Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Which Vikings are playing their last games on Sunday vs the Bears?

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Matthew Coller and former Minnesota Viking Jeremiah Sirles dig into what went wrong with the Vikings' running game both offensively and defensively this year and look at why it's a sign that change is needed. Then they play The Magic Johnson game, in which they discuss which players are going to be Minnesota Vikings in 2022 and how Jeremiah will feel if his former coach is let go next week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Mid-Afternoon on the Wednesday Left Guard with former Minnesota Viking Jeremiah Searles, Matthew Collar here as always, Purple Insider. And Jeremiah, you know what? I'm actually going to say I've made fun of you a lot about the timing of the podcast not being every Tuesday morning. But I want to start out by just saying how much I appreciate you working your schedules around to be able to continue to do this because you have been incredibly busy this year. You were doing all the corn Huskers, you know, broadcast stuff and everything else you're traveling around. So there's a lot been going on and I appreciate you finding different ways

to make sure that you are here to break down a seven and nine football team. Well, I thank you and thank you for being football team. Well, thank you. And thank you for being flexible. The listeners, thank you for not pounding the table, for yelling at me as well, because you all very much could. But I appreciate it. I mean, we're going to be flexible next week,

because I'm going to be in either, I think I'm in Dallas or Orlando next week. It's one of the two. So we'll make it work. We'll be here. But you know what? I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else there, Matthew. I mean, who else loves Misery Loves Company? I mean, also, I can't say you inform me of this with a nice, beautiful stat. We have not had a winning season since you and I started podcasting together.

So I feel like we just got to see this thing through, man. We're in a downtime, but we'll climb back out. We'll find our way out of the hole. We haven't had a winning minute since we've been. That is actually true. That is actually true. That is actually true. Since starting Purple Insider, there has not been one second of winning football above 500 for the Minnesota Vikings, which is really something to think about how crazy that is.

And that's why I've been, I don't want to say melting down, but maybe just struggling at times. And maybe you've seen my Twitter from last night of like the idea that anything should stay the same. Because think about that. Like COVID did not exist the last time the Vikings were above 500. This quarterback, this coach, this GM, these guys have had a long time to be better than this and then when you hear well you know if they only didn't play Ole Udo at right guard or if they only made this field goal or if they only whatever it's like you know the average playoff team was 114 points better in point differential than the Vikings pretty hard to buy that it was just you know this that or the other thing and so I guess that's where my frustration has come with well you know it's not the

quarterback's fault or it's not the coach's fault I don't know seems like it's kind of everybody's fault at this point yeah I think at this point you can't just piggyback or just piggyback that guy that guy that and it's everyone it's a collective thing right football is a collective game now are there games that one or two plays, one or two players come down and make the difference? Yeah. But when you look at the course of an entire season, you have to take in every single factor.

And I mean, the factor is we can't really move the ball on offense. And I think that one thing that you were talking about on your tweets, and I wanted to get to it too, is the fact that the run game, which is bad this year. Like we've had the years where like offense hasn't been great, but the running game has been decent. Like the run game itself this year was just bad. And I think that is the number one contributing factors to why this team was

bad. I think that if you want to look and say, why didn't this team not win? It's because they couldn't run the football. And, you know, I look at all the things that are going to the coaching, to the coaching changes, to who's playing the position on O-line, tight end, running back a whole bit. And it's a collective group of things of why it was bad. You can't just single out one guy. And so I'm with you on the fact that there needs to be change. I don't know how much change the Wilfs are willing to say. I

mean, are they going to go scorched earth and start all over, or do they keep some of the pieces? I don't know, but there's got to be change in this organization if they expect change in between the white lines. How about this for a what-is-that-stat-me? There were only four teams that were worse in terms of expected points added on the ground, and those teams were the Las Vegas Raiders, Atlanta Falcons, Miami Dolphins, and Houston Texans were the only teams that hurt themselves more in the running

game. And there's a really interesting thing that's happened. Tell me what you think of this, that running was actually better this year in terms of how teams executed it to add expected points than it has been any other year going back statistically in terms of how much teams were able to add, the best teams were able to add. I'll give you what I mean is the Indianapolis Colts, the running gods, were plus 63 on the expected points added side, which is really unusual. That's a lot to add just through the running game. The Vikings were minus 35. So the difference between the best running team and the Vikings was 98 points. That's really significant, but there's actually a lot of teams that were having a ton of success. Some of them

have running quarterbacks, the Eagles, the Browns, the Ravens, the Seahawks, there's some running quarterbacks in there, but I think that teams have gotten smarter about when they run and how they run. And I think that both sides of the Vikings were impacted by this. They could not stop the run in part because there's all these motions and different things that they seem to never solve. And then when it came to their running, running on second and 10, for example, just not a great idea statistically. And I think the league is really caught on to, yeah, you can't pass every play just because the stats say you need to pass every play. But if they say second and three, that's a great time to run or using jet motion or using misdirection or whatever, because, hey, Shanahan's doing this or McVay, this is a way to run more efficiently. And as per usual, it just felt like the Vikings were a step behind the league.

