Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Will Mike Zimmer coach again? Why didn't Vikings ownership take a big swing? (A Fans Only podcast)

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Matthew Coller answers Minnesota Viking fan questions, including whether Mike Zimmer will get another chance as a head coach next year, how the Vikings might draft a quarterback in 2023, which Vikings players would be the best at different kinds of wrestling and much more... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar collar here and this is another fans only podcast where i read fan questions viking fan questions and i suppose fans of the show as well and if you want to get in on it you can go to purpleinsider.com and where there's the contact us or contact me section you can go and type in your question there. It'll go to my email, or you can send me a message on Twitter, DM, or at message. I'll put it in the file, and then we will fire away on fans only questions. And I'm trying to work my way through these, but every time I get through them, you guys send more awesome questions, which is great. So let's dive right in. And course first let's open a diet dr pepper

that is not by the way that is not a sound effect or copy or pasted or anything that is every episode i've got one with me so it fuels the takes all right let's jump right in hunter from an email here hey matt big fan of show. Been listening for a little over a year now. Question for fans only. Should Mike Zimmer get a second chance at being a head coach? Most people's immediate reaction would be to say absolutely not because of how things ended here. And though there are concerns about his leadership rubbing players the wrong way and the fact that the league is trending toward offense still in his worst years the Vikings head coach as the Vikings head coach they were always

hovering around 500 and in the playoff hunt he's also 74 59 and one for his career and side note look how ugly things ended in San Francisco with Jim Harbaugh yet it seems there were teams that were interested in him becoming their head coach and one more important question have you been keeping up with Better Call Saul well let me answer that first uh we are only hours away as I record this from the part one of the final season finale if that's a thing the halfway mark finale and yes it has been an incredible season and uh you know by the time you listen to this we may know what has already happened to kim wexler and my mind will probably have been blown but the way that that show is able to set up its storylines over full seasons over years to have them end in like a giant crescendo is unlike any show I

think I've ever seen. Like the patience of their writers. There have been lots of other shows that I've watched, several other shows. I shouldn't act like I get to watch a lot of shows, uh, where they just murder people all the time. Like every plot twist is just somebody got shot plot twist and better call Saul just sets these things up so brilliantly and it always pays off in the same way that Breaking Bad did but even like more intellectual on the better call Saul side so if you guys haven't watched it I mean if you've got a lot of time and not a lot to do, go through and watch the whole show if you haven't started because it's really brilliant. Anyway, to your first question about Mike Zimmer, you know, I think that Mike Zimmer's age might play a role in this. I mean, he's let me look this up.

How old exactly he is. I think he's like 65 and and that's and that's 65 going on like 80. Yeah. 65 it's going on 80 for as much as Minnesota did to that man. Uh, so if he took a year off and then decided to kind of put his toe back in the market to see if he could get another job, I wouldn't be surprised. That's from his perspective. I also wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to be more of like a defensive consultant for somebody, not necessarily even taking on that coordinator role after, I mean, he's had a really long and very successful coaching career going back to Dallas and then being

a defensive coordinator in Cincinnati and a successful overall head coach, a winning head coach in Minnesota, as you mentioned, with a very good record that he ends up, uh, you know, finishing his career. So it's possible that Mike doesn't want to start fresh again with another franchise and would rather, you know, kind of be on the sidelines and, and maybe retire. I don't know. He hasn't said anything publicly, which is kind of interesting. He hasn't done one of those NFL Network sit-downs with his favorite reporter, which I guess it wasn't me, guys, because he hasn't offered to be on the podcast. But he hasn't said anything in public. And that makes me very unclear, I guess, about what he wants to do. Because

unlike Rick Spielman, who's doing every interview under the sun, it's very clear that Rick Spielman wants to be somebody's general manager or someone's president of football operations or whatever he can get at the top of some other organization because he's putting himself out there, including doing TikTok dances, which I mean, like, you know, I'm sure that everybody takes it hard when they lose their job, but seeing Rick Spielman doing TikTok dances, you're like, come on, man, come on, come on, stop. But with Zimmer, someone would be wise to bring him on as a defensive consultant. Like a couple of years ago, the Vikings have done this at multiple times, but a couple of years ago well the vikings have done this at multiple times but a couple of years ago they brought in what was his name uh the guy from the packers why am i why am i blanking on this but

