Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Will the Rams reaching the Super Bowl convince another team to trade for Kirk Cousins?

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom get together to discuss a Bengals-Rams Super Bowl and what it means for the Minnesota Vikings. Will teams around the league think they can acquire Kirk Cousins as a win-now answer now that the Rams went all in and went to the Super Bowl? Should the Vikings be looking at the Cincinnati Bengals as a blueprint for how they can build? What do we make of the Wilfs reportedly flying to Los Angeles to interview the Rams' coordinators again for their open head coaching position? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

and Sam Ekstrom here talking Vikings as always and Sam I think we should start right out with the two teams in the Super Bowl and dive right into this discussion, not waste any time. Okay. So we were just talking about the Rams and Matthew Stafford making the Super Bowl and whether that would convince other teams that they need just that one last piece, expensive quarterback who's proven and who has been the victim of a bad franchise before. Not that I think the Vikings have been a bad franchise, but the Lions certainly had that label with Matthew Stafford. And there's a little rewriting of history because there were like five, six, seven years where the Lions were competitive and they were making the playoffs or in the playoff hunt each year. And they had Jim Caldwell as their head coach for, I think, four or five years. And they were competitive. And I think people act like the entire Stafford era in Detroit was just

all the team not being able to get out of its own way. But that's aside from the point. So my question for you is, could you see another team that feels like they have a great roster saying, you know what? This Cousins, he's just like Stafford and he's all we need to get to that next level. Could you see that happening? Well, even add Tom Brady into the mix in the sense that the Bucs had the roster. They needed a quarterback. They got one. They won a Super Bowl.

And obviously, they acquired Brady as a free agent. The Rams sort of spent crazy draft capital to get Matt Stafford. But I think you could justify it for four or five franchises out there who feel like they're close. The Browns made the playoffs one year, close this year had a bunch of injury issues didn't make it they might want to upgrade the eagles made it um but did not win a playoff game jalen hurts kind of juries out on him the sealers are losing a quarterback maybe the bucks are losing a quarterback. Maybe the Bucks are losing a quarterback. It seems like they are again. So yeah, there are options out there. I think there certainly is a buyer for Kirk Cousins.

I think the question is, what is the price? Because a lot of teams would definitely be interested if it was, oh, you'll absorb a lot of this cap hit for us. Great. That sounds good. We'll give you a third round pick. Or is there going to be a bidding war for Kirk Cousins? How crazy is that to even consider that there'd be teams lining up, but you look at the Lions, they got a third and two firsts, the Eagles getting a third and a first, I think for Wentz. even decent quarterback play can net you a very big Kings ransom in return. So I think the question is, you do need the stars to align a little bit. Who has the cap space? Who likes Kirk Cousins? Who has a roster that's available or ready to win? And who has picks available to give the Vikings back in return.

So you still need to get the right circumstance there, but after seeing what happened around the league, you know, the last couple of years with the quarterback movement. Yeah. I definitely think that Kirk cousins could be desirable for a team just looking for that right fit. I think if you're the Tampa Bay bucks and you look at your roster and what you have there is they've got Chris Godwin and Mike Evans. I assume that Gronkowski is not going to come back without Tom Brady, but they have a good offensive line, actually something they can offer Kirk Cousins that the Vikings never did.

And a defense that is built up there and is strong. And it does not look like Todd Bowles is a legitimate candidate for anybody in the NFL to be a head coach. So they could bring back their head coach, Bruce Arians. We'll see if Byron Leftwich ends up with a job, but he may not. The coaching staff might stay solid there. And if you're the Bucs, you're looking around going, well, what are we going to do with all these things that are built to be great? And not only that, but when you look at the NFC South, tell me who's scary in the NFC South. You've got to feel if you're Tampa Bay, like you're not afraid of Atlanta.

You're not afraid of Carolina for sure. I mean, you're really not afraid of the Saints unless they find their way to a quarterback. And the other thing is, too, there is some serious scarcity here. So Jimmy Garoppolo is going to be traded somewhere. I think that yesterday guaranteed that. I think that the idea that Trey Lance could be on the trade market and the Vikings potentially trade for him probably died with that final drive. And Jimmy, I thought played really well for the whole game. I think he had the highest QBR over the weekend of any of the quarterbacks.

And yet the final drive is going to stick with everybody. Cause that's the same thing that happened in the super bowl. So, okay. You have Garoppolo who's going to be on the trade market, but who else other than Kirk cousins, there's more teams that need quarterbacks that are really not in a position to draft a developmental type of quarterback. I mean,

think about the top quarterback in the process in, in the draft, the top top quarterback quarterback in the draft, the top quarterback prospect in the draft, according to Mel Kiper, is Malik Willis from Liberty, who is a project. He needs a couple of years. He's like a Josh Allen type that has a big arm and wheels, but is not at all ready to play in the NFL. And a few of these other guys might not have quite the ceiling, a Kenny Pickett, a Sam Howell, that you'd be looking for to drop into a Super Bowl caliber type of team. So your options are draft one of those guys that are far

from a sure thing, or to go out and get pretty much either Garoppolo or Cousins. Unless I'm missing somebody here, Sam, I think those are the only two guys that when now teams could really trade for to put into their rosters. I don't think there's anybody else that's really on the trade market. Russell Wilson, maybe. I mean, that was kind of last year's story. Maybe it's this year's story again. And Aaron Rodgers, too. I think we need to consider that Rodgers could be available if he doesn't retire or smooth things over with Green Bay. So there are some big fish out there, certainly, that would be more desirable than Cousins.