That has been such a trend in recent years. Yeah, I mean, the creativity in the run game has really just kind of blown up in the last two, three years, in my opinion. I mean, it used to just be, even when I was playing, I mean, all four teams that I played on ran very similar schemes. One called it apples, one called it orange. It was the same idea, though. But as I watched the NFL more and more week in and week out,

it's the four-by-one sets or the three tight ends are all split out, and you're just making defenses think. And you're still running inside zone. You're still running counter and jet sweep. But the window dressing and the formation, I think a lot of it has to do too with the fact that the personnel right i mean a guy like kyle pitts can be in there to pass and run and i think that that's something that when we lost irv smith this year we kind of

lost that that hey is this a run or a pass because this guy can do a little bit of both right and conklin's made a really good year out of him, but he's kind of been our only threat there at tight end. But I do think the personnel-wise has changed in how people want to run the football. And you're right, the Vikings still kind of like, well, we're going to line up under center and we're going to put a fullback in the game. And I love fullbacks, trust me.

This is not me pounding on the fullback table. But we just were very predictable in our run game versus other teams that are successful, very unpredictable and made defenses think instead of a defense i can watch tape during the week and go okay here's the tendency and then we stick to our tendency which is really easy to do when you're the tennessee titans and you go hey here's what they do but no one's been able to stop it so we're going to try and find a new way to stop it and then when they can't because the titans are just so good at

running that duo downhill scheme with derrick hen Henry that it's helpful but the inside zone outside zone scheme for the Vikings we really never really were able to establish the fact that hey we can do this against anything we want and defensive are really just playing copycat from the week prior of whatever stopped it just doing that and seeing if we fixed it and we just never really were able to fix it as throughout the year so there's really odd things that happen on offense this year and i i would love your perspective on this uh and then we'll we'll do a fun game i think so but so that i i had kaylin kaylor on the show the other day she did reporting on the vikings nepotism hirings and things like that and and clint kubiak um now look there are a lot of sons of NFL coaches who do some really

great stuff. Kyle Shanahan is at the top of that list, right? But with Clint, there was so many inconsistencies in everything he did that it was just mind-boggling. And one of them was week two against Arizona. I looked back at the running game that week and I was like, oh man, they're going to run for like 5,000 yards this year it's gonna be nuts they lined up Delvin Cook and uh Alexander Madison on the field at the same time Cook was in the slot comes in motion runs a jet sweep and Buda Baker made an incredible play to keep it from not being a touchdown but that's one where unless you have Buda Baker like he's going for 5 10 15 yards and they never did it again the whole rest of the season never tried it again with those two on the field at the same time or with delvin

lining up somewhere else and the pittsburgh game where there's like oh all of a sudden they're running power stuff and they're doing a lot of different things and okay pittsburgh screwed up to give up a lot of those runs but then that just disappeared and it seemed like they went back to inside zone outside zone over and over again and i guess i like what goes into this on a weekly basis to go back and look at the tape and have such success doing some things and then just go completely away from them in the next game like how does this happen i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that when you aren't 100% sure what your identity is or what your identity is doesn't necessarily work all the time, you kind of get, as you like to say, galaxy brain. And you just adjust each and every single week. And then when it lines up perfectly and that week's adjustment works really well, great.

But then you kind of get away from it because you think, i have to individually game plan for every single week now like that's what happens is when you have a successful running game for example like and it went really well the scheme for that week was great so you're like okay i now have to scheme up against this next defense instead of just doing what the titans do or what the colts do it's like i don't care what the defense is in front of me we're just going to run our stuff we're going to run us and make them adjust to us because it doesn't matter if they line up 10 guys in the box, 11 guys, eight guys, we're going to run our stuff and we're going to be successful with it. He flipped to the Vikings.

We were constantly having to gain yards by scheme because of our interior line play not being awesome. And the beginning of our year, our left tackle not being awesome, right? Like we couldn't just rely and say, Hey center double team the nose double team the guy into the linebackers lap and let's get three like we just couldn't rely on that we couldn't rely on hey we just know if we call outside zone we're gonna get five or maybe pop one for ten like there was just no confidence in that and so i think clint felt it was more on him to scheme up good run plays versus just physically going out and getting after them.

And when you do that week in and week out, it gets confusing. Rules change. Things change. And when things change, people are unsure. When you're unsure, you play slow. And when you play slow, just bad things happen. And so I think a combination of a lot of that stuff went into the run game. And then ultimately, I think the ultimate deciding factor was the talent level in the inside three just wasn't quite where it needs to be to be really talented

in the nfl because you talk about those teams that are great up front running games they have really talented inside three in the center guard guard position the uh jimmies and joes rather than the x's and o's comma Pat Schirmer, lots of other coaches. Yeah, I always liked Pat. Pat Schirmer would say that all the time. We would try to give him credit for stuff. But yeah, now on the defensive side, I mean, I agree with you that when you're asking Ezra Cleveland and Ole Udo to do certain things in the run game that they just either have never done or aren't good at that it just doesn't work out super well and that was one thing with Pat Elfline where he was really struggling when it came to the pass protection but he was a good run blocker

and I'm not going to go out of my way to say Dakota Dozier was a good run blocker but his pass protection weakness was far more than his run blocking. I think he understood where he was supposed to go. And there's a PFF study on this, actually. What does that mean? That there is a massive difference. I know this won't surprise you, but it's way more massive in the run game than pass game. If there's a mistake blocking in the run game, runs basically get blown up. If it's perfectly blocked, you basically get 10 yards.