they they've done this before where it's some veteran coach that isn't uh really maybe interested in doing the grind anymore but they want to contribute i mean gary kubiak was that at first for the vikings with kevin stefanski so if you're a team out there, that's looking to improve its defense, it would be foolish not to bring in Zimmer in that kind of role if he wants it because of his defensive success over his career. And even, even last year, they struggled a lot at times, but they still schemed up a heck of a lot of sacks uh 51 sacks for the vikings last year as far as a head coach i do think there's some organizations that could use somebody who is like mike zimmer that's very experienced philadelphia went with doug peterson

for this exact same reason i mean the jacksonville jaguars needed an experienced head coach to come in there and set things right with that organization right now and think about washington too with ron rivera that might end up being kind of a mike zimmer thing now i don't know who that is at this moment um houston's trying to do it with lovey smith you go you get a defensive minded guy who can kind of set things straight and at very least the organization is going to run properly because of the guy in charge it's not going to be say like a freddie kitchens type of situation i don't know who that is though right now in the nfl i mean looking around like who has a coach that is a total joker and an organization

that's completely in the dumps. I'm not sure that there is one because most of those guys got fired. I mean, the New York giants getting rid of Joe judge, um, recently Detroit getting rid of, uh, Matt Patricia and even Chicago with Matt Nagy. these teams have already kind of set themselves straight. Matt Rule would be the next one up in Carolina. Should Carolina think about an experienced, successful head coach if they go 4-13 or something next year like Mike Zimmer? If he wants to do it, that's the one thing. I don't know if he wants to do it, if he wants to hold that role, because it's not like Jim Harbaugh, who I look at is still being much younger than Mike Zimmer. I don't know Jim

Harbaugh's age. Is he much younger than Mike Zimmer and, uh, energetic like that kind of stuff? Um, I don't know that that's Mike, but it's a really interesting question. Oh, wow. So Jim Harbaugh is 58, not that much younger than Mike Zimmer but for some reason it feels that way uh so you know I I guess I wouldn't be totally shocked if there's an organization like Carolina that struggles big time this year and needs somebody who has been around the block a few times somebody who could bring a little bit of toughness to their team and remember I mean this worked at the beginning it was only when everything had sort of fallen apart and the relationship between him and Kirk Cousins was problematic and all those things had happened that Zimmer let this

thing fall into disarray and as you mentioned disarray was still an 8-9 season, not four and 13. Um, so I, I guess I wouldn't be shocked if next year after he took a year off and everybody kind of put that stuff with Kellen Mond or what he said about Justin Jefferson's record or the players that were unhappy with the fear-based culture or something like all that kind of gets in the past. I mean, Mike McCarthy's a good example of that. Mike McCarthy, when he left green Bay was about as low as you could possibly get. I mean, you, you were losing with Aaron Rogers and you'd kind of lost the team and everything else. And then he pops back up with Dallas and has a very successful season last year. Um, there's something to people

who have done that job before. This will be one of the things that we're watching with Kevin O'Connell throughout this year is just there's no preparing to be a head coach in the NFL. There is no preparing for you to show up at work one day and have your starting quarterback in his second season, have his knee break into a million pieces and his whole career is messed up right and then you're trading for sam bradford and like there's there's no preparing for showing up at work one day and having adrian peterson have reports of him beating his child and then he's suspended for the year like the things that mike zimmer went through are things that probably his is on the excessive

side but are things that can never be anticipated. And someone like Zimmer, who's been through all that, I think it allows you to handle it a little bit better or be more prepared for it and know how to work a team through those things better than just, Hey, let's go to college football and get this Baylor coach who ran this really fun offense and he'll bring it to the NFL and he'll be a genius. Like, I don't know that that always works. Um, so I guess my answer is maybe, maybe he will. I wouldn't be surprised is kind of how I'd put it. Okay. Next question comes from John Hermanson with an F at the end. Uh, it seems the Wilfs are afraid of rebuilding

