Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Which front offices should the Vikings copy under new GM????

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Sam Bruchhaus of SumerSports breaks down the franchises that the Vikings are interviewing GM candidates from and talks about what the Minnesota Vikings front office should look like in the future. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, presented by Fandul. Matthew Collar here. And on the show today, Sam Brookhouse, let's go. All right, we welcome back into the show. Sam Brookhouse, senior data scientist for Sumer Sports, who has spent flight delay yesterday and many hours since I requested to speak with you. I don't know, it was like two weeks ago, but you've been really busy. you've been diving deep into the Minnesota Vikings and their general manager candidates. And what I want to focus a lot on Sam is not the candidates themselves, the people,

because we don't know a lot about what their philosophies are. But we do know whomst has influenced them. So they're franchises and what these candidates franchises do that gives them an edge. But welcome back to the show, my friend. How are you? I am excellent. This is such an exciting. time of the year, in my opinion, because you get to deep dive into these strange things that you've

picked up over the course of the season, over the course of draft season. And I think particularly coming out of the 26 NFL draft, in particular, something like this, the lineage of general managers and in particular how they're going to approach it and how we can use it is something that's really exciting to dive into. So happy to do that today. Well, where do you want to begin? I'll just throw out the teams that these AGM and GM candidates come from. And you can tell me where the most interesting spot is. You have Nolan Teasley from Seattle.

You have John McKay from the Los Angeles Rams, Terrence Gray from the Buffalo Bills, and Reed Burkart from the Denver Broncos. Which franchise do you want to focus on their philosophy and what they could potentially bring to the Minnesota Vikings? Where do you want to go with it? Well, I think the first thing we have to look at is, all of these guys are player personnel scout background guys,

which is a very divisive element as compared to Quasi Adofa Menta, who was basically the first analytics-focused trader background, financial background, other than probably Andrew Barry, who was coming from the Eagles. Quasi was one of the first guys to come from that lineage. And as a result, that's why he was kind of the surprise general manager candidate that popped up, had some success. But as they say, you kind of always pivot when you're going in a new direction. They make the decision to go away from Quasi.

Now it seems that they're going back to a more traditional scouting-based background. That is, if they don't go with the interim general manager, who obviously comes from more of a cap background. So it is interesting to see the, you know, devolving the separation of the current interim general manager who's definitely in the hunt, and the external guys, all of which are kind of young scouts who have a background in deep scouting, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. So when it, let's just begin with maybe Seattle, for example. Yeah, that's true.

They, uh, they won the Super Bowl. Nolan Teasley comes from there. And they really won the Super Bowl because they slam dunked the drafts for several seasons. And there were other good personnel decisions that they made, trades and so forth. But if you look at their recent drafts. history, your eyes pop out of your head. And I want to know from you on the data perspective, there has been a thought for a very long time that drafting is streaky and drafting is random.

But I do think that when we are in a universe that has so many new inventions and so many more people and so many more eyeballs and so many more ways that we can use not just data, but also human beings and studying even scouting reports and successes, we can use different tools to evaluate where we've missed and where we've hit in the past background information that they can get that maybe wouldn't have been there before. I think that there are some teams where you can look at their drafting in recent years ago. Do they know something?

Like, do they, not that everyone's ever going to be a hit and it's always going to be draft capital that drives this. But with Seattle, it's almost spooky good how they've built their team. So what can we identify from the Seahawks in the way that they, built through the draft that if Nolan Teasley is hired, might be able to bring to the Minnesota Vikings. If you look at what the Seahawks do, and this is something that I think will 100% transfer should Teasley go to the Vikings. They just take a lot of guys. They have a lot of draft picks. And so you look at the last two years where you bring in Mike McDonald, you're decently

successful, over-expected. Year one, they probably win more games than you thought they would have. And year two, they win the Super Bowl, which they were kind of in the conversation. for at the beginning of the year, but nobody thought in particular they were going to be able to get past the 49ers and the Rams. It's because they've just drafted a lot of guys. And so you see the people who are making an impact in the last two to three years. And as a result, the grand majority of them, Byron Murphy, rookie contract. You look at Jackson Smith and Jigba, just sign an extension. And they're just adding pure bodies. Now, I will also note, they're not, I'm not going to say that they're doing what the Eagles are doing, where it's like every pick is analytically explainable and even more so the Browns, where it's like really every decision is analytically explainable for the Browns.

