Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - What does the PFF QB Annual tell us about Kevin O'Connell's QB coaching?

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Ben Linsey of PFF joins Matthew Coller to talk about the PFF QB Annual, which features tons of new statistics regarding quarterbacks. They break down Kirk Cousins's numbers through the lens of head coach Kevin O'Connell and then talk about QBs the Vikings are going to face this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collard here, joining me on the show to discuss the PFF QB Annual, which has actually become an annual tradition for our show. Ben Lindsay, what is going on, Ben? How are you? I'm doing well. Quarterback Annual looks a little bit different this year. It came out a little bit later, but, uh, a lot of the same information in there. So happy to be back on and talk about it. Uh, I was just commenting to you before we went on very bright, very colorful,

uh, and just so much data in your face, which we're going to pick apart. I would love to know like the, the process, uh, on this. I mean, because it just feels like it's grown every year with the QB annual, the amount of information and in a way, and, and you know how much I love all data regarding football, but I'm having to go through Kirk Cousins chapter, like several times to just take kind of all of it in. I mean, I don't even know where to begin with all the different data that is included. So I'd love to know kind of how it all comes together. Yeah, it's an interesting balance.

I started doing it two years ago. George Chihory originally put it together. So I kind of took the mantle last year. And actually the thought this year was to kind of pare it back a little bit while still adding in some new situations, stuff that hadn't been in there past, like two high safety, single high safety, some of the different situational stuff. While eliminating some of the just looking at a giant table of data and not really processing what you're looking at. There's still a little bit of that because we're trying to include a lot, but mainly just give some basic stats, yards per attempt, completion percentage,

passer rating, in different scenarios, some more of our advanced stats like accuracy rate, grades, more universal advanced stats like EPA, and just kind of balancing giving you a lot of information but also having you be able to to actually understand what's going on yeah one thing I really like the look of that is new is the stable and unstable metrics and I like that that kind of directs anybody to a little bit of what it means just sort of layered in, which is really what we're going to talk about is kind of what it all means. So as I'm going through Kirk's numbers, I am going to quietly read them the entire chapter now.

No, I'm just kidding. But one thing that I want to understand, that I think the data can help me understand about Kirk Cousins and about the offense for the Minnesota Vikings is just the connection between the head coach and the quarterback. And I think with circumstances and schemes and all those things, and Sean Payton today saying that it was the worst coaching job in history or whatever that Denver had done, it's always very, very challenging to try to pick apart. Well, how much was it Kevin O'Connell?

How much was it Kirk Cousins for the different causes of these metrics? So we have the results, but what are the causes? And I'm going to be honest here, Ben, I'm trying to project a little bit forward to how much Kevin O'Connell impacts quarterbacks in general, because Kirk Cousins does not have a contract for next year. So when we look at this data, how should we interpret for Cousins data what we can read into how much the coach impacted Cousins' performance last year? It's one of the toughest things to split out

when you're talking about just football in general. Obviously, the quarterback is the most important position in professional sports, arguably. They have more of an impact on winning than any other position. But a lot – most quarterbacks are still highly reliant on the situation they're in. You see that last year with Aaron Rodgers in an example. Devontae Adams leaves. Some of the offense changes.

He takes a step back from his MVP form. It's the same discussion with Justin Fields this offseason. Why people are so split on him. Right. Obviously, he got thrown into a bad situation. Bad coaching his rookie year. Not a lot of supporting talent. It has are his numbers really reflective of what he's going to be moving forward now that they add DJ Moore, bring in more stuff. So I think generally the stable metrics, you have bigger sample sizes. You have more to sort of go back and feel comfortable that those are more predictive year to year. That's why they get grouped into the stable bucket.

And the quarterback has a little bit more control. But even still, stuff like stuff just in the straight drop back game, clean pockets, not all of those are created equal. If you have receivers running open way downfield, you're going to grade better. So it's a difficult problem to sort out. I tend to think the unstable metrics is a little bit more where you see those kind of athletic traits that people talk about,

the quarterback position, the ability to create. You see that come up more, and that's a little bit less reliant on scheme. But it's definitely a tough problem. Yeah, I mean, I noticed that under the unstable is positively graded throws. And I think that something that is generally up and down from year to year is explosive plays.