I think that Garoppolo or Cousins would be a debate because Garoppolo is cheaper, but he's also a little bit more careless with the football, a little less gifted with the arm, but he wins like crazy if you're a believer in QB wins, he, I think is more reliable in the clutch. Despite what we saw yesterday, he typically, I would, I would put more money on Garoppolo late in a fourth quarter than I would cousins based on what his career has shown. Um, so I think that as of now, they're kind of jockeying for like, who's the most coveted asset. But if you get a couple of those big fish sniffing around, maybe wanting a new team, they would probably jump to the front of the line.

But when you see teams go from mediocrity to Super Bowl so quickly, everybody gets entranced. And they say, hey, maybe that could be us. And maybe we could be us. And maybe we could take a shortcut and get this quarterback in there. I think you got to have the right defense. You got to have a defense that can play if you're going to absorb Kirk Cousins and you got to have weapons and you got to have an offensive line. You kind of have to have everything together to make that work. The Vikings even put, you know, just about the best possible theoretical team

around him for a couple of years there. And it's still, still didn't really pan out for them except for one playoff win. So I think the teams that do that, if they went after cousins, I think they might be a little foolish to think that they could, could solve the problem with that. But who am I to tell anyone that they can't do it after watching Matthew Stafford get to the Super Bowl I mean I don't think you would you or I expected that when the season started either I I did not know and I think that I was probably guilty of maybe and this is a thing that this season has possibly taught us is that there's a lot of statistics out there on quarterbacks and I'm not sure how many really tell us the truth about quarterbacks.

I mean, because if you compare Kirk Cousins and Matt Stafford statistically, Kirk Cousins was either even or slightly ahead of Matthew Stafford. And even when you looked at support and cast, the offensive lines, the wide receivers, Stafford often was even or better in terms of his supporting cast, more close to even probably as Kirk Cousins with a little better offensive line, maybe not quite as good of receivers, but you wouldn't have said one was way above the other. This wasn't one guy playing for Jacksonville for most of the time. I think that's a little bit of the misconception on Stafford because they had Golden Tate, they had Kenny Galladay, they had Marvin Jones. I mean,

these were really good players with Jim Caldwell, a very good offensive coach. But I think that the difference is the high end, the peak of someone like Matt Stafford is just higher. Like when things go wrong, when calamity and chaos happens, there's only one of those two guys that can get you out of something with his big giant arm and his big giant body who that was drafted number one overall. I think that that's really the difference when it comes to those two. And even when you're trying to evaluate all the middle quarterbacks, because you know, you have the first tier guys and I didn't think of Russell Wilson just because they're keeping Pete Carroll out there in Seattle and everything. But Wilson and Rogers are first tier quarterbacks.

They're going to give you over their career 10 chances to win a Super Bowl. They're going to be in the playoffs all the time. They're going to win double digit wins. They're guys you want in those big games. OK, well, obviously, these other quarterbacks are in that ballpark. But trying to differentiate between a Stafford, a Garoppolo, a Cousins, a Derek Carr, a Ryan Tannehill, I mean, that's where it often depends on who you have around them, what type of luck you get.

Because let's be honest, I mean, the Rams blew a huge lead to Tampa Bay, and then Tampa Bay decided they wanted to play the worst possible defense against the Rams and gave up a huge play. Otherwise, who knows? I mean, maybe we're talking about Tom Brady going into the Super Bowl that, you know, San Francisco with Garoppolo blocked the punt. Like a lot of times the margin for error with mid-pack quarterbacks is just a lot less than it is for great quarterbacks. And maybe with Stafford, what they've created in Los Angeles for him is something that doesn't have error,

a whole lot of it, and then luck that has been dropped on top of it. I mean, when you have such a stacked roster around him, this was a team that achieved the very same thing with a stacked roster and a great coach just a couple of years ago with Jared Goff. So I'm not trying to take away from Stafford. He has been terrific in this playoffs. It's just that when you don't have one of the top tier, this is kind of the game that you play over a career is someone like Stafford probably gives you one chance ever to win a Superbowl. Someone like Derek Carr, the same kind of thing that year, he went 12 and four and then got injured right before the playoffs. Maybe that was his year. So I've kind of started thinking of it more in quarterback tools what are they capable of and what might they need to win and how many chances they would give you to win

because I think of Russell Wilson two years ago that team was kind of falling apart and they still went 12 and 4 and it was like geez I mean we've seen this from great quarterbacks all the time so I think that there even is a case that's not totally insane. If you're the Tampa Bay Bucks and say, well, look, I mean, we've just got everything in place. Let's make this trade. But as you're a team that's quarterback desperate, trying to differentiate between, should we trade for Garoppolo? Should we trade for cousins? Should we, you know, what should we do? Draft the guy. I think it think it's it's really tough but what we know is that when teams start to look at what they have and know hey i'm bruce arians i'm almost 70 years old this could be my last shot or hey i'm mike tomlin and i could actually be on the hot seat for once

