Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Wisco Sports Show's Grant Bilse talks about how the Packers will build around Jordan Love

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Matthew Coller and Madison, Wisconsin sports host Grant Bilse talk about the Packers' offseason plan and how the fan bases view their last decade+ of struggles to get over the hump Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me for the first time on this show, I've been on his show plenty of times, Grant Bills, who is the host of Wisco Sports Show in Madison, which it's the Zone Madison Sports Station where you host. And we're going to talk about the Packers offseason plan. So what's up? How does it feel to be on this side of things with our conversation, Grant?

This is fun. I always like when the opposing perspective joins like a team-centered podcast. So it is my goal to be a cool Packers fan. Like I want Vikings fans to be like all right the team sucks but that guy like he was all right like that was that was kind of a fun conversation we had so that's my goal today I've long said this about the Packers Vikings relationship grant that Vikings fans want to know it's very much a suburban neighbor type of situation they want to know what's going on over there they have the binoculars out

they're looking over to the east what are those backers doing over there which i don't blame anyone but i think everyone always enjoys conversations like that to see what's going on although here's where i've gotten some pushback anytime the packers come up i've already made the declaration that jordan love is a problem for the minnesota vikings going forward uh where do you stand on that because i was on bill michael's show legend there in uh in wisconsin i was on his show radio row and he was less willing to anoint jordan love the next great one and sort of did a little compare and contrast with Rodgers and Brett Favre but I think from Minnesota's perspective you got to be at least very

concerned with what you saw so where do you stand on that love spectrum if you will well I think a lot of Packers fans just assume that Jordan Love is a hall of famer because the last guy was and I think Bill and and others who are maybe a little pump the brakes on Jordan Love are probably pushing back against fans like that it's like yeah he he could be very solid he could be very good but like let's not assume anything just because of what happened the last time that we switched from one quarterback to another so I like I can appreciate a little pumping of the brakes with Jordan Love um I am of the belief that if you look at the Packers season last year, that the first month or two, and the Vikings played the Packers.

They were at Lambeau, and the Packers were a mess offensively. They couldn't move the ball. They went like a month and a half without being able to get first downs in the first half of games, let alone actually score points. And I think that was a product of wide receivers that were children and an offensive line that hadn't really settled in. And Matt LaFleur kind of had to reinvent himself as a head coach this year. He had to learn how to be a brand new coach of a young team.

It wasn't a player led team anymore. It wasn't an Aaron Rodgers led offense like he had to reinvent himself. So I think the first two months of the season or so where it looked really bad, I'm not throwing that in the garbage. But I think once the wide receiver started to figure it out and there was a stable environment around Jordan Love, he did nothing but look really, really good. So I tend to put a lot more stock into the later part of the season. And I think maybe he got red hot at the end and maybe that would be unfair to expect that year after year

after year. But I am really excited because I feel like when we finally got a good chance to look at Jordan love, he was awesome. Whereas someone like bill looks at the whole year and like, I want to see another year. I want to see a little bit more. And I think that's fair too. I think what's crazy about his statistics is that even with the entire year,

even with the ups and downs of the beginning of the season, he looked like statistically one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL. And the second half of the season, he was arguably a top two or three quarterback, which again, no one I think is declaring him the next Aaron Rodgers, the next Brett Favre. That would be way too far. When we've seen Carson Wentz be good for a little while, Baker Mayfield had some good, then had some bad, then had some good again. So this happens all the time where quarterbacks are rising and falling. But you mentioned the wide receivers. I also would bring up Matt LaFleur here.

Matt LaFleur is not going anywhere as the head coach of this team. And he now has a quarterback that listens to him and maybe cares about his thoughts and how the offense should run. That's a little bit of a relationship that I want to keep an eye on because I think in the second half of the season, what Matt LaFleur discovered is that Jordan Love does certain things well and then has weaknesses like every other human quarterback in the league. And he really played to the strengths of Jordan Love. It reminded me when Brian Dable arrived in Buffalo and worked with Josh Allen, where he actually used a lot of the quick passing game. And then every once in a while, let it rip and then use

some of the staples that always work for every quarterback, work in the run with the pass, play actions. And I think LaFleur understands how to run the football, which is something the Vikings have struggled with. But when you can play off of that, you got play action shots that were getting wide open down the field, even against San Francisco. You got a short passing game that creates yards after catch for some wide receivers who are good with the football in their hands. And then every once in a while, you just need the guy to do something special, which he has the capability to do. So having that relationship is kind of the dream scenario between the head coach and the quarterback. I don't always like comparing the Packers now to the Packers with Aaron Rodgers,

but I think it's important to recognize like maybe the change that happened with the Packers offense and with Matt LaFleur this year, Aaron Rod Rodgers and I've said this now for a year or two and I think it's the best way to summarize why Rodgers and the offense that Rodgers preferred to run sometimes didn't work is he loved making football harder than it needed to be like he always wanted to make the tight window throw the back shoulder throw the and football in 2023 is kind of designed for the offense to work like it's that's the shoulder throw the and football in 2023 is kind of designed for the offense to work like it's that's the way that the game is set up so guys every once in a while are going to get wide open and they're going to have opportunities to run after the catch and

get free yards and rogers didn't always love doing that and i i think jordan loved working with matt lafleur and look he audibled and he moved guys around but it was always kind of within the realm of the offense and i think the plot was never lost whereas with rogers sometimes it wasn't like rogers wide receivers at the end it was adams and everybody else and look i'm not saying that jordan love like with jayden reed and wicks like he he had weapons that rogers never had because you know over the course of rogers career he had great weapons and he had up and down years but you're right like matt lafleur figured out how to work with jordan love and you go back and you watch the Vikings game against not Brian Dable.