But there's some guys you know, some guys with unstable metrics, like Josh Allen, who could sort of overcome the performance under pressure or something like that. Right. And in trying to even project what Kirk Cousins is going to be for this year, that was something I was looking at as well as trying to figure out like, where is the regression or where could it actually be better and two things stuck out to me one he graded fine when using play action but the play action results were not good which is kind of interesting like so he was doing his job but the receivers maybe weren't as open as they needed to be or whatever it wasn't really successful um but that's the thing that kind of

goes up and down but i also think like something like avoiding negative plays has always been really good for Kirk Cousins, sometimes gets him in trouble with certain checkdowns on fourth and eight and so forth that stand out. But, you know, I think that a lot of the things that Cousins did last year, except for grading, you know, high under pressure, which he's been very up and down throughout his career, are pretty stable for him year to year kind of through his entire career yeah and and i think that's sort of the story on cousins is we we kind of know what he is right he does things well there's things he's never he's never really going to do and that's why he's such a such a divisive quarterback the pressure stuff stood out to me as

well when i was going through and looking um because he did grade well he was under pressure a lot i believe the second most um snaps behind justin herbert uh last year but he did a pretty good job of of sort of mitigating those situations right and i i think one of the more interesting things with cousins is if you look at sort of the percentage of pressures that are attributed to him, it's one of the lowest in the NFL. Right. So it's not a case of him kind of drifting in the pocket, him holding onto the ball. He did a good job of mitigating some tied to a little bit to the run game. Right. It's tied to a few other things. But I think Cousins had a pretty typical year for him, with the exception, like you said, of play action. It's really it's a really interesting metric to talk about when you talk about does someone invite pressure or not?

Because with Kirk Cousins, I think that he throws the ball on time 90 percent of the time. And this is what you if you're watching a training camp practice and you're trying to figure out, does a quarterback know what he's doing? When he hits the back foot, the ball should be coming out most of the time. And Kirk Cousins does that. And having justin jefferson wide open a lot or uh you know just able to catch anything probably helps him confidently do that but there's another part of it that i think he naturally invites pressure not in the way that you guys track the metric but as in does not run away so like with with russell wilson he used to invite a ton of pressure deshahaun Watson was the same way.

But a lot of that was, I can make a play. I'm going to try to hold onto the ball a little longer to give myself a chance. And yes, I am basically saying to the defenders, come get me, but creating those extra opportunities. And I think that sort of shows up that Kirk is as good as it gets for this type of quarterback that hits the back foot and gets the ball out and things like that.

But it also, in terms of the raw numbers that he put up, the overall career success, I think it also tells us something about that, like how valuable that mobility is, even if you are inviting some extra pressure at times. I think the case you have to look at with that is Patrick Mahomes. Because that seems, there's a scatterplot in the beginning of the annual that kind of plots percentage of pressures responsible for a quarterback against percentage of pressures taking a sack. And Mahomes is someone who invites a lot of pressure, right?

He's going to make life on his tackles specifically a little bit more difficult because he's going to drift but it doesn't really matter right because those are that's what makes that's a superpower it's what makes him special he's able to make those off off-platform throws um right you you draw up a linebacker and hit travis kelsey running opposite the way he's drifting right behind him and that that's part of what makes him great with someone like cousins. He's more stepping up into the pocket, which kind of ties into some of the pressure numbers for the interior offensive line. It's,

it's tougher because rather than a quarterback drifting back, drifting outside the pocket, he's stepping up, he's taking hits. But it kind of confines the space you're in. So it's an interesting way to see the differing styles of play there. Yeah. I looked back at Cousins' entire career because you have a metric on pff.com that shows where the pressure came from, like which position, right guard, center tackle. And even when he had good tackles or bad tackles, it didn't really matter. It was always coming from the middle. Even when he had good guards in Washington, it was always coming from the middle.