and being bad for a year or two and prefer average eight and nine, even if it means they aren't any closer to a Super Bowl. Why do you think that is? What are the financial considerations? Is it ticket sales or is it something else? Yeah, I mean, for sure, nobody wants to, it's not just ticket sales, but it's also like even the

resale market if your tickets are going for four bucks to go to the game because your team is one in 16 uh yeah that's not a very good look for you i i don't know the exact answer to this question because the Wilfs talk so rarely. And when they do, it's very much on this kind of like corporate-y, PR-y kind of tone where it's hard to pick through what they're saying and what they really want. Like initially when they said, we want to be super competitive, my thought was, oh man, okay, they're ripping it apart. Like the more emphatic you get, the more you're going to take it apart. And that was the wrong read. It's always been really difficult to read the Wilfs. I mean, they would have been the last people that I would have thought

would bring in Jim Harbaugh for an interview after Mike Zimmer, that they would have gone with an aggressive older coach who, you know, I mean, I guess, you know, in some ways has been a culture guy with players, like getting players amped up and is energetic, but has left other places in total wreckage when he left. Right. Or, you know, teams that he won with that wanted him to go. That would not have ever struck me as somebody that the Wilfs wanted. And yet they entertained the Jim Harbaugh idea until they were talked out of it, from my understanding, at the very last second. And so that kind of tells you how difficult it is to put yourselves inside of their heads and look at this organization like they do, because they just live on a different plane than we do. The way that we see the team and the organization

seems to be a lot different than the way they do. I do buy into a bit the theory that they believe if you get in the playoffs, you can win the Super Bowl. And they're not tremendously wrong when it comes to that. I mean, last year, a number four seed ended up winning the Super Bowl. And they're not like tremendously wrong when it comes to that. I mean, last year, a number four seed ended up winning the Super Bowl. Still, it took 12 wins in the regular season. And if I'm not mistaken, the Rams won their division. So that's something that only happened in 2015 and 2017 for the Vikings and has not happened since Kirk Cousins has been here. But if they have this idea that's sort of rooted in the New York Giants,

that if you get into the playoffs, things can happen, you can get the right matchups, and somehow find your way to a Super Bowl, it is possible. It's not possible, of course, if you miss the playoffs at 8-9, and it's not really possible if you make that 7th seed.

I don't know that we're ever going to see somebody come from that number seven seed. That's that means you are way behind those top teams, uh, all the way to the super bowl. That might be part of it that they think, well, look, if we were close eight, nine, which is only one win away, or I guess with tiebreakers, they needed two more wins. Well, we were close with two wins last year away from being in the playoffs. So why don't we try that again? Try to get into the playoffs and then anything can happen. Now, a lot of you and I think of this differently. Think of it as you really have to have a Super Bowl team to go win the Super Bowl or you have to have a great

quarterback or a quarterback capable of getting so hot and and who has many of the aspects of Eli Manning's game that made him a great NFL quarterback for a portion of time not toward the end of his career but an incredible arm leadership capabilities like big-time guts I did a thread on Twitter one time about some of his statistics and that they they demonstrated that Eli Manning's aggressiveness was such a huge part of his success and why his quarterback rating doesn't really tell the story because he was always toward the top of the league and big-time throws and he didn't get sacked a whole lot and he would throw interceptions but that was oftentimes trying to make a big play to come back in a game or something like that if you have that quarterback the Joe Flacco is kind of like this Matt Stafford is kind

of like this that has that capability that physical skill where the high end is super high even if they're not always consistent then maybe you have a chance i don't know that that's really the case here i think that if the vikings were to win a super bowl or reach a super bowl with kirk cousins the only scenario where that would happen is if they had the case keenum situation where you have a number one defense you have incredible weapons around him you have a running game that year the vik, if you guys can remember, actually had a decent offensive line. They are not a complete top-to-bottom roster to have one of those lucky runs, but I think that that's a major part of it.