Yeah. Not Brian Dable, but Brian floors his defense guys were wide open that new year's Eve game. They were like laughably wide open. And then again, against the Cowboys. And I think that's a product of a quarterback and a wide receiver

and a head coach, obviously really all wrapping their arms around the same, the same offense and really executing at a high level and realizing, yeah, every once in a while when it's working, guys are going to be wide open. And we saw that all the time the final month of the Packers season. Why was that? Why did the receivers come together the way that they did? Is Bo Melvin really that good?

He looked really good against the Vikings, but obviously he's not the guy. But going into the season, it was Christian Watson, and then we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. And I didn't hear of Dontavian Wicks until he started making plays late into the season. And Reid was an interesting prospect, and I think what we've seen recently is that even we talk about the order of quarterbacks that they're taking making no difference, seems like that goes for wide receivers too, where first and second round

wide receivers can sometimes surprise us. And the best guy can come from the second round or late in the first round as with Debo Samuel, AJ Brown, even Justin Jefferson, nobody would pass on him now if you were redrafting that. And it feels like the Packers leaned into that idea that if we take a lot of them but not spend one huge pick on one guy that more likely than not somebody's actually going to be better than their draft status was but what about that group assembled with that offense in the second half of the season well to go back to the very beginning when these guys were drafted, this was the part of this team that I was most excited about was to watch the wide receivers and tight ends

because they took two tight ends too. They took Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft, South Dakota guy. So Midwest, just on the other side of your beautiful state. I just love that they started over at that position because for years, Devontae Adams was great. And then Packers fans kind of had to talk themselves into everyone else. And Lazard would have moments and like Robert Tanya would have moments. But I think we learned a couple of times over that the supporting cast

probably wasn't good enough. And watching Devontae Adams was a treat and it was great, right? Like I'm not trying to complain about some Packers teams that were really good, but I was so excited this year. We're starting over and we're going to build it from the ground up. These guys are going to grow with our quarterback. Didn't know if any of them would be good but I was so excited this year we're starting over we're going to build it from the ground up these guys are going to grow with our quarterback didn't know if any of them would be good I don't know enough about the draft but I just love that they took a scatter ground approach and it took a little time to get off the ground you would see flashes like Jaden Reed week one against the Bears made some plays and Dobbs was kind of a consistent presence throughout Watson when he was healthy was excellent but that was you know a little bit of the outlier

this year for the second straight year of his career but it really kind of culminated after the Denver game and you know we've talked to Packers reporters and Mike Clemens our embedded guy on our network has told the story a dozen times where he came into the locker room for media availability after the Denver game and all the wide receivers were sitting around a table and they were looking at iPads and and this wide receiver group took a lot of ownership for the growing pains that they were going through. And I think that's important, right? Like these wide receivers did not make excuses. There wasn't a lot of pouting. There wasn't. And they were bad. Like they were constantly running the same route. They needed to figure out how to play NFL football,

but they wrapped their arms around it together and said, we need to take ownership of this and figure it out. And they started meeting every week after games and going over things. It was just a really collaborative unit. So I think the combination of that attitude and just experience right after you play a certain number of games, it's just starts to click. I think that's ultimately why it worked. And then by the end of the year,

it was a different guy every week. Like it was Bo Melton. I didn't even know. I didn't even know who Bo Melton was. He was on my team for most of the year. And I'm like, Oh yeah, that's,

that's, that's right. I got him confused. Is that Grant DuBose? Is that the other guy they dropped? Oh yeah who Bo Melton was. He was on my team for most of the year. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. I got him confused. Is that Grant DuBose? Is that the other guy they dropped? Oh yeah, Bo Melton. And the group really worked as a whole to kind of figure it out throughout the course of the year.

And I think they were successful as a whole then when the team started winning. I think already he's the third greatest Bo of all time. Bo Jackson, Bo Diddley. Someone's going to have to let me know if there's a better than a Bo Melton. But he was one where in that game, I'm in the press box and they give us this play sheet that has all the starting lineups on it. So, you know, if a guy makes a play, you can look down and go, oh, OK, who is number 80 for the Packers or whatever his number is?

And he wasn't even on there. That's how anonymous this player was. And that's the way that their offense seemed. And historically, that's more dangerous than having one guy or just as dangerous is having multiple players. And we saw this from San Francisco where I saw that Bucky Brooks

was criticizing Brandon Ayuk a little bit. Like Brandon Ayuk's not a perfect wide receiver and neither is Debo Samuel. but you combine them with George Kittle and the Vikings have had this throughout history with Randy Moss, Jake Reed, Chris Carter, Robert Smith. The more of these people that you can have that cause problems, then the more spread out the defense becomes. And it felt like the Vikings were just not prepared for that. The second time they played, they're like, wait a minute. They're not supposed to have this many guys.

