Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Why haven't the Vikings made any moves yet?

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

Matthew Coller and Paul Hodowanic react to... well...nothing. The Vikings seem to be at a standstill with reports that they could trade Kirk Cousins and that they could also play out Cousins' contract. How does the DeShaun Watson news impact the Vikings? Should they be in on trading for him? What issues might come about if they do? They discuss a rumor of Baker Mayfield for Kirk Cousins and go down the rabbit hole of how free agency will play out depending on the Cousins moves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, where we wait for stuff to happen. Matthew Collar, along with Paul Hodowandik of WCCO Radio. Paul, it seems that we are in a state of stuck with the NFL, where everyone is waiting now for where Deshaun Watson will go, and then all the dominoes will fall after that. And the Vikings, though, as we stand in the middle of Sunday, are still $15 million over the cap and they haven't moved anybody. And they have to do so by the beginning of the league year, not by the beginning of the legal tampering period, but by the beginning of the league year. So there is still time for them to work things out and time for people to sit and wait and scroll on Twitter and hope that a report pops up of something happening. But this entire weekend, we've kind of been like, should we record a podcast?

Should we not record one? What should we do here? Because it seems like there's still things to be worked out with the Vikings before they make moves to create that cap space. Yeah. I, I thought maybe the slew of Aaron Rogers news, Russell Wilson news would be the Kickstarter to kind of get everything in motion. And as soon as that happens, then all the Deshaun Watson stuff comes through and it seems like that's now the next holdup. Um, and so now we continue to wait and I mean, it's going to be a flurry of action here. If we don't continue to see something league years, what the 16th, I think. So we're, I mean, we're recording this on Sunday, the 13th, people might be listening to this on the 14th. Like there's not

going to be a lot of time. so I would presume the Vikings and many other teams kind of have laid out what they want to do and they maybe have a couple different plans based on how some of these biggest dominoes could fall in the next couple days because how could you not because I mean if they're still just kind of waiting and waiting and then going to make a decision like they're not going to have a lot of time so yeah i've been sitting by the phone every every like looking through tweets trying to parse all the information we have but at least on the vikings front there hasn't been a lot that's come out it's daniel hunter's gotten calls maybe they have a small amount of interest in deshaun watson but other than that some of the ancillary stuff on the

other parts of the roster we really don't have a good clue of what they're going to do yet this is interesting um because i'm trying to find like the latest from the the insiderers about uh kirk cousins and everything seems like we don't really know um so i'm reading dan graziano and jeremy fowler now on ESPN. And it's just entirely speculation. Like they have to look into the possibility of trading him. The last regime tried to, you know, lower Cousins cap hit and it didn't work out and so forth, but there's nothing that's concrete that says that they are or aren't going to trade Kirk Cousins. And that's exactly what the buzz was in Indy, where it was more of, you know, I guess they could stay and play out this contract

and see what Kevin O'Connell can do with them for one year. But I think it was pretty clear that Cousins was not going to take a team-friendly deal to stick around. And I don't know if even a team-friendly deal, considering how large that would have to be is even still a good idea. If they were lowering his cap hit from 45 to 30, is that team friendly? It's been at 30 and yet they haven't been able to build around it. And, you know, they really have to make a decision here though, because it changes their entire approach to free agency and

with the legal tampering period starting on Monday how much money can you promise to people that you want to sign as free agents now it's possible that they would be going into free agency without the idea of signing big free agents anyway and waiting until the second wave, maybe chasing a few guys that are good potential long-term deals. But this team might not feel like it's in a position to go all in on the biggest name free agents anyway. So in that case, they could sort of wait and drag it out a little further, but it just seems like you got to decide here on what you're going to do with Kirk Cousins pretty soon. But what's playing against that is the QB needy teams are all talking to Deshaun Watts at first, and then they're going to talk to Jimmy Garoppolo after that. And so you're kind of like third in line here waiting. that's pushing up against you and, you know, talk about a challenge for Kwesi Adafo Mensah

to start his career as a general manager, because I'm sure that you create a big old notebook to bring in when you have that interview with the Wilfs and you say, all right, here's all the data and all the analytics. And here's what it all says about what I'll do to win the Superbowl for the Vikings. And then you get in there and then all of a sudden it's not a criminal case for Deshaun Watson anymore. And all hell is breaking loose. It's like, oh yeah, this job is hard.

This job is not easy. But I think that we have to wait until the Deshaun Watson domino falls before there's something that's going to happen with Kirk Cousins because the teams that miss out on him are quarterback desperate teams, New Orleans, Carolina, Indianapolis. I don't know if they're in on Deshaun Watson, but they're certainly out there in desperate need of a quarterback. So this is dicey, man. This is tricky. Yeah. And from a Vikings perspective, I'm not sure how many other teams have this large range of outcomes of what the next three days could be. Because if I told you in three days that they have either committed to Cousins just for the next year or have done some sort of tacking on void years or even an extension or something, and that they found ways to, you know, keep Daniil Hunter and Adam Thielen and Eric Hendricks and they're running it back.

Would you be entirely shocked? Probably not. If you said they traded cousins, they looked to trade Daniel Hunter, they dropped a couple other pieces and they're fully in a rebuild. Would you be surprised? Probably not. And there's a whole host of range of outcomes in the middle where you get rid of one of them. One of those guys, you keep one. There's just so many different possibilities for the Vikings.ings and that's what makes it so confusing and so just like that's why we're waiting um just buy our phones because it really could change um so quickly and this team's fate for the next year two years three years is going to change so drastically depending on what happens within the next week. There's just so much that could happen.