if you know we don't solve this problem or the ownership is saying hey go get us a real quarterback we don't want to wait we want to be competitive every year. Like there's all these other factors that usually when the chips are down, somebody makes that deal. And I think if you're a quarterback needy team, it's much better for you than it was last year where we saw Wentz and Sam Darnold and both of the teams that made those very expensive trades ended up out of the playoffs. Yeah. You know, it's, it's a, I'm just thinking of cousins going to a new market he'd much rather be in cleveland i think where he might be an upgrade versus dropping him in pittsburgh or tampa where the bar has been set at a hall of fame level like imagine trying to to fill those shoes

but it is all very inexact when you're talking about the middle of the pack but I think that just anecdotally a lot of those guys have a once in a blue moon season and you alluded to this where the stars align happens once usually happened once for Matt Ryan got to the Super Bowl loss happened once for Jared Goff happened once for Joe Flacco happened once once, you know, for Jimmy Garoppolo. Like a lot of those guys get that one shot where everything comes together. And I don't think it's happened for Cousins yet. I wouldn't say that 2019 was his one shot or everything was perfect. I think that the Vikings, you know, won some close games and made the most of a relatively easy schedule and got double digit wins that year. But I still think that you might still be able to get that once in a blue moon

season from Kirk Cousins in the right situation. And a lot of times the, the new energy that a quarterback can bring can get you those results right away. So it is very, very difficult to, to look at Cousins and say that he's any kind of long-term option. But if you are a a team that believes it has a two or three year window kind of like the Vikings back in 2018 and

you don't think that Cousins has declined at all which I don't really think he has I think he's pretty much the same guy um then yeah you may as well take a shot at it and and see what happens rather than dealing with the inexactitude of the first round picks as the Rams decided to do. They said, Hey, we know what we're getting here. We're going to bring him in and, uh, and make the most of it. Yeah. Now there is a counterpoint to all of this, which is we're talking ourselves into someone will definitely want to do this. The only other side of that is, uh, I was going through Mike Sandoz piece from the athletic every year. Mike Sandoz has been doing this for a long time where he takes his connections around the

league and he talks to a dozen people and has them rank all the quarterbacks by tier first, second, third tiers. And Kirk cousins was 18th by those rankings. Matt Stafford was seven. So basically the league believed that Matt Stafford could do this based on his talent. Now I, I was guilty of thinking, oh man, I mean, we're really sticking to the draft status, kind of like people do with Jameis Winston, where they're still convinced that he could be, you know, a great quarterback. But I think this shows that the league evaluated his talent correctly. The only thing is that think about what just type of roster you need in order to make that work.

And that's why the Vikings were, you know, I understand why they did it in 2018, but I think that they sort of overplayed their hand a little bit or overrated their own roster based on what had happened in 2017, thinking that they could just drop a quarterback in because it took superstars all over the field, hall of famers all over the field. The best receiver in the NFL, I'm ready to call it with Cooper Cup because even though everyone knows it's coming, he's still wide open all the time and you can throw him the ball every play and it'll be great. They add Odell Beckham, they add Vaughn Miller, and they still are down by 10 in the championship game. And so I think that shows you how hard it can be to do that, to do that thing where you just drop somebody in and then

hope that you get there. Tom Brady had to come up just short in an incredible comeback effort and that kind of thing. So maybe there is a counterpoint to that. I just think that NFL teams always get to a point where they go, oh, we just have to do this even if we don't love it. Can I ask you a question before we move on to the Bengals side of this and how it relates to the Vikings? People who don't like to talk about quarterbacks and winning. Now, look, if you do it by just the Super Bowl, as we've seen, the playoffs are crazy. And Aaron Rodgers can only win one Super Bowl, even if he's played really well in a lot of playoff games and everything else, because of how random and insane the NFL playoffs are.

But he has had double-digit wins in 10 seasons, Rodgers. How do people who don't want to talk about a quarterback's connection to winning justify Tom Brady, like celebrating Tom Brady? Because I remember once upon a time, Sam, this is a pull out my old man jacket right now or whatever, put on some denim, go throw the kids off my lawn. And there was once upon a time where people believed Tom Brady was the same thing that they say about Jimmy Garoppolo. Now it's the scheme. It's Belichick. It's the defense doesn't have a strong arm, all those things. When he first started, even though he was winning, there's a lot of, is he really that good? And you can Google this. If people don't believe me, when Mack Castle won 11 games for the Patriots, when Brady

got hurt the one year, there was legitimate conversation of they should just move on from Brady, right? He's too expensive. He's just a product of the system. It was not until Randy Moss showed up and the guy through 50 touchdowns that everyone said, okay, he's the best. He is the, is as great as, as he thinks. And then just one after that.

