Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Would the Vikings drafting a quarterback this year make their moves make sense?

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom talk about the surprising decision to keep Danielle Hunter on his current contract and what that says about where the Minnesota Vikings stand. They talk about whether drafting a quarterback would still put the Vikings on a good long-term timeline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collard here along with Sam Ekstrom back from his Hawaiian vacation and he was suspended for several days for tweeting pictures of playing golf in Hawaii. So now finally back on the show. Hi Sam, how are you? Well hello Matthew. You know how I was treated in Hawaii? This is a true story and it ties back to the Vikings. So this is a great story. I get off a plane very late with a couple of kids. And usually I'm browsing my phone, seeing what I missed while I was in the air. I didn't do that. I didn't check my phone at all. So I get to my spot and my wife's family is there, my brother's-in-law. And one of them leans over to me and says, what do you think about that Kirk trade?

And I look around and I say, you're pulling my leg. And they say, no, no, this happened. And I, and I haven't checked my phone. I have no reason to believe that they're lying to me. They wouldn't usually do something like this. And I was so mad at you, Matthew, for not like having texted me and not having just said something. No one texted me. I felt like a loner. I felt like a pariah. Nobody had notified me that this happened. So I get on Twitter and I'm browsing and browsing.

I can't find anything. And long story short, this is media literacy literacy lesson 101 these guys fell for like a fake Schefter or some fake trade that was made with the Dolphins I think the Vikings got like Zavian Howard Tua and a third round pick and they gave up Kirk and in those moments not only was I mad at you but I was kind of exhilarated I'm like wow the wheels are turning this is big news and then reality hits it's not real and it's at all it's more of the same i'm coming back to more of the same so good to be back it's a very similar universe to the one that i left and uh yeah excited to get into it also i caught a shark oh wow okay i reeled in a shark with my own hands that was the that was the highlight you ever watch the show river monsters no no but i've heard i've heard of the stuff that they like bring out of the water on that show i haven't really watched it but uh i'm guessing this was

probably a little more controlled environment on a deep sea fishing boat we didn't bring in any alligators or other creatures that could bite your head off, but now the shark might be could bite my head off. Yeah. The guy is constantly fishing in rivers. And then I think he expanded to oceans for the most insane and dangerous animals that exist in the water. And I never want to go near water again after watching it. Yeah.

You did come back to a very similar universe. One that doesn't make sense because it's so similar and that's what we need to discuss because the most recent thing to happen is that the deadline that daniel hunter's contract created by having an 18 million dollar roster bonus well they just treated it like it wasn't a deadline and let it pass and let Daniel Hunter's $18 million roster bonus kick in, which is another event that does not really line up with anything we expected for this off season. This whole time we were operating on the premise that you wouldn't want to

do that, that you wouldn't want to have this roster bonus kick in. You would want to either extend him or trade him, or even in the absolute worst case scenario, cut him to create a bunch of cap space to give contracts to other guys, maybe younger guys, guys with less injury history or whatever else.

And instead they just said, no, no, we're just going to let that kick in. And as of this moment, the Neil Hunter's cap hit is $26 million. Now they can change some of this and restructure or transfer money from the roster bonus to what is it? Regular bonus or something. I forget. And they could create some cap space here. But of course, that always goes along with kicking money down the road. And I think that's the part for me, Sam, that is so surprising with the way that they're operating is that everything that they've done so far has come at the expense of the long-term salary cap, which we said over and over,

this is not what you want to do because this is what they did before and it didn't help. And so it feels like we're just in 2020 again, or 2021 again, where you're messing around with contracts and you're moving money down the road and you're not helping yourself really at all. And the only silver lining to the Daniil Hunter situation is that you have Daniil Hunter and he's still going to play football for you and he'll be pretty darn good. But then when you look at who else plays defense along with Daniil Hunter, even if you can create a $20 million total in cap space to spend,

you're still talking about, I mean, a veteran free agent corner that's not going to be a part of this thing long term probably you know or two or three i mean they really need everybody in the secondary you're talking about all the guards that could make an impact on your team are pretty much gone so maybe you could get a center if it's jc treanor but if you're jc treanor and you're 31 years old and you're really good are you looking for a center if it's JC Treader, but if you're JC Treader and you're 31 years old and you're really good, are you looking for a team that has better Superbowl odds than the Vikings do right now? And I think that a lot of, you know, players who are of that age try to go looking for,

