Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Which Vikings free agents are coming back? Who needs to win the NFL Combine?

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Matthew Coller and Paul Hodowanic talk about what they are looking for from Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O'Connell in their first media sessions at the NFL Combine along with potential biggest winners of the Combine and the idea of waiting to draft a quarterback until 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here along with, from WCCO Radio, Paul Hodowanek. Paul, how was your first week on the job? Not too bad. Just lots of monotonous training and stuff that you got to fill out. Make sure I know the systems and got all that down. But we've figured that out and now we're hitting the trail hard. And now you'll become an investigatory journalist. Um, that's very cool. Uh, well, I'm happy for you.

I also do appearances on WCCO radio and in order to get paid for them, I have to do the same like training stuff as you just because of logistics and how, whatever it works out with corporate. And this is only to just like go on a couple of shows a week during the season. But I got a text from our friend, Brad Lane, who hired you and who used to be my boss a couple of weeks ago. And he was like, why haven't you done the harassment training? I was like, there's harassment training. Like how would I harass someone? I don't even work there, but yeah, I know I did it.

I watched all the videos that you had to watch and everything else. So, uh, okay, well, good for you. I'm, I'm glad for you to really get rolling with that job.

But of course, the most important thing in your life is not the journalism you will do for WCCO radio. It is breaking down the NFL draft and the NFL combine coming up, which I will be flying out on Monday evening. We've got the schedule now for Kweisi Adafo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell when they're going to talk. So I will be there 2 o'clock local time.

So 2 o'clock Eastern, 1 o'clock here Tuesday is when Kweisi is going to talk. And then Kevin O'Connell, I think, is like noon or 1230 Central Time, you know, Indianapolis, obviously, in Eastern Time. So I'll be there for that. And then after those podium sessions, which people can watch, they always do a side session, which I assume that that tradition is going to continue.

And there will be a lot to get into. I think, let me ask you this to start off the show, Paul. Like, what are you looking for from these guys? Like, what if, you know, if you had your choice to ask them three questions and three questions only, both Kwesi and Kevin O'Connell at the Combine. Like, what do we want to know? They just did introductory press conferences, but they were not that illuminating when it came to what the roster looks like and even kevin o'connell name dropping anthony bar i thought was more of just oh i played the vikings recently and we game plan for anthony bar it

wasn't i don't think some indication that they desperately want anthony bar back um but now they'll have a chance to have gotten together and had meetings and form their plan and be able to talk about what they want to do without completely giving away the entire plan. So what should we want to hear from the brass at the combine? Well, selfishly, just in putting these draft columns together, you know, in any other year, we'd have a really, really good sense of the type of players that quacey and kevin o'connell liked to draft uh but we don't know that i mean we knew what spielman wanted we knew what zimmer wanted and we could kind of forecast around that we could kind of understand

who to look for who to talk to to kind of figure out who might be on their radar and we knew what direction they wanted to take the team in they They were trying to win immediately. So you kind of knew the formula for what they were going to look for here. We don't know. We still don't quite know what they're going to do at quarterback. We don't know if they're going to really try to be competitive this first year, if they're going to try to address needs right away, if they're going to play more of a long-term game, like we don't know the answers to all those questions.

So I think trying to, trying to ask them questions where we can understand the types of players they like, the types of players they want to fit know, sometimes they go against the general positional value when they draft it and where they draft it. And so I would love to hear from them, their kind of philosophy on that because there's a really, really good center in this draft that might be there when the Vikings pick. And that's kind of just been a side storyline I've been paying attention to is what teams are saying about Lindenbaum and kind of the

positional value of do you take that guy thinking he's going to be really, really good and how much risk are you taking on not taking a high premium talent position player and instead going for a center, even if that center ends up really, really good. So I would love to hear, especially because of Kweisi's background, just what he thinks on positional value and just more broadly what they're looking for in players, because we really have no sense of that at all. We don't know that they want to go after a Daniil type rusher in later rounds. Like we have no idea the types of bodies, the types of guys that they like to go for. So that's what I'm interested. Yeah, that's a really good point.

And I wonder where the data points on a lot of these things that they're using. I mean, we know what Pro Football Focus does and we know that PFF works with every team. And so they're probably providing a lot of this data. But there's also a lot of things that we don't know about that PFF does for teams or that teams do on their own in terms of different studies and everything else to try to get just the ever bit of slight edge. I've always thought that the edge is in drafting the right positions that you're never going to increase by too much. Although we're going to talk about this, you're never going to increase too much your odds of drafting a bust or a home run, but you can increase the value of when you

hit a home run. If you hit a home run, this is, this is the thing. If you hit a home run with Justin Jefferson, he transforms your franchise, right? You feel great about your number one wide receiver for a decade. If you draft Garrett Bradbury and he turns out to be great. I mean, it's nice. It's certainly you'd rather have a great center than not have a great center. But if he turns out to be one of the best centers in the league, I don't know that it really changes your fate. I mean, the Cleveland Browns once drafted Alex Mack and he's an incredible player and they had Deshaun Kaiser playing quarterback and it meant nothing. I mean, like they had Joe Thomas. It's just like, and also offensive lines are five man units. And this is my problem with