But Tom Brady from the very beginning had skills, accuracy, leadership, understanding of the game, pocket presence, all those things that were clearly far above what you would expect from your average quarterback and was dropped into a good situation and won and won and won 17 times. He won 11 games or more. I mean, that's 17 chances you have to potentially win the Superbowl there. And he won a bunch of them. I, when people talk about how the quarterback quarterback wins and it's a team game and everything else, I think about Brady and think, well, what's the explanation for that then? He's had thousands of teammates, different offensive coordinators, different offensive lines. Some years it's good, some years it's not. Even some years their defense wasn't that great. And yet Brady, the best quarterback, is always putting his team in a chance to win the Super

Bowl. That to me makes it so we should look at quarterbacks and what they've done and how many chances they've given their team to win a Super Bowl as an evaluation tool if you're trying to decide, do you stick with the Kirk Cousins? Do you trade for a Jimmy Garoppolo? Do you draft somebody new? I think it has to be a factor. Yeah, I mean, it just furthers the point that Tom Brady will probably never be equal. And you look at what he did in some of those Super Bowls to win those games, I think it's what sets him apart, is that he is just so unflappable in four or five of those Super Bowls, it required a huge effort on Brady's part to either conduct a game-winning drive, come back from an incredible deficit to win those games. So he sets himself

apart with his clutchness. But then you look at, well, okay, he got there into the playoffs where anything can happen. But he got there with these incredibly consistent regular seasons. So was it that he took advantage of a bad division for two decades? Was it that Bill Belichick was just so consistent as a head coach with his building of a roster that they never really dropped off enough and Brady was just so steady that they got to that point? But I think that those that discount QB wins are probably a little flippant and those that put too much stock in wins are probably a little flippant. And those that put too much stock in them are probably a little bit foolish as well.

Like, I think that, yeah, certainly it does have to be a factor. And you consider the personalities, too. Like, how is it changing the locker room? How is it changing the offense? And are they able to do things on their own that influence the game? Whereas Kirk Cousins was sort of shackled to whatever was in his headset. And Patrick Mahomes is out here drawing plays up in the dirt with Travis Kelsey to win football games. There is a difference there. So I think

you have to look at it case by case and say, what exactly is in their DNA that allows them to win? Is it that they're super clutch? Is it that they're super clutch? Is it that they're super consistent? They don't have low points? Is it that they just have an insane high end like Matthew Stafford? These are all factors, but when it comes down to it, how many guys have multiple Super Bowls, right? I mean, Eli Manning, that's what sets him apart,

even though he didn't have near the arm talent of a lot of the guys that have won Super Bowl or no Super Bowls. So that does come into play, and you probably need to give QB wins a little more respect than just memeing it, even though it can be a little bit overrated at times. Yeah, I mean, I think that folks want to tell you about HelloFresh. With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. You can skip the trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. The new year is a great time to focus on what's important to you, whether it's saving money by ordering less takeout,

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you. As in, if you have Tom Brady, that the worst you're going to do because he's so good is you're right there in the playoffs like his last year in new england they were horrible that was a tremendously bad football team and yet they made the playoffs that year and so when they were good he could throw for 50 touchdowns and win every single game in a regular season. Like that's, that's your outcomes, your range of outcomes with Tom Brady, your range of outcomes with Matthew Stafford is if you are a not very good team. And this is, I think there's also two parts of Stafford. The beginning of his career is very, very volatile and he got better as a quarterback as he went along. But if you're not a very good team, you're probably going to be six or seven type of win team, maybe eight. If you, if just overall, you're not that great.

If you are great, he's still going to have his downside and he has shown his downside in the playoffs and interception at the goal line, tried to throw a couple of interceptions that were dropped throughout this playoff run that if they're caught maybe we're talking about completely different stories so you still like everything goes right and you win 12 and then you have to have the guys drop the interceptions because he still led the league in picks right like this is a thing that the guy does if you have someone like cousins if it's really bad with your roster he probably still gets you seven or eight but if it's really bad with your roster, he probably still gets you seven or eight. But if it's really good with your roster, it's just hard to see much more of a ceiling there because of the physical capabilities. Where even with Garoppolo, we've seen the quick release, the gutsiness can result in

some bad things, but it can also result in being there in the NFC championship for the second time in three years. So there's physical capabilities there. I think range of outcomes is more of a way to put it as opposed to just QB wins. But man, if you have John Elway, you go to the Super Bowl, what do you go four times, Jim Kelly, you go four times. Like if you're, if you're Dan Marino, you're in the playoffs every single year, and then he got unlucky and not getting back to the Super Bowl. So, you know, I think of it kind of in that way. Now with the Bengals, I think what they have on their hands is a quarterback who is going to win double digits

10 times in his career in Joe Burrow. This looks like it's something truly special in Burrow. But even if it's not, because there were people who said that about Carson Wentz in his second year, right? Even if it's not, the way that the Bengals have handled this, Sam, by finally living in reality and having to go down for a couple of years to get Burrow and then build up around him through free agency is exactly what I think Vikings fans should be looking at saying, we became the Marvin Lewis Bengals. How do we

become the Zach Taylor Bengals? Yeah, I'm writing about this for the website too. Think about how miserable it got by the end of the Mike Zimmer era. Now imagine having an era that was twice as long with less playoff success. That was the Marvin Lewis Bengals. 16 years was his tenure. No playoff wins. And it culminated with that five-year window from 11 to 15, where they made it every year. The offenses always broke down at the end.