Sorry, let's play a little choose your own adventure then. Let's talk about some of the potential options and then follow them down the rabbit hole here. So if the Vikings extend Kirk Cousins and lower his cap hit, they are still not out of cap jail by any means. However, that would signal that Kweisi Adafo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell believe that they can win with this team right away because otherwise there's no reason to do that. If you remember in 2020, Rick Spielman said that they extended Cousins and lowered his

cap hit to sign Michael Pierce, which sounds really ridiculous in hindsight, but they felt that they needed him as a big marquee free agent to rebuild that defense and replace Linval Joseph and that they were going to go out and be successful the next year. They also traded for Yannick and Gawkway. They moved around a bunch of contracts and money. They drafted players to start right away. Like they did everything to win now. And if you're Kweisi Adafo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell, extending Kirk Cousins is waving a flag saying, we think that we're going to win this year. And just a little aside here, if Deshaun Watson ends up in the NFC, which he likely will, if you're the Texans, I think you want him as far away from you as possible.

All of the sudden, the whole narrative of the NFC is wide open. It just changes a little because now all of a sudden you have one of the league work to create enough cap space to play with the big boys in free agency to rebuild spots right away. And then they have to approach the draft like they're trying to find players to fill needs within the next year or two years rather than development projects. And I think that that is the most difficult route to possibly win, no matter how many analytics you have, or no matter how many times Kevin O'Connell passes on second down as opposed to runs on second down. That is a tough one for me to see how exactly you go from where you are right now,

the 14th best offense and what the 24th best defense or worst defense, I guess. How do you improve that enough to put yourself in position to be a legitimate contender? Because extending him means we think we could be a legitimate contender. Yeah. And unlike in previous years, when they were able to extend him lower his cap hit like they were then still able to retain a lot of the talent on their roster that they wanted to keep as along with adding a piece or two i'm not a cap wizard i was last night on over the cap i was trying to kind of work through all these scenarios in which Kirk Cousins comes back on, you know, his cap hits 30 million. And I wasn't able to make it work where you're still not maybe getting rid of one of the

guys you ideally would want to keep. So even extending Cousins and saying, we're going to win now, it's saying, okay, we're going to win now, but we're going to win without maybe Daniel Hunter, or we're going to win without Eric Kendricks, or we're going to win without Adam Thielen. Uh, and that's where that line gets really tight because you're not keeping some of those guys on the roster. You would think you would need to keep, if you were going to win right away, like for all the, you know, the faults of the Vikings roster, they still have a, a strong, like top end with that, withil Hunters, with the Eric Kendricks, with the Adam Thielens.

But I'm not sure, unless you're pushing so much money down the road for all of them, that you're keeping all of them with Cousins and being able to add. It's tighter than it was in the last couple of years. So I don't know that there's a really good way that you can keep all those guys and add good free agents to this team. And then if you're doing that, like, why is it going to be better than what you were last year? Why are you going to suddenly make the playoffs?

Is it Kevin O'Connell believes he's like the QB whisperer or something? Or like Ed Donatel is going to turn this defense around? Like, I don't think either of those are good bets to make. So yeah, extending cousins, it still doesn't feel like your roster is going to be better than it was, uh, this year. If you do that, who do we think is the most likely to go to create that cap space? If they were to extend Kirk cousins, I mean, probably Daniel Hunter, I would think, I mean, I think you save like 14 million or something getting rid of him. So that's a big, big chunk right there that gets you under the cap.

You probably can get at least some draft compensation for him. And in that scenario, you just don't quite trust his neck. You don't quite trust the injury concerns with him and you just want to move on. That would be a tough pill to swallow i think for a lot of vikings fans and the team in general i think we saw what having a dominant edge rusher can mean to you in the playoffs and daniel when he's out on the field is nothing short of dominant but yeah that seems like the easiest um you know the the quickest and easiest way to clear up a lot of cap space. Right. Because how does it make you better to move on

from Adam Thielen? We saw how Kirk Cousins performed without Adam Thielen last year. He really struggled down the stretch when Thielen was hurt. And if you're going all in on your quarterback, you can't then say we're taking away one of your top wide receivers. The Vikings did do that once, but then replaced them with Justin Jefferson. And maybe, and this would be sort of peak arrogance of NFL people to look at that and say, well, they did it once, so they could do that again. But what I keep coming back to with the idea of extending him is how is this different from what the previous group just did? If you wanted to extend Cousins, move on from somebody who's expensive and still good and say,

oh, we'll just replace him with X, Y, or Z. Isn't that what Rick Spielman had just been doing? Like, why did you fire Rick Spielman then? Was it because he wasn't collaborating enough? I just feel like you moved on from Spielman specifically. Now, Zimmer, there were other issues that you could say, well, the environment had become quite toxic and things like that. But with Spielman, you moved on from him because you didn't like his vision and you thought that it wasn't going to work. And his vision was stick with Kirk and then go forward and lower cap hits and restructure and do everything and anything

to keep his job. So why would you do that again? Although I thought it was interesting if anybody heard Rick Spielman's answer to a Rich Eisen question, can you win the Super Bowl with Kirk Cousins? And he did not say yes. And it took him like three minutes not to say yes. He was just dancing around it, man. In classic Rick Spielman fashion. And he checked off all the boxes to all the Kirk answers. Whenever you ask anyone about Kirk Cousins, it's always the same. It's always the, he's very accurate, which I don't think anybody debates. And it's, well, if you get him the right circumstances, you can get to the playoffs.

