Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Will the Vikings face Justin Fields or Andy Dalton when they play the Bears?

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Matthew Coller is joined by Lorin Cox of the Locked On Bears podcast to talk about the Bears' plan for Justin Fields and whether they would actually start Andy Dalton for the entire season. Will Fields be starting when the Vikings face the Bears later in the season? Does Matt Nagy's job status depend on whether the Bears do play Fields this season? Does it make any sense to start Dalton the whole year when Fields is the future? Plus how are the folks who cover the Bears looking at the Aaron Rodgers situation. Do we care about the Lions? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by Scout Logistics. Matthew Collar here and joining me on the show today to talk NFC North because we're starting to get into it. It's funny if you're a regular person who doesn't cover the NFL that a lot of times you're just playing golf and you sort of look up and you go, oh, wait, I guess they're starting training camp soon. But for those folks like myself, it feels very close in the distance. And for folks like Lauren Cox of the Lockdown Bears podcast. What is up, Lauren? Hey, man, I'm just so excited to have like a real training camp this year with like fans can go and watch and it's not some, you know, closed off secret mission going on behind

closed doors. It's it feels like normal ish. Yeah, I think it is going to feel pretty normal. Like now when you walk into anywhere, it just feels like everything is sort of back to the way that it used to be. And I'm really looking forward to that with training camp. Last year, it was almost spooky to be out there with just nobody around.

And like, I think this is training camp, but this year it'll be great. And then fans in the stands will be absolutely tremendous because I could not have disliked empty stadium games anymore. In the Chicago press box there, it doesn't really matter because it's enclosed and you can't hear the fans that much anyway, but in Minnesota, you know, it's open because it's in a dome.

And so you really get that feeling of the wall of sound which last year was just the wall of nothing and echoes and then they would shoot off fireworks still when someone scored a touchdown but with no fans there it just was the loudest noise ever so anyway let's move past that and i want to talk all nfc north quarterbacks with you and sort of preview and try to figure out like even what is happening here with quarterbacks and since you cover the Bears we have to start with Justin Fields slash Andy Dalton is still a thing so tell me what you expect as the Bears go into training camp with the Andy Dalton Justin Fields can. Can I, can we call it a situation?

Let's call it a situation with the situation. I struggle with that terminology too, because it's not really a quarterback competition. They are full steam ahead. And at this point they've repeated it enough and have been firm enough on it that Andy Dalton is QB one and Justin Fields is QB two. And Nick Foles is hanging out somewhere, just chilling waiting for another team to come calling at some point.

But he's still there, too. He's QB three. And it's it's it's this balance of like you want to get Andy Dalton as up to speed as possible to start week one, as the Bears have fully indicated the plan is. But you also want to develop Justin Fields. So, like, do you take some of dalton's first team reps to give to fields for some of that development or i mean this is a brand new offense for dalton too and brand new receivers and a whole new situation so he's got a lot of learning to do and he can't spend all his time you know helping justin fields and getting everything up to speed there but it does feel like it's just this ticking clock of when will Fields take over and how are the Bears going to kind of control the discussion and the narrative if training camp comes around and Fields is lighting it up and maybe Dalton isn't. There's that sort of growing pressure and all the questions at all the press conferences are going to be about that.

And I don't envy Matt Nagy's position, but I think Bears fans are more than happy to have maybe a couple different quarterback options that you're actually interested in. With Matt Nagy, I remember we talked before the draft and I think you were saying like, look, Matt Nagy, it's not a great situation. And you're kind of feel like you're a little bit stuck with him or should you just fire him and maybe move on from this whole thing and try something else and then the draft pick of justin fields sort of changes maybe even the timeline and the amount of pressure on matt nagy because i would have thought if they just went into this year with andy dalton and drafted like a tackle or something that everyone would have been saying man if you go eight nine nine, just move on, just try something else because being stuck in the middle, isn't that great. But how do you think it changes the view on Matt Nagy? Like, does it extend how much patience he gets? Or if this doesn't go well,

I remember John Fox was the coach when Mitch Trubisky was drafted and it didn't go well that year. And they just fired John Fox like where is Matt Nagy's place in all of this with Andy Dalton and Justin Fields I think that's the most interesting thing about this offseason for Bears fans kind of like you said before the draft it was kind of like the plan was Andy Dalton and if they don't win some games they're going to clean house so then all of a sudden does drafting justin fields change any of the questions or concerns that we had about matt nagy as a head coach and ryan pace as a general manager before that like like all of a sudden it felt like so many sins were just instantly

forgiven it's like you know well now we're full on board with letting these guys develop justin fields because at the end of the day that's what it becomes more about it's like what what will be better for Justin Fields keeping Matt Nagy and company around to give him that continuity or will it prove out to be that a new coach in a new regime would be better for Justin Fields like it's almost like it's almost like a relationship that was on the mend and then they had a kid and now it's like oh geez like now you just have to do what's best for the kid. And does that mean, you know, having mom and dad try and work it out together? Or do we have to split households here and do kind of a joint custody thing? So that's what's so fascinating for me. And I'm willing to give Matt Nagy some more benefit of the doubt than John Fox had in 2017.