you know, who gives me the best chance to win. And at this moment, that does not appear to be the Minnesota Vikings. That's kind of how last year worked where Patrick Peterson took the highest dollar figure and everybody else was like, uh, okay, no one will pay me except you guys. So I guess I'll come here. That was Bashad Breeland. Sheldon Richardson came back with hopes that Andre Patterson could help him, you know, get some more money next time on free agency, but that didn't really work either. Steven Weatherly, like who was signing Steven Weatherly? And we're just going to go through that over the next few weeks of these players, these Mason Coles and Steven Weatherly's and Bashad Breeland's trickling into the roster. And we're going to look at the 53 at the end, going into the draft to go,

this is the same, this is the same exact thing so i i guess we need to play what now sam what now sam we're dealing with basically the same roster here unless there is something that really uh totally rocks our world that they do next yeah and this isn't baseball where there's no salary cap, so they can't just sign Carlos Correa at midnight and just shock the world. That's probably not going to happen because they are in a financial quandary. And the Daniil contract was one pretty decent method to free up some of that cash. That's what's peculiar about this is that if you were going to keep this guy uh you you wanted to do it with the ability to you know improve your roster as well and i don't think they were

going to clear 15 million they're just there's not enough years to to do that when your cap it's 26 and you're probably worth 20 per year um daniel hunter is still at 26. He's still paid requisite of a top tier pass rusher. So we should be clear about that. And that's probably the kind of money that he would want, honestly, in an extension if he got his way. But the hope would be that if you're going to pay him absurd amounts of money, that you could at least get some immediate relief and we'll need a brad spielberger session maybe to explain all this um or someone who's really smart with the cap but that 18 million is is dead is it not or can that be converted now into future years no that i don't know that should be converted yeah okay that could be converted and uh i think

they can make something in the range of like $14 million still by doing it. But of course, as everything else does with the cap, converting it comes along with kicking it down the road, which is the thing that they don't really want to do. Yeah, and creating those void years like they did with Thielen. And Hunter's not the worst player to kick down the road at his age and talent level. Like if you guarantee his services through age 29, 30, I think most people would be okay with that.

He is going to want a lot of money though. And if you play this out where, okay, we'll, we'll, you know, we'll rearrange the money in 2022 and 2023. And then we're going to have to have this exact same conversation again next year. Because Daniil Hunter is not going to go into a lame duck contract year without some security.

I'm sorry. I think that there's a holdout coming down the road unless they resolve this thing before training camp. He kind of has to report this year. They've got his hands tied because if he doesn't report, he doesn't get the first chunk of that bonus, which is $6 million. And without a new contract in hand, he's going to take that money. So I think you've got him locked up this year, but you haven't resolved anything. And this is what the last regime did with Daniil too. They just like delayed the inevitable problem. And they said, well, we'll let that, we'll handle it next year. Well, next year is here.

New people are in charge and it still is not handled. That's all very peculiar. Who's going to play in the secondary? Who's going to be the offensive line? None of these questions are, are answered right now. And caller let's like, let's remember, we were in the same boat last year as well, where we were scratching our head and saying, man, this team has no depth at the edge. This team has no depth at cornerback. And they did end up bringing in Everson Griffin. They did end up bringing in Bashad Breeland. Now,

did those acquisitions end up working out very well? No. And inevitably, Kwesi is going to bring in other people. There will be more talent brought into this team once they figure out how they're going to do it under the cap. But is it going to be meaningful, impact talent? Are they going to be one-year deals? Probably not impact and probably yes, very short term. There's going to be band-aids put on this roster, and that's frustrating. That's frustrating because then you're looking at, once again, a 2023 defensive rebuild. This is year three of just finding these stopgap players on defense.

This is not a fun place to be in for anybody, organizationally, fan-wise. Nobody likes this. The players probably don't like it either. They're like, I mean, Harrison Smith and Eric Kendricks must be saying, come on, guys. Like, let's build something sustainable here. And that's not the route they're going. So I liked the Harrison Phillips and Jordan Hicks deals.