And then when you get to the playoffs, you have to hope things go right. And, you know, and all those sorts of things. And you're just like, okay. So the answer is after seeing him for four years, you're not really convinced that that is the case. Uh, which of course, I mean, who would be after their results for the last four years? Uh, that's always a funny thing is when the results of the last four years are somehow separate from what the quarterback did. I don't think we would ever look at any other circumstance like that for any other team. So there is a nugget in the CSPN piece that says the Indianapolis Colts are interested in Cousins or that there are rumors that the Colts could be in on Cousins. And maybe it's Marcus Mariota if it's not a Cousins trade.

So let's go down that rabbit hole. If they were to trade Kirk Cousins to the Indianapolis Colts, let's just say that what they're getting back is more or less the same that Carson Wentz got in Washington. Because of the contract situation, largely, it makes it hard, unless there's an extension there, to get a ton back in return. But could you get a second, a third? Yeah, I think you absolutely could. And maybe even more than that. But I think the trade prices have been pretty high, but they have not been insane. There's a lot of debate about the Russell Wilson one. I'm not sure

how relevant that is to a Kirk Cousins trade because Wilson is considered Hall of Fame level talent. Cousins clearly better than Wentz, but maybe the contract is trickier. So let's just say that they get back a second and a third round draft pick. Then what do you think should be the plan for the Vikings if they have moved on from Cousins? Then you become a Marcus Mariota suitor uh someone like that and you draft someone likely uh is the way I would approach it uh you pay Mariota whatever 10 million dollars for a year two years bring him in draft Malik Willis draft someone else uh and then kind of fill out the roster with, at that point, you have a lot more cap space to work with. Fill it out with a couple cornerbacks, maybe on longer deals, some younger guys.

Plug in play another offensive lineman in there and kind of craft your team around a stopgap quarterback for now. And get the right pieces in place to evaluate all the pieces around that stopgap quarterback. And then whenever your quarterback's ready, you go and you put him in. Or if you want to thread the needle a little bit more, maybe you don't draft a guy if you don't like who's there at 12 and you want to wait. But I think that's a more riskier play of playing with the timelines of certain guys. And then you get into okay we're gonna have probably two more losing seasons when does justin jefferson get unhappy like the the clock starts ticking so i think they move on from cousins then it's all

right it's time to kind of find your quarterback of the future in the draft get a stop gap fill the roster with some longer contracts some younger guys guys to kind of see what they can do. And hopefully then in three years, when you're really in your contending window, those guys are still under contract at good rates and you can kind of make a play. So that would be my idea, my ideal strategy, I think in general, but what I would do if they moved on and traded cousins. Now, here's the question is, do you immediately just look to the free agent market and say, look, there are competent quarterbacks here. I was just looking up where Marcus Mariota's offense is ranked when he was in Tennessee. And, uh, it was some good,

some bad, but he had one year that he ranked 14th in offense. Like, okay, well, that's what the Vikings were last year so you have and they didn't have anywhere near with some of those teams a Justin Jefferson type of player the Vikings are building their offensive line where they're actually one or two players away from having a good offensive line they said they really like Ezra Cleveland and I actually believed that unlike some of the comments about Garrett Bradbury, but you actually are a guard away in free agency, which you could spend on to create a very good environment for your quarterback. And with the cap space that you could create, you can restructure Thielen or you could just

keep Thielen for another year. You can draft another receiver in the second round with one of those picks. Receivers are capable of coming in as rookies and having an instant impact I mean there are a lot of things you could do and even though it would involve sort of saying to the defense let's just figure it out yourself over there at Donatello I also think that there's a lot of value in figuring out who can play because the Vikings decided to keep Anthony Barr last year, they didn't find out what some of their younger linebackers could do. Blake Lynch is a guy who can play football. I'm not saying he's a future superstar, but I've seen him play and he knows what he's doing out

there, but I haven't seen him play a lot. And the same goes for someone like Chaz Surratt. What can he do? There are players on the roster who have been drafted in the last few years who haven't gotten a whole lot of opportunities to play. Cam Bynum is another guy where Cam Bynum last year, they decided, and I don't blame them for this, but Xavier Woods was going to fill that spot next to Harrison Smith. Well, Cam Bynum got in and played pretty good. So like, can he play? Don't you want to see that for a year to get your idea of whether he's a safety for the future or whether you need to replace that spot? Like there's value in finding out what you have with a lot of these defensive players. Generous Robinson is coming back from injury. He was a draft pick last year. Patrick Jones barely played.

Kenny Willek has got in a little bit and got COVID and then was out for a little while. Like there's all these guys that there might be something there. There might not be something there, but knowing that really helps you going into the following season. And I mean, from our own perspective, kind of makes it interesting because there will be people who surprise you and emerge. We saw this from someone like Anthony Harris, you know, Anderson Dayhoe years back, all of a sudden sort of became a quality starting safety in the NFL

and nobody saw that coming. He was a special teams guy when they originally acquired him. So, you know, the Vikings once upon a time spent 2014 trying to figure out is there anything here with any of these guys? And it turned out, you know, that there was. And so I think that that's a pretty

good franchise plan the other plan would be to turn around and trade for somebody else at quarterback as opposed to drafting one if they are so against this draft class uh which is hard to say right like uh quacey didn't pull me aside and say, it's Ritter. Like, they don't do that. I mean, you could tell by even the attempted insider reports that nobody really knows. And nobody really saw Amari Cooper being traded or Khalil Mack or, like, where they were going to go. These things, teams usually keep pretty close to the vest until the very last second. Same thing happened with Stephon Diggs, where we're just you know on twitter at 11 o'clock at night or whatever it was and then all of a sudden digs is traded so i expect a lot of the moves to come the same way