Like that one, that one at the time, it wasn't like there was this big feeling like Fox was going to be the guy to develop Trubisky long term whereas I think Nagy still has enough of that reputation and enough of that background from Kansas City to feel like even though there have been some questions about his offensive success and innovation in Chicago the last couple of years there's still that like well he he was working with Trubisky and Foles and maybe it wasn't quite the caliber of quarterback there's still like that, well, he, he was working with Trubisky and falls and maybe it wasn't quite the caliber of quarterback. There's still like that, that shadow of a doubt of like, maybe there's still something more here. Whereas the aging John Fox, we kind of knew what he was and wasn't. It's a really good question to ask. Did Matt Nagy botch the Trubisky years or was Trubisky just so bad? What was anybody going to do? because if you're looking at sort of both sides of that the play action wide zone stuff Trubisky was better at least I mean from my eye watching him

now of course against the Vikings beat up defense but like but still like just just a technically better situation for him where uh in this type of offense we've seen Kirk Cousins thrive. We've seen Ryan Tannehill thrive. And even though he was not accurate still and had his same decision-making blunders, including throwing an interception in the end zone against the Vikings when they were just a handoff away from closing out that game, we still, it just looked more comfortable for him and more effective. And it took a really long time for Matt Nagy to get around to the offense that made the most sense for Mitch Trubisky. On the other side of the coin, Mitch Trubisky is a backup in Buffalo making $3 million on a one-year contract. That shows the

respect from the league for Mitch Trubisky that nobody wanted him. Nobody wanted to bring him in. It's not even a Ryan Tannehill situation because when Ryan Tannehill was brought to Tennessee, they were on the ropes with Mariota. Like it was kind of over and it was somebody to threaten him. There's no threat to Josh Allen for Mitch Trubisky. So the league all watched Mitch Trubisky

and said, nah, nah, no. It wasn't Matt Nagy's fault. It was that guy. He's bad. So how do you weigh that with how much blame Matt Nagy takes? Because I think guy he's bad so how do you weigh that with how much blame Matt Nagy takes because I think that ties into how much trust you have with him and Justin Fields yeah there's always this inclination to make it like who with whose fault was it 100% was it Trubisky

or was it Nagy and I think you're touching on how there there's a middle ground here where it felt like at least for the last couple of seasons until the last second half of 2021, that Matt Nagy wasn't doing enough look like. And I think he thought Trubisky could operate that, but he held onto that and tried to sort of square peg round hole for a little bit too long until they lost six games in a row this past season. And he thought he might get fired and had to change up his whole offense to say, all right, screw this. Let's just make the best Trubisky we can get. And that's where the other side of this coin is,

is like the best Trubisky you can get. And that's where the other side of this coin is, is like the best Trubisky you can get is still limited as a quarterback. And that's where, that's where you give Matt Nagy some of the benefit of the doubt there too. That's like, even when you could squeeze as much as you could out of Trubisky, it was never going to be, you know, a Superbowl caliber quarterback to get your team to that level consistently but we also feel like Matt Nagy didn't squeeze as much out of Trubisky as he could for a lot of his time in Chicago so then when you try and apply that to trust for Justin Fields I think there's a concern of how Matt Nagy might adjust his offense to his quarterback and those things but if Justin Fields is just the

better quarterback and is as good as Justin Fields is just the better quarterback and is as good as Bears fans are hoping he can be you might not have to adjust that much and he might be more of a fit for what Matt Nagy was trying to make Trubisky be early on and there was a lot of great things schematically that Nagy did and especially you know 2018 some of those things were starting to work a little bit and it just sort of died off from there as as partially the level of quarterback play and the surrounding talent around him kind of dropped off. So like there's enough there that we you've seen Matt Nagy be successful

offensively with quality quarterback play. So if Justin Fields can be that quality quarterback play in theory, the trust should be there that Matt Nagy can make this work. It's a matter of how quickly can Justin Fields get to that point. So give me the ideal scenario with Justin Fields, the most likely scenario, and the fire everyone, how did you mess this up so badly scenario for just this year only with the quarterback situation for the Bears. the bears it depends on ideal by whose standards because the bears keep sort of insisting i say sort of for a reason that the plan is to treat this like patrick mahomes and start andy dalton the entire year and and don't give fields this season but then matt nagy in every press conference always leaves the door open for like yeah well we're still gonna do what's best for the bears