There is a level of art to it. They take Judarian Price this year, which I understand the pick. I disagreed with it from an analytical perspective. But they take like four or five other guys in the middle rounds. And those middle round guys, particularly last year, and to a certain degree this year as well, are always, they have some data blue chip element. And so you look at a guy like Elijah Arroyo last year who played a good role, but probably wasn't, you know, the go-to tight-in one with the emergence of A.J. Barner in particular played more of kind of a titan F or slot role where he was receiving. But that was what he was at Miami. There was a database argument for why you would go get a guy who had high.

target share at Miami. You look at Tori Horton, another guy who they added, who had a blue chip kind of return profile, but also had a high target share, high yards per route run. And that made sense. They even went and got a guy who's on their practice squad in the seventh round, Ricky White, who we really loved, who we thought we would have a special team's impact and so forth and so on. So there is always kind of a sumer sports or a databaseed guy element to their mid and late round picks, but that's easy to say because they take so many dang picks. They have so many picks. And this is very similar to what the Ravens do as well.

And that's why often we see the Ravens have these really young teams. And so I think that philosophy of exactly what you said, there's a lot of variance in the draft, but we know that in any given year we could potentially restructure our team just by having a lot of draft capital is an analytically good approach, even though, you know, typically the Seahawks guys do come from a scouting-based background. Right. And that's the thing is with the world and the way it works in the NFL today and how much more technologically savvy we are and how much access to just research or the ability to research these things.

Even I can do stuff like this like with Kayla Banks. One of my concerns is that I went through every first round defensive tackle for the last, I don't remember what it was, 10 or 12 years and looked up just what past rushing grades were and run defense grades. and there weren't too many guys that fit his grades that ended up working out his first round defensive tackles. And so they're right there. You're sort of taking a red flag risk, even if I think that Banks is a very unique specimen himself at 6'5.330 pounds. But with Seattle, one of the things I did notice is production is almost a lock for every single draft pick that they're taking.

And Smith the Jigba makes me laugh. Every time now I hear someone say, well, you know, Carnell Tate's more of a wide receipt. or this guy's more of a wide receiver too. It's like, well, really depends on the situation because Jackson Smith, the Jigbel was supposed to be, well, he's just kind of average and, you know, he doesn't do one thing special, but man, did he have a lot of production in college and it transferred over to the NFL? I also think that they take pretty much freaky athletes across the board. Yeah. Gray's able, crazy athlete, Nicky Minwari, crazy athlete.

And they tend to play the board very well as well, because I think that all these things come together. It's like, yes, it's random, but you can really shift it in your favor if you have a million picks, you play the board extremely well, you get freaky athletes and these guys are ultimately very productive. I thought with this year's Vikings draft, they did a great job of fitting certain guys to what their coaches wanted. But if you are shifting a philosophy toward, we're going to bring in a lot of talent and see what happens. I would be in favor of that. I definitely agree. And a couple items, just a quick data aside. You mentioned the JSN having a lot of production. The conversation also arose with like Carnell Tate versus a Mecca-EGbuka. And it wasn't exactly the same again because Egbuka maintained target share in college despite being the wide receiver too. We didn't really see Carnell Tate do that. He was in the teens in his target share. So you make an excellent point about JSN as well. But I think there's something to that. And I taught a class this past week. at Tulane about sports analytics. And someone in the class raised their hand and they were like,

how does analytics help us find the kind of freaky outliers in the draft? And I said, that's not what analytics is for. Analytics is to ensure that you are not like not not making a mistake, but it's not the job to find the outliers. It's the job to find the sure things. And you listed some of those things, the guys who are at consensus on the board, the guys who are athletic, the guys who have a lot of production, the guys who are typically younger, but have played a lot. Those are three excellent analytical signals that a player is going to be good, and that's kind of the Seahawks general approach, I'd say. I also think that analytics is there to tell you when there's no rhyme or reason to something. And if you're talking about, well, can it

help us find the undrafted free agents? Can it help us find the sixth and seventh round picks? The answer is no. It truly can't. Like, you can take slightly better swings, but okay, maybe you have 3% instead of a 2% chance. If you get the most productive undrafted free agents, well, that means the entire league looked over them seven times and said it's not really worth it. So that's like a Gabriel Murphy who had some flashes for the Vikings in practice and stuff, but clearly was just not an NFL player despite all of the production that he had in college.

I just pulled it up. Jackson Smith, the Juba for Ohio State in 2021 had 95 catches for 1,600 yards for Ohio state and it was like, I don't know, wide receiver two. That was Jefferson. I mean, Jefferson the same thing. He destroyed college football and was like, can he really play outside? Sometimes there's, it doesn't have to be analytics. It's just common sense that the best football players can make it.

But I think that we can with Seattle and Nolan Teasley project pretty well that they have boxes that are, that are clicked with certain draft picks that they take that you would, and an overall approach that you'd love transferred over to the Vikings. The Rams, I think the Rams are in some way overrated in this way where everything the Rams do, it's like, did you see what the Rams did? Like they played not one, not two, but three tight ends. And you're guilty of this too. And so is everyone else. And I love big personnel as much as the next person.