but the deshaun watson conversation would come up if the vikings were to trade cousins to indianapolis and i think that uh one you are really putting your life in your hands with this contract. Okay. Because you still have some of the same problems there, even though he's a better quarterback is you really restrict what you can do. And Houston is a very, very dumb franchise that is clear, but they didn't have a good roster. They made a few big mistakes and suddenly they won, what was it? Four games with Deshaun Watson. He's a great, great quarterback, but you're still talking about that really high threshold and how challenging it could be to build around a contract

of that magnitude. I think he's on the hook for $40 million for this year. And the other part of it too, is when 22 women accuse someone of something, you are concerned that this person has a problem that goes beyond one particular bad choice or one particular issue. And I'm not saying that, you know, someone like Ben Roethlisberger only made one bad choice or whatever else, but there are other players who have made mistakes say very very bad mistakes mistakes that i don't blame anybody for not forgiving them but where from a football

perspective you would say i don't think this is a long-term thing this was just one problem that they had with 22 people accusing him you worry about him signing somewhere else and then doing the same thing over again and having it blow up again and having him get suspended, which I think he ultimately will be, and also bringing someone to your community that might be a predator. And I think that those are very serious concerns. I know that there are a lot of people who are willing to say, and there are teams that are willing to say, who cares, man, get me a ring. Deshaun Watson's great at football, but you have to factor those things in if you want the Vikings to trade away cousins and then trade for Deshaun Watson. Yeah, the Deshaun Watson's a really hard topic to kind of parse through and figure out how to approach it. But just from a very high level, if they do, in fact, go after him, they're giving up multiple first round picks. They're taking on a massive contract.

And yeah, they're going to have a hard time building a team around him. There's some nice cheap pieces that are on this team that at least in the short term help you out. Justin Jefferson doesn't need a contract extension for a little bit. Christian Derrissaw doesn't need a contract extension for a little bit. You have Brian O'Neill locked up. But yeah, that accelerates your timeline to the nth degree and it immediately puts pressure on you to fix those stopg gap or to find those holes and fix them quickly with not high caliber free agents with guys that you're coming off the street and trying to figure out and we saw in the last regime that that didn't work too well now sean watson's better

than kirk cousins so that's a you know you have a little bit more, um, margin for error in there with that. And you'd, you'd hope that with a offensive head coach coming in, maybe you can even, um, you know, like get the offense to go even better than it would have been if Mike Zimmer had brought in Deshaun Watson and their, uh, coaching staff were trying to coach him up. So I think there's definitely reasons to go for it and just to say, F it, let's, let's try it. We're going to put it all to the side, but it's, it's going to be the first litmus test in how much Kwesi can swallow in terms of the contract, in terms of, you know, the, the person. And we just don't know any of those things yet. Uh,

we could, we knew Spielman and Zimmer's track record with guys that had off-field issues. We had things to look back on. This one is just yet another of this long list of things that we don't know how Kweisi would react to it. We don't know how Kevin O'Connell would react to it. And so, I mean, it makes it interesting, but it's hard to prognosticate. Yeah. And I think that there are other teams who are in circumstances that I don't want to say fit better, but make more sense to do everything they can than the Vikings, where you have to match up somehow what your roster has with the player and the contract and what he's going to be able to produce and what you have to give away. Because I think that one thing is clear that there are

players who can certainly elevate their teams, quarterbacks who can elevate their teams to being better than they should be. But there's also a threshold there. Like if Deshaun Watson is on last year's Vikings team, they're absolutely in the playoffs. Are they a Superbowl contender? I don't think that they are. They're probably a team that instead of winning eight wins 10 and you're fighting for playoff spot the same way because Kirk cousins has been a good quarterback for them and has created kind of a baseline of quarterback play that you either have to get a lot better

quarterback play, like Josh Allen, Mahomes level quarterback play, or you have to have a lot better roster. Now, which one of those two things is easier to do? Usually it's, and I'm sure some people would say that Deshaun Watson is of that level of the Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes. And that, that might be true, but even those guys need to have good players around them and good rosters around them to actually compete for a Superbowl. And that's where I kind of hesitate to say that this would make sense because how are you finding top talent to put around him aside from Justin Jefferson without first round picks and without cap space. We get to the same problem, but a different version. Here's something I thought about the other day popped in my head.

The Los Angeles Rams won what 16 games total last year, right? 12 in the regular season and then four in the playoffs. The Minnesota Vikings have 15 wins the last two years. So you aren't really that close. It felt close at times last year when they were missing field goals or fumbling at the end of games. But the teams that usually make the playoffs are usually about plus 100 or more on the point differential. I think this year the Super Bowl teams were plus 80 and the Vikings were in the minus in terms of point differential. That's a lot of space to make up. And oh, by the way, they're losing players who actually were decent for them last year, like Patrick Peterson,

Xavier Woods, guys who are filling these roles and they have no money to replace them. And so this problem is going to continue to persist. Like Deshaun Watson gets sacked a lot. You have to put together a good offensive line for Deshaun Watson. You have to give them weapons just like everybody else. You have to give them a defense if you actually want to compete for a Super Bowl and how that is happening. And plus, if you're talking about a six game suspension, then somehow if you're winning right away, you have to work around a six game suspension, which means getting a backup quarterback who can play and win you three of those games. It gets a very, very tricky formula. And I get how they would say, well, you know, down the road, the cap will go up and everything else, but the cap goes up for everybody and you

won't have draft capital to work around it. And then you add all those other elements of it. And I think it should matter. I know to teams it doesn't, but I think it should matter how your fan base is going to feel about it. That's too much for me. All those factors are just too much on the Watson front. Yeah. I think he needs to go to a team like the 2017 Vikings team, like the Vikings were in when they signed Kirk cousins, they need a team that kind of has everything and is perceived to be that quarterback away. So that's teams like the Steelers or teams like the Colts even, or a team, maybe the Panthers, though I don't quite think they're there yet. But you see the Seahawks in the running for him.