And also Aaron Jones coming back and still being Aaron Jones, that there's a couple of running backs, Jones and Christian McCaffrey specifically, who just buck the whole running back thing. They can do so many things well that yes, pay that guy. He's different. There's a couple of guys in the league who are that way. And once he came back and they were able to play off of him, that is where it seemed like everything started to come together. So the question is, as we look forward here to the Packers off season plans, what is it that they're

trying to do on offense around Jordan Love that's different? Because I don't know if you heard this. It was mentioned once or twice on the broadcast. They were a young football team. And by once or twice, I mean every quarter it was made. Can you believe this is the youngest football? I know. I know it's a young football team. But what is it to build on there offensively as they go into the offseason first of all that young thing is not lost on me like i heard it a ton and every time i heard it it's like that would annoy the hell out of me if i was like if i was another team it's like we get it at this point it is it's true but like i am self-aware as a as a packers fan and an

owner oh by the way to to pick out that stuff and to notice like oh yeah that would be annoying as hell if i was a fan of another team. What they're going to do around love? Well, a little bit of offensive line reshuffling. That's pretty par for the course for most NFL teams. They're probably going to lose their right guard, John Runyon Jr. And free agency just because he's going to command a little bit more money. And he wasn't even that great to begin with.

He was fine. They really like the center. They like the left guard. Left tackle is going to be interesting because Bakhtiari, we assume, is going to be out. And I think that's for the best. I mean, spiritually, he's been out now for two years. Like Packers fans mentally have moved on. We've moved on from Bakhtiari a long time ago.

They could keep running it with Rasheed Walker. He was fine. Like, again, once the offense settled in, once the wide receivers were running the right routes, once the O-line kind of settled in and Matt LaFleur figured some things out, Rasheed Walker was actually pretty solid. He wasn't the best left tackle in football, but you don't need the best left tackle. If you have five guys that you like, you don't even need one guy that you love. If the whole unit is a group.

Now, if one guy goes down with an injury, that's, you know, a separate thing. So I think, I think their off season specifically in the draft on offense is going to depend on how the board falls. I could see them taking a left thing. So I think, I think their off season specifically in the draft on offense is going to depend on how the board falls. I could see them taking a left tackle. I could see them taking a wide receiver. I could see them doing neither. And that's kind of the beauty of, of how the season shaked out is by the end of the year, it's like, well, you're not beholden to getting anyone. If, if the board doesn't fall your way, they could run it back with basically the same offensive line combination and the same wide receiver combination. They need more running backs. I think that's, that's the big sticking point. And I don't really know, maybe you can help me understand the best way to, to drafting

matter because for years, you know, analytics, people have talked about running back and value. And I think fans have boiled that down to, well, you say running backs don't matter running back for the Packers this year mattered a lot because Aaron Jones got hurt in your week one and they didn't have a running game when he was out like they had AJ Dillon and AJ Dillon's a very nice guy and I think he's a great story as a Packer and he loves Green Bay he is not like Matt LeFleur couldn't run the ball so they need another guy to be behind Aaron Jones if Aaron Jones misses time or obviously you can't have him out there the whole game where the drop off is not you know here at Aaron Jones all the way down to AJ Dillon so that's probably their biggest need on offense and if running back is your biggest need I feel like you're in a pretty

okay spot oh you most certainly are especially when you already have a star as your starter but as far as the running backs don't matter thing it's just like any other saying or phrase that's supposed to capture a much more complicated thing where it misses a lot of the nuance to that conversation i think what it comes down to usually is that if you draft a running back you shouldn't plan on extending him because then you're running into where running backs tend to fall off. And this was the problem the Vikings ran into with Delvin Cook, where he had a couple of injured seasons early in his career, and then they extend him. And then he gets to the age where he's not the same player anymore. And the other part of it

is too, we see Aaron Jones's in the fifth round pop up all the time. There are many very good running backs. So how irreplaceable is someone? Should you spend a second round pick on A.J. Dillon when the odds that a fourth round pick is going to be good are probably the same? And not only that, look at free agency. There's five star running backs in free agency right now. And you can always go out and get a Latavius Murray, even if you want a secondary type of guy. He's done that for about five different teams now where he's RB2

and he's super reliable and he passed blocks. And there's a bunch of those guys out there. And they are very reliant on the offensive line, the scheme, the system, how you pass the football, all those sorts of things. And then you start to wrap your head around this and go, you know, maybe you shouldn't draft one in the first round because if you don't have the right blocking or if the guy busts then you passed on potential opportunities to get more irreplaceable positions like edge rusher or wide receiver that are just harder to find guys of that caliber so i think that's like

the uh crib notes version of why you wouldn't want to draft a running back high if you're the green bay packers but there's another storyline on the offensive side surrounding jordan love which is his contract and one of the issues as wonderful as it is to wait three years one of the issues is then you run into by the time he's playing, he's very expensive. Now, if he's great, that doesn't matter. And we've always said this, that if the guy is great, if it's Patrick Mahomes, if it's Aaron Rodgers, you can reach the Super Bowl with a great quarterback who is expensive. Or if you have a youngest team in the league with a bunch of guys you've drafted recently, that's what the Detroit Lions did still this is going to be quite a negotiation with the guy who's had one half of