And I think that, I mean, some of that is that his coaches have often put him under center because he's good at that and kind of came up in that traditional under center era of the NFL. But even in the shotgun last year, it may have benefited the center Garrett Bradbury a bit. But once again, we saw the guards just get attacked and attacked. It's also because every team knows this guy is not running away from us. And when the Vikings played Kyler Murray in 2021, it was fascinating to see how Mike Zimmer schemed up to keep him from scrambling, get out of the pocket. He still

had a good game that that game, but he didn't have a lot of scrambles. And he did that to Wilson a few times too, where he would just contain, contain, contain. And you don't have to do that with Kirk Cousins. It's just like, let's send all of our pressure at him. So I think that that's one thing that we have to kind of use the metrics and our common sense understanding how he plays

to see the impact of that shortcoming of his game. But there's another metric I wanted to ask about as it pertains to coaching, and that is yards per attempt on zero graded throws. Now, nobody shut off the podcast because I just said that. It's a little confusing and sounds weird. All it means is a throw that any reasonable quarterback could make. So like a screen, like the quarterback's doing nothing on a screen he's just catching the ball and just you know throwing it you know two yards in front of him uh or a wide

open crossing route where there's nobody around you don't have to make a special throw and kirk cousins was very middling in this and i think that this is a coaching stat because jimmy garoppolo and brock purdy are at the very top and And this is like what Kyle Shanahan does is creates these zero graded throws or anyone could make them throws. What did you make of kind of how those rankings worked out? And do you think I'm right that it is kind of a coaching stat? Yeah, that was the intent when I was going through and trying to think of new things to add to kind of the overview sections in the beginning. I realized zero graded is a universal term. People will see it and they'll kind of shut down. It's something that in season when I'm working with NBC and stuff for the

broadcast, I have to keep in mind, you have to be able to explain things to the average fan. But basically, it's just like you said, it's just an expected throw um and it is a coaching stat in my opinion and the results you see caroppolo's up at the top brock purdy is number two uh jared golf who a lot of people think ben johnson is going to to get a head coaching job next year one of the top offensive coordinators in the league he's number three with the vikings specifically um i think part of it also is that they ran a lot of routes kind of 10 plus yards downfield over the middle of the field those are tougher routes to get zero graded throws on right you're asking your quarterback to make downfield throws uh likely in traffic So in that situation, a lot of their cousins' potential zero-graded throws

might be more underneath, right? You might not have as many downfield opportunities. So I think that might play a little bit into it with O'Connell and the Vikings. But in general, I think it does a good job of showing offenses and offensive coordinators who are doing a good job of creating easy yards after the catch opportunities for their offense. You make a really interesting point there that pings in my brain about the Rams moving on from Jared Goff and bringing in Matthew Stafford, because it seems like that Kevin O'Connell Rams inspired offense wants to ask a lot of its quarterback and not just say, Hey, we'll dial up a bunch of yards after catch. And I do

think that there is a ceiling on yards after catch to at some point. And I like Jimmy Garoppolo and what he did in San Francisco. They won a lot of football games for someone who doesn't get much credit as a quarterback. But I think that there is a at some point you have to have quarterbacks who can make big time throws. And we saw it in the Super Bowl with Matthew Stafford. At some point, your dude has to make a no look laser beam into double coverage rocket throw if you want to win the Super Bowl. And I think Cousins is capable. And you look at his accuracy numbers. They're very, very good, as you would expect. I think he's capable of making a lot of those throws. But as I'm thinking about the next quarterback, so if you get drafted to the San Francisco 49ers or with Ben Johnson in Detroit, if they move on from golf at some point or whatever, you are going to have life be a little easy on you. So I think that the bar for the next quarterback for O'Connell,

what he's going to ask his quarterback to do is actually quite high. And this may be why the Vikings did not draft Kenny Pickett. The Vikings did not draft Will Levis when they had opportunities because you have to get a lot of big-time throws for it to work. And we saw with Stafford in that season they won the Super Bowl, there was a lot of big time throws for it to work. And we saw with Stafford in that season, they won the Super Bowl. There was a lot of variance in that. There was a lot of times where he threw three interceptions and then, but he also threw for 5,000 yards.