And that's why running backs, the whole thing, they don't matter and that sort of deal. I think that's a major part of it, how much the blocking impacts it. With passing, if one guy makes a mistake, usually the quarterback can make up for it. So I agree with you that you kind of have to look at how those guys executed more than anything and then not finding other ways to work around that.

On the defensive side, maybe you can compare this to weirdest things coaches have ever said to you. But today, Mike Zimmer said that he was talking to someone with the team and the coaching staff and said that the tape does not match up with the numbers when it comes to the Vikings run defense. And I just, like, my skull collapsed into my cranium. Just like, what? Huh?

I was there for every game, man. You couldn't stop the run all year. All year from the very beginning. I don't know. What numbers is he referring to? I mean, just like all the numbers that say how bad they are running. That's what I mean. Like, where is he like, oh, that doesn't match up. It's like, no.

Like, if you look on tape, there's a reason this happened. Like, there's a reason. It's like you said, when it gets blocked up perfectly, there was multiple times this year I'm going, oh, everyone's blocked. And then the running back just has to make one cut through the hole. That doesn't make any sense i i'm my my mind's kind of exploding right now as well trying to just decipher i mean i've heard that's like oh you didn't play as bad as the tape said or you didn't play as good

as the tape said like yeah that's fine but does he mean to say that we didn't play as bad as the yards that we let up yes is that is that what he's trying to get at i think that's what he's saying is that the tape of their run defense doesn't look as bad as the numbers do well if some butts were candy and nuts it'd be christmas every day so i don't i don't know like i don't know how you can expect to try and defend that that's a very that's it's indefensible you can just be like wrong like no that's not howefensible. You can just be like, wrong. No, that's not how that works, Mike. Next time, just be like, hey, can you elaborate?

I think that what happens so often on this beat is that things get said that we're so shocked, we don't even know how to follow up. Like there was a, and I'm not getting into it, but there was a Kirk Cousins vaccination comment today when he came back. We were just like, huh? But, you know, there's a Kirk cousins vaccination comment today when he came back, we were just like, huh? But you know, there's a lot of, and then I got a message from someone.

Why didn't you guys follow up? Like, I don't know, man. Sometimes you never see it coming. It's like, you know, if someone just came up and like punched you and you'd be like,

whoa, what, huh? And they'd be like, well, why didn't you just punch it back? You're like, I don't know.

I was so surprised. I feel like that's what happened there with the Zimmer comment comment like the tape wasn't as bad as the numbers we all watched as sony michelle washed up running back just got chunks of yards i mean this is this is kind of like uh symptomatic of where we are maybe i shouldn't say symptomatic uh emblematic of where we are with zimmer and with his team where it's just every press conference is just like, huh? Like, what are we talking about here? I mean, I would argue that the ability, not the ability, the way that the ball was ran on the defense this year

after the free agent signings is more alarming than the fact that the offense couldn't run the football this year I think you spent a bunch of money on Dalvin Tomlinson Michael Pierce and you get guys you've got your linebackers and Barr and Anthony in there like and you're like we're gonna stop the run because last year wasn't good either and then you buy these guys I know Pierce was hurt because he rushed back too soon or whatever but I mean you can't that's i think more alarming when you talk about upper management with rick and those guys because those are the guys that are paid to bring the guys in to do what they're supposed to do and i know you still have to perform but even with the addition

of those two guys the run defense was nowhere near where it needed to be so i feel zimmer probably feels he has more defense he has to defend that side more because that's where they paid the most attention and really they came flat out and said we we're going to stop the run this year. And then they just didn't. And I think that's probably why they're trying to defend that a little bit more than the running game on the offense being equally as bad. Yeah, that could be. But you think if they weren't so easily trucked in the run game, there's two or three wins that are potentially on the table where opposing quarterbacks played really badly. Cleveland comes to mind.