But it's like, you know, I think most of the passes were from Matthew Stafford's Super Bowl champion quarterback. I don't know if you can Gardner Minshue three tight ends onto the field and have it work. But the Rams do always have this little outside the box, not outside the box to the point where they're insane and it doesn't work. But outside the box in, we're going to be the team that decides to just throw everything away for Vaughn Miller and Jalen Ramsey and take a big swing at it. or we're going to be the team, you know, that does something different schematically or something a little bit different.

And I like the idea when it comes to John McKay of bringing an outside the box way of thinking of can we push this forward, even if everything doesn't work and everything isn't as genius as Sean McVe putting an extra tight end onto the field. Gary Kubiak has to be like, what? Come on. What? I had whatever, man. Whatever, man. Genius Sean McVeigh.

But anyway, I'll stop joking around about that. But it does feel like the Rams always are one step ahead with a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I got to defend myself a little bit because the thing that I was marveling at was not that there was three tight ends on the field. It was that they were trying to pass with three tight ends on the field. So I got to defend myself a little bit. But as you mentioned, there's always something. And I think with the Shanahan, and it came up obviously in the 26th. 26 draft massively.

With the Shanahan kind of tree, and I'll say that, obviously, that's talking about head coaches, but we'll talk about those teams that have that type of philosophy. The Texans with Amico Ryan's and the Rams with Sneed and McVeigh, the 49ers with Shanahan and James Gladstone and Liam Cohen with the Jaguars. That's like the four major teams who all kind of have this similar approach of we have a philosophy and we're sticking to it. Now, the Rams in particular, I think have the most aligned with what analytically we like to see from the draft. And even the taking of Ty Simpson way higher over the board is based on an analytical principle that you have a quarterback who last year put the gears to you before you finally were able to resign him.

He's getting old. if that quarterback goes down, you're screwed. So I just prefer to have a quarterback in the building. I can actually get behind that all things considered. But they also have these weird mid-round philosophies that you typically pick up on, which is like, we like transfer up productive defensive players. Kobe Turner, Jared Verse, Braden Fiske, Josiah Stewart. That's a guy that they really like.

So they have these like philosophies that they really stick to. Less need, obviously coming from the Falcons with Thomas DeMittroff, who we worked with for a very long time at Sumer, is doing a great job for my New Orleans Saints right now. That's kind of what to expect from the Rams proper and Les and Sean McVeigh. The wild card comes in with, is it going to look like what James Gladstone is doing? Because James Gladstone is a lot more aligned with what the 49ers is, where it's like, we have our board, our board may look different than everyone else, We are not going to worry about where we are going to get these guys.

We are going to have a philosophy that we are taking this year, and we are going to do that. We are going to trade picks in order to get guys who we want. We are going to take guys 100 to 150 picks over consensus, which if it's the sixth round, sweet, do it. Like you said, the analytics say that player is probably going to be good anyway. So take your swing. In the second and third round, we're starting to get on the borderline there. And so you mentioned the 13 and 12 personnel. One of the things I was railing against is that, again,

people are getting into these heavy personnel to pass. It was clear the Jaguars looked at their 12 personnel production last year, which not for nothing. They have a really good 11 personnel package with Myers and BTJ, if they decide to keep him, or Travis Hunter, who now is saying that he's actually going to play more wide receiver. And, you know, Brenton Strange,

like they have a really, really good 11 personnel package. So now we're going to take a tight end who primarily blocked because we want to play 12. It's a little out there. And it's the same way with the 49ers. So the question about the candidate coming from the Rams is, is it going to look more like the Sean McVeigh-Less Sneed where they'll do some wacky things, but it's clear they're trying to attack something? Or is it going to be more similar to the 49ers than the Jaguars where it's like,

this is what we do. We have something different. I would hope, especially for the Vikings team that is coming from an analytically based and has a lot of very good players on the team, that it would be more to the Rams style than particularly towards the Jaguars and 49ers style. Because when you go look at that 49ers team,

there's not a lot of players who they drafted that are their top players. Trent Williams is Christian McCaffrey. Brock Purdy was a seventh round pick. If they thought it, we know, given how they stick to their board, that if they thought that he was really, really good, they would have taken him with a third round pick.