and we're still gonna put our best quarterback on in the field and all these different sort of caveats that have basically only guaranteed Andy Dalton week one. That's about the extent of that you can say for sure he's going to start against the Rams and then from there TBD. So I think best case scenario, I mean, I think for the Bears, it's Andy Dalton plays really well and you don't necessarily need to put Justin Fields on the field that as much as you might want to get him some experience at some point down the line. I think they're perfectly happy with, you know, throw him in week 18 against the Vikings the way they did with Patrick Mahomes, his last game of his rookie regular season. He got that chance to get at least get some snaps out there and then you go on to the playoffs and do that. I think that's the best case scenario for the bears. More likely Dalton is going to be up and down for, you know, four,

six, eight, 10 weeks. And you're sitting a couple of games below 500 going into the bears week 10 by week, and you need better at the quarterback position and you make that change. And we're on the schedule to find that is really the most difficult part because the bears have kind of a weird back and forth schedule. There's no back to back home games. It's alternating road and home every single week. And you kind of go good team, bad team, good team, bad team on paper. So it's hard to find like a three game stretch where it could be a soft takeoff for fields against a couple of bad teams back to back. So it's it's a really difficult thing and I think at this point it's just going to be as long as Andy Dalton can keep him off and I think we're going to get this point where maybe the Bears are beating bad teams and losing to good teams and you still don't know like if the Bears are any good up to this point and if Justin Fields is going to make a difference or when he's going to be ready but realistic for me is that that you know six to twelve range in that middle third of the season wheels falling off would just be you know dalton

getting hurt or or just playing so poorly so quickly that you have to rush fields out there and maybe it's too early for him i mean trubisky this was sort of the plan for him in 2017 behind mike glennon and he barely made it four weeks before the bears had to make that change so i think that's what you're trying to avoid but it doesn't feel like there's there's a scenario where fields is just a complete and total mess because i think expectations are going to be reasonable for hey it's his rookie season and we just want to have something to be excited about for 2022 i think teams mess this up all the time remember tom savage started instead of um deshaun watson for like a half i think i I, who was it? Gosh, who started instead of Josh Allen? I'm trying to remember who it was. Somebody ridiculous. AJ McCarron or something.

Um, Nathan Peterman, Nathan Peterman started instead of Josh Allen. Right. I mean, just ridiculous, ridiculous. Why we would bother with. And that's a little bit of the problem in a way with Andy Dalton is he's just good enough to not beat the good teams, like you said, and to beat the teams that are very beatable and to win a few, just like he did with Dallas last year, you know, that gets them to six and 10 because he's Andy Dalton. And with Cincinnati, he could, when they had great, great teams, they could get 10 wins out of him or nine wins out of him. But that's just like, what is the point of doing this?

And so I guess I think, why not just go with Justin Fields right away? Because like you said, the most likely scenario is Andy Dalton eventually drives them crazy and they're losing. And then they're like, oh, now we have to go to Justin Fields. And I get the Rams, Aaron Donald thing,

but also every team has someone who's good at football on defense. So if your plan is to have Justin Fields, I don't think he's a guy who's like Mahomes in the way that he has to sit as long because he played a lot of football and he played it for Ohio state. Right. I mean, Mahomes played a lot of football, but in a ridiculous preposterous, not anywhere close to NFL type of offense. And he was technically troublesome with how, you know, the footwork and all those things that people complained about. So it was good for him to sit for a year. I just, I can't see a huge benefit for having him sit for

five weeks and then be like, okay, now play that we've wrecked our season because we decided to go with Andy Dalt. It doesn't seem like there's any measurable benefit. It's sort of that rule of thumb. Well, yes, ideally, rookies should sit because it's good for them. And you ask, well, why is it good for them? And again, you start to like, you can kind of postulate and say, you know, well, then they get to, they can see how a starter prepares himself during the week, and they can see how the NFL speed gets adjusted,

and they can get used to, I mean, all these sort of like intangible, unmeasurable things that you could probably figure out on the fly anyway, as a starter. And is, is it really going to be the difference between fields being a great quarterback and fields being an average quarterback? Is that going to be the difference between him starting right away at week one or sitting eight to ten weeks i i think logically from a football standpoint you're 100 correct that there's there's not really like an x's and o's argument that i've heard as to why fields shouldn't just start week one but at this point it's they're so they're so locked into this and they so they

committed it from the start and it becomes that like that free agency negotiating politics game where when they signed dalton they told them he was going to be their week one starter and if they if this regime gets a reputation of promising players things and then not giving them those things then all of a sudden you know free agents become a little bit less inclined to want to play for you and teams or players become less inclined to be traded to your organization because they don't know whether they can trust you and take your word on it. Plus the money, you know, that they'd be paying Dalton just to be purely a backup after signing him for not a crazy amount, but he would be a certainly a well-compensated backup. Much like Nick Foles, who's already the highest paid number three quarterback in the NFL right now, but you know, it just becomes, you're sort of playing the, the politics game with free agents and quarterbacks, which is not necessarily the same as doing what's best for your football team. I think the best way to do it is probably just to say, Oh, Andy Dalton. Yeah.