And I think Kevin O'Connell wants it to be that way. And I think it's not just O'Connell. You look at the coaches sort of from that tree. It's kind of across the board, right? You mentioned Stafford the Niners traded up multiple first round picks to get Trey Lance to add that talent it hasn't worked out so far it doesn't sound like he's going to be the starter next year but it's something that they've looked for the the Packers with Jordan Love right a sort of has a lot of arm talent a guy who can create a little bit we'll

see how that goes but it's something that these offenses have looked for um and i do think cousins right he has probably a better arm than people give him credit for i think one place that shows up when you're looking at the quarterback annual is the vertical lead throws is something that he grades highly on and those are essentially both vertical lead throws and over the shoulder throws are leading a receiver downfield vertical lead is more driven right so think of right hitting the hole and cover two hitting a guy running down the seam generally a you need more arm strength to to sort of hit those throws than the lofted over-the-shoulder throws downfield. And it's an area that Kirk Cousins has had success.

So even if they move on from him, which I'm guessing might happen, they'll probably still look for a quarterback who has the ability to make those off-platform throws, to hit those windows over the middle of the field, down the sideline, sort of between the corner and the safety. And I think that's kind of the way that whole coaching tree is moving. Yeah, no, that's a great point is so Aaron Rogers probably when he was with LaFleur

and wins two MVPs got a lot of help in terms of how they schemed it up for yards after catch or for short throws and zero graded throws. And yet at the end of the day, need aaron rogers to do some mvp stuff and that's the thing about a brock purdy or a jimmy garoppolo is that's nice and it's great uh but when it's third down in 20 and you need the guy to throw off his back foot 40 yards down the field it's iry kill to win the super bowl you don't have that guy and and they do. And of course, everyone wants that guy. Everyone wants Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, who can be special. But I think that what Kevin O'Connell will have to improve at,

and we'll see how it goes this year, I'll be interested for next year's QB annual about the data, is what Shanahan does so well and McVay does so well, is they can do both. And I didn't see the easy throws. And I think that that's where with Gary Kubiak, to some extent, Clint Kubiak, Kevin Stefanski, you see the screens, you see the play actions, you see those really working for Kirk Cousins. And I think that's why when we look at his traditional numbers, his quarterback rating,

things like that, even his PFF grade, that they were down from previous years. I don't think he really played worse, and he certainly played really well any time a clutch situation came up last year. But I don't think that he played worse than he did in the past. I think that the easy throws were not there. And if Kevin O'Connell is going to bring in a rookie and develop that player, those have to improve. Like you have to be better at executing screen passes and play actions and

things because that's going to drive. I don't know. Maybe you would know what percentage of an offense, but like a third of an offense sometimes is those plays. Yeah. A third is about right. Right. You look at some of the offense in the NFL, they're up above 20% screen rate RPOs sort of around the same range. And if you're not sort of beating expectations in those areas, it makes it difficult on the quarterback.

Kenny Pickett is an example last year, right? He, in terms of grading, he actually played pretty well. The offense really struggled just because he didn't have those easy throws. They avoided the middle of the field, not a lot of play action. So yes, you want your quarterback to do the difficult things, but especially if you're bringing along a young player, you have to have to make it as easy as possible for them to kind of learn on the fly while still leading an offense that can move the ball. I don't understand why Pittsburgh stayed with their offensive coordinator. I mean, there's someone else's problem to cover, but like what?