I also think that it's very easy for us to say, hey, just go be bad. Take it all down, struggle for a a year and then it'll be fixed pretty quickly but there are there's like a body count that comes along with that like when you go to the bottom and you lose and and and i always said that you didn't need to win two games if you're the vikings like you bring in mariotta or you bring in winston or you bring in Winston or you bring in a bridge quarterback and you could still compete for the playoffs. That was always my thought. But if you're presenting it to ownership and you say, look, there is a scenario where we win like four games here, three games. It's hard.

People lose their jobs. It gets ugly uh you're you'd be asking kevin o'connell to come here and start his coaching career miserably right i mean if they had drafted kenny pickett and thrown him into this roster said go get it buddy it's gonna like kenny pickett's gonna have a really tough time in pittsburgh he would might have a tougher time if he had come here and i think that's part of it i don't know that it's so much financial considerations they seem to have a lot of money uh and they seem to make their money in real estate so i don't know that the football team is really their main source this is the case for most owners in the nfl where they're already super super set in life with money. And this is their play toy. It's not just

their way of making money. Uh, there's, there's maybe a few who are like this, Jerry Jones, Mark Davis with the Raiders, but there's not many of those left. It's mostly just kajillionaires who are having this as their fun thing to do. It's not fun at all to take it apart and to lose a lot and i from that perspective i get it like if all of us owned this thing would we enjoy flying in and sitting in that box upstairs and watching the fans boo us off the field and and and what you know what are you thinking like folks you don't understand someday this will be much better. So I get it. Like, it is probably wiser to do a reset on the organization after last year.

And it was the right time to do it. It was the time where it would have been accepted. If they go 5-12 and this year just completely goes off the rails and everything goes wrong, well, then we're going to look back and go man you tried to win and this is what you came up with as opposed to hey it's all right they're taking a step back we're learning things they're putting themselves in a better position so it is hard to put yourself in their shoes and put yourself inside their head and say well here's why they wanted to do this. But that's just my theory, is that they believe that if you just get in,

you could win the Super Bowl. And they also look at it as losing as hell and it would be really, really, really tough to go to that stadium every day and watch them lose. And they dealt with it the one year with Leslie Frazier, where it was completely miserable and people lost their jobs and they drafted high and got a good player and rebuilt how about that anyway uh all right on to the next question here from um jim couric digital on twitter do you think that quacey trading with rivals will help motivate players let me take a sip of diet dr pepper here

no i don't uh i don't i don't think that i don't think that nfl players need motivation um i think my friend alex boone said this one time, and I thought it was perfect when we used to do radio together. He said about what he wants from coaches is to go draw him up a play. And I think that's right. That's exactly what NFL players want from their coaches. College coaches motivate players. High school coaches motivate players, high school coaches motivate players. If you're coaching high school kids and you're helping them believe in themselves as young people, that's an awesome thing you're

doing. And you're drawing them up plays. It's a big part of the job. Like help those kids become confident in themselves, learn the game, learn to work with each other, all that sort of stuff. That is a great thing to do. If you're one of those people who coaches high school football, I mean, you're, you're helping people become, you know, grown men down the line and all the, all that stuff. That's not what NFL players are. I mean, these, these guys are contractors. They show up to work and they get a paycheck and they do the job that they're asked to do. And there are some guys who extra, extra love football. Maybe some who are kind of borderline psychotic about it. Harrison Smith absolutely loves football. I mean, that guy

just watches insane amounts of tape. He could talk football day. Like that's, that's like him. He has this sort of special love for the game, but for a lot of players, it's their job. You show up to work, you do the job, you put in the hours, you put in the extra hours outside of work that are required. And when it comes to Sunday, you go out and you try to do your job the right way. So you keep getting paid and keep having a career. I think that there's a such thing as players turning on a leader, but I don't know that there's a such thing as a leader motivating his guys so much that they try extra super hard.