You're a QB one to start training camp. And then we'll see how it goes. And the minute Justin Fields does anything good in a preseason game, you're like, well, there it is. He's set, good to go, and then go forward with it. Because by the same token that you say, like, there would be a trouble if you promise players things and then don't give it to them, it's also a problem if Allen Robinson is catching footballs from Justin Fields and then in practice and going, oh, my God, he throws the ball so beautifully and fast and far. And then you're making me play with Andy Dalton. Like, I think in a way you have to consider that

too, right? Is that Justin Fields is just so much more talented than Andy Dalton. It's not even like a Ryan Fitzpatrick to a situation where that was pretty wonky too. And that's a thing you can run into where you're winning some games and then you change to the other guy and he's not as good, but to, uh, he's not like this unbelievable athletic talent or something like Justin Fields is. He doesn't have a cannon like Justin Fields does. And I think the players ultimately, they, they kind of gravitate to the player with more talent, even if the other guy is a little bit more refined. So I think it'll be a fascinating situation to watch. I want to ask you about the other situations around the NFC North,

and we'll get to Aaron Rodgers. Okay, let's just go to Aaron Rodgers because, look, don't ask the guy during a golf thing if he's coming back, okay? He's not going to tell you. Why do people still ask aaron rogers at all like you know whether it's a golf thing or anywhere i mean he's not his style in any way right are you coming back actually guys i waited till i was playing golf with bryson to say yes i'm coming back but i i will say though that the fact that we've reached this point and he hasn't said he's not gonna play to me means he's going to play that's where I've sort of

stayed on this like hill for the entire offseason that it's going to get pretty dark it's going to get pretty ugly but ultimately Rodgers wants to be the guy who rides in on the white horse and takes his team to the super bowl and then everyone talks about on the team mistreated him but rogers overcame it again i think he loves that i think he wants that and i ultimately think that's going to happen but how do you feel about it yeah i i'm i've been curious about the the public leverage aspect of this where it's like what is rogers's advantage in being wishy-washy i mean you know and why why not say no because you can always change your mind i mean you can

say no i'm not coming back which has been sort of reported that he's maybe told teammates or coaches or whatever that he's not going to come back but when you're asked about in public why why not why not throw a little bit more of a fit? Because even now with everything already reported, you've already got a split among the fan base where some Packers fans are saying, screw them. I never thought I would ever hear my lifetime Packers fans saying, get rid of that Rodgers guy. Bring on Jordan Love. But if the damage is already kind of done, what advantage does he get from being wishy-washy about it and just kind of being mysterious and ho-hum? Like either throw a fit and maximize that leverage or just come back and eat it and deal with it one more time.

It's been kind of a weird approach from the Rodgers camp from the start that once it's out there, then you might as well go all in either in or out. And the fact that he's not going all in on, I need to be traded, whatever, like publicly, like you said, and he's just sort of hinted at being annoyed. You made a good relationship comparison earlier. I'll make one. You get in a fight with your significant other and you're like, I'm not, I'm not talking to you anymore. And you just go to your whatever office or something.

And then you coldly walk by them and just like not say anything. And you know what I mean? For a day, but no one can keep that up. Right. So you're going to eventually kind of just work it out. That's what it feels like a lot more than no, we are filing divorce papers. And if you're the Packers, I think you're totally fine with waiting this out as long as you need to wait it out. You know, maybe earlier this off season, I felt like, gosh, if you could have traded them for the number three over overall pick, maybe you should have done that. But I could

also see a case for being like, okay, I'll let you give me the silent treatment it's fine because you have no leverage to leave here uh or you're not divorcing me because you can't or you won't so I'll just wait you out and I feel like that's exactly what the Packers are doing you're saying okay fine and even if this goes into the season it's like Aaron you're gonna play you're not gonna play if they go oh and two does does Aaron get a bunch of phone calls from Devante Adams? Please come back. Jordan love is horrible. So that one, I think eventually works out that way to me. It's more when than it is if, but give, give me odds. What, what's your odds on Jordan love actually starting many football games for the Packers. It pretty low right it seems like you know I mean we say many football games you know 20 percent 15 percent you know it just doesn't seem like I'm in a similar path with you that there's there's a process here and there's a there's some relationship repairing it just

seems weird because like what is like obviously Rodgers feels disrespected and obviously wants to have more say in some things but I don, I don't understand necessarily how the Packers can appease him other than trading him. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like a contract holdout where love goes. Oh, and two of them, the Packers come and say, all right, we'll give you whatever you them to play other than some sort of, you know, was there a written agreement that, Hey, we will give you more say in free agent decisions,