Baker Mayfield was way off in that game, but they just kept handing off. on the table where opposing quarterbacks played really badly uh cleveland comes to mind baker mayfield was way off in that game but they just kept handing off i think they converted a third and 20 with a handoff yeah i mean that's sorry mike i don't know what the tape looks like on that play but i mean i i don't know as much about x's and o's as you mike but i know that somebody did something wrong yeah that up't add up there that's not supposed to be the way it goes um so uh anyway as we as we approach just give me your give me your feelings because we like to talk about our feelings give me your feelings here as we approach what is very potentially the end for zimmer like do you feel having played for him and had some great times with him in the first

sort of iteration that had some success? Um, do you just like, I don't know, you tell me how you feel. Is it, is it like kind of sad that it's gone this way? Or do you feel like we should be making more excuses for him or defending him more? Or like, how do you feel? You know, I think I feel how Zim feels feels which is he understands this is a product he told us all the time it's a production-based business you know and and that's kind of how he approached everything as far as how he built his team how who played who was on the field who wasn't on the field is that if you can produce and help us win then you can be here if you're an asset if you're not then we're gonna have to ride the bench until you're

ready or you're gonna get cut and so for me i look at it as like zim understands that and i think that he would be the first to tell you this isn't good enough and if that's what the wilf sir say hey this is a production-based business he's gonna be like yeah i didn't get it done i mean i i didn't have i didn't get what i needed to do it's my job to have this football team ready and he'll probably look at you. But I think that you do have to look and say, you know, it was a pretty good run. You know, I think it could have been a lot worse. You look around the league and you look at some of the coaches that have come and gone during his tenure at Minnesota and be like, man, we're probably pretty lucky that we had

Mike Zimmer here and we were accomplished the playoff berths and the NFC championship run. Like there's a lot of teams that would kill for a couple years like that. Now, does it mean that we're not going to want to get back there and strive to get back there? No. But I think that if Zim is at the end and the axe comes down and off goes the head, that I think that we have to be, as fans, thankful to him, and I'll be always thankful for him

for the opportunity to play. But I think he helped the Vikings turn a corner when they needed it and i don't necessarily want to i don't think he ran this thing into the ground right a lot of coaches when they're on their way out they they just run it into the ground i mean matt patricia right i mean he left that place an absolute dumpster fire for the dude to come pick it up i mean i think that the culture that's been set with the guys that he's brought in and the off the field stuff that Mike Zimmer's done, the ability for another coach to come in here and have quick success is going to be piggybacked a lot off of what Zimmer's built here in the last seven years. It's been seven or eight years or seven years that he's coached here.

For all of your Minnesota sports inspired goods, use the promo code purple insider. When you go to soda stick.com, that is S O T A S T I C K.com. You can get their North state beanie, their Adam Thielen autograph shirts, Marcus Foligno fan club design for all of you hockey fans out there. And the one I always mentioned, because it's the best one, the Randy Moss disgusting act. You can put that on a hoodie shirt or almost anything else and plus anything you want with skull on it soda stick has it again that's s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com perfect for gifts and you can get that shipping free by using the code purple insider so yeah the way that i've been thinking of it is that he did what he was hired to do when he first got here through the first four years it must have been 2014 through 2017 and set the bar to

the point where every year espn predictor people would pick them to win the division or to go to the super bowl or be a like, Hey, look, maybe don't forget about this team. Like that was not much of the conversation before, um, Mike Zimmer got here. So he set that bar and then they couldn't get over it after they brought in Kirk cousins. And, and that's not to say it was all Kirk cousins fault. That's, you know, it's a common, it's a common thing. Don't blame Kirk for everything. So we won't.

But, you know, once they did that, though, it just makes the terrain so much harder if your quarterback is not the type of guy who can put everything on his back and carry a franchise. And I also think that Mike did some things that really worked in those first four years that they tried. And this goes for the way they built the roster and they tried to do them time and time and time again. And it's an, it's also an adaptation lead. You have to adjust, you have to change. And so there's a, there's a lot of things that, you know, I think that he was doing right through the start that suddenly kind of didn't really work anymore. And one of them, I mean, running the football is definitely something to look at with this, because even from that time, from 2014, 2015, 2016 to now, the way the teams run the football has just changed so much. And yet he's still like, why weren't we running more on second and 10? He's like, well, I don't know, man, because nobody does that anymore. They've all looked at the numbers and decided that's, that's how, you know, the teams are following the numbers. We're setting records for fourth downs, but Mike is still unsure about when to

go for it and when not to go for it. Like those types of things. They tried to swing for the next Daniel Hunter about 69 times and missed every time. And that's another thing, too, that they really locked into Stefan Diggs, Daniel Hunter in the same draft, Eric Hendricks in the same draft, and then never did it again. And that's a major part of it, too, is that, you know, great, great coaches, great quarterbacks can take rosters that are sort of slipping and keep them great. But good coaches and good quarterbacks, not as much. I think, you know, Mike Tomlin is an example here. Like that's not a good team and yet their record is better than the Vikings once again. So I guess that's the way I'll look at it is I will always sort of draw that line, that divider. But it reminds me a lot. I don't know if you could think of an example off the top of your head, but it reminds me a lot. I don't know if you could think of an example off the top of your head, but it reminds me a lot of both Atlanta with Dan Quinn

and Cincinnati with Marvin Lewis, where I think those are very good coaches. I think they're not the most cutting-edge coaches. And once things started to slip a little, it kind of slid pretty far down the hill when they weren't able to maintain those rosters that they had such success with. Yeah. I mean, I think the most recent one would be probably Pete Carroll, right?