a good season and yet showed every reason from character to performance to the arm talent to the fit with the coach every reason to think he's going to continue to be good how do they navigate Jordan Love's contract well and it's it's funny too you know and Bill and I on on his show and and I host evening drive in here in Madison like we've talked about like well what would the Packers say what would the Packers point be to Jordan Love and he's repped by I think Mulligato with athletes first like what would the Packers argument be to keep the price low it's like well we've only seen you for one year and if I was Jordan Love's age I'd be like well that was your that was your decision like we didn't decide to sit on the

bench for the first three years of our career so i i don't know that the packers have much of a leg to stand on in terms of keeping the money down i don't know much about contracts negotiation cba stuff i just read people who do and brad spielberger i know is is a friend of well obviously you friends with all those guys at pff and the work that they do it's great you know it's talked over and over this is going to probably start with a five like it's going to be a 50 something million dollar deal and i guess that's the price you pay for having a great quarterback i think why the packers would feel better about paying jordan love after just being done with paying aaron rogers is they're paying a guy who they feel like is super bought in. He's going to be around for off season programs. He's going to be connected with the

team. He's going to be, he's also an age that fits better with the rest of the roster. I'll defend Rodgers a little bit in, in how the end of his career wrapped up because he's 40. Like I, I understand there's a bit of a disconnect and I understand that that's kind of a tough connection to make. We heard about that with Matthew Stafford and his wife brought that up. So that's just a reality of getting older. But I think the Packers are feeling better about the person and his connection to the organization and his teammates that they're investing this money in. And also the rest of the team is costing them, at least on offense, very little. Like they're no longer going to be paying David Bakhtiari. They'll have to eat a little bit on the dead cap, but for the most part, they're out from that burden. They're not

paying Devontae Adams. All these wide receivers are first second year guys they're paying Aaron Jones a little bit of money but for the most part it's not like they're already paying like the Niners were already paying tight end wide receiver wide receiver running back that's not the Packers are in an opposite situation so that makes a big deal a little bit more tolerable not ideal you don't want to pay a quarterback 50 million after one year starting but I think the Packers will be okay with it for some of those reasons for sure. If you're not paying a hugely expensive wide receiver or left tackle or too many players on the defensive side, Rashawn Gary has a pretty big contract there, but there's not a bunch of guys. And I don't think Jair alexander is super long for green bay so we'll see on that that's another major topic i suppose but they are in a position

to deal with it for a short period of time and that period of time is now your window which i wanted to ask about uh the window is the thing in football and it is to the point where it's gotten a little cliche, but it's very true. Teams are always rising and falling. When do you legitimately have a chance to compete for a Super Bowl is the biggest question in a league where you have a couple of teams that are always there and then everybody else is jockeying for spots in your mind, have the Packers moved into a position where as long as Jordan love is playing, they are playing for the super bowl because I would say yes already. And I, I know I get this comment every time, every time I say something nice about Jordan love, I get the, like, you're anointing him. Then I, I know, but it just, as far as how it's played out, when we've seen quarterbacks play like this, you're more likely than not to keep playing like this than you are to completely fall into the ocean. I know that's the dream, or I should say one of the great lakes. I know that's the dream of Vikings fans that they get overexcited about Jordan love.

They pay him 50 million bucks. He can't deal with the pressure. He never plays well again. And it's Carson Wentz. But I think if you're the Vikings, you have to kind of prepare for the idea that he could be there for a long time. But do you go into next year saying Super Bowl? I mean, it's Super Bowl or bust kind of every single year because that's how it's been there forever. And I'm curious about what that's like because it's not here like that forever. It's wildcard weekend or bust uh so often in minnesota but uh that it seems like it's risen to that level already with jordan love so there's two topics that i could discuss here both

are very interesting to me like the packers window about competing for a super bowl starting next year i definitely we need to talk about that because I have some very firm structured thoughts. I also like the Super Bowl or bust thing, man. Part of the reason the season was so fun is because this wasn't a Super Bowl or bust year. And don't get me wrong, like there were some games in September and October that really sucked.

I also, and I don't mean to be like, I was the best fan of all, because that's not the case. Like I would be annoyed and I would get frustrated. But like in October, I kind of said yeah this sucks but like we're not expecting to do anything this year some of these guys are just beginning their NFL careers like Christian Watson Christian Watson in his second year and when the Packers were really down bad in October it's like guys he's played 10 career games that's nothing like some of these guys they barely started so just

wait just hang out and they they ultimately kind of came together and started to pull out of it. And then they lose to the Niners in the second weekend of January. Like they have every other year for my entire life. And it's like, we went from season with no expectations to it's groundhog day again, super bowl or bust expectations. It's a privilege to, to champion and to be a fan of a team like that. But when you come up short year after year after year, man, it beats you down. And like, it's a good problem to have. Some fan bases would kill to have that problem,

but it takes it out of you. So this year was nice. And I hate the idea of immediately putting Super Bowl or bust expectations back on my team. But I think next year, I mean, you just look at all the variables when you think about a Super Bowl window, you have a quarterback that might be paid a lot of money, but it might not be a ton on the cap next year.