I liked sort of the intermediate multi-year contracts where you can actually have guys around for a little bit of time. I thought that was smart. But they can't do that much more because they just don't have the finances for it. So I think it's all very strange. Maybe there's some financial finagling that is yet to come. But letting that deadline come and go was probably the last thing that I expected, to be honest. Well, and that's because when they make out this contract, they do it on purpose to set up to have

it be a deadline because no one actually wants that to kick in. And then they just said, no, actually, we're going to let it kick in. And right now, as it stands, he'll have a $25.8 million cap number for this year. Next year, it's set up for him only a $25.8 million cap number for this year. Next year, it's set up for him only to have an $8 million cap number and only make $4.9 million in base salary and $3.1 million in bonus. So that's like, what, $9 million or something? Like, that's not going to happen. Daniil Hunter is not playing for $9 million next year,

and there's nothing worked into the contract to prevent the holdout that has to change. So they will have to decide, are you extending him? Are you trading him? Does he want to move on? Are you cutting him at that point if no one's trading for him? And that could depend on just where he's at. If he has another injury, that could be a tough situation. But the team who's trading for him, though, would have to sign him to a long-term contract extension.

And so those are kind of your possibilities after this year. And they decided that they would just change this roster bonus to something else. And we'll have to see how that plays out if they're going to do that. Right now, he's going to be on the cap though with two void years 2024 and 2025 and that's the thing that you just didn't want and it's not insane money as it stands right now for those void years but if they change that roster bonus and whatever else and you add more money to that i mean it's just that these were the things that they did before and where everyone got to know who rob Brzezinski was

because they would be talking all the time about how well Rob Brzezinski was able to work this out or that out with the salary cap and that's okay if you're in a position where you have to win right now and there are teams in the league who are in their winning window to potentially go to the Super Bowl next year who are doing all this stuff with the salary cap that Vikings fans got used to in 2017, 2018, 2019. And their team. And so it's like, Oh, well, their team is doing this and they're, they're creating this problem down the road for themselves, right? Because they know they've only got a couple of more years to potentially win the super bowl with where they stand. so they could do this. And that's like the Rams who are messing with contracts like crazy because they

have to. Like Matthew Stafford is in his 30s. And so you got to take your shot to win back-to-back Super Bowls and the future be darned. But the Vikings are not in the future be darned situation. And yet they've acted like it in multiple ways. And here's the other thing that doesn't really quite fit for me, Sam, is that they've tried to trade all these guys. They tried to trade reportedly Smith, Thielen, Hunter, Kirk, and just came away with nothing and then made their situations worse on the salary cap in order to just create some space for right now. And I was thinking about this after Robert Woods was traded. Robert Woods was traded for a sixth round pick. Robert Woods is a great football player,

but he's coming off an injury and his salary cap hit is not good. And so you just don't get anything back. And what I keep coming back to is the los angeles rams could trade away robert woods for a sixth and be like we won the super bowl last year who cares if we lost the trade quesadilla fomenta can't come in and lose every trade but you were never going to win all the trades if you were moving on from these players because everybody in the league knew the situation that you were in. The agents knew the GMs around the league knew. Plus, you're the new guy.

You're green in this league. If you're Kweisi Adafo Mensah, who's losing a trade to you? If you're a GM who's been around a while, you got to win that trade with the new GM. Right. And I think that these dynamics were maybe something that wasn't considered. And now they've had to readjust and say, well, I guess we've got to just hold our roster together and see what happens down the road. Yeah, it's a heck of a pivot from going from complete fire sale, which seemed like that

seemed like the direction that we were were anticipating i guess more so than like running it back we we thought if they're going to go a direction it's more likely going to be a sell-off um and for them to have all of these kind of tradable assets and then to really recoup nothing the only the only move cutting michael pierce you know that and and then basically re-signing him one for one with another big nose tackle. So that was kind of balancing out. You haven't changed the roster at all. And you're just anticipating that Ed Donatel is going to wave a magic wand and improve this defense.

And that Kevin O'Connell is going to say abracadabra. And Kirk Cousins is going to suddenly flourish behind the same offensive line. Oh, I'm sorry. Austin Schlottman. Austin Schlottman is going to change the course of Vikings history. The next Dakota Dozier folks, um, this is going to be pretty similar. So you're counting on the random, the randomness of the NFL to just to kind of fall in the Vikings favor. You're hoping for injury luck. You're hoping for close game luck. You're hoping for, um, October Kirk to play also that way in December, like you need so much to go right now. Um, and you need all the, you know, any free agents you sign from here on out have to be good. It's all got to hit.