Like, oh man, you traded with the lions. Now I'm going to really try to make it like, no, probably not, not, not at this level. Uh, I think that what players at this level are looking for other than go draw me up a play is to be consistent. Um, I was writing an article about, um, just the, the whole thing about culture. And one thing that came up is consistency. Harrison Smith said, like, don't set things a certain way and then change it at the first bump in the road. I think that just like you or I, well, not necessarily me because I'm the only one really who works for me, but at your place of work, you want consistent leadership. You want consistent set of rules and guidelines and how you're

supposed to act within your work environment you don't want that changed all the time you don't want the rules switching on you you don't want to get in trouble for something one day that you got praised for another day right like it's the same with nfl football like at that at that high of a level it's really a work environment more than it is this like hey we traded jameson williams to the lions so go shut him down like probably not quite that way uh all right next question comes from at josh pink 34 with the lewis scene selection do you think the new minnesota defensive scheme there will be a three safety will be three safety heavy. So, uh, do I think that the new scheme will have a lot of three safeties? Uh, yes, I think so.

I think that what Cam Bynum showed last year clearly was not enough for them to be totally confident and just running him out as their starting safety but at the same time like cam bynum can be the next guy who develops and then is into that role next to lewis seen long term you feel like you've drafted somebody with some talent and some versatility as a former cornerback you want him on the field i mean every coach says this and then doesn't always stick to it but i think it's right which is you you you put the best players on the field and you find a way to put them on the field i know some people were very upset to hear uh that there was praise for cj ham from kevin o'connell but cj ham's a good football player like they should use him they shouldn't just get rid of him because he's a fullback and fullbacks are old school like cj ham could do a lot of really good things for an offense

and you shouldn't throw to him on third and ten maybe for a check down but he's a good blocker he could catch the ball he can make a play in space like we've seen him create explosive plays here and there i mean you want to take a good player put them on the field so i look at cambine them is the same way that one thing teams not a lot of teams but some do is they try to get an extra tight end out there on the field some teams use the fullback they try to get an extra tight end out in the field so they can get that third linebacker out there and they can sort of say to you all right now we've got a mismatch somewhere because you get that third linebacker out there and they can sort of say to you all right now we've got a mismatch somewhere because you've got extra linebackers we can run play

action now you're going to ask that guy to cover like the vikings have done this to other teams a lot with irv smith and kyle rudolph well that this is an answer having an extra safety out there is an answer and you can be pretty versatile with it i mean you can um you know you can bring harrison smith up to be the guy in the box and play that linebacker spot because he has really good instincts uh you can have cam bynum you know be that deep safety or you can kind of switch some of the roles you can use some interesting pass rush type of stuff like there are a lot of college teams that are doing this and i think it has a pretty good amount of success so i i do think that that is the way they're going to do it plus

confidence past the first two linebackers on this roster should not be super high we haven't seen anything from troy die in several years uh chas surratt clearly didn't uh excite the current coaching staff because they drafted brian asamoah who we've never seen play like those are your backups right now you're going to want to have other options to put on the field when teams are trying to scheme against you to get that extra linebacker out there so i do think that lewis scene opens that door for them to be more versatile to use the three safety stuff a little a lot more than zimmer did and i think zimmer intended to but then he couldn't get along with jayron curse or jayron curse getting in trouble off the field upset him and so he decided

to kind of put him in the doghouse there and never got around to it but for a week or two when they did it, it was pretty effective. All right. Let's see here. All right. This comes from at THW0110. I've said this before. I'm always amazed at the number of random letter and number people who ask really good questions. I thought every single one of you was a Russian bot. And yet, no. Not the case. Unless Russian bots have great

football questions possible uh all right let's see uh does the fact that they did not take the Vikings did not take a developmental quarterback in this draft mean they believe in Kellen Mond no it does not uh Kellen Mond is here because he's cheap and because there may be upside that the coaching staff has no benefit whatsoever to not find out, right? Like if they just came in and said, okay, uh, we're cutting Kellen Mond is one of our first things to do. Like what's the upside of that? He's only been around for one year. You should give him another training camp to find out at least if there's something there or if he can just be a backup i mean at this point the chances of kellen mon becoming a starting quarterback in the nfl are almost zero like think about this