drafting offensive linemen high is that you have to have five good players. And if you have a great tackle and the Vikings have had this, Brian O'Neill is a great NFL tackle. What difference has it made when the other guys aren't that good? So like Penny Sewell, if you could, this was the debate with Jamar Chase and Penny Sewell. If you could, this was the debate with Jamar Chase and Penny Sewell. If you could draft Penny Sewell and he made your whole offensive line good. Oh my God. Like you would draft him instantly. Yes, for sure. Whereas Jamar Chase can make your whole passing game good by himself. And he did. And Justin Jefferson has done that for the Vikings. So I look at the positional value is how much can one

player impact it? There might be a debate here with corners. Can one player, if it's not Jalen Ramsey, can one player transform your secondary versus one player might be able to transform your pass rush. If that player is good enough coming off the edge and you can have one guy dominate and take over games. I don't know that you can really have one guy unless he is truly Deion Sanders take over games as a corner where it's more of secondaries are sort of like offensive lines where they're a complete unit. And I agree with you. I would love to ask, and maybe I will, um, Kweisi Adafo-Mensa about kind of how he views different positional value i also want to get some sort of hint of whether they buy that it's a weak quarterback draft or not and this

might be hard it might be difficult to get them to say for sure like hey crazy come on just between you and me let's talk about the it's bs right it's a great qb draft right no i mean i i understand why people say that but um but but in even just the general concept of weak positions and things like that like is that something that they put a lot of weight into or is it more just sort of a player to player their own individual evaluations yeah and again with quacey's background and the fact that he wasn't in a traditional like pro scouting role for a really long time or under one specific gm for a really long time it's even hard to kind of go back and say okay what did andrew berry do can

we get hints on what quacey's gonna do oh what did they do in san francisco like can we get hints on what quacey's gonna do he wasn't necessarily involved in those things right away when he got into the nfl and that kind of was molded over time. And then if you like, if you don't have that, then you also go, okay, what, what kind of guy is Casey? And if we're taking him at kind of this analytics focused mold, we also don't have GMs kind of in that mold that have come from the analytics side that we can say, well, these four analytics GMs, this is how they kind of address things right away. So there is not a lot of historical context to even try to guess what he's going to do. You can go and say in Cleveland, they drafted Jedrick Wills and Owusu Koromoa, I think in

like their first year with the draft. So they went in the trenches, they went athletic on defense. Maybe you can say the Vikings would do something like that, but there it's nothing more than circumstantial that you can find for any, any sort of hint at what they could do. So it's going to be really, really interesting because it could go so many different directions on the draft, you know, quarterback or not. It could, there's just so many different possibilities because we have no priors. What do you think of the idea of the Vikings just trying to get ball players and then looking toward 2023 when it is an allegedly stronger quarterback draft.

Now, when I looked into this, what I found for the quarterback draft for 2023 is if you're drafting number one or number two overall, you should be in pretty good shape. Bryce Young and CJ Stroud are kind of like the, these guys almost can't fall off their pedestal type of good. They're like, I mean, Justin Fields did drop, but sort of like the Lawrence and Fields that you know they're going to be those top two picks. Bryce Young could be a transformational player of like, you know, next level. Number one overall pick,

changes your franchise type guy. CJ Stroud probably has a few more holes in his game that he has to shore up. But after that, they all sound like the dudes from this year. Spencer Rattler is one of them there's a handful of other uh quarterbacks that are talked about the guy from coastal carolina like could they do this or that to make themselves a first round pick and so i tend to think that you don't want to do that unless you're tanking and the browns did this

once upon a time where they didn't take i think go, Goff or Wentz, and they waited to take Baker Mayfield because they were tanking. If that is the case, then I would say that's totally fine. But I don't think the Vikings are in any position with the players they have on offense to tank. They're in much better position or more likely position, even if they changed quarterbacks to be competitive for a playoff spot and develop a quarterback over a year, and then have a really good sense for where they stand with that quarterback by next year and know if they have to make a big trade up to get a top five type of prospect. I think they're in a better spot to do that, to take a Matt Corral, to take a Malik Willis and see what you have there. Then they are to say, no, no, let's just hang out and see what happens in 2023.

Because then, I mean, you might end up getting left out of the party. When you think about like, if you stick with cousins for a year and then, okay, you're not drafting a quarterback, you have no other option. You get to the end of 2022, you go eight, nine, nine and eight, whatever it might be. Maybe you make the wild card of 2022 you go eight nine nine and eight whatever it might be maybe you make the wild card maybe you don't and you go into that draft with the 18th overall pick or the 16th overall pick and you start making phone calls hey can we get up to like number two no no you may not because whoever the number two is drafting a quarterback cj stroud or bryce young and then you're ending up drafting a similar level prospect a year later, as opposed to having a year with somebody like Malik Willis.