They might have some money to play with depending on how they maneuver a little bit this offseason, how aggressive they want to be. But they're not going to be playing a first place schedule. That honor will go to the Lions. It's not like they had a bunch of coordinators poached. And a lot of times when a team goes on a deep playoff run and they're a contender, you lose coordinators. Now they switch defensive coordinators. Most people think that'll be a positive. I don't know.

We'll see. They are not dealing with the obstacles that a lot of Super Bowl contending teams are. The Eagles have all this pressure. The Cowboys have all this pressure. The Niners, I'm not sure how to define what exactly their situation is, but they've been coming up short and that wears on a team the Packers are for the most part a footloose fancy free young team that's just starting their journey without the weight of all these playoff failures with an easier schedule than their division rival Lions and they brought all their coaches back their staff wasn't completely poached over so I'm not saying Super Bowl or bust but that's a lot of good factors to have if you're

trying to take a run and make a deep playoff run and compete for a championship and I like I don't think I'm being an over-the-top homer by thinking that right well i mean i think the subject in general is very interesting of how you go into a season and create expectations because when you get into the playoffs and you smash the dallas cowboys face in with a team that is, have you heard young and on the rise? I'm trying, I'm trying to be as, as very much like Fox broadcast as I can, uh, by bringing this up over and over. But, uh, so when you are a team that's on the rise and you have a season that beat expectations the year before, then everyone automatically goes into the next season saying, all right, well, it's got to be better than it was last year. That's just the reality of this thing. And that's why some teams

are incredibly disappointing, like say the 2018 Vikings. But I also think having seen this play out for when your team has the pressure to be Superbowl or bust, but can't make it. That's when it gets really difficult. And that's where the Vikings lived for years with Mike Zimmer, where the holes were too much and the quarterback wasn't enough to make up for them. And the salary cap was too screwed up and the players were getting older. And yet every year it was, hey, if you're going to have Kirk Cousins as your quarterback, then you better go deep in the playoffs. then if you don't it is just a pool of misery nothing is okay to talk about not like nothing good is okay to discuss it's just we need to go over every draft pick they missed we need to go over every bad contract they once traded a fifth rounder for a kicker who didn't make it

out of camp kicker slash punter i'm not making that up he was supposed to do both cory vedvik i mean that that's the type of stuff that happens so there is a you're you're looking at this if you're the packers as well we want to be right back to that super bowl or bust but the pressure that comes along with that can break people it can break the coach it can break the quarterback it can be really really difficult for them to deal with. And I do think that they are going to be facing a new level of this stuff. Whether, I mean, you might not feel that way. You might be like, well, there's going to be years to work this thing out, but I promise you that the get up show, the Shannon sharp show, skip Bayless, all the, you know, the big talkers, everything else.

Everyone's going to put the Packers as you better go back to where Aaron Rodgers consistently had you, or this whole thing was not a success with Jordan Love. Well, and it's easy for fans to say, well, we made it this far and next year we're keeping everybody. So we should make it, you know, that far plus X, like it should be better. And there's a world in which the Packers have a better season next year and they perform better and they don't make it as far. And that's what's really tough. And that was kind of the reality of this last season too, because the,

the, the Packers with Rogers in his final year, did they go eight and nine or nine and eight? It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. They lost the lions in week 17, week 18, and they missed

the playoffs by a game and then coming into the next season we're all doing our predictions and i kind of felt like i think they'll go eight nine nine and eight but it will feel like a much better night because it'll feel like the starting point rather than kind of the the last whimper of a team that was never able to get it done i don't want to be the fan that just assumes well my team made it to the division around so next year we must must be bound for the NFC championship or more because that's not how it works. But man, I, you're not, again, you're not playing a first place schedule. You didn't lose a coordinator. Like, and I guess the lions didn't either. Don't get me wrong, but the lions also, I think you make it that far into the post-season and you

lose. There's nothing, there's nothing worse than a loss in a conference championship game. Like there is nothing, that sucks worse than just about anything in sports. So the Lions are dealing with a little bit more disappointment from last year than the Packers. Packers kind of feel like they pulled one over on the Cowboys and then almost knocked off the Niners. And weirdly, you can spin that as a good thing, even though it feels like they all played the Niners,

maybe should have won. I don't know. But Super Bowl or bust expectations. And this is something that I don't know if the football sphere at large has really started to dive into and discover. But Super Bowl expectations year after year after year. When a team comes up short, like you carry those stones on your shoulders. Like Josh Allen and the Bills go into the postseason now with a dark cloud over them. And the Ravens do too.

Like all these teams that haven't been able to knock off Mahomes or haven't been able to get over the top in the NFC, you start your postseason run at a disadvantage because you go into the expectations, which makes the loss worse, which amps up the expectations higher for the next year, which makes that loss worse. And it just gets worse and worse and worse.

So it's this really fickle game. You kind of got it. And the Packers won the Super Bowl in 2010, which was their second time making the playoffs with Rodgers. Like you kind of got to get in and make your hay before you really start to stack up losses because those losses only make it harder. This is a good point. And I actually picked the Packers to beat Dallas for this reason, because Dallas is

was better on paper across the board. But my feeling was that, well, the Packers were playing better than they had for the season. So the way they were playing going in. But it was mostly just the Cowboys enter every playoff game with the weight of so much losses, so many losses over the years. And so much of the Tony Romo losing a ball through his hands and Des Bryant reaching out a ball that somehow was not a catch and all that stuff. And nobody feels bad for the Dallas Cowboys because they are obnoxious.