that i looked at this number since kirk cousins came out and was a success in the 2012 draft along with Russell Wilson. So a third rounder and a fourth rounder, both NFL successes. There have been 24 guys drafted in the third or fourth round quarterbacks. One of them has become a starter. That's Dak Prescott one for 24. I do not have my calculator up right now to figure out the percentage on that, but one out of 20 would be 5%, so that's way less than 5%. I mean, when you draft a guy in the third round, your expectation should be that he is a backup quarterback at best, and if you hit the magic 3.5%, then good for you,

but it is a super long shot. And the fact that Mond couldn't even be the backup last year, like we can criticize Mike Zimmer for a lot of things, but we can't criticize him for not knowing football or knowing football players. Like Mike Zimmer's football player decisions were pretty rarely wrong who he put on the field. I mean, if, if Kellen Mond was capable of running the Vikings offense against the Packers, I mean, they needed to win that game to stay in the playoff race. They would have used him. It wasn't like some sort of personal beef that he wasn't going to play Kellen Mond, maybe with J Ron curse a few years ago, but now with a quarterback,

they did it because they thought Sean Mannion gave him a better chance to win. And then this coaching staff looked at all the tape from last year the practice tape the training camp and they said the the preseason we got to bring sean manion back too um that's kind of why i mean drafting a developmental quarterback there really is no such thing there as a developmental quarterback like look around the league what is gardner Minshew maybe the best guy recently like Tom Brady does not count anymore I even think that like if Russell Wilson had come out in the draft this year he's the number one overall pick probably Kirk is taken higher too but especially Russell Wilson with his physical gifts like the NFL has changed even in that way um so i i just think that

they they don't believe in kellen mond there's no there's no evidence to believe in kellen mond if they are surprised by kellen mond well then that's really good i mean if he comes out and he plays really well in training camp then fantastic you've got yourself a backup but the odds of that after how last year went where he really didn't show anything are not super high that's why they brought back sean manion there's no point to drafting a sixth rounder fourth rounder fifth rounder there's just no point that is almost never going to get you anybody who can play the position so that's why they didn't draft a developmental quarterback not not because they thought that, uh, Mond was secretly great and Mike Zimmer just missed it.

Um, okay. Next question comes from Jason fans only question. Let's say the Vikings win a very believable eight or nine games. They finally see the light that this is Kirk's ceiling that would have the Vikings picking in the middle of the first round if this quarterback class is as good as they say what would it take for them to move up to get one if QBs are targeted I'm guessing trade demands are going to go up oh man we just got done with draft season we're already into the next draft season it's a little much um no that's okay i mean 2023 draft questions are okay i've already looked at some mock drafts by the way no i think that even if kurt cousins has a really great year and they win 11 games you have to be thinking about drafting a quarterback anyway right like maybe they wouldn't but you have to be thinking that contract age it's already at the

point where this year it made a lot of sense to draft a quarterback it especially would be for next year because then you're talking about late 30 you're talking about basically the same age where the Packers said we need to draft a quarterback in Jordan Love and with a lot of really good prospects allegedly and I say allegedly because there have been other years where certain guys were supposed to be number one think about this last year if you go back and look at the way too early 2022 mocks who's the top quarterback for a lot of people Sam Howell he went in the fifth round like a lot can change with this quarterback class but let's just say that you're right and that it is thought of as being a really good quarterback class you know I think that there's a lot to be said for drafting

with your own pick if you can so if they win eight games and they draft in the same spot they did this year, I think that you probably try to wait. Now it matters a lot who's ahead of you, but you probably try to wait because of how difficult it is to figure out which guys will make it and which guys will not. So Mac Jones is the great example of this as nobody thought Mac Jones was anywhere close to Zach Wilson and long-term he might not be. I don't know, but Mac Jones proved in year one that he could play in the league and play well and take a team to the playoffs. I mean, nobody, nobody thought that necessarily. That's why they drafted four other quarterbacks before him. And we've seen this with a lot of other situations too. So if you can pick a quarterback with your

pick this is why pittsburgh did a great job in the draft like i don't know about kenny pickett he certainly doesn't come across as a guy who's going to change a franchise but if he doesn't work out well they just had a linebacker that didn't work out too like that happens all the time like what is it six out of ten guys get their fifth year option picked up or something like that, or maybe half. I mean, so, okay. Every team is going to have first round bust. If you have to trade the whole farm to go up and get a quarterback in a draft like this, where there's going to be a lot of quarterback prospects that people are excited about. Likely that could cost you what a next year's first, maybe more than that. And at the same time, you're going to have players who are older, who are getting to the end of their careers, like Adam Thielen, like Harrison Smith,