You see maybe the Vikings. Those teams don't quite make sense because they are going to have to give up so much capital. They're already cap strapped. And then they're going to bring on this guy with all the off-field distractions and their roster isn't ready for them. And so I think if this scenario was happening three, four years ago when the Vikings were trying to decide whether they were going to keep Case Keenum or go with Kirk Cousins, then a Deshaun Watson taking a swing at that would make a lot more sense. Where the Vikings are currently doesn't feel like they would be able to get over the hump with him. And maybe not.

Maybe he'd have an MVP campaign and he would look really, really good. But when you put together where the roster stands and then just all the off-field stuff and what that would mean to everyone inside the organization to your fan base there's a lot of there's a lot of women in the Vikings organization that do a lot of really good things and what are you saying to them like there's just so many questions to ask and the Vikings in in their tenure with a first year head coach a first year GM it just doesn't quite make sense that they would take that shot at this point in their tenure with what they've got going on right now. And something else that

deserves to be mentioned is just when it comes to Watson, and then we'll move on to some of these other rumors from the CSPN piece, including another Kirk Cousins, one connected to a different team. But the Deshaun Watson thing, let's just say I learned a lot about how a jury works when I was doing my jury duty. But a grand jury deciding that there wasn't enough to move forward with the criminal case doesn't mean that nothing happened. All it means is with the evidence that was presented to them, they did not feel like it was enough to move forward to potentially get a conviction. That's what the grand jury means. So I'll give you an example of when I was on the jury, there were three potential charges. There were two that were dead to rights. There was no question about it. The third one though, was very much, if you asked me my opinion on this show, I would say,

oh yeah, oh, he definitely did that. But the evidence wasn't sufficient enough to say without a reasonable doubt, like to reach this threshold. And so I think that there's some confusion about that of like, oh, well, the grand jury said they're not going to pursue this. So it's over. That's not exactly what that means. And if you look at the statistics as it pertains to charging sexual assaults just nationwide, it's society, but that's the reality of the thing. It doesn't mean that the 22 women made it up. So just wanted to make that clear. The other rumor with Cousins is Baker Mayfield. Now I had heard coming out of the combine that the Cleveland Browns were not interested in a Mayfield for Cousins trade, but it does

get brought up here that they could look to Watson, which apparently they've made an offer, Cousins or Jimmy Garoppolo and send Baker Mayfield back. I have never loved this idea, Paul, because of who Baker Mayfield is and how Baker Mayfield acts. And I'm not sure that he's quite the bridge quarterback that you want. I mean, you want a bridge quarterback like Ryan Fitzpatrick or better who is going to accept their role and handle it with class and help the rookie quarterback that you draft to develop them for the following season. That's what you want. I don't know if you want somebody who is a selfish center of attention, leaks things to the media about everybody when things go wrong,

just has been a problem since college. And it's amazing to me that Mayfield has somehow dodged the whole character thing when that has been a problem, even going back to college. That's one where I don't think that there's some supreme upside. I think that his upside is being like a little more flashy Kirk Cousins, a little more risk-taking Kirk Cousins at the absolute best, but he's not as accurate. He has issues fundamentally with the way that he throws the football and things like that that Sage Rosenfels and I were talking about that if he hasn't fixed by now, are probably not fixable.

So there's not a long-term potential option there. And also he could play, and this is always a fear too, he could play just well enough for them to be like, oh, we made a great trade. Let's keep Baker Mayfield and let's just build around him. I don't like that option from any of those angles, but do you? I view, if that trade were to happen, I view Baker Mayfield as nothing more than just a year, a stopgap before you let him go the next year. He is just your bridge quarterback, and I get the character concerns,

but the biggest win for me there is you're getting rid of Kirk Cousins. I think I'm not as so much worried about the return of who is going to be or who's coming back in that trade as, okay, you got off Kirk's money. Now you have Mayfield, who I think just has that one year left on his deal, and then you can get rid of him. And so it can kind of be a, hey, Baker, this thing's up to you, man. Like like do you want to have a nice second contract like do you want to be that first round pick or first overall pick that just like is now going to become a backup like is that what you want uh and so i would bring him in and basically say hey this isn't like for us this is you're our quarterback for a year because we don't have someone ready and so we're gonna let you do your thing and you're gonna have weapons to throw to uh you're it's not like you have justin jefferson you have adam thielen uh like there will be no like justin jefferson can't

get open like justin jefferson's dad's not gonna put together a tape of stuff like no one's gonna take baker mayfield's side in that and so for for me, it would be okay. Hey, prove yourself. And I'm not quite sure. Quacey coming from the Browns views him as that like a guy that you're going to give it an extension to, because it from all indications of what was happening towards the end in the, or in the middle of last season, beginning of last season, they were fortifying their offensive line,