And so you start to kind of degrade the level of talent that you can get when you take these wild approaches over time. And so I would hope it looks more like the Rams than it looks like the 49ers or the Jaguars as it stands right now. The Rams are another team where you can point to a lot of their draft picks and say these guys produced in college. Kobe Turner is certainly one of them that I remember being on my radar as like a mid-round guy where you go,

while that pass-rush win rate or that pressure rate or whatever it might be is really popping out. And Jared Verse had excellent production as well in college. And there's a little bit of with the Vikings with Brian Flores, you need to fit a certain kind of way he wants to play in order to draft those guys. And they match this up with someone like Jake Golda, who had very good production and fits exactly what you want to do there. But the Rams seem to focus.

on that a lot. Just real quick, all I'm making fun of is that teams used to play two tight ends and a fullback and one receiver sets kind of all the time. And it's like, but what if it's three tight ends, which is basically the same thing. That's, that's the only snark I'm getting into. But the Rams do seem to have this ability to have their philosophy. They feel like it works. And then they do adjust, though a little bit to where you saw Les Sneed do the trade with Atlanta, which is one of the most insane trades I've ever seen a team make.

I mean, everybody knew that James Pierce had background issues because he was going to be a top five or ten draft pick if he didn't, and you trade a next year's first all the way up. And so the Rams, and this is where I am impressed with them, and taking Ty Simpson, who I don't really believe in at all,

but the point is not about whether I think he's going to be good. It's having even a long term approach for a team that's sort of famous for going all in and not saying, well, we need this one more receiver. We need this one more player. And rather, if we get next year's first, that will be awesome. And then we can trade it for somebody or, you know, like their asset management has

been really, really good. And that's very important to me in the evaluation of the next general manager. Because I think the thing that shocked me about Kwasia dao Manza coming from the background money did was the asset management was brutal. They paid top price for every free agent. They kept every player in the building. They overpaid for guys from the outside in a lot of ways, not Andrew Van Ginkle or whatever,

but in a lot of ways they did. And then with the draft picks, they didn't have any. And you're not going to hit too many picks if you don't have any. Let me, do you have a follow up on that? Or do you want me to move forward? Yeah.

The key thing that I think you mentioned is the asset management. And unfortunately, in this game, you have to view the players as assets. And I think a lot of people in their heads think Sean McVey and Matt Stafford, the two people who can't be separated, kind of like Drew Breeze and Sean Payton or some of these guys that we've seen for a long time. Again, I don't know if that relationship is as good as we really expect it to be. Matthew Stafford was going to be a raider at the combine,

pretty much certified for reasons that are unknown because that Raiders team wasn't going to be particularly, good, he just wanted to get paid. And so you take a step back if you're less need at Sean McVeigh, and you view the player as an asset, again, unfortunately as an ex-player to say that, and you say, this is a risky asset. We have to make a move. That was another thing with Cui, and in particular with J.J. McCarthy, where it was like, what is the risk behind this player? Well, we're going to stick with them. We're not going to stick with them. All that stuff. The asset management wasn't particularly great with respect to the most important position. And that's a

a big example there, but you can, you hope that John McKay has that similar approach of understanding the risk behind each player that I think we saw with respect to that Ty Simpson pick from the Rams organization. I think when I think of the Rams, I think that they have been since they won the Super Bowl, not reactionary to stuff, not to, well, this happened. So we have to go crazy and do that thing. It's both Seattle and the Rams feel a little more methodical about the way. they go about stuff where the Vikings, their history is all just being reactionary.

It's, oh, we won in 2017 with Case Keenum. So now we have to go make Kirk Cousins the highest paid quarterback. And then you could go along the list. The Rams beat them in a playoff game. So you've got to spend insane money on your defensive tackles and wildly overpay an offensive guard and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. That's where you don't want to see them do that into the future. Buffalo is an interesting one, Sam, because Josh Allen,

plays there. So I think you could very easily say, well, Josh has made everybody look like they are really good at their jobs. The bills have overall drafted well. What I notice about the bills is there is this challenge when you have the best quarterback of working around his contract. And I think that contracts around the league for quarterbacks have become much, much easier to work around unless they're that one. So the fact that they have sustained a very good roster that was on the precipice of get one call and you probably go to the Super Bowl in the playoffs. And they've been in that position year after year as Kansas City showed. It's not guaranteed just because you have the great quarterback. I think we can pick stuff up from Buffalo's approach

because if the Vikings do have to pay Kyler Murray, they will once again be in that universe that they have to work around a very expensive quarterback contract. I 100% agree. It's difficult to take anything away from the bills given that their philosophy from the first time that that administration came in was we are going to draft we are going to draft josh allen we are going to develop this entire team around josh allen and the entire cap situation the entire drafting will be based on josh allen so that worked out for them but it's very difficult to have that work out so I did a deep dive on Joe Shane the other day because I was very interested in why he was able to maintain his job with the Giants despite bringing in a veteran head coach. And I do wonder if this

is not a more Bill's-esque approach where it's we're going to have great scouting infrastructure and we're going to hit on people in the mid-rounds that can help us at any given point in time. And you think of the people that have been that Matt Milano was one of those guys. Terran Johnson was one of those guys. And while their early picks may or may not work out from time to time, Keon Coleman, for example, who hasn't been kind of the excellent player that they hoped him to be, the jump ball guy that Josh Allen can kind of throw it up to, they have this propensity to constantly have this influx of, you know,