And, oh, by the way, you have to be the best drafting team ever. You've got to find a couple of starters that can play right away. And if not right away, within the first couple months. Because you don't have the depth to count on the players that are currently on this roster. Unless you find half a dozen guys in this draft and undrafted free agency that can contribute in some way, I don't see how the depth is going to be worse because there were 20 free agents that left this team. I mean, it's astonishing. So I'm scratching my head.

You're scratching your head. You've been here all week. Time to process this. It's all hitting me like a ton of bricks this morning. Now that I'm back on the clock here with Purple Insider, man, this is a heck of a situation, Matthew. Hey, everybody. I've been making my meals from HelloFresh,

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And that's drafting a quarterback still this year. If they were to draft a quarterback this year, whether it be Malik Willis, Desmond Ritter, whoever they decide that they think is the right guy. Let's even say this. Here's my plan that would make it all make sense. What if they traded down with Pittsburgh and then still drafted a quarterback at number 20, Matt Corral, for example. And we always operate on the premise that we don't know which quarterbacks who are picked in the first round are going to succeed.

Because I got a few tweets this morning. I wrote a column about this saying like, oh, well, if you're not getting Malik Willis, then what point is there? Oh, no. I mean, there's been plenty of times where the first guy and the one that everyone assesses to be the best does not turn out to be the best. This could be like Blake Bortles being the top quarterback and Jimmy

Garoppolo and Derek Carr turn out to be way better. That happens all the time. Sam Darnold was the guy who was the most physically gifted coming out of USC, did not turn out to be the best quarterback in that draft by any means. So if it's Desmond Ritter, for example, at number 20, and you've traded down and you've gotten more assets from the Pittsburgh Steelers who really believe that Malik Willis is their guy, and then your plan for next year is to have Desmond Ritter or Matt Corral sit behind Kirk Cousins, you play out out the entire year however it goes doesn't really matter if you make the playoffs great if you don't make the playoffs well all is not lost

because the following year then you can plan to move away from Kirk Cousins and on to that rookie deal and the only thing that's in your way is the no trade clause from Kirk Cousins. Can you convince Cousins' side that if he's traded to whatever team is desperate for a quarterback at that time, that they will sign him to a new contract extension? And you could say, well, look, you're not going to be our long-term quarterback. So, yes, you can deny this no trade clause or you can use your no trade clause or you could just work with us and go where you want to go here's your couple of options or something like that i i mean they've made it harder on themselves to do that for sure because he has the no trade clause and then he has

the option of saying no i'm gonna dig my heels in and stay here as your quarterback but i also think that if there's an extension on the horizon for somebody else and there's absolutely no extension here, that his choice would be to go somewhere else. And then you transition it all onto the next rookie deal that mitigates some of the effect of how they've hurt themselves with the salary cap here. And you can start the process of going into free agency with a ton of money. You've got a draft class from this year that will have been more developed. The draft class from last year will have been more developed. And as long as you don't hurt yourself in the remainder of this free agency with certain spots, it can all still come together the way we kind of thought in just a different

fashion that was hanging on to the same stuff for one more year, rather than moving away from that stuff and having the possibility of really taking a step back. That's how it would all come together for me. I don't think that waiting until 2023 to draft a quarterback makes sense unless you're going all the way to the bottom, because there's two guys who are the by far and away, best prospects, CJ Stroud and Bryce young, and the rest might as well be if you're drafting this year, right? With QB three. So that that's the thing that could tie it all together for me, where I would still say like, Oh, okay. I take back a lot of what I said. This is all actually fine. If they

still draft a quarterback on draft night. Yeah, I think I would agree with that. And I think we've probably said as much going in the one year Kirk extension did sort of change things a little bit because if you drafted a quarterback and Kirk's contract was expiring, then there was a clear succession plan. Now the succession plan becomes a little more fuzzy because what if Kirk is actually like, what if he has another career year? Or what if he puts up similar stats, like just has the same year where he is statistically very good and has those teasing glimpses? Well, then what do you do? Do you waste a second year of that rookie quarterback's contract to play out Cousins' deal because there's the allure of being competitive. That's the problem with Cousins is he's always going to have that allure. There is a