And that's my thing too, with Willis specifically, is that I think the ceiling is really high and you have a year to figure out, could he reach that ceiling potentially in an NFL environment? Because there's no real way to tell. And we've seen Ben Roethlisberger. We've seen Josh Allen. We said like, there are lots of guys who've come from colleges that are not, I mean, Derek Carr's Fresno state with Jimmy Garoppolo. Was he something Illinois or whatever? Like, uh, I forget where he went, but I mean, it was like nothing special at all. And yet we've seen these guys turn into good NFL quarterbacks. So I, you'll, you'll see that a lot. Well, the guy went to Liberty, you know, like, I don't know, but that doesn't seem to correlate to turning into a really

good NFL prospect. So I think you, you should be looking to take your shot this year, uh, as opposed to doing the let's wait till 2023 thing. Yeah. And I mean, in general, you're trying, when you draft someone, the, the highest, like years that you're going to get like war wins above replacement are going to be that year two, year three of their rookie deal. And so I think if you're waiting, then you're pushing Justin Jefferson, or like, if you're waiting for a quarterback into next year's draft, then you're waiting another year with the Justin Jefferson timeline for that contract to get even longer. You're waiting another year for Brian O'Neill just continues to get more expensive. You're just waiting more and more years for these guys, these younger guys that you have

on the roster. And so that doesn't mean you push it for this year, but it really does mean you try to find that window in 2023 and 2024. Cause you have those, you have a few of those young pieces, those prime, really, really high potential pieces that you can capitalize on. And those are the years that you need to focus on it. And so if they just hold off another year with the draft, that means they're probably solid this year and then they take a step back next year. And then they're trying to build back up in three years and then your timelines get a little screwy. And so I agree. I think the strategy, if they want to move from Kirk Cousins, even though it's a weak with a quarterback that you feel you can come in,

bring in next year and every other requisite pieces around him so he can succeed in year one, like other quarterbacks of the past haven't because they I mean, you don't traditionally win with a rookie quarterback. You really got to wait till year two or year three. So you'd if that's the way you have to go, you kind of have to commit to it now. And you have to structure everything else around to build for that quarterback coming in next year and it's just a lot of uncertainty because you don't know how next year is going to go you could wind up with the 20th pick because things go really really well and then you're just not in a position to do again and you just don't know where you're going from there yeah and that's uh it is the difficult

needle to thread because if they they could end up in that 2023 spot anyway, if they draft someone this year and it doesn't work out, it's just that everybody else is replaceable. If you have, I don't know, a corner that you draft say, and he goes bust like, I don't know all their recent corners.

You can sign people in free agency. The Vikings signed the wrong people last year, but if you go through the free agents last year in free agency, there were teams who signed corners that worked out. You go through the pass rushers, Trey Hendrickson worked out for Cincinnati, became very good. And there were rumors that the Vikings were interested in him going into free agency. If you don't get a quarterback, there isn't really an option to just go to free agency and get one. If you need a guard, they're there. This year, a center, there's like five good free agent centers. You can only do it if you have cap space, of course, of which the Vikings have not recently had cap space.

But you can, but you can, when you do you can fill those spots. Quarterback is just not like that unless you really want you know, Jamis Winston or something, which no one does. So you did a thing on the site where, which by the way, purple insider.com looking very snazzy. If people want to go check it out.

And thanks to our friends at cultural North in Duluth that built purpleinsider.com. So it's got all of our articles there, podcasts, videos. Go check it out. So you did an article there, which is on our sub stack as well, about in part the winners and losers from the combine. And it's always fun to come out of the combine. All right. Well, who's, you know, help their case. And my suspicion, how I would have guessed it for what it means to

be a winner or loser of the combine is, is sort of exactly what it turned out to be in your research, which is that if you are a winner of the combine, uh, hard to say if that means anything, if you are a loser of the combine, that's bad. That's probably going to tank you if you are a highly thought of prospect. And that is, and you writing this, that is now what I'm watching for with these quarterback prospects is which one of these guys will be the loser of the combine? Because that seems to have at least a loose connection to whether guys are going to work out or not. Yeah. Going through the exercise. I mean, you know, we see it after the senior bowl,

we see it after every step of the draft process, it becomes, okay, who won it? Who lost it? What, what happened during the combine or during the senior bowl or anytime. And I'm always a bit just cynical about those things. Is it just one week? Did they just get hot? Did they run a 4-2-40 and now they're in the winners? And we're going to discount a lot of other things because he came out of the combine with nice buzz. And then he ends up being, I mean, the famous one is John Ross. I think that everyone goes to John Ross runs the crazy 40.

He goes to the bangles on a first round pick and just is never good. And I think people maybe overemphasized what he did at the combine. So I kind of wanted to go into this, look at the past five, six years and say, who was consensus consensus coming out as winners and losers. And I found kind of a lot of winners and it's those athletic freaks you talk about,

but then going through the losers, I was looking for a couple to be like, we'll see these guys lost the draft or lost the combine and still ended up really good. And there weren't many to pick from. It's like Cooper cup. Cause he ran a slow 40 Orlando Brown. Cause he was just horrible. And like Lamar Jackson. Cause everyone still thought he was a wide receiver. Like those are the only successful losers of the last five years to still have a solid career. So I think, yeah, it's a good point because I think we look for the positives at the NFL Combine. We look for who ran the really, really fast 40

or who put up 40 bench press reps. And it really should be like who ran a really slow 40 and what are these top prospects that kind of fell off during the Combine, which ones didn't perform at a bright stage, which ones just don't athletically just stack up to the rest of the draft i mean if you go through some of these losers i mean it's like nikhil harry ran a slow 40 he's a loser in 2019 there's names that i had never heard of joe juan williams uh devin singletary josh rosen tease tabber wayne gallman

like these are the guys. Viking Wayne Gallman, Viking current free agent. Jake Fromm. Like these are the guys that go into the combine and they're deemed losers and then they fall off. And so I think it's still a little risky to be like, oh, they won the combine. They're going to be really good. It's more, it ends up just being the same crapshoot with the winners that it is for the rest of the draft. But the people that come out of the combine and are bad are bad in the nfl that just seems to be the trend that we're seeing uh yeah and the lamar jackson thing was because he didn't run the 40 i