60 to 70th percentile talent at kind of core positions that they get in the middle rounds. And I think a great place to look at that, in particular, is their offensive line. Year over year, over year, over year. Even when Josh Allen was taking a lot of sacks, now he doesn't take a lot of sacks, they had one of the best offensive lines, or at least a very underrated offensive line. And so I think particularly given the struggles with depth that the Vikings have had with the offensive line, there may be an approach that the bills have taken. And quietly, the Giants have kind of.

built this up as well where all of a sudden you have Andrew Thomas, Illuminaur works out for you. Now you have Francis Maui Noah. I don't know if that was Shane's pick, but it definitely was something that he had a piece in where the bills slash Terrence Gray slash potentially the Vikings may just try to build depth in the trenches. And that is always a sound strategy because those guys, edge rushers, tackles are really, really hard to find anywhere else.

other than the draft. And when you put a lot of resources towards that, I think it makes a lot of sense. So that's kind of the main takeaways that I get from the bills is number one, it's clear that they have an infrastructural approach. That's what the reason why Joe Shane kept his job. I'm not necessarily certain that Terrence Gray will have that approach, but it seems as if the bills have built that up over the years. And so at least it's a philosophy, it will probably be there. And then also just this idea of building constantly through the trenches and in the box through the, you know, early and middle rounds, I think makes a lot of sense for what we may be able to expect from Terrence Gray. Something that I've been thinking about a lot that the Vikings got serious about this offseason

with acquiring Ryan Van Damark through an RFA signing and then drafting Caleb Tiernan was depth offensive line. And you just cannot have enough of it. And if you don't have it, you are mega screwed. I think it was maybe. Kevin O'Connell or somebody along the way, some coach pointed out that if you have one offensive lineman who's struggling, you can work around that. This was kind of Seattle last year. Their right guard was kind of in over his head sometimes, but they had everybody else on the same page and you can work around it. If you have two, you are just in trouble. You cannot have two weaknesses along the offensive line, which if you have two people hurt, that's going to happen. And for the Vikings,

we saw it last year. They were kind of unsurious about their backup tackle position. just in school had had a little bit of a history, but the athleticism was so far below the where you would expect a tackle to be. So they go out and get Van DeMarck, who is a big giant dude, and they get Tiernan, who is a phenomenal athlete to come in. And I think they could do better in the guard position, too. We've seen that. And, you know, backup centers.

There's just none of them. So I don't blame anyone for not having backup centers. But the point just being that if you're starting offensive line is going to play together, less than half the time over a season because there's so many injuries, you need seven offensive linemen who can play, and that needs to be an emphasis. And the middle rounds, man, you're exactly right. Like a lot of football is what is your greatest weakness?

Because, you know, who knows that? Every single opponent that you're going to play is how can we attack you? So if you can shore up your weaknesses with a guy who's a B player, a B minus player, the best Vikings teams that I've covered had B or B minus players at a lot of positions because you're not going to build the 1994 Dallas Cowboys or whatever, San Francisco 49ers in the salary cap world with 32 teams. So I generally like that philosophy of trying to build up that way. How about Denver?

Here's what I want to toss out there for all these teams. That there's one through line to all of them is that they all have pretty sick defenses. And I know that Buffalo's wasn't as good last year as previous years under Sean McDermott. but generally, like, they had been top of the league multiple times. So you have physical, nasty, deep defenses that have been built. And when I look at the playoffs, Sam, even last year, I know, you know, New England's defense was good and maybe not quite as good as the Texans or quite as good as the Broncos. Although if they could have just got a little itty bit of quarterback play, either one, they're probably in the Super Bowl. I feel like the NFL right now in this moment without Tom Brady or Peyton Manning or whoever, just even Mahomes taking a step back, just completely running over everybody.