I mean, I think Pete Carroll, he was so good for so many years. And all of a sudden it's like, it kind of just, I know Russell got hurt this year, which obviously he's, he's an elite quarterback in my mind. Like that never helps. But even when he's been back, they haven't been the same. They haven't had really since the Legion of Boom. Like, it's never really been the same. But, yeah, I think you're right.

I think that the league is changing in the way that there's really no loyalty to the team anymore. And there never really was. And I'm not saying that there should be. But, like, I don't ever think that there will be another history ever of Anthony Barr doing what he did in what was that 2017 or when he's like nope I'm gonna take less money to stay here like that was a testament to the Zimmer culture then I can't see I mean well apparently everyone wants to stay with New York and Joe Judge but that's insane but I mean I just don't see I don't see that happening anymore. And I think that that's part of the culture shift of winning helps. But again, I think that with Zimmer slipping to where we have

and where this team is, I don't see it ever changing unless you get new blood in there, new ideas, and kind of new energy for everyone that's coming in and everyone that's departing ready to go and find elsewhere. Yeah, I think that's departing ready to go and find elsewhere yeah i think that's right and after 2018 we saw a change i think in who wanted to sign who wanted to resign and all those things after that first season and that's even where the ball started to roll with stefan diggs wanting to be out and that also represents another i think sort of key moment of Zimmer and Kirk Cousins of, man, this guy who means so much to this organization, who is one of go, Hmm, this thing is not going in a good kind

of way when you have one of your best players wanting out. And even though you can look at the trade and say, well, you got a great receiver for him. It's like, yeah, but you'd lost the trade for different reasons. You didn't lose it player for player. You're even player for player. You lost it because the bills are in the AFC championship and winning their division again. And Stefan Diggs is happy and has caused zero problems for that franchise. And your team is in disarray two years later. Like that's why you lost because that that's why you lost the trade because Diggs was right.

And that, and that's a worse look for you than if they had drafted Jalen Rager was Diggs being right. It's not even about Justin Jefferson. So well, let's play the about Justin Jefferson. So, well, let's play the game because once this happens, it just keeps going when it comes to breaking down how this team got into their pit of misery.

So this is called Matt. Yeah, that's the metal band that plays. What does the stat mean? Yeah. Pit of misery. So this is called the magic Johnson game. because there is a gif or gif whichever you prefer uh where magic johnson says i'm not gonna be here have you seen this i have

i have seen this okay so i want to ask you about who's gonna be here uh yeah the magic johnson game who's gonna be here and i want to Magic Johnson game. Who's going to be here? And I want to start slow, and then we'll speed up. So let's start with Anthony Barr. Seems like with his contract situation that this is probably going to be it for Anthony Barr. But Magic Johnson game, do you think Anthony Barr is playing his final game against the Chicago Bears on Sunday? Yes.

I think, I think him, the only way he stays is if him and Kendrick's are just that good of friends and that good of boys that they're just going to ride this thing out together. That's the X factor in that one for me. Yeah. I think that he's also going to sign somewhere else probably. And I don't know how much longer he's going to play with the injuries that he's battled through banged up yeah i i want to ask your perspective on bar

because i think that the contract when he came back was not a good idea that's not his fault he didn't sign himself to it he asked them to come back and they could have said hey fail you know sorry purse strings and such uh but instead they said, oh yes. Oh, you want to come back? Here's all the money. They gave him a huge contract. Like you didn't even have to, if he's begging to come back. But anyhow I think that he's been a very good player for the Vikings who, when he signed that contract, it was never going to be worth it. It was never going to succeed. And then the, you add the injuries to it. There was always a feeling that more could have been there than it was,

and I think that that's fair. But I also think that the things that were said about him by his teammates and coaches and everybody else were true about his value, his intelligence, everything that he brings to the defense, and they were different when he wasn't in the game. So I'd love to hear your perspective on him now that this could be the end of the road. Yeah, I think that everyone, when he wasn't in the game. So I'd love to hear your perspective on him now that this could be the end of the road.

Yeah, I think that everyone, when he came in, he had such high expectations, right? And people forget that he was a true position change guy. Oh, there's that word, position change, right? That's one of the ones that worked, though. I mean, he was a 3-4 outside linebacker. I played against him at UCLA when he was there, and I was a junior his senior year.

And he was a pass rusher. I mean, the dude was coming off the edge every time. and so he made that switch to that Will linebacker that hybrid run around in the box guy and pro bowl player I mean he did so much for this defense and you know everyone wanted to knock on him at times but you could feel the difference when 55 wasn't out there now you could see the way it seems and Nothing against Eric Wilson or any of those guys, or Ben Gideon, but they just weren't what Barr could do. The range he could do, the ability of him to play back and forth. And when he was healthy, he was one of the best linebackers in the league.