And nobody feels bad for the Green Bay Packers because, oh, look, we're title town and all that stuff. But when you have been through that and it's the close calls after close call, I think it does have a psychological effect on the team if you have largely the same group. And it is really hard to break through. And we might've seen that a little bit from Buffalo. And you get to that big moment

and their kicker misses the kick. And it's like, this is the town where the kicker misses the kick. And I don't know how much of that is reverse engineering after we know the result. But with Dallas, you could see it. And with Baltimore, you could see it. Those two teams got into those games. They freaked out.

And that is not something that happens to Kansas City because they're Kansas City. And they've been through it time after time. How long does it take, by the way, since you have a super bowl for you to start crying about the things that have gone bad in the playoffs, because from a Viking perspective, nobody wants to hear the Packers or the Cowboys whine about it. But I do think that when you have a new generation of fans, when you've reached a point where your fans are going to have lifelong memories as kids and they've never seen the Superbowl and they've only heard their parents tell them about the great 2010 Superbowl, you start to get to the ballpark of being a little

bit of a tragic franchise. And again, this is not me saying the Packers are that, but you have enough throws across the body. The, the onsite kick thing you got, you know, there's a lot of things that have gone wrong. A couple of coin flips, by the way, that in overtimes of games did not go Aaron Rogers way. And if you are 13 years old and you are living in Madison, Wisconsin, you think my team always screws it up every single year. Why can't it be like when dad was watching the Packers? That's what you think right now. So I was going to walk down this road earlier and I stopped myself because I'm on a Vikings

podcast here and no one wants to hear a Packers fan complain. Look, Super Bowl was incredible. I got to watch that with my dad. That is a memory that I will have forever. And when they say banners fly forever, like it's true. Like that is that lasts. It doesn't matter what happens after that moment. That lasts.

That'll never go away. But I swear to God, Matt, like you are correct in the like the the tragedy of these playoff losses. And they all build because one leads to the next, which makes the next worse, which makes the expectations work for the next. And then the loss is even worse. And all of these losses are different. Like Kaepernick running for 200 yards

and the debacle in Seattle in 2014, which as a rival fan of the Packers, is that not like the funniest playoff game to watch ever from a Vikings fan perspective? Like it doesn't get any worse than that. And then, you know, giving up 208 yards or whatever it was, Raheem Mostert, they got blown out by the Niners.

Jimmy Juthu right passes, right? So like you're absolutely right. And I, as a Packers fan with my fellow Packers fans, like I'll complain about it because it like, yes, it sucks to be a team stuck in neutral or it sucks to be a team that can never get out of neutral. Like the Lions were forever. It also kind of sucks to be the team that gets the playoffs every year and never wins and it like they're just different degrees of suck I mean it's it's a it's a different time of year it's a different approach you have different conversations

but it sucks and that 2010 Super Bowl obviously makes it all worth it there's some Packers fans that would start to to question um banners fly forever obviously but you're completely and totally right if you only started watching the Packers a little bit after that Super Bowl run I mean there's a lot of it's a lot of getting kicked in the groin which of course is what Vikings fans know because they've never had that Super Bowl so again I I realize my privilege as a Packers fan a bit but it does suck I mean you just mark off the second weekend of January to get kicked in the balls every year. You can mark it off. So this is a thing I think about all the time now with my connections with Buffalo and my friends are back there

and they've gone through it these last few years. For so long, Buffalo did not make the playoffs. For most of my life, Buffalo didn't make the playoffs. They tried Drew Bledsoe, J.P. Lossman, E.J. Manuel, Tyrod Taylor, and they just continued. And Tyrod finally make the playoffs. They tried Drew Bledsoe, JP Lossman, EJ Manuel, Tyrod Taylor, and they just continued. And Tyrod finally broke the streak. And then they moved on from him to get Josh Allen. But I was talking to one of my friends in Buffalo this last offseason, and I was like, yeah, this has to be pretty exciting. I mean, you guys are a favorite to potentially win the Super Bowl here. and one of the things he said was

in a way yes but in another way the regular season becomes totally uninteresting it doesn't matter and as opposed to following this sort of long journey and this is what the vikings fans have had periodically is years where you didn't expect it and then you're in the nfc championship game nobody expected randy moss to instantly be the best receiver ever. I mean, they expected it to be good, but not like to take it to the best offense ever with Randall Cunningham. And with Case Keenum, same sort of deal. Nobody expected once Sam Bradford went down that the Vikings would be flying to Philadelphia to play for a Super Bowl potentially. And so it's always kind of like, oh, wow, we're here.

Look at us. And with a team like Buffalo now or the Packers for so long, it was just, yeah, all right, the season starts in January because we know we're going to be there. And the only way we're not going to be there is if the quarterback gets hurt. So week to week, every loss becomes huge in the regular season. Then it's well, the playoff position and like every loss becomes some just like travesty during the season. And it, the wins are just, yeah. Okay. We want to move on. And like, it's a very odd place to be. It's almost

like if you're talking about those teams, you need them to lose some. So you have something to discuss because if it's rogers all right they beat tampa bay uh whatever on to the next one and they beat the bears on to the next one let's see what they do in january and that can be and look again i'm gonna say a million times vikings fans would kill for this existence to have it matter every year where they're gonna be but in a way it's a strange place to be. So there's a rush to get there with Jordan Love. And you sort of had the one year where it was fun and surprising.