or we will trade for some player that you like, or sign some free agent that you like. Like, I don't know what olive branch Green Bay can give him other than, other than training him, which is not, does not solve the problem. If,

if they start losing leverage, like they're, I don't know. I don't know where Green Bay can, can really real Rogers in other than just sort of getting in the staring contest and say, you know, it's up to you. If you want to sit out and not collect your checks and not play that, that's kind of their only, their only play for the Packers. So just,

it's like you said, it just seems like once we got through the draft and the main movable parts of the off season, you're not going to be able to orchestrate that kind of a trade in training camp. movable parts of the off season that you're not going to be able to orchestrate that kind of a trade in training camp if aaron rogers came to you as i don't know who makes this decision because they don't have an owner but let's say it's uh mark murphy i don't know who makes this call and aaron said look if you fire brian guttgen i'll play i'll play today i'll suit up today you fire him i play that's it that's the ultimatum. You don't fire him. I go host Jeopardy or I play golf.

I would fire the GM in a second. I'd be like, all right. Okay, Brian, go find another job. See you, buddy. What would you do that? What would you do? It's hard because Aaron Rodgers is 37 turning 38 this season. And certainly if this was Rogers five years ago or whatever, 100%. And that's a no way to suggest that Rogers is declining yet, but you'd only go. So, I mean,

Tom Brady is obviously breaking all of the rules, but like we get, we get three more years of elite Rogers, maybe four. I mean, if, if I'm, if I'm Mark Murphy and i really think i'm

that close to winning the championship right now i think gms are a lot more replaceable than franchise hall of fame quarterbacks absolutely so i would be inclined to meet that demand and fire brian gutekinst but i would imagine if i'm mark murphy i was very involved in the drafting of jordan love and probably have a lot of confidence in Jordan Love because I was so involved in that process with that general manager that I hired. And so I can see where his perspective would make that decision a lot more difficult for than us on the outside or just like, well, I mean, what is good compared to Rogers and Jordan Love's not anything, you know, for sure. So of course you would keep the Hall of Fame quarterback and move on from everybody else.

But being in that decision to make a role with that kind of information definitely changes the dynamics for me. Oh, for sure. And he's, like you said, he's got skin in the game there. But if it was just you or me, I think I'd say take a hike, general manager. And here's why. From my perspective, the Minnesota Vikings have won 13 or more games twice ever they did the Packers did it the last two years in a row because of Aaron Rodgers we

and you and I know from our respective teams how impossible it is to get a quarterback that great and how every single time you roll out the 53 you have a chance to win a super bowl if you have that guy and i just couldn't pass it up i couldn't pass it there's no chance jordan love is as good as aaron rogers zero and uh there's there's you could go 30 years without finding anyone close who gives you this much of a chance to win the super bowl in the next like you said three four years of elite play guess how i could find another general manager i mean you could be the general manager who cares like just really there's like gotta be a thousand people in the world who could be totally fine general managers who are involved with football

right there's like three aaron rogers level people so that's that's a that's the way i look at it i think from a from a leverage standpoint like i we could imagine a scenario where this conversation may have at least happened where rogers comes and says hey fire gutekunst or or i don't show up and if you're mark murphy the decision in your head maybe isn't one or the other it's it's can i keep can i actually keep both do i trust trust Rogers threat? Is he, is he really going to sit out? Like if my alternatives are fire good to keep Rogers, or maybe I can keep good to and keep Rogers. I don't,

I don't think that Rogers is really going to sit out the whole season. I mean that from Mark Burvey's perspective, that's, that's I think what that comes down to is it's like, I don't think I have to fire goodekunst to keep Rodgers and still have my cake and eat it too in this regard. The threat from Rodgers isn't quite real enough to pull the trigger. But if it was, like if Rodgers had some kind of opt-out or something in his contract, an alternate reality where he truly could escape in a real threatening way then of course i'm firing brian gutekunst right away yeah i uh i think you make a good point though where it's like what can they offer him at this point he doesn't really want money does he want a longer contract

does he want jordan love gone does he like what could you do if he wanted jordan love gone that would be pretty easy just like trading to somebody for a second round pick, who cares? But you know, I don't know what it is. And you're right. They invested so much in the, in part of the investment is not just trading up. It's not just the first round pick, but it's also alienating your starting quarterback. That's a lot of investment to put into this one player. So, so that is a difficult one where you could say, oh, they, in some of these situations, it's like, oh, they should just pay him. And then they usually do like Russell Wilson. I think a few years ago, there was some contract sort of rumblings of all Wilson's unhappy with negotiations.