But ultimately, I mean, this game beats you up. It's hard to year in and year out be that same kind of productivity. And so for him, I think the injury bug caught up with him but i do think that if he could get his body right and get a really truly healthy off season i still think he's got a couple good years to go somewhere and it could still make an impact one thing that i notice and this is where sometimes the numbers in the tape will have a difference amazing but it does happen where so you know pff will track how teams perform when throwing at a certain player but there's it's impossible to track when you don't throw at that player so one thing that

always amazed me was on play actions and things like that that anthony bar could robot around which just kind of means stop from going in to stop the run and turn around and run backwards and cover so much ground like a guy that that size and that length and you would see quarterbacks be like okay oh the linebacker you know came toward the run and i'm just gonna throw it right over oh wait anthony bar is there and he's in the way there and i i mean there's just there's subtle things like that uh he was the green dot guy or whatever color dot it is that that calls the and everything else. And I think there were subtle things there that made him more valuable than say sacks interceptions, you know, and, and really you look at the way that he's going to end this

year. I think that he played fine, if not well throughout this entire season. And he ends with a pretty good year. That was sort of what he is. It was not unbelievable. It wasn't Bobby Wagner or something. it wasn't bobby wagner or something it wasn't 10 sacks or something but they were much better when he was in there and he was good so that's kind of way that i look at him let me give you a harder one because i think that was

easy deniel hunter will deniel hunter be here i think he will i think deniel hunter will still be here because there's something to be said about when you're the guy in the room right like you're the captain of that room it's your room I mean you especially if a new staff comes in like they're gonna lean on you to be a leader and to be kind of the guy and there's something I think players like about that and I think that Daniil feels like he still has a lot to prove in purple um I know that he doesn't i mean he's done but i think that he wants to come back and have a full season in purple that being said money talks and if money's too much and they ask him to take a pay cut or they ask him to do one of the things then yeah he might go but i do in my gut i think daniel hunter is still in purple next year i think so

too and if they have a new general manager it's really hard to look at what daniel hunter has done and he is 27 so it's almost we're almost getting to where he's a grown-up now you know for so many years it's like daniel hunter is actually younger than their entire draft class and he's been in the league for four years or something you know it's ridiculous but we are getting to the point where you reach and i remember doing a study on this with mario williams a long time ago of looking at like after 27 28 production can continue to be high, but it's usually not the same as it once was. You people get old fast in the NFL. I mean, it's a,

it's remarkable how quick someone goes from in their prime and young to like kind of on the wrong side. But I think with him, this injury was kind of weird. And the other one, who knows? It's reason to be concerned. It's reason not to want to give 20 plus million dollars per year. But also, it's so hard to find guys who are like that. And you saw the impact when he was gone. I think that you look at that as, OK, that's something you want to invest in.

And maybe they end up getting a better deal because of the injuries that he had. But I agree that Daniel Hunter will be here. How about Patrick Peterson? Think he comes back? Not if Zimmer's not here. I think if Zimmer goes, Peterson bounces. And even at the end, there were some hints of maybe Patrick Peterson is sort of even not enjoying the Zimmer experience.

Yeah, I think that Zimmer was the draw for him. But I don't know. I could see Peterson hitting the retirement button too. I mean, I think he still has some good ball in him, but at the same time, I could see him being like, eh, what is it? Who was it, Vontae Davis? Just halftime.

I can't play with these boys and just bounced. I think I could see him at the end of the year saying, you know what? That was fun, but I'm done. Were you there for that? Were you in Buffalo together? That was the year I got there that year. I wasn wasn't there but i signed there week four that year and so i got to hear all about it it's amazing that's legendary i mean nothing but jock straps and jerseys is

hanging out there walking out the freaking locker room oh well at least he didn't do the antonio brown and completely strip and dance around. Amazing. That was strange. How about Adam Thielen? I actually said someone asked this the other day, and I don't know. This one's hard. No, I want to say yes, because his life is built there, and he's built so much there. His agents is there. Like everything about Adam is the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota experience. That being said,

if they bring in some coordinator who maybe doesn't see eye to eye with Adam, I could see them maybe saying, Hey, pay cut, Adam, pay cut. We got, I mean, you got to think there's a lot of money that has to get moved back into the, the, the purple and gold side out of the player side, right? And then the organization side, I can see them like, Hey, you got hurt. You know, you've got Justin Jefferson now. Like, pay cut? You want to stay? And if I think if they ask a guy to take a pay cut, he'll leave

because he still is a high-caliber receiver. I think, again, he's getting older, but he still has a lot of good football left. But I think in my gut, he stays. I want to say that he does because, again, if there's a new GM, you're just looking at what do we have and what can we set up? And this leads to the next question, of course, and the last one, how can we set up potentially the next quarterback? And that's a really big part of it would be, you could give them two great wide receivers, not just one, but if I'm Adam Thielen and you're saying, all right, well,

cousins is going to get traded away. We've got a new coach, new GM, and we're hitting the reset button here. That doesn't mean tanking. It just means that it's going to be very different around here. I wonder if he says, look, is there any way you could send me to Kansas City? Right. And I wouldn't blame him for that because I think this year I've covered Adam now basically his whole career. And I, this was the most frustrated he's ever been. And there have been other times where there've been downs and disappointing losses and disappointing seasons, but I have not seen him be like angry before necessarily. And he looked like he was pretty angry with how things went this year.