Yeah, you and me both. I do not understand that at all. I have a friend who works sports radio out there and he tweets about it all the time. And just having watched a few of those games, why, why are we making things so much more difficult on a rookie quarterback than they need to be? I was impressed that Kenny Pickett kind of grinded through that. I was curious about Justin Fields because you probably know my former intern and former PFF intern, Haley English and people who listened through the off season,

when she was doing the show with me, we'll know how she felt about Justin Fields' data. Not impressed. And she made it very clear that she was not impressed. How about you? How do you view it? Now that we have the QB annual showing us so much, every detail, there's still not a lot to be real excited about, but as we were talking about circumstances matter, how much can we take this and transfer it onto what he's going to be this year?

It's tough because he there, when you're looking at the data, there isn't much optimism to be gleaned from, from any of it. And the most interesting thing to me is the accuracy and when I was sort of writing up takeaways after I released the quarterback annual you look at what Justin Fields was his last year at Ohio State he in terms of accurate pass rate he led the FBS and then you get to Chicago and he's beating out only Zach Wilson among qualifying quarterbacks over the last two years and yes he's throwing the ball downfield. It's more difficult to be accurate when you're throwing the ball as far downfield as he is. Off the line hasn't been great. Receivers haven't been able to create a ton of separation. You sort of have to factor all of that in, but you do have a quarterback

going into year three and he hasn't shown much reason at all for optimism even if you're comparing to a best case scenario like Josh Allen Allen his numbers were still a tad better in some areas at least in terms of offensive efficiency and how they were able to move the ball and even with fields and all he added as a scrambler he had more scramble yards than any quarterback since Michael Vick in 2006. Their offense still really struggled. Fields as a passer really struggled. So it'll be interesting to see how much a young offensive line sort of getting another year under their belt, another year under Luke Getze, who a lot of people respect

as an offensive play caller and offensive coach, and bringing in DJ Moore, see how that all impacts him. But from a data perspective, there's not, not a lot to be optimistic though. Yeah. It's one of those things that I think Chicago had to take more of a leap of faith than anything. But there is a certain threshold of blaming the circumstance that I just

can't really get on board with. Call it like, like the Ryan Fitzpatrick quotient or something like if if i think ryan fitzpatrick could have done better with that offense passing the ball than justin fields last year i'm pretty concerned even with those weapons because we you know fitzpatrick was the guy who would always be dropped into a bad team and they would say all right look can you just win like five games and then we can draft someone else and he would say for 20 million dollars you bet i can uh but what ryan fitzpatrick would always do whether it was tampa bay or miami or

whatever is he would he'd get you like that 4 000 yards or whatever i mean he he would make a reasonable quarterback situation out of it even if the team was trying to intentionally lose like in miami i think he won something like five or six games in the year that they were supposed to win zero and I think that Fields was significantly worse than what Ryan Fitzpatrick would have done with that Chicago Bears situation and I don't know how you could not be concerned about that and here's another thing that I want to ask is just how much and you you try to quantify this in a chart. So how much the players around and their grades and their performance impact the quarterback? Like how bad was it in terms of circumstance for Justin Fields? Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't great. I don't have the

chart in front of me to see exactly where he ranked um but i know it's a situation where it's not a lot of talent around him obviously they extend commit but even when you you don't have a great situation right there's still quarterbacks who who provide above average sort of wins above replacement above average value pffs approximation of value at least and fields wasn't up there um so like I said it's a situation where you expect him to take a step forward I'm just not too optimistic that it's going to be a big enough step for the Bears as bad as it gets basically as I'm looking at the chart right now like all the way at the bottom uh not surprising that you know Kirk Cousins was toward the top because he has Justin Jefferson, which has certainly helped.