little bit of shimmer to him. That's why he was a tradable asset, you know, and Matt Ryan is not, is because Kirk Cousins is younger and better and has like these really high-end moments. So you would hate to draft a first-round quarterback and not play him until year three. That's just a poor use of that valuable resource. So it is messy. But however, with the no-trade clause, how many teams in the NFL could you look at

and sort of stick your nose up at and say, they've got no chance to be good. I don't want to go to that franchise. There's not that many. I think you could convince Kirk Cousins to go to 29 of 32 teams and say, hey, with you on this team, this is a competitor. I think that's reasonable. I don't think there's a whole lot of places where you just can't possibly go and win. And I'm sure Kirk Cousins is evaluating that in a potential trade situation. But I think you lay it out well that the Vikings do have that as leverage to say, we are not extending you. If you want to cash in on 100 million guaranteed dollars, you can accept this trade. You can help us out. We'll help you

out. It is mutually beneficial, Kirk. So to those despairing the one-year extension with the no trade clause, I get it. It doesn't look great, but I think there is probably an out. And the challenge will be if you were rooting for sort of the next in you know the next in line i think that if a quarterback gets drafted then i think that frees you up to root for as a fan you can root for the vikings and kirk cousins this year you don't have to like root for their failure to try and like get the ball moving on this rebuild you can actually root for them and still feel good about the Vikings future being paved along the way. And man, last year, half the fan base wanted them to lose so they could change all of this and doing another year of that, I think would be very frustrating for a lot of people of

going into each week and being like, this team can't really win anything and they need to be punished for what they did in the off season. I really, I mean, I really feel like that would be the sentiment from a lot of people of, I don't want to see this make, you know, a 10 and seven playoff run. Because then they might decide that this was the right way to do things and then do it again and then continue to repeat history and then go on six years of the same stuff over and over and over again. And I think that that's one thing I'm not sure they fully considered with running it all back is that it's not year one, man. It's year five. And if Kirk Cousins is the quarterback under contract through 2023

and he plays that season and lets it all play out you're talking about six years and if you don't accomplish anything in six years if it's the same stuff that is a long time of people's lives that means that you could be a freshman in high school and be you know halfway through college with your team just in the middle, fumbling around in the dark, trying to reach the playoffs and then hope that anything could happen, which I do think is kind of a theory that the Wilfs have or this team has had in recent years. And you could say, oh, well, the Rams weren't the number one seed, but they still won 12 games. And so if you're not getting to that threshold of winning 12 or 13 games,

if you can't look at your roster and say, this roster can win 12 to 14 games, you are not talking about being a competitor for the Super Bowl. And when we talk about like where they were last year and how far they have to go, they have to increase their win total by 50% to get there. 50%, like that's a lot. You have to go from eight to 12, which, you know, one field goal that went in or didn't go in from last year, one fumble at the end of the game. Okay. I'll give you those two. Where's the rest coming from?

Right. I mean, what, what, what was the bad luck for the rest of them in the close games? And also if we compare last year's roster to this year's, last year's is better right now. Like go through the defensive depth chart at this moment, and I know they will sign people, but right now, what is Kenny Willekes starting on the other side of Daniil Hunter? I mean, that that's, that's happening, right? And I mean, that's probably a position that they would draft with a first round pick. And then you're asking a first round pick to come in and be a difference maker right away, which does not usually happen. Jordan Hicks is probably not as good as Anthony Barr. Anthony Barr was good last year. I thought he had a very solid final season as a Viking. You're asking