Eric Hendricks, Delvin cook. And you're not going to have those foundational pieces anymore for the quarterback you draft. And you're not going to have a foundational pieces anymore for the quarterback you draft and you're not going to have a first round pick for the next year that's a very dicey situation so if they win eight games and they're drafting 12th i think like this is i mean we're talking 2023 draft i have no idea what's going to happen right but like just to try to answer your question i think what they want to do is get as close to your own pick as you possibly can. And I'll point to the Chicago Bears as kind of the horror story for this. They didn't have a first round pick this year.

Where are they getting players? The only way they can get players is by ripping it all apart and resetting their salary cap around Justin Fields. But you're using the first two years of Justin Fields' rookie contract already. You're burning those by giving him no chance to win in those first two seasons. So, you know, in reality, was it a really smart idea to trade up for Fields if he becomes a superstar within the next few years and changes their franchise? Yes.

But timeline-wise, it probably wasn't. It was actually more of a desperate move by the Bears, hoping that they could just pick their next quarterback and say, oh, it was all Mitch Trubisky's fault. It wasn't Ryan Pace's. It wasn't Matt Nagy's. No, it was Mitch Trubisky. And it turned out that, you know, it was kind of everybody's fault. Yeah. Great question though. And look, you know, I'll try my best on 2023 draft scenarios,

but more likely than not, if you want one of those top guys, you're going to have to pay a lot. So if they only win eight games and they can figure out a way to hang around and get the best guy who falls to them. Yes. But there might be a case if it's Stroud, if it's Young, one of those guys. I don't know about where Spencer Rattler is going to be in this conversation, but if you're trying to get one of the top guys, you have to hope that the worst team in the league already has a quarterback, which can be tough. If it's Houston, sorry, they're picking their guy at number one.

Right. Uh, so we'll see. All right. This comes from at D money, zero nine one nine. Let's see. Maybe a fun fans only question for the Vikings roster. Who would you pick for the following wrestling competitions? By the way, just wanted to say real quick, these last couple of questions are kind of on the ridiculous side uh actually all of them are because i said feel free to send ridiculous questions but also feel free to send like reporter questions what's it like to cover the team that kind of stuff because i like answering those too they're a little bit of a deviation from you know just talking purely about the depth chart and everything else. So if you want to send those again, purpleinsider.com, good place to do it or Twitter DMs.

And, uh, but I'm, I'm getting to the end of the file so I could use a few more questions there. Okay. So, uh, what you want to know is the following wrestling competitions, who from the Vikings roster would I want for Olympic wrestling sumo wrestling pro wrestling and arm wrestling uh all right Olympic wrestling I think Garrett Bradbury was a wrestler I know that some other offensive linemen were but I think Garrett Bradbury was and we could put him in his weight class. And I'm sorry to do this. I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of ruthless, but like the biggest problem Garrett Bradbury has is that he's out of his weight class. And that's why he gets pushed back a lot is because Kenny

Clark has 40 pounds on Garrett Bradbury. And it's just as quick. If he could wrestle other guys who are 290 pounds, I think he'd be pretty good and you see it really the wrestling is is much more in the run game where you're kind of you know grappling uh then i don't know anything about olympic wrestling by the way so if you went to iowa and you love wrestling and you know all the details and i sound ridiculous i'm sorry i'm trying but i think that that's the right answer is in the run game. It's more of his wrestling skills and he is good at run blocking. Uh, so I would take Garrett Bradbury there with the Olympic wrestling. So I think a lot of it's about

technique. I don't think you could just be a strong guy and wrestle someone sort of like boxing where it doesn't really matter if you're big, giant and strong. If someone knows how to throw a punch and dodge a punch, they're going to beat you. So I'm going to say the same thing is true for wrestling. Sumo wrestling is Christian Derrissaw. My gosh, he is gigantic. In person, gigantic.