And I, I think that he directed some of that kind of subtly toward Clint Kubiak and so forth. And his agent tweeted something about it midway through the season, but yeah, not maybe the brightest move, but if you're, if you're of his age and his talent still,

you might be saying, look, I don't know if I've got like three more years here until we can be a real Superbowl contender. Can you trade me somewhere? And I think if you're the organization, you've got to say, for all that you have done here, we should. We should honor that request if he wants to do it.

So I think that that's possible. Plus, he's very expensive, and you could create some serious cap space by doing it. Yeah, the thing is I wonder what they'd ask for him. I think that you mean honestly you ask for the moon, right, but I'm not sure what a team is going to be willing to give up for Adam Thielen versus I think that the more likely is maybe they just kind of see how much dead money he has and honestly just could release him.

They could honestly just release him and see what happens, depending on what his dead money looks like on his contract. I'd have to look that up. Yeah, I think a second rounder might be not insane. I mean, like broken ass julio got a second rounder true and he's got more yeah he's got more name recognition but everyone knows he was broke by the time that he left so uh feeling high ankle sprain isn't as broken as julio was so i don't know that would be my expectation like a second late second rounder or something yeah

um i think third yeah second third and i think it would be heartbreaking for people in Minnesota to see him go, but you would understand it. And Buffalo had to go through this. I've used Buffalo as an example a lot of how that 2018 season while you're there is pretty tough. But they had to make a lot of hard decisions on players that people liked that they moved on from, and it ultimately turned out to be much better for them in the future.

All right, the last one. You know who it is. Kirky Boy. Kirky Boy. Kirky Boy. Kirk Cousins, yes. He's gone. I think so, too.

He's got to go. He's expensive. If I'm him, I probably want to go, too. I'm probably tired of my fault. And you talk about a rebuild. I mean, he doesn't want to be part of a rebuild. I mean, again, I know that. Here's the thing.

Kirk can still go make really, really good money because he's a good quarterback. We're not talking about offloading whoever that quarterback was. I don't even know. Sean Mann and whatever his name was. I had to watch the other night. It just made my eyes bleed. Kirk is still a good quarterback, and he is still a starter in this league.

And there's enough teams around the NFL that don't have a good quarterback that he can still go make himself some money somewhere or there's a team that's willing to trade for him because they know who they're getting with Kirk I think that it's a little bit if anyone follows Huskers on here it's a little bit like Adrian Martinez who was here with the Huskers good quarterback not a great quarterback didn't really help us win a lot of games but I think he was just tired of being the scapegoat for everything and he just wanted a fresh start so he's gonna go to kansas state you know i think kirk is kind of in that same line of thinking of you know what i know who i am i know what i'm good at i know i could come back here and do the exact same thing over and over again and get in trouble

and get yelled at by everyone or maybe i go somewhere else where they appreciate me and i can kind of hit the refresh button on my own career. Right. Yeah. And I think that if you're Cousins, you're probably, I mean, you're probably at the end of your line here yourself. I mean, I just feel like it has not been a good time here. He's gotten a lot of criticism, which has been well-earned by not putting up W's and L's. I mentioned earlier today, as a total aside, that anytime people talk about like, oh, you know, W's and L's, I don't know.

Sometimes it's luck and whatever else. Peyton Manning went 135 and 25 in a 10 year span. So I don't know. I think he had a lot of different luck and good things and bad things happen along the way. Do you think Tom Brady is just the luckiest human? I mean, look at his wife. So maybe. But I mean, there is luck that is involved in football, but it's not the end all be all in w's and l's right i mean usually if you

go through the history of the league and quarterbacks who have more than 100 games and look at who's elite who's a 500 quarterback who is bad it pretty well categorizes by the w's and l's eventually over a seat over one season maybe not but over a large sample it does anyhow that's uh i think if i if i'm cousins i'm saying can you send me to a team that's a little more ready to win than this team is because they have so much to do on this roster to get there so um i'll be very interested but if i'm his agent too maybe i'm saying this just hasn't really been a fit it hasn't worked out and now you're going to change everything potentially. So we will see there how that ends up playing out. It is going to be some kind of fascinating January and February.

All right. Love to see it. Hate to see it. What do we have for love to see it? Hate to see it. Love to see it is just that hell of a guy, Antonio Brown. I mean, you just you love to see that someone that and i guess you could do a hate to see it too because you don't want to see anyone do that but for me it's the

fact that bruce arians kept going about he's not a bad guy and even the week before antonio brown like you guys just make this all about everything i'm just here to play football and then he just goes and does that and then everyone's like yeah this is who he is he's kind of a jerk like this is kind of who he's been his whole career and And I just thought it was hilarious to watch him pump the fans up. And then the Uber driver going viral, like the whole thing was just hysterical. And I just found like following it from start to finish was one of my favorite things.