Cam Bynum to be as good as Xavier Woods. I liked what we saw from Cam Bynum, and I think he's a very smart player and has a chance to be a starter in the league. But Xavier Woods played like 1,200 snaps last year and was very solid for them and made some key plays. Patrick Peterson was not at all a disaster. I mean, I thought that actually they got about the highest end of the spectrum of Patrick Peterson that I would have thought of from last year we thought this could be a total disaster if he falls apart and he was a solid corner for them last season so now you need somebody to play solid there you need Cam Dantzler to be better than he was last year you need to find somebody to play nickel corner because

right now you don't have one it's it's it's Harrison hand at this point. So when you look at last year and go, Oh, well, you know, they just need to coach a little better and, you know, have things go right. No, actually they got worse. The roster is decidedly worse right now. And, uh, who's playing guard is the same guy playing center. Uh, the offensive roster is not any better. And now, okay, you were 14th in the league last year. If you coach better, what are you, 10th, 12th, right? I mean, so it's very hard to see right now this roster being any better without any significant moves. And that's where it's just if you draft a quarterback, then you can pretty much throw up your hands and say, let's have fun this year because we know that next year is where it's going to be over and Hey, we'll just see how it plays out and let's all have a

good time. But if they don't, then it's, you really, you guys really have to win and you have to win this year and you have to find a way to do that because that's the standard that you set. And that's what I was going to ask you. Like, is it fair to say that if they don't draft a quarterback, that all these things, they have to work and they have to work this year and we're judging it on a win now and you better compete

because you didn't do anything to help yourself long term. You did the same things that Rick Spielman would have done to try to win and save his job right away. Yeah, it's almost like Rick Spielman is still the shadow GM. I don't believe that he's selling his house. I saw the listing, but I don't believe it. He's still here. He's in the building. No, I'm not propagating that misinformation. Uh, I think that the Vikings are setting up a year where they, they are just counting on so many things to be different, um different than they were last year when nothing is different.

So then they're hoping that these variables, these coaches, these new schemes are going to play a huge role. But new schemes don't necessarily insinuate immediate success. It's going to take time. You have to learn, especially defensively, they ran the same thing forever. And I know that it got pretty bad at the end, but, you know, that was like for Harrison Smith, it's like putting on your comfy robe at night. That was Mike Zimmer's defense. You know, Daniil Hunter, 4-3 pass rusher. I think he'd still be good in the 3-4, but if you've got him him kind of standing up as an outside linebacker, that is a new role for him, so there's going to be a learning curve.

And look at last year. Even with the familiar Zimmer defense, when you brought in all that new personnel, they struggled to figure it out because it was so new to them. And Mike Zimmer was confident all along, it's going to be great, and then it wasn't great, and then he changed his tune and said, no, no, we actually needed a while to, to kind of come together. And that's going to be the case in this new three, four multi-front at Donatel thing. Kevin O'Connell, you know, is going to figure out maybe pretty soon that, um, all right, if we want to, you know, kind of, you know, throw it all over the field with Kirk,

there might be some consequences to that. So there's going to be these like major adjustments and then micro adjustments along the way to adjust. And it's hard to imagine that having an immediate effect where suddenly this is a transformed team. I mean, there's going to be growing pains there. And when those growing pains are happening with a bad defensive roster and like a bad offensive line you can you can imagine it going badly pretty quickly so if the schedule is unkind early in the season you could build quite a hole um kind of like they did last year when they were one in three um and the schedule wasn't even that tough and they were still one in three um and that really doomed them

for the whole season where they were just chasing chasing chasing that 500 mark oh we got there oh we're we're down again two games below you could be running into the same thing um so the expectation is extremely high but is it even realistic and i think that that comes back to and i'm sure you've talked about this this week is ownership meddling here is ownership saying you needed to do this or is this literally just crazy going about his business on his own accord finding that the trade markets were slow um and maybe getting convinced that you know if if we get lucky we can win like is that what happened or the wolf's whispering in people's ears? We don't know. We can only speculate. But their claim of saying we plan to be competitive,

maybe Quazy came in and in his interview, he spun a very convincing story to say, I see your situation, this is what we're going to do, and this is going to mean competitiveness in year one. Maybe that's what they bought into. Maybe that's why they love the interview so much. We'll never know, Collar, because we didn't have hidden cameras in the room. Folks, the hockey and basketball teams here in town are headed down the stretch toward the playoffs.