think like he we knew that he was not going to have this unbelievable throwing session at the combine and so you gathered this list of winners and losers through different sites you just looked around and tried to find like who was naming winners and losers from this and then gathered your list but with jackson it was i think in part he was and just think of the silliness of some of this he was being represented by his mom and so they were like upset that he was being represented by his mom and not like some super agent and then uh the whole he didn't run the 40 thing and i think he was trying not to run the 40 to be like passive aggressive actually warren moon i think said way back in the day that he purposefully ran a slow 40 so nobody would change his position i mean just you know i like we're still dealing with

that sort of stuff with biases and things like that and that was shown with the lamar jackson but the other loser quarterbacks that came out of the combine included cardale jones who ended up being the next quarterback picked after dac prescott uh by the way and uh let's see who are the other ones brad kaya remember brad kaya yeah more like more like bad kaya uh and and uh josh rosen was another one of them who came out of the combine um not doing very well and then you know he ended up being one of the biggest first round busts of the last like 10 years so i think that that is absolutely what you're looking for uh is who doesn't show up because you know that this thing is coming from

the minute you're done playing college. You as a quarterback know the throws you're going to have to make the numbers that you're going to have to put up as far as how fast they want you to be and everything else. I mean, poor Kenny Pickett is pulling on his thumbs or whatever to make himself a little bit longer in the fingers. But you are very well aware. So it's almost like, did you study for the test? You know, that's, that, that's really what it tells you. I think about the quarterbacks because Orlando Brown, if I remember, had a way better pro day and everyone went like, what did he just like get really anxious or something? So, but he dropped in the draft and turned out to be a steel pick. So I guess there is some of this that maybe you can get a steal and the same thing for cooper cup cooper cup was

overthinking it like he had unbelievable college numbers completely dominated the senior bowl and then it was oh well it's this four six number but on the same thing but you also research this and those numbers when it comes to the the, like they matter. If you are certain heights, weights, speeds, and so forth, like it does tend to make a difference when it comes to whether you have a good chance to succeed or not. Yeah. And one other point on just the winners tab alone, it's like the guys that were said to be winners and ended up being really good are the guys that you went into the combine already as first round

picks. Most of the time, it's like Josh Allen was a winner. And then he ends up being a really good are the guys that you went into the combine already as first round picks most of the time it's like josh allen was a winner and then he ends up being a really good quarterback it's like carson wentz was a winner then he ends up being a really good quarterback like you go down the list it's like oh mike gasecki was a winner well he was the best tight end in that draft and then he becomes a winner like deshaun watson like these guys were really really high prospects before and then they became and then they were winners at the combine. And then they became really good players. If you start to then go to like the later round guys that then end up getting this winner tag,

you go to like wide receiver, Aaron Fuller was on the winner. I don't know when Aaron Fuller got drafted, probably not high. It's like, let's see here. Offensive tackle, Jason Spriggs was a winner. Wide receiver Marquez North. Like these guys that weren't first round picks, but are deemed winners. Those are the guys that are a little bit more shaky. Because then you're more picking just the tools.

Like, oh, he ran a fast 40. I'm going to throw him in the winners. So I would caution. You could probably believe in the first round picks. Bonafide guys have really, really good combines. They're probably going to be good pros. But if it's a third round guard that has a good broad jump, probably believe in the first round picks bonafide guys have really really good combines they're probably going to be good pros but if it's a third round guard that has a good broad jump and then they get thrown in the winner category that one is just going to be much less sporadic

or that's going to be much more sporadic than any other pick so the winners the ones that did really well were just a high concentration of guys that got picked picked really really high and uh i i noticed jake from was the other one that i did not mention for the losers. And I think that what usually happens is there's, there's some tool with the quarterbacks that is short for you to end up on the loser list. Like Kaya and Fromm had horrible arms. They just were not NFL arms and their college tape looked pretty good. And then all of a sudden you see them in comparison to the other prospects. You go, okay, that's not going to be throwing the old pigskin fast enough to be an NFL quarterback, which leads me to my next question,

which is if you had to guess of the quarterbacks, let's say six, top six, I tend to think it's more of five, but I'll include Carson Strong in here anyway. Give me who you think ends up being the winner and who ends up being the loser at the combine out of the projected potential first round quarterbacks. Yeah, well, I think if Kenny Pickett's hand size comes in really small, I think then he immediately goes into the category of he's playing from behind. He plays a really good rest of the week. As stupid as that sounds,

everyone's paying attention to what his hand size is going to be because it is just so small compared to what they have historically. So I think he could potentially be a loser on some of those measurables, and he's just not going to have the arm strength that some of the guys he's going to be throwing around are going to have. And so the obvious one would be Malik Willis that you would think is going to come out, be a winner. He's going to run a fast 40.

He's, I mean, people consider it like I've heard a lot of draft analysts say if he comes into the league, he might be the second best quarterback rusher behind Lamar Jackson just immediately. So he has that strong skill. He's going to run fast. He's going to be quick. He's going to be agile. He has a really, really big arm.