We are in a defensive minds world and a defensive roster's world. And passing success on the offensive side is always going to be the number one driver. We know that. But I also think that the defenses that are being built up, the nastiest defenses are winning in the the postseason and the Vikings have the DC. But roster-wise, I'm not sure they're there to say we're as good as the Texans or a team like the Denver Broncos. So is that what you've observed about them of how they've really built a identity through having this deep and nasty defense? I think there's a checklist when it comes to team building. And number one is, do I have a

quarterback? If I do have a quarterback, there's correlations to my team being pretty good, regardless of what is going on. It's really hard to find a quarterback. So then you have to look on the other side of the ball and try to figure out where can I try to build consistency, given that on offense, everyone is connected to my quarterback. My running game is, my wide receivers, which the Vikings found out the hard way last year.

So it's about how can I consistently build a defense? And to Andrew Barry and the Cleveland Brown's credit, I think that's actually probably why they have maintained the level of power that they have in that organization is they have been able to consistently build defenses that, number one, fit with their former defense coordinator, Jim Schwartz, but also you look at that depth chart and you're like, that's a lot of guys. That's very deep. And so you're not as reliant on a defense coordinator who could go take a head coaching job somewhere.

So I think that is, despite defense not being the most correlative year to year, the thing that is is quarterback play, which is even more variant if you don't have the guy. So I think there's definitely something to that. And with regards to the Broncos in particular, it is interesting because like some of their guys have been acquired. Talanoho Funga comes up who was excellent this year. Like key acquisitions at non-premium defensive positions typically do work out. A guy like Tala no Hufunga who did have injury risk, but was a certified all pro basically at all times he was on the field. You spend a little chunk of change in a depressed market to get him.

all of a sudden he's an absolute weapon for Vance Joseph. And I think more generally, the approach that the Broncos have taken long term is one of that. We're going to acquire key free agents, Mike McClinty is another great example of this, where he has played really, really well. They kind of brought him in as a guy who could be their tackle but could potentially swing elsewhere and sometimes play left if it didn't work out and so forth and so on. That was probably a good acquisition. And then they're drafting, obviously, to a certain degree,

they got a quarterback who had a very high floor in that he doesn't get sacked, which is Bo Nix. And we can debate back and forth about whether he's a true quarterback in this league. But there's two things. He has the two things, in my opinion, that set a floor for a quarterback. He doesn't get sacked and he runs a lot. He can run, which is why I'm still kind of a believer in Andy Richardson from time to time, because he doesn't get sacked and he can kind of run.

Now, what I'd love if he could stay on the field as well, yes, but that's a whole other evaluation. So I think particularly looking at the Broncos, we know that the Broncos from the top down, despite who the owner is, have always had a very organized system, despite who the head coach is. And that is maintained year over year, over year. Reed Burkhart, you know, only got there about four years ago, but that could be an addition that he has. and the comp, the comparison here would be Darren Mugie, who obviously goes to the Jets. And that is, if you read anything, if you talk to any of those guys in the Jets building, that's basically been the approach of Darren Mugie is that we, if all else fails, we will be organized, our scouts and our analytics guys and our cap guys will be on the same page

and we will be moving in the right direction. We could draft awful players or we could have terrible contracts, but at least everything will be organized and moving in the same direction. So we'll all fail together. And I think that's a major, major, major thing for the Vikings this year where it felt as if no one was on the same page. And so I think that could definitely be organizationally something that has basically been for better or worse, plug and play over the years from the Broncos organization proper

where sometimes it's Sean Payton, sometimes it's Gary Kubiak, John Fox. It's all those guys. but the front office itself has maintained a level of organization, consistency, and togetherness, where it always seems like the Broncos are moving in the same direction. I think that's an absolute, absolute, absolute key for the Vikings moving forward. So who would you hire? I think with all things considered, it's tough because some of these guys have a Vikings background, right? Like in particular, Gray and Burkhart have been in the building.

I think I like going with the young guys. if I'm like looking to try to figure out what is going on, I really love what Muzi's doing. Maybe it's not the same, but you could at least speak to that. So I think Burkhard is probably the leader in the clubhouse from my perspective in that I think he's going to be able to manage the quarterback position pretty well. I think there is going to be a commitment to using free agency dollars at the proper positions

and using draft picks at the proper positions. And so in my opinion, I really like the fit of Burkhard as a, as you know, a guy who was previously in the, organization goes to the Broncos, they have a lot of success, an explainable success. And so I think that's kind of my favorite right now in all things considered from what I can see. Again, you look at less need, you look at James Gladstone.