Here's what I want to know from your study of basically every NFL quarterback here. What are we confident in for this year? There's a lot of, hey, it could go this way or it could go that way. I'll give you an example. I think I'm confident. You put it that way. What do we think

we're confident in? Cause it could be blown up instantly that Derek Carr in new Orleans is going to be pretty good. I think that the supporting cast there, as we mentioned is pretty good, but also there's something to most quarterbacks, not Kirk for whatever reason, but when your team isn't really buying into you. And also think that josh mcdaniels is a horrible head coach even if he's a good offensive coordinator that that situation has kind of progressed and could look pretty good and i look at andy dalton's metrics and i just scratch my head like i saw him play pretty good against the vikings but everybody did so i didn't think much of it and i don't know that i watched another Andy Dalton game the whole year but I went like well if Andy Dalton had some decent metrics I think Derek Carr is

like a souped up version of him so I think I'm confident that Derek Carr is going to make a for a pretty good quarterback in New Orleans and that's a good situation for him to drop into what what are you could respond to that but what what are you confident in after looking at all the metrics yeah I agree with you on on Carr and Andy Dalton is one of the if you didn't really if you weren't sort of in my world where I'm looking at grades and numbers throughout the season and then you just see Andy Dalton's numbers in the quarterback annual and you kind of what you kind of look at that and say how did that happen but he played pretty well them. I think sort of sticking with the car theory, like I don't see how Jimmy Garoppolo in Las Vegas works.

We already talked a little bit about San Francisco and how the layups that those offense creates for Garoppolo. And yes, you need a quarterback to be able to, who's willing to pull the trigger over the middle of the field before guys are open. You have to have that level of trust. But he's always someone who's willing to pull the trigger over the middle of the field before guys are open. You have to have that level of trust. But he's always someone who's struggled under pressure. The Las Vegas offensive line does not look very good on paper.

Yes, you have Devontae Adams, but you lose Darren Waller. I just don't see how he jumps into that situation and they have any success. It's one of the moves of the off season that was kind of surprising to me. And then I think one more I'll throw out is there's a lot of talk sort of at that right after my homes, the, the Allen, the Burrow, the Herbert, if you want to throw him in there, I think we can be most confident that Burrow is going to have a very good year. I think out of sort of those combinations behind the homes, Burrow was 97th percentile in every

stable metric last year. He's a guy who does sort of the expected things very well. He has some faults, right? He'll take some sacks, but that's more of a stylistic thing. I think when you're looking at clean pocket, straight drop back, all of those situations, it's just he's a very safe projection from year to year, whereas Allen and Herbert have a little bit more volatility. Yeah, Herbert was what I was going to bring up. And if I was trying to go a little bit on the toasty side, I might say that I don't

think it's going to be that different with Justin Herbert, but I feel like the internet just disagrees that everybody loves what has somebody last year called him an internet quarterback. I was like, okay, let's now we're going too far the guy is six foot six and can throw it over them mountains but like there's just something about his game that i feel like there isn't this looseness that there is with the mahomes a burrow and an allen there is a confidence to those players and we're talking about guys that remind me of like John Elway or Ben Roethlisberger, whatever, like those those are the aliens. And there's just maybe a rigidness to Herbert where you're like, dude, if you if you were like a little more, you know, a little more chill or something there, whatever it is, that factor, you could just destroy everybody but instead you're just pretty good as opposed to an absolute alien uh what is that does that show up somewhere like what what is it about him because i feel like he gets talked about like those other guys but i don't think he's quite there and i don't know

if an offensive coordinator change fundamentally changes that element of who he is yeah i kind of agree with you when i was another one of my takeaways that I wrote up was a lot of the blame goes on Joe Lombardi, and deservedly so. I don't think that offense maximized what they had. You're trying to turn a guy who, you roll him out to the right, and he's hitting a corner on the opposite side of the field.

You have that guy, you have to take advantage of that kind of talent more. But at the the same time i don't think people are talking enough about the role that herbert played in one of the lowest average depth of targets in the league if you look at his route heat map so basically where the chargers were running their routes compared to league average compared to where her was throwing the ball. They were running routes downfield, down the sidelines. Now there's some nuance there, right? How many of those routes were just clear out routes? How many were actually, was the play intended to go there?