The quarterback play was never quite good enough. And once the defense started to decline, Andy Dalton, shocker, was not good enough to overcome that. And he was collecting big checks, and they were were not winning they were in purgatory and by the final year the defense tell me if this sounds familiar was a last place defense and Andy Dalton was not good enough to overcome that and that led to Marvin Lewis getting fired not after two years of bad like Zimmer but after three years of being a really bad football team. So they were patient to a fault. They turned the page two years,

kind of in the basement with Zach Taylor. And then you strike goal. You draft the right quarterback, maybe burrow, you know, getting hurt in 2020 in retrospect helps them. Cause it gets them the draft pick that gets Jamar chase, which gets them to the super bowl, arguably the next year. Like the draft pick that gets Jamar Chase, which gets them

to the Super Bowl arguably the next year. Like if they don't have Jamar Chase, if they just win seven games in 2020, maybe they're not here right now. So I'm not suggesting that quarterbacks go tear their ACLs, but you see the factors that played into it. Getting that high draft pick a couple of years in a row, Burrow and Chase, those two, probably more than any other pairing on that team, are responsible for getting them to a Super Bowl. So what does it teach us, Matthew? I mean, the obvious, you got to choose correctly on your quarterback, and it helps when you have the number one overall pick, but you don't necessarily need the number one overall pick, especially in this year's draft. So the Bengals win six games in two years, and now

they're in the Super Bowl, kind of like the Rams with Goff back in 2018. They just had the right offensive mind who came in and was able to work with that young quarterback, and it worked for them. So I think there's a couple models there that can give you hope if you're a Vikings fan that this can be turned around fairly quickly, but you got to make the right choice. I upset the internet on Sunday. I don't know if you saw that. By saying the closest the Vikings have been to a Super Bowl post-FARV was when they almost sucked enough for Andrew Luck.

And that angered some people. I would say that they were closer. This might be a bold take, but I think that they were closer in drafting Andrew Luck and then being able to build around him the same way that Cincinnati has with Burrow. Then they actually were going into Philadelphia with Case Keenum as their quarterback, because clearly they got blown out in that game. I think that if they had gotten Andrew Luck as opposed to Matt Khalil, that they do make a Super Bowl at some point. Andrew Luck's team was really stupid and terrible during the time

that he was there. And I wonder if that's one of the reasons that he retired early is just because Indianapolis was so poorly run. I would have loved to have seen him more with Frank Reich, but he still got them to an AFC championship game and was exactly what we're talking about with getting double digit wins all the time. And that's where I think with Vikings fans, as we go into this, you have to look at these teams. It's not just Cincinnati. It's also Buffalo drafts, Josh Allen, and everyone, including me was like, really, are

you sure? And this goes to the skill sets and range of outcomes me, was like, really, are you sure? And this goes to the skill sets and range of outcomes thing, right? That the range of outcomes on Josh Allen was always terrible to amazing. But the same thing, I went back and read Patrick Mahomes is scouting report. It says the same thing that if this doesn't work out, Patrick Mahomes will be terrible and he'll throw interceptions all the time and won't know what he's doing. But if it clicks, he can be a superstar quarterback because that's his talent level. Now, Malik Willis and Matt Corral might be those guys. I haven't gotten fully into draft season yet.

It seems like Willis is the top guy there. But everything always involves if you hit. The number one thing that we hear anytime we bring up drafting a quarterback and moving on from Kirk is like, well, then what are you going to do? What if the quarterback doesn't work out? And the answer is, I don't know, draft another one. And it has to be somebody with a lot of skill and a lot of talent to take you to the next level. But Cincinnati is one of those teams, one of many teams that has had this work. And some have only had it work briefly. The Derek Carr Raiders, I think was his third year

they're 12 and 4 the wentz eagles he didn't finish the job but he got them to home field advantage if the eagles come to u.s bank stadium it might be different but carson wentz and that team on a rookie contract we've seen it work so many times that it's it's just impossible to deny like the stafford thing is such an outlier with a team trading desperately for a quarterback at the last minute to go with their great roster. That almost never works. This is the, I mean, I don't know.

I don't know if you could think of too many times this worked. Maybe Rich Gannon with the Raiders, where they got him from the Kansas City Chiefs and it kind of worked out for them to go to a Super Bowl. It doesn't work that often with the rent-a-quarterback. Peyton Manning, Denver, but that's Peyton Manning. Yeah, it's Peyton Manning, right. But aside from that, I mean, it doesn't happen a whole lot.