handing out some big contracts to those guys. And I know a friend of the show, Eric Eager, pointed out on his podcast, he saw that more as we're fortifying the rest of these pieces to move on from Baker Mayfield. That's why we're paying our offensive linemen. That's why we're paying these other guys, because we think we can win with a roster with a rookie quarterback or with a guy that's not making a lot of money. And so that's where Quasey just came from. So I don't have much concern that if he played really well, he's getting an extension here. I view that more as we're getting off of cousins. That's a good thing. And now you have, you just know who your stopgap quarterback is going to be, and you can decide whether you're going to draft someone this year

or hold off for another year. So I'm not really opposed to that. If that's the deal that came through, I think overall getting rid of Cousins is the positive part there. And if you have to take on Mayfield and kind of the sideshow that he has for a year, I'm fine with that. Yeah. I think you make a strong case and put it this way of all the options of moving cousins, that's not one that I have as number one on my list. But I'm not against it in the way that I would say, don't ever do it. I'm going to stand outside of Kwesi's new house or apartment or condo, potentially, with a boombox that's playing me over and over again, saying don't trade for Baker Mayfield. I'm not going to go crazy about that if they decided to make a move like that. And I do think that they have the offensive line and now a weapon in Amari

Cooper that could be quite good with Kirk cousins and Kevin Stefanski. And Stefanski was the only guy who got them to the playoffs as the offensive coordinator with cousins. I still had just heard some things that made me think that that's not going to be the direction they want to take, but also Baker could be behind the scenes trying to force his way out too. We don't, we don't know that because Baker seemed quite unhappy and there was a report that he wanted to be moved at the end of the season. And then he came out and denied it, even though his side probably leaked it. So anyway, but that's those are the types of games that you end up getting with Baker Mayfield.

So if it was all of the options in the world, the number one choice for me, if you're moving on from Cousins, is that you're going to sign Mariota. Because I think that even though he's not a great player, he could take you to the playoffs. He's done it before and that he's going to understand the deal. Having just been a backup where Mayfield is much more of a circus that comes along with him that I'm not sure is necessarily great for your team. I think you want somebody who is a very solid and sound leader who is going to also take on somebody else to work with them, like a Desmond Ritter or a Kenny Pickett or whoever the Vikings might draft. If you bring in Baker Mayfield, I don't think Baker Mayfield is teaching

the next guy the ropes. I'm not sure that Baker Mayfield knows the ropes necessarily. I mean, really from his play, it's just been pretty mediocre the entire time he's been with the Browns. So another, by the way, another case for the NFL can't evaluate quarterbacks in the draft because they took him number one and Allen way behind him and Lamar Jackson way, way, way, way, way behind him. So I'm just saying again, to that point. Now, let's say that the Vikings decide to play it out with cousins. How do you think that they handle the rest of this? Because what that means is that someone else and not just one someone else, that means lots of someone else's are going.

And I don't think that that's a bad thing. I don't think if they move on from feeling or they move on from a Hunter or Delvin cook or any of these other guys that it's a bad thing because if you get your cap, right, it gives you so much flexibility for the future. And this was the point I was trying to make the other day on Twitter about how,

like you can't have your heart set on Adam Thielen being a Viking for life because that's not the reality of the NFL, that you have to do what you have to do. And Cousins was a lame duck quarterback in Washington in 2017. The same stuff happened. Sean Jackson left, Pierre Garçon left, and their team just wasn't very good for that one year. Now, that didn't work out for them in the future. They're also one of the most incompetent franchises in all of pro sports. So that is what it is. But

I think that if you're keeping him, that's not the worst thing in the world. If you're drafting a quarterback and it's not the worst thing in the world, if you are moving on from some players that are taking up a ton of cap space, even though it hurts from the locker room perspective, and even though it hurts a lot for fans who see some of their favorite players of the last 10 years having to be jettisoned. Daniil Hunter at that point is probably gone. I think that clears up a ton of space for them there.

And then, yeah, it's pick whether you want to keep like Thielen or you want to keep Eric Kendricks and how you want to kind of move forward who you think has more left in the tank a 32 year old Thielen or a 30 year old Kendricks and I think both would hurt uh both sides of their both sides of the ball uh but it I mean it might be a good thing you're one you're not paying 17 million to a 32 year old wide receiver. History does not favor that. Or you are deciding not to pay a lot for your linebacking core, which is something that most good teams don't do.

They don't tie up a ton of money in their linebackers. So there's, you know, there's reasons to go both of those directions. Uh, and yeah, it's know there's reasons to go both of those directions uh and yeah it's it's gonna sting like the way that the vikings did this the last couple years where they kept the band back together was for spielman we're either gonna win while i'm here or i'm not gonna have to watch the destruction when i'm gone and he's gone and the destruction is gonna come and so it's gonna be sad for vik Vikings fans and people who like this team. And even for people covering it, like covering Adam Thielen's really, really fun.

Covering Eric Hendricks is really, really fun. Covering Daniel Hunter's really great, but it's, if, if cousins is here, two of those three are probably not. And that's just the reality of the, that's the bed that the previous regime made this current Vikings team. So what do you think? Like, do you think Thielen, do you think Thielen would be the likely guy there if Cousins stays to Thielen. At the same time, if you're keeping Cousins, then your goal is not to have a total reset year, I think. He's sort of the lame duck bridge quarterback, but you're also still trying to have a good offense, and I think Kevin O'Connell is going to want everyone that is there that's good.