And they're like, oh, just give him all the money. Then you're good. It's fine. That's not that way with this, because he's already got all the money and he doesn't care as much about that. It seems. Let me get one more relationship analogy in here it's like rogers and the packers the packers cheated on aaron rogers and now he's upset and it's like you can't just un cheat on him you know what i mean like you can break up with the party of the boyfriend or whoever you cheated with and make oh we're never gonna talk to them

again but for rogers it's like well now that doesn't really of course i don't want you to talk to him again but it doesn't really make it better. So like all they can do is promise them in the future that they will behave better and be a better partner in that relationship. And there's not really, you can't just buy a big bouquet of flowers and say, forgive me. And it's like with Jordan Love, it's like cheating with your neighbor because he's just right there. It's like, it reminds you every day by working with him in the quarterback room that they kind of chose him over you if you're Aaron Rodgers, or at least that's the way Rodgers

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S O T A S T I C K.com. Original Minnesota sports inspired goods. Code Purple Insider for free shipping. Let me ask you this question about the Lions. Do you care about the Lions? Do you care about Jared Goff? Like, do you think about that? When you're doing all of your shows, Lockdown Bears,

do you think about the Lions ever? It's funny, you know, like after the draft, I went around and, you know, talked to a Packers guy and talked to Vikings guy about their drafts. And I never quite got to the Lions because it's funny you know like after the draft i went around and you know talked to a packers guy and talked to vikings guy about their drafts and i never quite got to the lions because it's like well and you know you pretty well mark those as as w's on the on paper on the schedule as the things can go wrong between then and there but it doesn't feel like they're a team that's like legitimately they'll certainly say they're legitimately competing this season, but a lot of the roster moves over there have not been, I'll say, seeming like the best interest of the short-term future of the team. It feels like Goff is just kind of there as a placeholder, and you look at everything that they've lost at wide receiver and what they've tried to replace it with. I mean, they're slowly kind of getting some foundational type stuff there,

but clearly not going out of their way to win as many games as possible in 2021. It's the beginning of what feels like more of a rebuild. So, like, I care in the sense of keeping an eye on where things are trending in the long term, but I'm not too concerned about them in 2021. Right. I had the same thing, although I will say that I did have a podcast scheduled with last year. I brought on a couple of guys from a podcast called the Pride Podcast, and it is about the Lions.

So and anyway, we play the game of like, what what happened there where I kind of just went through all the things that are terrible with the Lions and they had to explain how it got there. So that's the only way to use the lions in the form of conversation is like, can you believe that they just stuck with Matt Patricia and continued to roll out the worst passing defense in the history of the NFL over a three-year period? Like, yeah, that's the lions for you. The only thing that sort of interests me is just the fact that Matt Patricia isn't there. And they have Aaron Glenn as their defensive coordinator,

seems like a competent person. And Jared Goff, when he has pass protection, can be pretty good. They don't have any receivers to get open, but when he had time to throw in Los Angeles, he was much better than when their offensive line deteriorated a little bit. And so there's a way to talk yourself into the lions being at least worth discussing, which is, Hey, their coaching staff before was so epically incompetent that maybe

they could actually win more games or be more competitive just by proxy of not having Matt Patricia. Yeah, there's, there is something to be said, like as much as, you know, Dan Campbell is ridiculous. You're just a meme of a human being. Yeah. You know, I think I saw just the other day that the lions have, I think seven former players on their coaching staff. And they're the only team in the NFL where the head coach. Offense coordinator, defense coordinator, all played in the NFL. I don't, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator all played in the NFL.

I don't, I don't remember the exact numbers and, and who to credit for having dug that up, but there's something to be said about toughness as much as it's overblown as a, as a trait. It just feels like these guys are going to be maybe a little bit more disciplined and you won't maybe have as many of the,

like the lions, you know, goof ups or just the weird fluky lions things where they just are hilariously, you know, undisciplined or make those kinds of stupid easy mistakes that they're, they're not very talented right now, but I'm, I'm sort of expecting them to be a little bit more, you know, sharper around the edges where it's,

it's not going to be them beating themselves as much as it's just, they won't have enough talent to beat you. Right. Right, right right right right at least like will their defense look mildly competitive would be the thing and it's it's not that i mean matt stafford has had his moments over the last couple of years but it's not that he was so good where you're like oh the drop off to jared goff from what they've been is going to be incredible I think that there's people think that there's this massive distance between Jared Goff and Matt Stafford I don't know how you feel about it but having watched many a Matt Stafford game I just can't get there I just can't oh man you'll never replace this guy you mean the guy who throws

interceptions in the end zone all the time and like takes sacks constantly at the worst time like i don't know i just i feel like if there's sort of a competent jared goff and there's a competent uh defense and they have this good offensive line you can get to a place where you say maybe we shouldn't just ignore them when the vikings are going in to play the lines there was a game i think david blau started where i have never had this before i didn't even want to go to the stadium to cover i was just like this this is what am i doing here it's like a fourth preseason game it's the worst i always think of matthew stafford as like jay cutler with a better publicist like a better pr team around him but and i mean jay

cutler was injured too but and maybe some better weapons around it. But anyway, no, but to your point. So good. That's so good. I'm going to steal that. But like, it blows my mind that the Lions have had three top 10 picks in the last three years and passed on quarterbacks all three times. Like, I mean, it's one thing, maybe, maybe two years ago with Hawkinson, maybe they weren't ready to move on from Stafford just yet.