And now you're back to that land, man. Like, that's where you got to live. See, you keep allowing me to keep talking about this. Like, this is something I feel very strongly about. You say that Vikings fans would kill for this. And I don't doubt that they would, but then I think some Vikings fans would live in this existence for a couple of years and be like, like this, like this, this ain't all it cracked up to be either. Like there's pros and cons to this type of inexistence too. And obviously the dream is

you win Superbowls throughout all of those playoff losses to kind of mellow up. Right. But really only the fans of the Patriots and the Chiefs like there are God's chosen children and most teams are not among them which I think is what Arif Hasan tweeted a couple weeks ago which made me laugh this is my first thought by the way when I saw the Lions fans or when I saw the Lions build that lead to the Niners it's like hey I'm not going to talk trash to Lions fans right now because they don't deserve it but like this is kind of what it feels like and Lions fans are going to come back into next year and every regular season game is going to be exponentially less exciting. And it's a weird thing to come home from church on Sunday

and to set up shop to watch the Packer game and to just expect to win. And if they win, we got, you know, we skated by, we got away with it, we avoided catastrophe. And then every couple of weeks they lose and it's a meltdown. It's a nightmare for six days. And there's not like really anything to be gained this Packers season. And I talked about this with John Runyon Jr. When we were at the Super Bowl at

Radio Row, this season was a blast. And even when they were losing games every week was like, all right, let's, let's see what they got. Like, I don't know. I don't know what to expect this week. And if they lose, I guess I've seen worse this year they've been losing games and if they surprise me and win like how much fun would that be this season felt like it took forever and it was a journey and like i'm ready for the next season to begin now whereas with rogers especially when those those long stretches of playoff losses the further removed you got from 2010 it's like the season would go by in a blink of an eye you wouldn't really enjoy it and as soon as they would lose in the playoffs, it's like, I don't want to think about football

for like at least three months. Like I don't even want to begin to think about next season. And it's a weird place to be. You're exactly right. And this is why I'm so hesitant to throw expectations on next year. But I feel like I got to do it a little bit because a lot of things that have lined up for the Packers

and that will be lining up next year. But I don't know. It's like that fun season that you don't expect as soon I, I don't know. It's like that fun season that you don't expect. As soon as you try to grab it, it's like Narnia. Like you can't, as soon as you realize it and you get ahold of it, it's gone. And now all of a sudden you're expecting and losses hurt more and wins aren't as enjoyable. It's a very weird thing within the football fan experience. The Vikings fans have lived in a much worse place over the last six years, which is every year should have Super Bowl expectations based on the move you made at quarterback and how

much you're paying for the quarterback and how you approach the roster and so forth, never tearing it all down, never doing a reset. And then you come up short and you lose in the first round to a bad New York Giants team, or you just go eight, nine because you lose a lot of the close games at the end. And then you go, what was this all for? We had the expectations, but we never actually believed we could go anywhere. That's where I think they have lived in a different circle of health.

It's much worse than saying, we'll see what happens in January. It's also my Sam Darnold argument. My Sam Darnold argument is if you draft a quarterback and bring in Sam Darnold argument. But my Sam Darnold argument is if you draft a quarterback and bring in Sam Darnold and move on from Kirk Cousins, next year has really no expectations. And if he's good, whichever he it is, whether it's Darnold or whether it's Bo Nix

or JJ McCarthy or whoever, it's going to be a lot of fun. If you were a Houston Texans fan, you were in the darkest place of anybody, which is there's no reason to even watch football ever. David Cully is our coach who cares like Davis Mills is our quarterback. This is just no, there's no way out of this. And then suddenly what, what, what, what is happening? And it's the most exciting place to be. And even if it goes wrong then it usually goes cataclysmically wrong and it can be funny but it could also get you a top draft pick in the next

draft that gives you the guy you see i'm saying like that there is it's much better to win eight games and have it be kind of fun and unexpected and find out along the way than it is to win 10 games and have expectations that were much higher than that and just be like, oh, we went to San Francisco and got pummeled in the playoffs and everyone forgot that we were even here. And that is a major part of how I viewed the last few years. The Vikings went 13-4. Was it worth it? No, because you just lost the playoffs.

You much, you would have been much better off having a Sam Darnold, having a Marcus Mariota, drafting a quarterback and finding out what's there. And instead now they've put themselves in this position, which is the final thing I wanted to ask you about. Did you have a comment on that before I ask you the final thing I want to ask you about? No, I was just going to comment like going 13 and 4 and there's fans of bad teams that would say well the fun is the friends you made along the way the ride of going 13 and 4 and i would add that when you're expecting to make the playoffs and win playoff games there is no fun made

along the way 13 and 4 is just 13 and 4 you win games and you wait for the playoff so i completely agree and co-sign everything you just said yes Yes. I compared 13 and four to a summer fling. Like you knew it wasn't going to last. See, this is the difference between the Packers going 13 and three or four was you believed you could win the Super Bowl. But the way that the Packers beat the Vikings at the end of the year, they had to come back against Indy. Like no one actually thought it.