But on the target he mapped, Herbert wasn't throwing those passes, right? All of it was sort of underneath. So he was getting kind of locked into right check down to austin eckler underneath rob dekeen and alan right that was where he was comfortable and i think that kind of connects a little bit to what you were talking about where there's not as much of the the freelancing um sort of type of nature to his play that you see in in burrow and alan and mahomes and i think that teams are kind of looking for, teams are targeting at the position.

There's not as much there with Herbert. He has all of the tools to do it. He has the size, he has the arm, he has the mobility. I think the important thing for them next year is him and Kellen Moore working together to sort of unlock that a little bit more, get him more comfortable in those situations as as well as attack downfield, obviously. That's not to say that I don't think you can win with Justin Herbert or now even that he's paid because he has the talent to do it. There's a great book that if you haven't read, you should by Bruce Feldman about, I think it's just called

quarterback or making of a quarterback. I read it a couple of summers ago. And then I saw Bruce at the combine across the room and I yelled, I love your book. And he called security, but it's, it's super good. And, and one of the things that he reports on is how like college coaches are always looking for certain personality types that have like a like this dynamic element to them and those guys the allen and in the homes in the borough they have it that anyone i mean you don't have to have watched almost any football at all anybody who saw like 10 minutes of john elway or jo Montana or something would be like, that's it. That's the, I don't know what it is, but burrow has it just like they did, just like the legends did. And I'm not sure that I see it in Herbert. It reminds me of, and this is going way too old

for you, but it reminds me of how Dan Marino would always get his teams close and could never quite do it. He didn't get sacked a lot and had an unbelievable arm, but there was something to it. Like when things broke down, especially later in Marino's career where he, and this is old only for you, Ben. You just walk out of the room for this. But there was something like he had this Achilles injury and there was something after that where he couldn't really make those plays anymore.

And in the playoffs, it would kind of get him every year. And I feel like there's something to that to Justin Herbert, but I won't just continue to talk about how I grew up in the playoffs it would kind of get them every year and i feel like there's something to that to uh justin herbert but i won't um just continue to talk about how i grew up in the 90s um but i i did want to bring up a few other quarterbacks just to get your your takes on these because i i think that there's like some guys who could go one way or the other desmond ritter is a confusing one and i'm kind of focusing on guys that the vikings are going to play this year because i think they have a hard quarterback schedule but it might not be depending on a few guys I think Taylor Heineke their backup is going to play like halfway through the season there is nothing that I see from Desmond Ritter that makes me think oh yeah good job Atlanta you should have

stayed with Desmond Ritter uh is it am I missing something with that like a third round pick who didn't play well at all? I don't really understand why they decided to stick with him. I don't really think you're missing much. I know Ritter had a pretty big fan club on the online quarterback community coming out of Cincinnati. He had some accuracy issues. But as far as just the essential quarterbacking sort of task right he knew how to

read a defense he knew how to how to drop back how to work the pocket all that stuff he he played pretty well at Cincinnati in those areas there's not a lot of data in the NFL he started out really poor and those numbers kind of skewed um his overall numbers last season again, he wasn't very accurate. He struggled pushing the ball downfield, which their offense did in general last season. So I'm not necessarily surprised that they stuck with him. But I wouldn't be surprised if we get to this point next year, and there's another quarterback in there who isn't Taylor Heineke either uh because some of his underlying numbers were pretty rough in Washington oh yeah I mean I'm not saying Taylor Heineke's good I'm just saying Ritter's gonna get benched it's kind of what I think but yeah you mentioned

and I remember during that draft that there were a handful of analysts who were talking about him it's like well he's got the best footwork and pocket presence and uh you know i think we need to talk about how he runs like a 4-4 and it doesn't look like it at all and and so we're not being able to maximize that athleticism and you mentioned pushing the ball downfield that is such a such a big deal and i just don't see the physical tools there for him as a quarterback to be dangerous and if you're're the Vikings, I think you're happy that they didn't make any different move at the quarterback position there. So one more thing for you. What do you think the Vikings should do a quarterback in the future? Because we asked Casey Adafo Mensah the other day and his answer was like, everything's on the table. There was

nothing from the Vikings press conferences that made it seem imminent that Kirk would sign an extension or that he'll be here past this year. It just, everything points to him not. But I mean, if you want to select keep Kirk, that's an option for you. How do you think that they should handle it? I think that they should move on. All right. I think we've seen enough at this point to, to know that when you're paying Kirk what you're paying him. Right. And then you add Justin Jefferson's contract into the mix. It's very difficult to have be paying that much money to those two players. And rookie makes the most sense. The tricky thing is, I don't think they're going to be bad enough. They're going to have the same decisions that they've had, right? Kenny Pickett, Will Levis.