It happens much more often that teams draft high and take these quarterbacks and build around them. And people could use the example of like, well, look at Tua in Miami. They've got more wins than the Vikings in the last two years. And I think they've mishandled a bunch of things and they still were able to build rosters good enough to be better than the Vikings the last two seasons. And that, that may really solidify the point is even though they drafted somebody who's just maybe a level below competent, they've still got a lot of really good players on that roster. And then if they draft somebody else and that person works out, then they've got a chance to drop them into a great roster. So it just seems

like what Cincinnati has done. I don't know how you could be looking at that as the Vikings and go like, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think that's us. Let's just keep rolling the dice with a 33, 34 year old quarterback until he decides to retire. I guess, you know, as long as we're in the hunt, it's just kind of a, an archaic attitude about it. Um, it's inefficient, it's expensive. It's unsatisfying. The fan apathy should tell ownership all they need to know. So I think that ownership knowing what they know, do you think they would have hired a GM who was committed to keeping this thing going? I don't. I feel like anyone they hire, and this applies to the coach.

I feel like they all need to be on the same page with the quarterback. Would you agree with that? I think that as business people, they have to look at what you pay versus what you got out of it and what they paid versus what they got out of it with cousins. It just wasn't worth it. Like this was a complete failure. You can't have one playoff appearance in four years and say like, oh yeah, no, that worked.

I mean, that's paying Audi prices and getting my Honda Civic, right? I mean, it's just, that's how I look at it is that that's gotta be the first or second conversation you're having. And if you're them, I don't know how you could be saying, oh yeah, well, what we really want is you to keep going down this road, but just improve the culture in the front office. I have a tough time seeing that. Yeah, ditto, which is why I'm

super convinced that they will at least attempt to trade that contract. And as we talked about in the open, any number of possible suitors. And I think once you get a coach in here, you can start to see the wheels turning on that. So, you know, you look ahead to the head coaching search, you know, which coach is going to understand that quarterback importance, that quarterback relationship. Oddly enough, as controversial as he is, Jim Harbaugh, a former quarterback, a quarterback that saw the transition or a coach that saw the transition from Alex Smith to Colin Kaepernick, probably understands that as well as anybody. Folks, we've got an even better offer to tell

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Plus the hockey and basketball teams are both actually exciting this year. And SodaStick has you covered there as well. Go to SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com and use the code Purple Ins insider for 15% off. Poor Alex Smith. He gets to be this guy every time. All he did talk about a guy who won all the time and he had what, what was his lead in the game against the Indianapolis? It was like a

20 something point lead against Indianapolis that his defense blew poor Alex Smith. He was in the NFC championship and he's known as just this, like, sorry, not good enough. We're going to put in everybody else. But no, you're, you're right about that. And they had to go to the more physically talented quarterback and then ended up getting to the super bowl. So maybe if they were to hire Jim Harbaugh, which is where I wanted to go next, by the way, the coach search continues. You'll have to give your take on Jim Harbaugh, uh, because I've given two days of takes on that in the last two shows. So I want to hear yours, but they're going out to Los Angeles reportedly to interview

again, Raheem Morris, Kevin O'Connell, and then swooping up to San Francisco to talk to D'Amico Ryan's, um, I guess, or do they make him drive to LA or fly to LA? I don't know. Maybe they've got the private jet. They'll fly up to San Francisco. My opinion on this is if they were to come home with one of those three coaches as their guy, I think you're in great shape. I think all three of them make sense. They all come from places where the offenses are extremely modern. Raheem Morris and Kevin O'Connell both have offensive backgrounds, even though Morris is a defensive coach now.

And D'Amico Ryans is one of those meteoric rise type coaching candidates who did a tremendous, tremendous job in the playoffs with his defense. Also somebody that I think being a former player and a position coach would relate tremendously well to their players. I mean, I think that any of those options are really good for them. And the Harbaugh thing is that is play with fire and either you get burned or it turns into fireworks, right? I think that's really, there's only two outcomes with Jim Harbaugh. You're probably not going to be like 10 and seven or whatever. You're right. You're probably going to be something great or something really bad. And he ends up leaving for

Notre Dame or something, right? Like those, those, that's the way that I look at their coaching search as we stand. Yeah. I think when you bring in a coach like Harbaugh that has a reputation and has some baggage, it can be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy when you enter the relationship with some bias because you start to look for problems. And that kind of has followed Harbaugh to a lot of places, even places where he's had success. I mean, obviously with San Francisco, they're three years, a phenomenal football team. They're almost winning a Super Bowl and then one 500 year and it's over and guys are retiring instead of wanting to play for him. And in Michigan, every single year, every losing streak they have, Harbaugh's at it again. He's getting

nothing out of this roster. He doesn't get along with college kids. His shtick has run out. So you look at his resume and he's just a pure head coach. He jumps out of the NFL. He's a quarterback's coach for two years, and he's been a head coach somewhere for 20 straight years, and he wins everywhere he goes. So clearly, there's something there from a success standpoint that's appealing. But I also don't know if it's quite the culture fit that they're looking for to pair with a younger, forward-thinking GM who has a lot of good ideas.