So it was like you had your fun, but it wasn't. Was it worth it? I don't know like it depends on whether you got a venereal disease or not i guess but i mean it's uh it was kind of fun but it really had no substance for the future for them and in fact it ended up hurting their future by going 13 and 4 but the last thing i i wanted to ask you about was your perspective on where the vikings stand at the moment. The other day I asked Lauren Cox, who is a podcaster who covers the bears. I said, what would the, what

would bears fans want the Vikings to do this off season? What, what would like, if you were trying to say, let's put the Vikings in the worst position possible without being ridiculous, would you rather see them bring back kirk would you rather see them draft a quarterback and hope that the guy busts what would what would a packers tell the vikings to do well if if i wanted the vikings to continue to be bad or stuck in the place that they're stuck in like i would want them to bring kirk cousins back at a high number for like two or three more years right and and that by the way way, that version of the Vikings will probably get the Packers a couple of times over the next few years in Kirk's tenure. Like that, like they won't be terrible, but they're going to be stuck in a place like, like what's the expression?

Our guy, Eric Eager has said this before. Like it's easy to go from three wins to eight wins and eight wins to 10 wins or eight wins to like 12 wins. It's hard to go from 12 to like, it's hard to make these jumps. The Vikings with Kirk cousins for a couple more years. I, I would think could be wrong, would be stuck at a place where like,

yeah, we've, we've attained a certain level of competence, but we can go no higher. Like with the bears, I would love for them to keep Justin Fields because the Justin Fields bears team might beat the Packers. I've yet to see it. I'm sure it could happen at some point, but like a Caleb, who knows what Caleb Williams could be right. And who knows if the Vikings were

to trade up and take Jaden Daniels or even like Bo Nix, like, who knows? I, like, I didn't think quarterbacks that have been taken lower in the draft. I didn't think anything of, and then they turn out to be awesome. I like, I don'tics would be awesome but i know what kirk cousins is and i know that that's not going to win a super bowl probably um so if i was a packers fan wishing the worst on the vikings i would want them to you know go sign kirk to what like what would kirk cost per year do you think for the vikings to retain he's not taking a discount it's very debatable because if i'm on Kirk's side, I'm not taking less than what Daniel Jones made. So just like as fundamentally, I'm not taking less, but the Achilles injury, everything else, I projected it out at two years, maybe 68 million. It would be a Vikings offer for him. And maybe

they settle on 75 or something. If he's coming back, it's still going to be a lot and it's still going to be restrictive because it has to be short and there's already dead cap money to be dealt with. So if it can't, if you can't sign into a five-year deal to spread all that stuff out, the only way to do it is void years, which will kill you down the road, et cetera, et cetera. We go through that whole thing, but it's going to be expensive. And to your point, I think that that's right. I think if you asked every other front office, if you were just out Indianapolis Combine and you're sitting down with Brad Holmes

or Brian Gutekunst or Ryan Poles, you'd be like, so what do you hope the Vikings do? I think they'd say, yeah, we know Kirk's probably not going to get them over the top. But if they draft somebody else, behind door number two could be something great. And that's what you'd be worried about. That's how I would think of it.

Could they have you guys talked about this? I know that my Packers are the weird oddball organization. But what about signing Kirk to two years and then drafting a quarterback to sit behind him for one year? But here's the weird thing, like not to immediately take away the chance for you to answer. But like Bo Nix, the idea with Bo Nix is that he's pro ready because he's played so much football. So like is Bo Nix the type of prospect that the guys available in that region are guys that have played a ton of football so I don't know if sitting benefits those guys at all the problem is you need so much on the roster is so if you draft a quarterback then where are you

getting pass rush where are you getting a corner where are you getting a left guard right right if you're spending draft capital on a quarterback philosophically that kind of makes sense but also couldn't you just sign someone cheaper to not take you deep in the playoffs right and that you're that you're less committed to and that will damage your salary cap less if you signed gardner minshu to a two-year deal well that's going to cost you 15 mil a year and not 30 mil a year and gardnerner Minshew was one pass away from being in the playoffs himself. So yeah, it's,

we've gone back and forth in many different ways, but I think that being stuck in the same middle is where the other teams in the division would probably be fine. The Wisco sports show grant. It's been great having you on Madison's's place for sport what is what's the tagline sports for sports what it meant is number one station it's you know you were number one sports all these stations the hottest sexiest sports talk there is in wisconsin the number one sports talk we're number one the place for sports all the things so yeah four to six evening

drive if you don't completely hate my Packers takes, then you just find me on Twitter and I always tweet out links and stuff. So I make it easy. All right, Grant. Great to get together with you on this side of things. Very good stuff. Really enjoyed the conversation

and we will definitely do it again soon on somebody's show. Hell yeah. I appreciate it, Matthew. And I like, I like following the Vikings. The Vikings are interesting. Like I'll listen to Vikings talk. I'll put pregame, postgame, like purple inside like all of it because they're a fascinating team so to be able to join you on on this side of the saint croix uh or the mississippi depending on the part of the state it was fun thank you for having me matt for sure we know it's never normal

that is definitely the thing all right thanks for listening