And Adam Thielen is still good. The thing about Thielen, though, is, and this is just what it's hard. I mean, when you look at players, you have to look at what they're going to be, not what they've been. And even what Adam Thielen has been has just been okay. And, I mean, okay is still good. Catches a lot of touchdowns and gets open. But I think I ran this the other day that per season,

he's averaged like 50 something catches the last three years. Yes, he was injured, but that's part of it when you get into your thirties. And if you're talking about somebody who's catching 50 passes as a projection for next year, having them on a $17 million cap hit is just not acceptable. Now they could restructure in a way that wouldn't hurt them long-term. So that's possible for him. And that would likely mean then Daniil Hunter. And I think if the Vikings were to move on from deal, Daniil Hunter to keep Kirk cousins, I again,

do not think that's the craziest thing in the world, but I also think that's going over like a lead balloon. I mean, that is just not going to be something that people are pleased with at all to see Hunter sent out of here. And by the way, he's getting a fourth or fifth round draft pick back. I think as soon as I say this, it could be a first rounder, you know, in five seconds

from now. But looking at the Amari Cooper thing, contract is everything when it comes to trade value. It's not just the player, it's contract as well. And I don't think that Daniil Hunter based on the Cooper deal is going to get this huge return. So if you're moving Daniil Hunter to keep Cousins lame duck, I don't think that's going to be a very popular move. Can I ask you a question? Like, do you think there's a scenario where the Vikings want to trade Kirk Cousins but they just can't find a suitor like I think I've been operating at least if they want to keep him for

a year it's because they want to do that for where for him to mentor a guy and they you know that's kind of the route they want to go but you think there's a scenario here where they just can't find a team to take him and so they make a lot of these rebuilding moves. Um, you know, they, they kind of go about their off season like they would have if they didn't have cousins, but they, you know, they do still like, I'm just wondering like if there's a scenario where they want him, want to get rid of him, but they just can't. Yeah. Uh, one point on that cousins is not going to mentor anybody. Uh, that's very clear. i think from even when he was asked about kellen mond last year it was just like i don't know he exists don't ask me about it um so i don't i don't

think this is an alex smith patrick mahomes situation with whoever you draft but uh what was the question yeah do you just do you see a scenario where they want to train and they're just not with the team and building an entire franchise around him that you would take a bad offer just to move in a new direction from the one that has not worked over the last four years. But if you're Kweisi Adafomensa, it's easier said than done, right? Like it's easier for us to say hey quacey i won't criticize you if you trade kirk for a third i won't because i know it's hard out there and you need to build your own team man so i won't but i think people will you know i think that the twitterverse and the nfl networks and espn's this is all that quacey was able to get his first trade as a general manager his first signing was uh ty mcgill

so you know home run on that one yes um that really did happen by the way but uh you know so but they would say this is it this new gm who's supposed to be brilliant for the vikings he's only trading kirk for a third if you're getting less than wentz, it looks ridiculous to the outside world. And that is probably a factor. That's the only way I would see them saying, all right, let's just keep them instead. But what I keep coming back to is, let's say Deshaun Watson goes to the New Orleans Saints. What is Carolina doing? Who are they playing at quarterback?

How is Matt Rule not getting fired if they draft Kenny Pickett next year they are winning six games if they stick with Sam Darnold they're winning six games and Matt Rule is fired so what are you doing if you're Indianapolis and Frank Reich went to Jim Ursae the owner of the Indianapolis Colts and apologized for bringing in Carson Wentz because it was a disaster. And apparently Wentz is not a great guy. And so you're on the hot seat too. Like Jim Ursae is not going to be patient for years and years and years and years of missing the playoffs and being incredibly mediocre. You need an answer if you're the Indianapolis Colts and you need an answer who can win. And this is why I think it's actually a better idea for the Colts to get cousins than it

is for Jimmy Garoppolo, because even though there's a case to be made that Garoppolo is a better quarterback, he's not a healthier quarterback. He's having shoulder surgery. He's had all sorts of injuries. He had an ACL tear. He's had an ankle thing that kept him out the year before. Like Kirk Cousins is the most predictable quarterback that you're ever going to get. And for these guys who need to save their jobs, which is ironic because he's gotten two coaches fired in the past, but you could see it where they would say, all right, we'll give you what you want. That there has to be a market there for Cousins because he's so much more predictable

than a lot of these other quarterbacks. If you sign Jameis Winston, are you putting your job status on Jameis Winston? Are you putting your job status even on Mariota, who, like I said, he had one decent year of a good offense, but it's not like you're sure that he's going to be really good. I think that they will absolutely get offers.

I think they're already getting offers. It's just whether you want to take them or not. Got it. Got it. Well, can I lay out what, because the next time I'm on this podcast next Sunday, things will have happened.

People will have signed free. I think free agents would have signed, or at least we kind of know where they've signed. So I kind of laid out what I would want the Vikingsikings to do or what i would do if i were in their scenario i laid out kind of what i would do with the current roster and a couple free agents i would target can i give those to you before we go lay it out lay it out all right so we're also by the way there will be emergency pods and sam is away sam uh, Sam's family had planned a long planned a vacation during this week because his wife's not into football. And so she didn't predict potential Kirk traits. So Sam is away. So your emergency podcast guy for this week. So we may talk before Sunday. But yes, I'm very interested in hearing your Vikings plot. All right, we're trading Kirk Cousins to the Colts for whatever we can get to basically send out all the money that we can.