You might say Delvin Tomlinson. He's big. Christian Derrissaw is insanely big. Like when you think, if you were at the the mall and you were walking by a guy and you said, oh my gosh, that must be an NFL tackle. Like that's Christian Derrissaw. He would not be able to hide from you in public. You would realize right away that he must be an NFL player.

So I will go with him for sumo wrestling. Plus he's, he actually does have really good balance i think like um what do they call it like an anchor pro wrestling is funny eric hendricks for this he's just like really athletic but also very strong there are pro wrestlers who kind of look like eric hendricks in their build so i'm gonna go with him unless it was sometimes they have like really small people in pro wrestling that are just what they call them heels and things like that you know maybe maybe there's like um kai forbath or something just some ridiculous heel who gets beat up all the time i don't know but

but i think kendrick's has like that combination of agility strength uh you know he's more of a quiet personality but you know could kind of pump up the crowd maybe that's the other thing that you're looking for with pro wrestling is who has the biggest personality and i don't know who that would be on the team right now honestly like there's a lot of guys that we're just starting to meet in person because of the way covid was and i'm not really sure about their personalities I would have been able to tell you much better when we were in the locker room and now we're going to be back.

So I'll save that one. But as far as like the body type and the skill set, I think for pro wrestling, arm wrestling. So Jalen Twyman's arms are very impressive. And I think that's the best I can do. I mean, any of them is the right answer right like any any of these guys would absolutely demolish you in an arm wrestling competition if that's just pure strength that's i mean but jalen twyman has the most like rolls up

the sleeves check you know check out the arms kind of thing and then you know daniel hunter is another obvious answer to all of all questions who's the most jacked and scary guy body wise is always daniel hunter um i don't know if it matters if there's any arm wrestling aficionado that could tell me this but if you are a guy with like longer arms does that hurt you in arm wrestling i don't know um if it does then danielle hunter might have some problems but that's that's the best i could do for all of your wrestling needs all right another uh a couple more silly questions here i know you love diet dr pepper have you ever been a mr pibb guy that from dustin 5522 oh you betcha oh yes sir so i used to do um one of my first gigs was these

high school games and they were out in the middle of nowhere like in the middle of new york state kind of by syracuse it was nowhere near where i lived this was like a two-hour drive or something like that and we used to when we would go home we would always stop at the same wendy's and one of the reasons that we would always stop there is because it was the only place with mr pibb and mr pibb is fantastic so shout out to all the pibb fans out there um but similar i don't know if they have a diet pibb though and at some point in your life anybody who's similar age to me you know this like if you drink a lot of soda you have to switch you can't just like keep pounding regular pib or all of your

organs will shut down uh that's just that's just the facts of life so if they have diet pib out there someone let me know all right last one uh you green this from rick uh via email you green lit ridiculous questions so here we go in the In the spirit of other Vikings media members having crazy holiday themed merch. Do they? I didn't know that. If there was one wacky thing that you could do that you could put the Purple Insider logo on, what would it be? The first thing that came to mind was the surface of the moon. And maybe aim a little lower

literally and figuratively uh what would i put the purple insider logo on well this gives me an opportunity if you're still listening after my arm wrestling analysis uh is to say that if you become a founding member of purple insider at purpleins insider.com click on any of the articles you go to the sub stack then you will get a football a mini football with the purple insider logo on that says founding member so i think the obvious answer is just a football is the best thing that i could put it on in terms of getting people to actually see it how How about every water tower? Um, bottoms of planes would be good for the twin cities. Everywhere I go, I'm looking up and seeing the bottom of a plane. So maybe that's the best place to be, but Rick is a founding member. So he's going to get one

of those footballs. Eventually I just ordered them. So they're going to come to me and then I'm going to ship them out to all the founding members. But anyway, this is fun and ridiculous and I appreciate you guys. So I need more questions. Feel free to send them and ask about whatever you want to ask about. Those were good. Those were very good. And we'll do it again soon. So thank you all for listening to another fans-only episode of Purple Insider.