Is Jim Harbaugh going to change the way he operates? Because the NFL's changed since he got hired to be the 49ers coach over a decade ago. I'm not sure he knows, you know, Kweisi Adafo-Minsa as well as the one year overlap in San Francisco would suggest. I'm sure that there was a little bit of a power discrepancy between those two at that time. So whether or not they would be a good fit, I think is not established whatsoever. And I kind of like the idea of aiming young, aiming new and hoping you hit a home run. Like if you get new GM, new coach, new quarterback, all of whom kind of can, can make their way in the NFL without a lot of baggage. Yeah, I could blow up, but you could also hit a

grand slam there too. Like the Bengals did with Zach Taylor. So that's one story. Many of them don't work out. I get that. But I think I would steer clear of Harbaugh with this particular situation, since this is not a win now kind of roster. And he's got a pretty gaudy record that I'm not sure he wants to endanger. Right. If we think about the number of teams with bringing in a quarterback, GM, and head coach at the same time, and that's kind of an interesting, like there's only a handful of teams that do that. Usually it's on different timelines, like with Jacksonville bringing in Urban Meyer and Trevor Lawrence, their GM was still in the same spot. And I also think had Urban Meyer had any idea what he was doing, they would be in a pretty good spot at the moment, but instead it was an immediate train wreck.

So you always worry about that. But the guys that they're interviewing right now, these other candidates, it's not like they're interviewing some hot college candidate. They're interviewing, I think, very solid, proven NFL candidates who are going to know what they're doing and not just trying to sell tickets with who they're talking to. With Jim Harbaugh, it is a little different than that. It brings a lot more attention. The franchise entirely becomes about him. But also what concerned me was that he and Trent Baalke were actually really close.

And then it all fell apart with Harbaugh being unhappy with different moves that happened and then making it public that it happened. One of the interesting things for this article I read from the Mercury news about the situation was that, you know, people on Harbaugh's side did a lot of talking to the national media to make it seem like it was the GM's fault when things went wrong and stuff like that. Like there's, there's a, there's a competitive edge to Harbaugh that may go a little too far sometimes, and that concerns you. So I think that what you're trying to do, at least if you're being, I think, long-term or sort of –

Harbaugh feels like penny-wise, pound-foolish to me, but sort of short-term, it's going to get everybody really excited. It's the big flash and bang, but does it really fit? I think you're looking for the Cincinnati thing. You're looking for the Buffalo thing where they bring in Sean McDermott, a good offensive coordinator, draft the quarterback and build it all together with the same vision. Like those are more of the things that are interesting to me. Do you have any preference by the way of Raheem Morris, Kevin O'Connell, D'Amico Ryans, which it seems like that is their finalist group?

Yeah, I think they've narrowed in on the correct finalists for the record. I think that those names are probably the best of those that they interviewed that are still available. I probably lean O'Connell because I want that offensive marriage between the coach and the quarterback. Of the defensive candidates, probably Morris. I just think Morris has a ton of respect around the league. He's got experience on both sides of the ball. He got the Falcons to play super hard for him as an interim. I know that he had the previous stint with the Bucs that didn't go as well. But I think that he's a really good

candidate. I mean, Ryan certainly has the sort of the up-and-comer appeal like the Mike Tomlin, but I also, I'm still a little wary of kind of going player to coach that fast. Maybe I shouldn't be, but because it is different. But yeah, Morris, probably number one, the way that Jalen Ramsey endorsed him, I thought was incredible and very telling. But O'Connell would be my choice because I do gravitate offensive. And I think I would rather swing and miss on that side of the ball than have the revolving door with a good defensive coach. Was that a revolving door with a good defensive coach. Was that a revolving door?

Yeah, the revolving door of offensive coordinators that the Vikings typically have. Yeah, it was more of knocking your mic down. So I think that all of them work for me, where you are at the timeline, what you need. O'Connell is interesting to me because he goes back to Washington under the Shanahan thing that his growth goes along with these other guys who've had success and we shouldn't leave Matt LaFleur out of this either that you

know Matt LaFleur he kind of went along this there's like a Shanahan Kubiak path that these guys have taken together the Shanahan, McVay, O'Connell is part of this, and then LaFleur. And it's worked for most of them. You have to have good teams. You have to have good quarterbacks, but this system, it clearly is effective going all the way back to John Elway and Denver. And like, look, John Elway was obviously a Superbowl quarterback before, but the way that Mike Shanahan came in and made things easier for him got the most out of him. They've gotten the most out of Garoppolo. Aaron Rodgers, when Mike McCarthy leaves is we're joking around about his, he washed, can he not play anymore? And then MVP, and he had an MVP season this year. I mean, it was even that same LaFleur offense in Tennessee

that took Ryan Tannehill from where he was in Miami to being really good in Tennessee for the last couple of years. But then LaFleur goes, their other guy goes to Atlanta, and then Tannehill didn't have as good of a year. So I think that it's the right group to be picking from. And going with Raheem Morris, somebody that worked with Kyle Shanahan very closely on their passing game, it's the right group of people to be grabbing somebody from to drop a young quarterback into this situation where they have a lot of good weapons to work with right away.