So how much Colts take his entire contract, and then we'll take the Carson Wentz return. Just give us the picks that you just got from Washington, and if you can do better, you can do better. But whatever you can get to send out all the money, do that. Uh, I am then, I still think Daniel Hunter, um, can is a really, really important piece on this team if they want to compete in three years, say. And so I'm going to extend him and I'm probably the, this first year, like his cap's going to be a little bit lower on the idea that you're going to have a rookie quarterback in a couple of years that then Daniel Hunter's contract can be a little

bit more, uh, can be a little bigger and that you can kind of fit that in. So I'm extending, um, Daniel bringing his cap hit down. And then I am signing, I'm going to address quarterback and edge in the draft early. Uh, so I'm going to go after a corner or a quarterback. Uh, I'm going to go after edge aggressively. Uh, I've talked about it in my columns and just in the draft early. So I'm going to go after a corner quarterback. I'm going to go after edge aggressively. I've talked about it in my columns and just in general, this defensive edge group, defensive line group in the draft is really, really solid. There's going to be a lot of depth that the Vikings can go after in the

middle round. So I'm going to address edge there too, to give, to bulk them up there. And then I'm going to sign two cornerbacks, Rasul Douglas, former Packer, 26 years old, PFF, to give, to bulk them up there. And then I'm going to sign two cornerbacks, uh, Rasul Douglas, former Packer, 26 years old, PFF predicted a contract of three years, like 21 million. So $7 million for him every year, he's 26. So that's just the type of guy

that you want to get on more than just a one or two year deal, a guy that can, you can kind of grow into, and then maybe his third year of that contract, that's when you're truly contending. So I'm going to sign him and I'm going to sign cornerback DJ Reed from the Seahawks. Another guy, 25 years old, you can sign him to a three or four year deal, probably like $8 million per. So I want to just throw a lot of bodies at corner because we know that in general, you just kind of need competency there. Like you need need competency on the offensive line so i'm going to throw a lot there still let some of the young guys like cam bynum cam dantzler get in there but their depth on corner is just not very strong so i would rather go to veterans there and then have some of your young guys in your linebacking core in your in your defensive line let those guys kind of mature and figure out who's good from there,

because I'm not sure a lot of your sixth, seventh round corners that you've drafted should be getting a ton of time. So that's what I'm going to go with there. And then I'm going to invest in the center position. We're going to get rid of Bradbury. I think I was listening to the NFL, their athletics NFL show with Robert Mays. He was talking about all the center contracts recently. Some of the biggest center contracts have actually been worked out really, really well. So I want the Vikings to put a decent amount of money towards the center

because I think that as your Cleveland on the left side, if you can find any kind of stop gap on the right guard side in the draft or in free agency, and you have a strong center who can also then help out a little bit, I think that would help whoever's that quarterback, but especially a rookie. So I see a couple options. You could go with Brian Allen. He's the former Ram or he's the Ram center. Obviously knows Kevin O'Connell's system really, really well. He's only 26. So again, the theme of those younger guys that you can get on longer contracts. So I want to sign Brian Allen.

Or if we're able to clear some cap space doing some different things, go after Ryan Jensen, who's the Bucs center. He's the top of the market. And I find a lot of value in that. Fortifying the offensive line, I know it's a weak link system. But I think I'm going to sign Brian Allen to about $8 million again. So a lot of those mid-tier free agents, but longer, younger guys, and we're going to see what we can do. Oh, and then Marcus Mariota, I'm going to sign for 10, $12 million to kind of fill out the rest of the roster.

I like it. I mean, I like a lot of parts of that. One is if you're signing free agents, make sure they're 26 or 27. And so they're a part of making you better right away and longer. The reason that you don't draft a center in the first round is exactly what you just laid out. There's like four guys who are good centers in free agency this year. And it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend when there's always centers who are coming available in free agency. And that position is so hard that usually you're not peaking as a center until you're like 27 or 28 years old. And you've seen all the defenses and you've gone through years of technique and everything else. It's a very hard position to be good at right away. And so I've always felt like the center position is extremely valuable,

but also kind of like you have to replace it the right way unless you're getting a guy like Travis Frederick who works out. And if Bradbury had worked out, it would have been a great pick. But the odds of it working out, what you get, how long it takes to develop, very tricky, very tricky. And if it doesn't work out, wow, you've just shot yourself in the foot because you had some of the league's worst interior offensive line play for three years. And that's one of the worst parts of drafting a bust center is that you're going to play

him. If you draft a bust wide receiver, there's usually other guys and you'll just demote him. If you draft a bust center, you're usually going to play him and he's going to be bad and it's going to hurt him. If you draft a bus center, you're usually going to play him and he's going to be bad and it's going to hurt you. And that's exactly what happened. So I know I like it. I like the Brian Allen idea a lot because of he's going to be able to help everybody else with the system that they're putting in.

I think it's a good plan. The one thing is the Hunter deal is a little tricky in trying to figure out how that fits into everything, but it is remarkable. I mean, with the cousin stuff, you make 35 million cap space right away as soon as you trade them. And all of a sudden you feel like you just hit the lottery. There's just 35 mil. I mean, you're talking about eight to 10 for Brian Allen, 10 for Marcus Mariota. And then looking at, you could still sign other corners and everything else.

And all of a sudden you're like giving yourself a money bath, basically, when you create that much cap space in one foul swoop. So anyway, well, Paul, this has been fun and we'll see if it blows up in our face moments from now. But, you know, we'll be back

probably for some emergency pods for sure. And, you know, people can hear you as always WCCO Radio, where you're rocking it there. So thanks for your time. And there will be lots to come, folks. I promise you, lots to come.