So I would anticipate everything out of the senior bowl sounded like he was good with scouts and with the coaches. So I wouldn't anticipate that changing. So I would consider Malik Willis to be that front runner for someone who's going to be really, really good. Carson Strong doesn't have some of those athletic traits. So for putting him in there, he seems like he could be an easy loser. He's kind of flat footed and he's not running super fast and he just doesn't do a lot of the, doesn't match up with some of the Matt Corral's, the Malik Willis's of the world in just terms of speed. So I think the traditionally the guys at the combine that do really well are the athletic ones. And so that's where you're going right away. It's Malik, it's Matt Corral. Those are the one, two I would consider. Sam Howell, I think he's just going to be kind of meh just based on everything we've seen.

That was kind of his MO at the Senior Bowl, too. So I could see him, Pickett, or Strong kind of being down there in the losers just because they don't have that athletic talent to match. I was going to say Matt Corral because he had the injury. And this is if he participates in everything. I haven't read whether he Corral because he had the injury and this is if he participates in everything. I haven't read whether he's going to do all the drills or not, but if he's healthy because he got hurt toward the end of the season, then he has a lot to gain because he fell behind by not being at senior bowl. Although there were some writers who said that he gained steam because the other quarterbacks didn't wow outside of Malik Willis. So I don't

know. Everybody's got their take on what that means, but he has an opportunity to show that he is also a really great athlete, which my understanding is that he is. But I mean, until it's on paper, it's hard to really know because I mean, Sam Howell really ran very successfully this year, but is he going to run like a four eight and then it's, oh, okay. He ran successfully because the defenses are slow and he played at North Carolina. Uh, but if you run a four, eight, you're not going to be a difference maker with your legs in the NFL. You really have to be like four, six or below to be a difference maker, running the football

in the NFL, or they'll just catch you. Cause if you're four, eight, a fat guys run four, eight, they'll get you. Uh, so that four, eight, a fat guys run for eight, they'll get you. Uh, so that, that is, is going to be interesting. I think that Desmond Ritter has maybe the most to lose here because of the arm strength. Now I've watched only a little of Desmond Ritter and there are some people who love Desmond Ritter that I've, I've mostly watched other people's breakdowns. And this is how I usually do it anyway, because trying to sift through a bunch of games to figure out like where I'm going to get takeaways is much worse than watching say JTO Sullivan's YouTube, where he breaks down all the film on somebody.

So I usually do it that way. And, uh, I just don't know that I see like a lot of jump in that fastball. And I don't think you have to have a total cannon to succeed in the NFL. We saw that from Mac Jones last year. It's not like Joe Burrow has the hugest arm ever, but there's a price to play poker. And I don't know that he has it. And the same goes for athleticism. When he was on a football field with Alabama, he wasn't running away from those dudes on Alabama. And every time it's, it sets off a little bells in my head. And again, I'm not, you know, not claiming that I know

how to predict who's going to be water or anything like that, but it sets off bells in my head when the conversation is, well, he's pro ready because he like understands offenses and ran a pro system. And I'm like, I don't know. I remember when Cam Newton was doing the John Gruden camp and Gruden asked them to like, give him a play call. And Cam was like, we don't really have play calls. They just like, give me a number. And then I run the ball and score a touchdown. And Cam was great and took a team to a super bowl. So I don't know, like, I'm not sure that that whole pro ready is good to the under center or like, I'm not sure that that whole pro ready is good to the under center or like, I'm not sure how much that really correlates.

So if Ritter shows up and runs a four seven and throws the ball with kind of weak velocity behind it, I think he could drop out of the first round. There are other people who have them as the first quarterback, but I was, Mel Kiper was talking about this. I was watching a video where he was talking about it saying like, if he doesn't like show those physical tools that are equal or better than

these other guys, he might not be a first rounder because he went to Cincinnati and it's not like he picked, you know, put up numbers that were 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns or something. Yeah. And just approaching this from a Vikings perspective, if Ritter is kind of that pro style guy,

the one like I our friends Eric Eager and George Shahuri I think on their podcast talked about Ritter and just being super pro ready because if you kind of set the system up for him play action uh kind of get him doing those types of things he can be really successful and I think that would make sense for a team that is just a little bit more on the cusp of winning right away. When if he was goes to the Steelers, they have the requisite pieces a little bit more in place for him to do that with the defense that can support him. The Vikings already kind of have a quarterback like that who can if you cut half the field for him, he is going to find the right read. He's going to go if his first reads open, he's going to fire it.

He's going to make that throw. The Vikings already have an iteration of that quarterback and so I'm just not sure going the Ritter route makes sense for what they have because it seems eerily similar to you know what what's currently on the roster and that's why they would be in it from a Vikings only perspective the winners of the the combine for them might be those more athletic guys, because that is a departure from what they currently have and maybe what they would want in their quarterback moving forward. I think so too. I think that if you're,

it's just like they went the opposite with the GM and the opposite with the coach, they will probably go opposite with the quarterback if they do indeed make a quarterback change, by the way, I don't really expect in terms of the rumors or buzz there to be anything concrete when it comes to Kirk Cousins. And I was thinking about this today.

Here's why. When the Vikings signed Kirk Cousins to a contract extension, there was no buzz whatsoever. There was nothing out there. In fact, I think it was in typical Purple Insider fashion. Two days before, Courtney Cronin and I did a show talking about why there wasn't any news at all or anything as it relates to a Cousins extension. I was also reminded of this. When Jared Goff was traded for Matthew Stafford, we were all surprised.