And this is where you don't have to tank. You could be good right away, but you're just probably not ready to be a Superbowl team without building up the rest of the defense and offensive line. That makes so much sense on a timeline for me. I don't have, I mean, I've expressed my skepticism about the Harbaugh thing. It doesn't mean I would hate it if they did it and would complain about it every day. Trust me, I wouldn't. I think it would be incredibly fascinating to just look through everything Harbaugh is saying and doing all the time. I mean, he is somebody that as content creators,

we just dream about covering because it's always like D'Amico Ryan, sorry, pal, but you're not as interesting as Jim Harbaugh. It's just from the, I think that if you're looking for the more solid choice, one of these three guys exists and I think they went the right way. I had some questions along the way

about not interviewing certain people, but I think ultimately they landed in the right place. Yeah, and I guess I would second that and I still think they should have interviewed Leftwich. The enemy continues to get overlooked and maybe there's more of a interviewed Leftwich. Biennium, you know, continues to get overlooked. Maybe there's more of a reason for that than anybody really knows, but that seemed like a bit of an obvious one. And Doug Peterson too, you know, like, so there were some offensive minded coaches who I would have liked to see in the candidate pool, but of the pool

that was originally there, they seem to have sidestepped a couple of potential landmines, right? I think we were both kind of lukewarm on Todd Bowles and Dan Quinn, and they don't see, they seem to have avoided that. So Dan Quinn's going back to Dallas, Bowles probably hanging around with Tampa Bay and they won't be on the Vikings. So I think that of the candidates, they settled on the right three. And, you know, unless the Harbaugh thing escalates, unless there's another secret dark horse candidate, feels like we might have a head coach by the end of the week.

And the Lane Kiffin thing never materialized. I mean, maybe it was – Yeah, what happened to Lane? So somebody said – and I don't know if this is true. So this is what someone said about the lane kiffin thing was that uh it was their conversation with lane kiffin was more on the side of matt corral than it was on the side of become our next head coach that that was speculation from somebody that may kind of have an idea of what's going on so i don't want to say that is like i was

cold hard fact that that is the truth i'm not definitely reporting that i'm only saying that that makes a lot of sense if that was the case uh or that it was kind of put out there to see what the reaction was and most people's reaction was like no don't get lame kiffin but then here they are chasing jim harbaugh so i don't know you think jim harbaugh burns bridges yeah Yeah. Right. Check out the Lane Kiffin resume. Right. One of my favorite things to do is to just Google the somebody's name and the word drama, Lane Kiffin drama and Google explodes because there's too many hits on that. So, uh, well, let me ask you before we close out the show here today, Sam, who do you think will win the Superbowl? This Bengals team feels a lot like Tom Brady's first Superbowl team. Does it not? Does it not just kind of out of nowhere reaching

the Superbowl with some unlikely victories, um, clutch young quarterback in his second year. I think I go Cincinnati. I still think that Burrow, I oddly trust Burrow more than I do Stafford. Stafford tried to throw that game away yesterday. And I've just seen his low points. And Burrow is playing so locked in right now. I mean, starting in like early December, he has not missed a throw. I mean, the guy, I know he threw a pick yesterday, but the guy is laser focused. I think Cincinnati has the momentum. I like that team a little bit more. I think they're underdogs, but I would go Bengals in that game. I also think that Joe Burrow in terms of big stages is the least shook person I may have ever seen in my life. I also think that Joe Burrow in terms of big stages is the least shook person

I may have ever seen in my life. I mean, they're down 21 to three and Joe Burrow doesn't look like he's, you know, distraught or anything like that. And then after they win the game, this is like what the guy expected. He won a national championship. He expected to be in the Super Bowl. He said that after the first win, like, yeah, that was nice that we won a game for Cincy, but like we want to go to the Super Bowl. I was amazed at Joe Burrow's mentality and his confidence. And Matt Stafford, I'm not always sure about that. There have been times where he's wavered. And even though they come out on top, they're down 17 to 7 in that game and get a lot of help from San Francisco to come back and eventually win it. So I think there's something there. Here's the guy who makes all the difference to me though, is Aaron Donald. Yesterday, our friend Jace Frederick, who was on the show the other day, he texted me and he said, I believe in Jimmy here, Jimmy Garoppolo for this final drive. And I just wrote back Aaron Donald. And then Aaron Donald gets the play that takes down Jimmy and he throws the interception at the end. That offensive line

on the interior against Aaron Donald seems like death for the Cincinnati Bengals. So we'll see. I like the matchup. It's kind of fun. It's like the up and coming team versus the team that's got to win this Super Bowl now, or they're probably not going to be as good in the future. So good stuff, Sam. We will get together for a friday round table not sure with who yet i guess we'll see and maybe we'll be talking later this week after a new coach press conference we will find out so thanks for your time thank you to all who uh watched and if you're first time watching us here on the bring me the news channel we do podcast every day. So we've got tons of different guests coming up. We've got George Shahuri is coming up from Pro Football Focus. I just talked with our friend who covers the Rams, Cameron DaSilva.

We did an episode earlier this year about what could go wrong for the Rams. Well, he's going to come back on and make fun of me for that. And also we're going to do one with one of the best gambling people on when you would bet the Vikings to go to the Super Bowl next. It's going to be that one. So it'll be fun. It'll be a fun week. So, Sam, thanks for your time.

Thank you all for watching and listening, and we'll catch you next time.