And it's still not over. They still haven't technically released him. There's still something going on as to why the Buccaneers have not fully released him. So the end of the story has not written, but I have just loved following it from the word go. I mean, someone needs to do a timeline of the problems caused in Pittsburgh, the problems

caused with the Raiders, and then the problems caused with the Tampa Bay Bucs. I still have a feeling that he's going to come back and catch a game-winning touchdown in the Super Bowl or something. Like, they're just like, okay. It's not over. Like, it's not over. Just don't melt for like two weeks in the playoffs he was fantastic in the super bowl last year yes man um my love to see it and hate

see at the same time is hub arkish who's kind of a legendary football guy saying that he wasn't going to vote for aaron rogers because rogers is a jerk and here here's the thing now you're shaking your head i want to protect the right for people to call other people jerks and not give them accolades because they're jerks. Aaron Rodgers acted like a jerk this year. Sorry, he did. Like I, he, he did a lot of things that were very jerky from the very start of the off season to skipping all the OTAs, to doing all the stuff, all the interviews and everything

else, a lot of jerky stuff. And if somebody doesn't want to vote for him for MVP because they want to give the tie to the not jerk or Brady who hasn't done any of that stuff, that's fine. Call somebody a jerk. I don't understand why I was so upset about calling somebody a jerk. Yeah, but it's not the most likable award. No one cares if he's the most likable player.

It's the most valuable player of what you do between the white lines keep all the other politics crap out of it it's what you do with the football in your hand or what you do and when it comes down to it the dude is the best quarterback in the nfl there's no doubt about it i don't care if he's a jerk i don't care if he's the nicest human shoot his own family doesn't even talk to him you think that he's not a nice guy that the dude can absolutely spin it. And that's the part that I hate that a lot of sports, politics, and everything like feelings come inside of it when I get it. Yeah, he can be a jerk, but we're not judging him on that.

We're judging him on what his performance base is. And if you want to say that he's not the most valuable player in the NFL, I can't really respect your opinion anymore. That's the part for me is like your opinion is no longer really valid because you're now saying based off of my emotional bias i don't think that this dude's performance is that good well he has been a provable jerk uh does that matter well why it's at least one game did for at least one game uh which br Brady didn't miss any games. Now, here's the thing. He hasn't played as good as Brady.

By the numbers, Brady and Rodgers are pretty much dead even, whether it's like expected points added. PFF grade Brady is better. The expected points added for the whole season team passing Tampa Bay is a little better. Maybe if Rodgers had played that other game, he would passing Tampa Bay is a little better maybe if Rogers had played that other game he would have been up there a little higher so I here's what I'm defending I'm not saying you should vote for MVP because you are not vote for some for MVP because you

think the guy is a jerk what I'm saying is if a writer wants to say look i don't like the guy and i think he's treated people badly and i think he's treated his organization badly and i'm going to give it to somebody else because of that i think that's okay i think it's okay to just go off on somebody who has been a jerk and like think about this this is what they do in baseball for the hall of fame and with um barry bonds barry bonds is not in the hall of fame because he's a jerk and and a cheater right and uh a lot well you know maybe you could argue that uh rogers's galaxy brain campaign on the mac show could also be considered you know a negative toward him but anyway uh so my my point is just that like this happens and i don't cry

any tears for aaron rogers or barry bonds like you had plenty of opportunities not to be called a jerk so it's it's fine with me and he responds in the most jerky way possible by calling the guy a bum so like fine all right it's all even i love that insult by the way i think i think calling someone a bum is just an ultimate insult because like it's really not like a bad word but it just like if someone calls you a bum like you're ready to fight like you are like you're just like irks at like whatever inside of you really is loser and bum are like the toughest you're a loser like the loser uh last one for me just real quick is um hate to see that week 18 basically doesn't matter

who would have ever seen it coming that adding this pointless extra game didn't matter thanks nfl uh my uh my last my last hate to see it is just that i don't think the arizona cardinals are that good no i agree like you know i i think that for a while there they had us all fooled i think that we were like you know they'll get kyler back things will get rocking again i just you know i don't think the arizona cardinals are as good as people think they are which makes me sad because i kind of wanted them to make a run i kind of wanted the cardinals i like that team i like the guys on that squad like i think that they had a good but i just i think that they're kind of screwed when the playoffs start.

Yep. It would be fun to see sort of like up and coming quarterback, up and coming coach kind of deal. But yeah, no, I agree with you. They played well against Dallas, but I'm not sure that they got the juice to go deep in the playoffs. So Jeremiah midday on a Wednesday recording time, I think worked out pretty well.

So we'll continue on through the playoffs though, and we'll break down and have some fun and play plenty more games. So I appreciate your time as always. And good stuff, man. Absolutely. Talk to you next week.