There was no reporting whatsoever leading up to that trade that oh yeah there was speculation maybe a little that they could trade Jared Goff but it came out of nowhere and it was all of a sudden and so I expect this week to hear oh every team's sticking with their quarterback and everything else but I don't think that that's a guarantee at all that they're doing that uh just based on whatever combine buzz is that's a guarantee at all that they're doing that just based on whatever combine buzz is. That's what everyone's going to want to know is, Hey, are people talking about if they're going to trade Kirk or not? But I think that when it's something of this magnitude, teams have been pretty good at keeping it close to the vest because they don't really benefit at all

from having it out there. Usually it gets out there with trades when a team is trying to shop somebody and they're not having a whole lot of success. But even the Stefan Diggs trade, there was not like a concrete report. Vikings are trying to trade Stefan Diggs. And I asked Rick Spielman at the combine a couple of years ago, has Diggs asked you to be traded? And he's no, he's not asked to be traded so usually like we don't walk out of the combine with a super good sense for these things um i had on my list here to ask you about the free agents though because a lot of times we do come out of the combine with some sense for which free agents they might be trying to bring back depending on how

committal they are when we ask if it's like well you know we really like what he did and we're evaluating then okay well that doesn't sound like you're really going to bring him back there aren't too many that i think that they're going to bring back and i'm just gonna shoot you the name and you give me your take on whether these uh players are coming back So let's start with Anthony Barr. Do you think Anthony Barr will be re-signed by the Vikings? No, I don't. Yeah, I don't either.

Feel free to give a sentence on why. Okay. No, I mean, I think we all maybe perked our ears up when Kevin O'Connell said his name in the press conference, and I was even, when I heard that, I was like, oh, interesting. Okay, maybe Anthony Barr is a winner here, but the more I think about it, I'm just not quite sure adding a linebacker who's about to be 30, continuing that contract extension. Uh, he's Anthony Barr has been with the same regime this whole time. Obviously he was loved by that regime.

He was prioritized by that regime. Uh, I don't imagine that they are going to want to sink in a ton of money into a linebacker unit that again, going back to positional value is not normally where successful teams put a lot of money. And so that's why I would say if we're, if we're betting Anthony Barnes would come back. Yeah. And having Eric Hendricks in a system that sometimes only plays one linebacker, I don't, I also don't see them saying, oh yes yes this guy who had a serious knee injury last year that kept him out the entire training camp he'll definitely have the quick twitch skill to suddenly become an outside linebacking edge rusher it just doesn't really meet common sense there

that if he could not ever show to Mike Zimmer that he should be used off the edge you could say a lot of things about Mike Zimmer. He did not use Anthony Barr wrong. I have no question about that. In fact, Anthony Barr doesn't have any question about that. He said that in his goodbye press conference where he kind of said some other really honest things. He said, I don't think Mike Zimmer misused me. And I agree with him because there's Vaughn Miller types that are so blazing quick. And I think Anthony Barr was more like a Mack truck than he was somebody who just had that like explosion that would get him toward the quarterback. And I think that's what Zimmer saw.

And also you need to develop pass rush moves over years and years in the NFL to beat tackles. And he's not been doing that. So I think it would be like really foolish to think, oh, well, we've got the answer for Anthony Barr. It's this other thing that he didn't start doing till 30. Like that doesn't match up. So yeah, there was an, if there,

if this was a different time in his career, maybe four or five years ago, I could, I could maybe be convinced that that could be something he could learn. And I don't doubt his willingness to try that, but I just don't feel like at this point in his career, that's something that would give you marketed returns that you, you really feel like you need to keep them on the team for. Okay. How about Patrick Peterson? Do you think we hear Kwesi Adafo meant to say we need that veteran corner back? I could see it. This one, I feel

more solidly than Anthony Barr just because they don't really have a lot of other guys in that cornerback room that you feel really solid about. He, from the public comments that we've briefly heard of him, he seems open to coming back, which I think is a good thing. So if it's on a similar deal, maybe a little bit less money, I could see it as a possibility. But this is not like one of those auto-resign guys. This is one of those kind of on-the-fence guys for me. I would say no because he's 32, and there's just no point in signing someone who's 32 for this Vikings team at all. Like, sorry, all people who grew up watching football in the nineties, you're out. You can't do this. If you started listening to music at like in sync,

then you've got a chance to be on my team as a free agent. But you know, anything past that, uh, you want free agents for corners who are 26, which is usually the youngest age that you see sometimes 25, but usually it's like 26, 27 people hitting free agency. That's somebody you could sign and will be good for three, four or five years. Whereas Patrick Peterson is just year to year with his entire career. In fact, he was even being asked about a position switch. He was asked about retirement. Like that's not, I think veteran presence is nice, but like, that's not something that you really want to pay for with Patrick Peterson. As much as I enjoyed listening to Patrick Peterson talk about football, because it's one of the greatest players ever.

