands there and picks a defensive part. I think he's got the intelligence and accuracy and all those things. And his chemistry with Travis Kelsey is like few that have, you know, I've ever had it between a wide receiver tight end. It's very much Gronk and Brady. Like, so I don't, I don't want to count Kansas city out. I think it matters that they are playing at home. But I agree with your assessment overall that Cincinnati is probably the stronger top to bottom team. And I just, I do have trouble seeing how they're going to stop all those weapons for Cincinnati,

Philadelphia. I think because they're at home, I want to take Philadelphia and think about like that giants game. They had to play like two and a half quarters. I read like it matters, right? Like San Francisco played a very physical game against the Dallas Cowboys in which Micah Parsons literally picked up their tackle and launched him. Like, even though they came out on top because they're a physical team, they had a tougher game. That was a one score game and was a real like knockdown drag out where Philadelphia was celebrating after two quarters and they were able to just pretty much hand off and you know do whatever they wanted Gardner Minshew's out there at the

end of the game and they don't have to go anywhere going from west coast to east coast is hard and if you're asking me which quarterback is more likely to turn into a pumpkin I think it's probably Brock Purdy rather than Jalen Hurts who was good last year great this year MVP caliber where Purdy rather than Jalen Hurts, who was good last year. Great this year, MVP caliber, where Purdy has a little more cracks, I think in the foundation of his play. Um, that in Philadelphia also led the NFL in sacks. And I think Purdy has not faced like the pressure got to him a little bit today and that could happen. So I'm going to go, I think Philadelphia and Cincinnati, but I'm not sure. I don't really want to pick against my homes in anything. But Cincinnati did beat them last year.

I'm not sure. So anyway, well, this was really fun, Paul. I'm glad that we could do this. And I promised this last time, and I'm going to stay to it with us doing more of these live shows. So subscribe so you get notified when we do them and watch them. And I've noticed that there has been an uptick on people paying attention to the YouTube channel. So do that. I'm going to put together some special YouTube only content for Purple Insider.

And if you're finding us for the first time, the Purple Insider podcast on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, we do this every day, more or less. In the off season, I think I take off Sundays. But other than that, it's almost every single day, guests and everything else. And Paul and I get together each week on Sunday. So lots of off season stuff to pay attention to. So thank you, everyone. So many of you who commented, listened. This turned into an extremely fun time for us breaking down the games. Hopefully you had a lot of fun, sat on the couch, ate pizza, and now we get two more weekends of NFL football and that's it. And then it's off season time. So thanks for all your time, Paul,

and we will do this again very soon.