You were early enough in the Patricia regime where you weren't sure yet, but the last two years picking Akuta at three and penne sewell at seven i mean i'm glad they didn't take justin fields but like they it's mind-boggling that they haven't made more of a long-term investment in that quarterback at the very least to your credit when you talk about that defense coming together there are a lot of recent draft picks littering every level of that defense they used a couple of day three picks in the defensive line this year they got some recent linebacker picks and they took one in the fourth round this year and of course Jelani Tavai a couple years ago and now that's secondary it's been you know draft picks every single year Akuta and now Melifanu and they got uh Oruiwe they got the worst names

to pronounce so by all means and across their roster but I mean even both their safeties Harrison and Tracy Walker but day two ish maybe early day three draft picks across the board like that's what i mean like they're building that foundation they don't have like stars and superstars that are these top-notch talented players that are going to elevate the team but it's like there is a consistent investment in developing young players at every level at least of that defense and then somewhere along the lines the offense is supposed to catch up at some point i have been more convinced by lions like pro lions arguments this offseason than i was last offseason remember everyone was saying well if stafford continues the numbers that he had in the first six games and they've got these receivers and it's

like who's their who's their coach they have the worst coach I've ever seen. I wrote after they lost to the Vikings at us bank stadium last year, the headline of my article after the game was Vikings fans will be sad when Matt Patricia is fired. And they were, I mean, it just, I've never seen a more incompetent coach. I think Vikings fans who remember less tackle maybe, but someone who continued to play the same defense every single game and just get torched every single game and not change anything is mind blowing. And I don't think it was the roster. I think it was truly this man had no idea what he was doing. So let me get one comment from you about the Vikings. And then I have a quick game for you before we wrap up. How do you about the vikings i mean just don't uh don't

hedge don't hold back just give me your give me your honest assessment from the windy city perspective of how you think the vikings will do how much of a threat they are to the bears how you feeling i always feel like i should be more concerned and threatened by the Vikings. They're always a team that I look at and I'm like, they should be pretty good. There's talent across the board here. It feels like it's all there. And it's like, ooh, those could be tough on that Bears schedule. But they are both in the last, what, five weeks of the season.

And so I don't know what Vikings we're going to get at that stage of the year. Cause there's so much of that sort of Vikings inconsistency. And it's just like from week to week and year to year, I just, I don't know what to expect. I like the moves that they've made. I mean, I know they've, they've kind of slowly bled some talent here and there, but you know, you bring in Patrick Peterson and you kind of revamp some things on the back end there and i know there's been some turnover and now the defensive line is absolutely loaded you still got

still got the receivers and you adding slowly to the offensive line of christian derisaw i mean it's like they seem to be filling some of their gaps from the previous year and you know we've seen kirk cousins do kirk cousins things on and. And it's just like, I, I want to be threatened by them. I really, I want to give them that benefit of the doubt. It's just hard for me to like, really trust it until we see it. Cause even, even we'll see it for three or four weeks and then we'll see something different the rest of the year. Hey everyone. I want to tell you about our friends. It's scout logistics. And I really do mean it when I say friends. They are fans of Purple Insider over at Scout Logistics.

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preferred carrier of Fortune 500 companies across North America. And we have quite a few of those in Minnesota, right? They can ship perishable, non-perishable, FTL or LTL, and they have on-time delivery rate of over 99%. So if you're like them and you enjoy the show and you have shipping needs, check out scoutlogistics.com or call 855-217-2688 extension 232 to connect with them directly to find out how Scout Logistics can minimize risk and overperform and go the extra mile for your company. this has happened every year except for 2017 that i've covered them where it's a winning streak a losing streak um disappointing games like in 2018 they lost to the bills last year they lose to a winless falcons team and then you know they beat the tar out of the lions and maybe they've got a game on national tv that they win and people get excited and then it kind of goes back the other direction and so they're going to have to kind of prove they can be more consistent than that, as you mentioned. But I feel the same way about the Bears, where it's like they're interesting to talk about right now because of. I mean, who's the starting quarterback? What's the bears record. But then again, the bears at soldier field can beat the Vikings with Jim Miller and Chad Hutchinson. So I guess it really doesn't matter. And that's, that could also play into

your lack of Viking fear is like, well, when they come to soldier field, it's a win anyway. So, um, all right, before we wrap up, Oh, do you have one more comment on that? Well, I was like, one of the things I was noticing as I was looking back to the Vikings is like, you can kind of track how this has gone with, this is unfair to call but the deterioration of the coaching staff like when when the when the pedigree of the offensive and defensive coordinators under zimmer have sort of like slowly dropped over this and certainly they've had some issues with some of them that maybe had a higher reputation before they came to minnesota and things struggled but like when you're down to Clint Kubiak and what is it? Adam Zimmer's doing their defensive coordinator with Andre Patterson.