I don't know that it's the right move for them to bring him back. Yeah, I and I think we'll probably talk about Sheldon Richardson next. But just in terms of Patrick Peterson, unlike the D line, there aren't as many cornerbacks that I am one like want to see give. I mean, we want to see them have a shot, but there are just less of those guys than there are on the D line. And so if you want to have that veteran come in, the guy that in one year just really, really kind of took hold of that locker room and from all reports, I can see the value in it. Whereas I don't know if you want to do Sheldon Richardson next,

but I wouldn't imagine him coming back just because there's so many it's put up or shut up time for a lot of those defensive linemen that they've drafted in the last few years. And I'd assume Kwesi and Kevin O'Connell want to see what they have, if they have anything in any of those guys. And Sheldon Richardson has always been a one year, try to help him get more money, maybe later down the road, and also just kind of fill a stop gap hole for your team as you try to make the playoffs. Uh, that doesn't seem like the prudent approach for them and so if that's the basis of knowledge that we're going on for this then i

don't see why sheldon richardson would come back yeah as i'm looking down the list i agree with you on sheldon richardson it's hard to actually find someone that they will bring back i mean let me just run this down i mean rashad hale you don't think they'd bring back? Probably not. Ole Udo, I think, is a totally fine swing tackle. They just screwed him over by making him play guard. But at least I guess he has experience being bad at guard if they need someone off the bench. But I thought as a tackle, he was okay. And that's your new Rashad Hill.

You just sort of send one out and bring one in. Xavier Woods, there might be a case for. One of the things is that he was 100% healthy last played every snap which is a good thing and if harrison smith wants him back he's probably not that expensive i don't hate that idea but i mean some of these other ones like mckenzie alexander no dd westbrook there's no point to that one um got the kicker and punter are fine they could both come back. Mason Cole, I guess for an off the bench type of guard, Tyler Conklin is the one that I would say, Oh, for sure. I'd want him back, but I think someone else is going to say,

here's seven or $8 million. And the Vikings will, um, make him a cake and say, good luck on your journey. You don't think Chad BB is coming back, Matt. You don't journey you don't think chad bb is coming back matt you don't you don't feel like that you don't think he's got any run left in him come on man there's just there's like a list of these players who become a thing for a little while that you just go how was that a thing how did they keep and chad bb has been nothing from when i've been around him nothing but a hundred percent super hard, professional, all that stuff. So I'm not insulting him, but you're like, why? Why did that keep happening? What did you see there exactly that you thought this is a really good idea to have this player continuing to come

back? It's like your number three wide receiver. Yeah. I don't think Chris Herndon's coming back. Sorry. You lost that draft pick. I don't think you'll never get that back getting that pick back no luke stocker may have been like if we had a conversation about the player who was like got into games and was their worst player over the last five years like dakota dozier who's also not coming back is maybe the winner of that contest but But Luke Stocker is the most random, like five years from now, no one will remember that Luke Stocker played in games. But he actually got in quite a bit because they couldn't stand Chris Herndon that much, which makes it even more mind-blowing that they decided to trade a fourth-round pick for.

For the Jets' fourth tight end but you can never you can never yell it loud enough for the jets fourth tight end this horrendous football team you traded for their fourth tight end for a fourth round pick that's something like they should give you a fourth round pick for taking them off your f off their hands um anyway okay so i have a little combine quiz for you about 40 times but before we get to that is there anything else from the combine that you will be looking for no i i mean i'm just going to be really locked in on um kind of kind of everything it's the first year that i've dove head deep into into all of it um so i'm excited to see it it's been a year without a combine uh for a while

we thought players may boycott the combine so i'm just excited for it to to be there and i like everyone else will be trained in on those quarterbacks trying to figure out what people are saying about them watching honey kenny pickett's hand get get measured if there's a stream for that i'll pay for that uh just let me know where I have to go for that. So, yes, just very excited to see what happens with the quarterbacks. And then also the edge rushers, too. I think there's some fun athletic edge rushers that the Vikings could maybe pursue in the second or third rounds. That'll be kind of keeping my eye on it.

Okay. So since 2014, five players for the Vikings ran a sub four, four, four. So at least four, four, three or below five players. Can you name those five players?

And I will tell you that, um, four of them played a lot and one other one may someday play a lot. And this is now the one thing about this is like those pro days from last year like this is what's listed on pro football reference so some of them are not like kenny wongwu is not listed here oh and i mean kenny wongwu ran like a four or three two so uh this is that was gonna be my first guess so i'm glad you took that off the board for me so i i don't know why he's not listed here is that just because there wasn't a combine like i don't know why but the other the other guys four of the other guys for sure it was

at the combine so go with the four that would have run a sub four four three all right i think trey waynes probably ran a really really fast. I remember him being a blazing fast cornerback when he came out. Correct. He is the fastest 40 guy that the Vikings drafted in the Mike Zimmer era at 4-3-1. Okay. Justin Jefferson. I'll throw that in there. That's correct.

4-4-3. He has the fourth fastest 40 time. I think that there's one in here that you'll be very surprised at. Okay. Dalvin cook. Is he in the top five? He is not. Dalvin cook actually ran a four,

four, nine. And I recall that Dalvin cook had a very bad vertical and everyone's like, oh man, I mean, he's just, he had actually, I've got to hear a 30 inch vertical,

which I mean, if we practiced a lot of jumping we still wouldn't jump 30 inches but like we could get closer than you'd think to that like these other guys are doing 40 inch verticals so anyway okay so i'm trying to think of the one that didn't play a ton uh that you mentioned um let's see let's well okay 2014 okay that would have been before or that would have been the jerek mckinnon year did he run in the top five yes jerek mckinnon had the second fastest at 441 and then well i'll give you the guy that didn't play enough because uh it kind of has just thrown me off with wong woo not there. Amir Smith-Marset ran a 4-4-3. But I don't know why he's listed and Wong Wu isn't.