You're going to have to hope that someone slides a little bit and you can probably trade up to a 10, something like what the Chiefs did with Mahomes. But I think getting a rookie quarterback in that situation where they do have some pieces, right? They have two good young tackles in Daris on O'Neill. You have Justin Jefferson, you have TJ Hawkinson, you have drafted Jordan Addison.

It's a situation where a rookie quarterback should be able to have success. Tricky thing is just going to be finding the right one. Okay. I know that this is like right at the beginning of training camp and it's a weird question to ask, but I think people people will like if i ask it to you uh what if arizona picks number one and takes caleb williams and the vikings don't have a quarterback and arizona calls and says how about like a second round pick for kyler murray and keep in mind i know his contract is a lot i did look up why not uh the restructures and stuff like that you can move around some of that money with his contract so it doesn't have to be 50 million dollar cap hits uh how are you on that idea like

ice cold lukewarm blazing hot do you like that somewhere between lukewarm and blazing hot i think because of because of the rookie thing i said where I don't think they're going to be that bad, you're probably not in the running for one of the top picks. And you would also be buying low on Murray. He's a quarterback who did not play well last year. That offense has been – it was bad. And they're going to be bad again. So even if he comes back at the end of the year, he's probably not going to play well again. But he's a talented

quarterback we've seen him sort of be able to attack those downfield windows maybe not as much over the middle of the field but he's he's a good deep thrower he can create with his legs he has that freelancing ability we talked about so I wouldn't hate it if you're trading say a second round pick for him even if he has the higher contract, you can probably move off if things don't work out. So I don't hate that at all. If I'm going to have a quarterback thing fail with a former number one pick, who's an, an unbelievable athlete with a great arm and pair them with the best receiver in the world.

I got, I'm going to, I guess I'm going to take my chances. And if we fail, it'll be very fun, is the way I would look at it if I was Kweisi Adafo-Mensah. But of course, my career is not on the line if I make the trade. I just make fake trades. But I have kind of liked this idea, and I know I can hear people cringing and getting upset. But go back like halfway through 2021, it reminds me almost of like a Carson Palmer with the Cincinnati Bengals

where he showed what he could do, but the situation devolved into something so terrible and ugly that, you know, he had to leave and eventually showed when he had the right situation and an all world receiver, how good he could be. And I think Murray is a tick below your burrow and your homes, but it's not as below as our most recent.

We just re we just react to whatever just happened when people rank quarterback tiers i always kind of like well i don't know because it's whatever just happened is the ranking and uh power rankings are the same way it's every ranking right yeah that a team gets a big win in week four it might not matter at all and they shoot up like 12 spots in a power ranking like what so anyway um i think it'll be a fascinating quarterback year we've got rookies that are set to start that were all drafted super high uh a lame duck kirk um jordan love a quarterback we don't know about in green bay all sorts of things uh very interesting and so to prep you for all of it, you should sign up for pff.com if you don't have it already. And the QB annual is just a shower of data that you can immerse yourself in. It's very fascinating stuff to go through. So I implore people to go check that out. And if you

already have PFF and you don't know that it dropped, then now you know, and you can get a look at it. So Ben, you're the best man. Thanks for doing this. Always love getting together with you. We can make it more semi-annual. We can get together other times. Hopefully we'll do that during the season rather than just to talk QBs, but love having you on and really appreciate your time. Sounds good. I appreciate you having me on anytime.