To me, that's that's usually like some kind of a sign when you get to the end of a coach's regime to where he no longer has the coordinator cachet. They've come a long way from was was it george edwards and the defense there and i mean they've had some really quality quality guys that again have had offensively maybe some question marks here and there but it does feel like the uh the shine is certainly off of where that coaching staff maybe once was well and at this point it's just zimmer's ship i mean he's alone let me i'm not a sailor but like alone at the bow or at the alone at the wheel alone. Is there a wheel on sale? I don't know. Whatever. Like he's up there himself as the captain.

I'm the captain now and everybody else is sort of following his direction and how that goes. Last year it didn't go so well and we'll see how it goes this year with, like you said, Clint Kubiak is the offensive coordinator. means mike zimmer is in charge of the offense um okay before we wrap up here's what i got for you uh there are let's see actually i just want you to give me players since 1995 for the chicago bears that have had more than 1,200 yards receiving in a single season. Chicago Bears players with more than 1,200 yards receiving in a single season. Can you do it?

Brandon Marshall. That is correct. I think Alshon Jeffrey did. He either came really close or broke 1,200. Yes, he did. One year he had 1421 yards and i i don't i don't think alan robinson hit 12 i think he was just under i think it's just those two alan robinson 1250 well just barely okay what inspired the question that's what i figured is

where that was going but so now you have two more guys and if you say another one i'll just give it to you because it's 11 yards away now these might be harder because one of the guys is so random i've i don't remember him at all from 1995 another guy 1999 and then another guy if you say him from 2000, from 2002, I'll give it to you anyway. Those are a little before my time of really being conscious of being old enough and conscious of Bears football. So picking a wide receiver from the late 90s and early 2000s is when you say the name like oh yeah i've heard that name and i but i couldn't say i've watched them play so i like in my head i was like mushan muhammad or maybe bernard barian but i don't think they quite came that close in like the mid-2000s but this would have been before their time so there's no way right those are

good jokes or not jokes wow i yeah they are it is a joke they're pissed those are good guesses i meant to say um but uh you have marcus robinson uh jeff graham who i have no recollection of and the one i was going to give you marty book was marty booker yeah 1189 yep i thought you might throw out a curtis conway which he was a thousand yard receiver you also had bobby ingram show up bernard barian was a good guess he had 951 yards for them and then the vikings got him and it wasn't good um martellus bennett was sort of in that ballpark so there was there were some guys that you could have guessed but i just think it's sort of funny that like bears passing games have been generally so bad that there are very few players that ever

have great receiving seasons either it's been why the alan robinson thing is so head-scratching to me that you you have legitimately like a section of bears fans that don't want to pay alan robinson top money because they don't they don't see him as like a true number nothing's not a true number one but just he's not worth the the that price tag i guess apparently a lot of it i think comes down to there were a couple there were like three plays last year where mitch traviski threw him a 50 50 ball and they all came down as interceptions and maybe robinson could have done a slightly better job of fighting for those balls but i I will take the other 130 catches compared to those three plays every single day. Yeah.

He's, I mean, he's terrific. I think he's one of the best wide receivers in the NFL and to be able to even put up the numbers that he has with Mitch Trubisky should be exciting to Justin Fields. Should Justin Fields ever play with him? All right.

Well, you do great work, Lauren, where you're always a great guest on the show. I love bringing you on and I am stalling so I can pull up your Twitter handle. Oh, OK. Cox, C-O-X, please. Sports one is your Twitter. I've never heard it with the please. That's good. There was the other day I was on Twitter and I see someone's name trending who I've never heard of. And I was like, well, who is, who is this? Just, you know, I'm not doing anything. I just click on it. And it was a porn star. And so the first thing that popped up was like,

Oh wow. Oh, okay. Now I know who this person is and I've seen a lot of her so and now you need to scrub your internet history and your wife's gonna find out and all this stuff becomes a whole issue i guess i'm not gonna take that any farther but cox sports one on twitter locked on bears podcast lauren cox great stuff man uh always great to catch up with you and we will we'll definitely do it again before Vikings and Bears play. Because that's a really long time from now. I was going to say, we'll see you in a couple of years when we finally get to that game.

And it's a weird quirk of the schedule. Every year, Bears and Vikings, final game of the season. Looking forward to it. It'll be fun. All right, man. We'll talk to you again. And thank you all for listening to Purple Insider.