Okay. All right. Well, it couldn't have been Treadwell. So I'm trying to go fast. No, it could not have been Treadwell. Could have been Treadwell. Mike Hughes? It was not Mike Hughes.

That's a good guess, though. This guy was a top two round draft pick guy. All right. Let me see. Not okay. It wouldn't be Irv. I'm could be Jeff Gladney. Maybe not Jeff Gladney.

No, could be McKenzie Alexander. It's McKenzie Alexander. Yeah. Which is really surprising because you don't think of him as being all that fast. So Trey Wayne's Jarek McKinnon, McKenzie Alexander,

Justin Jefferson, and Amir Smith, Marced, and somewhere mixed in there is Kenny Wong Wu, but not listening. Okay. Now more fun is to name the slowest. Yes.

And you name the five slowest guys that the Vikings have drafted. And if you, if you can't, most of them are late round draft picks. So we could change this to top four round guys why don't we do that why don't we make it top four round guys that are the slowest the vikings have ever drafted all right well we're gonna go probably jaleel johnson then if he's correct the slowest at 538 and a 28 inch vertical wow uh all right, we're just going big bodies then.

So, Garrett Bradbury? Garrett Bradbury is incorrect. He ran a 4.92. He was fast. Somehow got listed at 3.06. What happened there? How was Garrett Bradbury listed at 3.06 at the combine? Okay.

So, we're going top four rounds. Did he do like the milk challenge? You know how people try to drink a whole gallon of milk but he actually did it or something man milk all right so if we're doing fourth round we've got some some offensive tackles in there uh we've got like willie beavers could be one of them right yep tj clemmings could be one of them he's a little clemmings a little farther down the list one two three four clemmings is a little farther down the list. One, two, three, four Clemmings is, is fifth for fifth slowest among guys drafted in the fourth or above, but you're, you're going in the right direction here. Drew Samia was a fourth round. Correct. Yep. Drew Samia five to nine. And then the one that you're missing was actually talked about as a guy who was athletic and played with

athleticism in the NFL, but his combine, his 40 and his vertical are so hysterically bad. Um, but was, but actually looked athletic when playing football as an offensive lineman. Oh, okay. Offensive line. Um, thinking, I'm thinking, uh, Pat Elfline. Pat Elfline is right. That's a great guess. He ran a 5-3-2 and had a 23, 23 inch vertical. Now I have a box in my house that is 20 inches. Yep. And I have no problem jumping up onto this box. Now, I don't know. That's not how you really do it. Sure. I I'm going to take back the thing I said about the 30-inch vertical. We couldn't get close to that if we tried. But like 23, yes.

I think I would at least get to if I practiced it and worked with someone on like jumping technique and how to do this. I think I could get to 20. Yeah, I can get to 20, I think. I think I could easily get there. I'm trying to pull up part of the article was todd mcshay look kind of through the espn numbers and the red flag numbers and i'm trying to look at 40 yard dash time for offensive line and they don't even have it in here but five three two is about as slow as you can ever run a 40 yard dash i think which is crazy because he was good in space when he was healthy and they use them at center before he had that. And again, it's just two chances that you're getting to do this weird track and field type situation.

Maybe he didn't train for it super hard. Who knows? The combine stuff, especially with some of those positions and some of the drills that aren't as important, like for an interior offensive lineman's 40-yard dash, those maybe can be ones where you're not paying as close attention to it. The thing about it, though, is if you draft someone who has a 23 inch vertical and who runs a five, three, two, nothing can go wrong with that player. And if it does,

he's going to be bad. And that's, that's the concern I think with all of the combine numbers and what they really mean is nothing ever went wrong with Cooper cup and his four, six had Laquan Treadwell. Laquan Treadwell was not a good route runner and it was just over because he doesn't have any physical traits to make up for that. So I think some people will kind of focus on like, well, the ceiling is limited, but I don't think that's it. I think it's just, it narrows the scope of what could potentially get in your way. So here's a good example. Cordero Patterson is a horrendous route runner who I don't know, understands the place that that was the big deal is that he just didn't like

understand how any of the things work. And he's a star for Atlanta and was good with new England and was maybe the best kick returner ever. I mean, there's because he's an unbelievable athlete. So when there's something there to make up for problems that you have, you can succeed. I think that that would be another small edge in terms of if you're looking for let's increase our percentages by just a few points. So weird times with no football to talk about paul but next week will be very very exciting and now i can actually say if you stayed this long you get to find out sage rosenfels is coming to the combine with me so we'll be doing shows there

i sort of hinted at like a little bit of a surprise but i am flying in former nfl quarterback sage rosenfels to go to the combine with me, cover the Vikings there for a couple of days, and we're going to have a lot of fun. So I'm looking forward to it, Paul. Yeah, I'm psyched. I'm psyched to listen to that. That's going to be awesome. Sage knows so many people down there and is going to have tons and tons to say,

I'm sure, about all the quarterbacks. I'm excited to hear his thoughts on all of it. Yeah, he's the best. And I think he's been working with at least one this year. So we'll be interested to hear about that. So thanks for your time. And thank you all as always for listening. We'll have one more show and then it's off to the combine and just keep your eyeballs peeled for, or your ears or whatever open for lots of stuff coming out on the podcast feed throughout the week. So I'm just going to be pumping it out when I do interviews and stuff like that. So it won't be just showing up in the morning, I think so. All right. Well, thanks for your time, Paul. And we'll see y'all later.