Sure, they're similar, but there's like two diverging curves there. So it's difficult always to tell what's going to happen. But I think all things considered Rudy Burk Hart, if you want to bring in new blood, is the way that I would go in my opinion. outside. And that's why we try to break down what their philosophies were as franchises and what they do well, because we don't really know the person, although I do know read. And he is a very sharp eye, but I also think that he saw the pluses and minuses of someone like Rick Spielman in coming up through the, you know, like what the mistakes were and also what the successes were. He's also from here,

which means that he fully understands the quarterback thing and how badly the Vikings need to have that locked in and be consistent on the quarterback side. So speaking of that, the over under on fan duel for the Vikings right now in terms of win total is eight and a half. And I noticed that the line moved a little bit in terms of their chances to win the division to plus 500. It is very squished between where the lions are at, Packers, Bears, and Vikings. When you look at the roster for the Vikings, what do you see that needs to happen

to hit that over, to be at the top. And I know, like, yes, Kyler Murray needs to be really good. That's kind of obvious. But give me something on, like, how that happens, rather than just, well, yeah, I mean, if the quarterback plays a lot better and the defense is just as good,

then whoop, they're going to win the division. But how do they get there? You're in a division where everyone else has the quarterback position, at least somewhat figured out. So you bring in Kyler Murray and I like the way you paused the question because it's like how. How is this going to happen? Whether it's Kyle Murray or J.J. McCarthy.

The thing that I came on here and just railed about last year was like the ball is not getting in the air. Like when you combined the throwaway rates, the sack rates, the scramble rates for J.J. McCarthy and Carson Wentz last year and Ambrosemer as well, like they literally just were not throwing the ball when they were trying to throw the ball, which I can imagine drove the coach's nuts. So I went and I looked at some key statistics for Kyler Murray and obviously he's a free agent acquisition. So things are going to have to improve regardless. But I think there's a couple key items in which they're really going to have to improve.

And I think first is the scramble rate where you want Kyler to be a guy who is productive with his legs. That is why he was the number one pick. the draft all those years ago. But if you look at 24 and 23, the years where their offense was actually pretty good and booned up the Cardinals, he was more kind of an average scramble rate guy. Last year, he was seventh. And now, he did get injured, injured in quotes, who knows. And he didn't play a ton.

But he was seventh in that. We saw him go from in between about a five and a half percent scramble rate to a six and a half percent scramble rate all the way up to like eight, nine percent in that metric, which is basically meaning the ball ain't getting in the air. And when you have an aging small quarterback, you need that ball in the air. So the sack rate wasn't excellent last year either, but that's something that I think could improve and may have just been, you know, something that that was a flash in the pan or injury based because he typically has been around the top or at least around the average

in the league. And then the average depth of target is the thing that I'm really, really interested in how it's going to evolve. Because if we go week one, week two, week three, week four, he's the starter. And we're seeing him, you know, really push the ball more eight, nine yards down the field. That is a sign that I think the Vikings could move and groove as this season goes on. Now, this is somewhat coach-based, particularly with respect to Cliff Kingsbury, in previous years where he was an air raid type guy.

But even with petzing and the Gannon crew, Murray was solidly around the 30 to 35th lowest A-D guy. And so that potentially could just be a Kyler Murray thing on the bright side. That means he's probably going to get the ball in the hands of the players. A high A dot doesn't necessarily mean that you're moving the ball down the field. Jared Gough has a very low average depth of target. But Jared Gough is getting the ball in Jemir Gibbs' hands. He's getting the ball in Amunrah St. Brown's hands. So I don't know if that could signal a philosophical change from a Vikings team who is typically almost always above average in average depth of target.

in particular, the Sam Darnold year being fourth, where it's like we're sick of not getting the ball on these dudes hands. We're going to potentially maybe move Justin Jefferson a little bit more in the slot. We're potentially going to mix up the personnel a little bit more, even though I'm not necessarily sure what that will look like,

given a lot of the personnel is the same. And we're just going to get the ball on these guys' hands. We have a guy who we know can do it from a respect of, you know, he has been accomplished in low average, up to target offenses, and that's the way we're going to approach it. Maybe that's what it looks like. But in particular, if we start seeing that average up to target creep up for Kyler Murray while keeping the scramble and sack rates, again, you want the scramble rate to be a little bit in maybe

top 15, top 10. But if those rates start going up and Justin Jefferson isn't touching the ball again, we're in deep, deep trouble as an offense. Yeah, I think a couple of things from watching back the tape of the first five games this year is one, Marvin Harrison can't separate. rate at all. So that makes it harder for a quarterback if that's your first read, because that's been really Kyler a lot of times. His first read, okay, I'm going to scramble with Cliff Kingsbury. And then I saw in 24 that he wasn't doing that as much. He was kind of quick through progressions at times. Also when, you know, Trey McBride is your also top weapon, you're going to end up with a lower average depth of target. But it's interesting that with the Vikings in 2022 and 23, when

Kirk first got here, his A dot was not high. I think in 23, it was one of the lowest in the entire NFL. So it was different from the quarterback in the same general system because that's been a question like, well, you know, if Darnold pushed the ball down the field all the time, does Kyler Murray have to do the same thing? And I don't think that he necessarily does. Also, you get Joanne Jennings as a possession receiver. You can actually have someone who sees T.J. Hawkinson on the football field, unlike last

year. So there's a lot of things that, uh, I think can work, even though Kyla Murray has kind of played in a certain way. And then you get those deep shots where you're lofting it up on a slot fade and having Justin Jefferson go get it. I actually think it's kind of funny how from a passer perspective, Kyler plays a lot like Kirk cousins, uh, but then instead of running, Kirkwood gets sacked or, you know, check, check down to the fullback or whatever joke you want to make here.

But from an actual passer perspective, they do pass up open receivers sometimes. They aren't aggressive enough, but they can also drop it in the bucket with the best of them in the NFL and execute the underneath stuff extremely well. So if you add a lot of what Kirk was doing to a guy who runs for an extra 500 yards, you've got something quite nice here. But the question would be in a division such as this one that is this difficult, would you go with the over or the under on the vice? Vikings eight and a half on Fandul. Are you buying what they're selling this year with this thing? Or are you skeptical, Sam? It's such an interesting question with respect to the Vikings.

I think if you put me to it and you give me five seconds to think about it, I just kind of have to go with the under because I don't know what the quarterback situation is going to be. Like that's really the grand majority. I'd say probably in my head a six of ten of how I would make. that decision. The other four is all coaching. And that's why that's what's really making this a hard decision for me. Because I do trust that adding Joanne Jennings into the offense, you know, making a couple depth-based offensive line moves addresses some of the stuff that has kind of plagued this offense over last year in the late part of the year prior. And so I think the real

question is number one i think at this point we can believe in brian floris to have a good defense and that sets your floor probably at six to seven wins of you're going to catch teams on a bad day and you're going to create plays and create points on the defense side of the ball what takes them the extra three to four to get to nine 10 wins has to be a coherent offensive strategy that is based on the players and that's been the big struggle over the last couple years it obviously you go two years back, it was the big struggle when it came to the playoffs. And so it's tough. I want to know if this offense can be above average.

We just haven't seen it in terms of expected points added per play from Kevin O'Connell yet, but he's dealt with three different quarterbacks. So it's such a tough point. And I think that's why the eight and half line is a really good one because I am at 6040 on one side of the on one side of the fence. But I think it really, really rotates along. And I think this decision would swing one way or the other as early as week two to three as compared to with, you know, most teams who are kind of in the middle of the pack are definitely most teams who are projected to be fourth in division where I wouldn't really feel comfortable about until about six to seven games. I think it's going to work because I've seen O'Connell do it. you know, the first half of 2023 with Kirk Cousins and how well he played there and Sam Darnold.

And I've also seen Justin Jefferson turn even Nick Mullins into a good quarterback. If you could put it in the general vicinity, that's going to work. But the pitfalls are very obviously there. And on the defensive side, you mentioned the floor. And while I think that they have enough smart players on that side, experienced players, that Flores believes in and trusts and so forth, there's a Harrison's, Smith element to this that's just different when he's not out there. And also, you lost 100 quarterback pressures between three veteran players.

And now you're saying three young players, you go do it. And that's just different. Even if you weren't thrilled with Jonathan Grinard's sack production, he was still creating a lot of pressure. Even if you didn't love Javon Hargrave, he still created versus other defensive tackles a fair amount of pressure. And the same with Jonathan Allen, where Dominique Orange and Caleb Banks, you don't know if they can play at all. I mean, I think they can because they're high draft picks and they're big

dudes and everything else, but you're not sure about that. So the variance, I think, is a lot wider on the defense than it's been. They also have a pretty tough quarterback schedule, which I know quarterbacks get hurt. You never know who you're going to be facing. But when you go to through the opposing quarterbacks, like there's a lot of really good players that you're going to face along the way that have seen your blitzes. Ben Johnson has resolved this defense several times. And, you know, Jared Goff's going to come back with a plan now that Drew Petsing is his offensive coordinator and Jordan Love has multiple times, you know, solve this defense. So it's, uh, I think it is a variance team in a division where all of the other teams, I think,

are fairly predictable in what they're going to be, which makes the Vikings interesting, if nothing else, which is kind of where we've lived for quite a while. Sam Brookhouse, Sumer Sports Show, you and Lindsay Rhodes do an amazing job there, breaking down the national football league and sumersports.com. So great to have you back on the show. Dude, a fantastic insight into what the Vikings should be looking for in their front office. And glad to have you on, man.

Thanks for doing this. Thank you. I think the Vikings are one of the most fascinating team. And you know, I can't leave without saying football. Football.