And you can get yourself ready by going to SodaStick.com and use the code PURPLEINSIDER for 15% off all Minnesota sports inspired goods. That's SodaStick, S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. Use code Purple Insider for 15% off. And what will be interesting is on Wednesday when Kweisi Adafomensa holds press conference, and of course we'll have a breakdown right after, um, what's he going to tell us to explain all of this? I mean, because he's got a lot of questions coming his way and these aren't questions of, Hey, did you go to Princeton? And, uh, are you happy to be here? Where are you going to live? This is dude, what are you doing? And, uh, I mean, I'm sure he's

never faced anything like this in his life, that we are not an aggressive media, but we ask the questions that need to be asked. Hey, we broke Mike Zimmer a bunch of times just by saying, hey, Mike, what was that? It's funny. I'll get that tweet sometimes to be like, why don't you guys just yell at Zimmer? Because usually if we just ask him what happened, he tells us. But we'll see what whatweisi has to say. Because, I mean, I think the explanation from his standpoint,

and maybe this is a mock press conference for us, but the explanation from his standpoint has to be that all of these things were just the right thing to do in comparison to what our other options were. And I have a tough time agreeing with that, but I also don't know what the other options were. And I have a tough time agreeing with that, but I also don't know what the trade offers were. But my thing is, if you want to get cap healthy, and hey, did the Bengals just sign Lael Collins? Where did they get that money?

It's very strange. Can't figure it out. All these other players keep going to teams who have quarterbacks on a rookie contract and have a ton of cap space. Why does that happen? The Bengals rebuilt their offensive line. Vikings, I wonder why you've never been able to do this.

If we could only find the person responsible. It's just amazing, right? It's like, oh, there they are. Oh, they already signed two offensive linemen here. Have another one. It's Lael Collins, who's extremely good. And now, instead of the right side of Joe Burrow's offensive line being garbage, one it's lay out collins who's extremely good and now instead of the right side of joe burrow's office of line being garbage now it's very good okay be nicer to riley reef

yeah uh well i don't know what his deal is they must feel like he's washed uh or is he is was there only a one-year contract i don't even know what's going on with riley reef i thought i think it was a one-year deal also okay i think i think he was hurt toward the end of the year. Yeah. Right. He didn't play. So, I mean, really, yeah. The lack of Riley reef is why they, uh, they lost the super bowl. Yeah. The other thing I was going to say is like, I was going through the schedule and trying to figure out if we truly believed it was the defense's fault, which again, right now it's not better.

And Ed Donatello probably knows what he's doing, but Mike Zimmer also knew what he was doing with defense and I was trying to figure out like how many games were actually the defense's fault that the defense just gave them no chance to win and you know there was nothing that they could really do I couldn't find many like the accumulation of the statistics ends up looking extremely bad because they gave up 37 to green bay in the second to last game but that was lost no matter what because sean manion was your starting quarterback and you had no chance i cannot find other games where they were just not

in the game because of the defense like san francisco i think really hurt them but early on the in that game they get an interception they give themselves a chance uh one of the touchdowns scored or was it a field goal i forget they had a couple of turnovers right in their own zone so i think they threw an interception right at the goal line or something and there was nothing the defense could do there now i'm not gaslighting and saying the defense was good it was not good but the point was just like i'm looking at these scores and trying to figure out okay okay, Baltimore, but they were up two scores in that game against Baltimore,

and they couldn't finish the job offensively when they had a chance. Anthony Barr got them an interception in overtime. They couldn't finish the job offensively. My point is just that even if they were to fix some things on defense, still from here on out with whatever money they could create with Daniil Hunter like are they being so much better this year that like even if they draft a corner even if they draft an edge rusher are they putting together something so much better this year that it's

winning games more than it did last year I don't really see that possibility like this has to be revamped long term and that's where like when you have feeling and he's on the older side you have harrison smith and you have eric kendrickson they're on the older side i mean you just like what's the timeline here like how are you dealing with the fact that at some point you're going to lose those guys and instead of losing them now and starting the process of replacing them now with developmental players or draft picks, they're going to hold down those spots. And then you're going to lose them anyway, because at some point everybody gets old and is done playing football. And I guess

that's where it's just hard for me to add up like what the top, what they see as the timeline and how they see it all coming together in the future to have a super strong roster. Because if you're saying like, well, this year is a transition year, 2023, we'll have an amazing roster. And I'm asking, well, how good is Eric Hendricks and Harrison Smith at that point? That's several years down the road from now, right? So now you have to find new, those guys too. And those guys are great. Why wouldn't you start trying to find them now and to your point what i'm tying it all back into is i think that the idea that they have to remain competitive and that they can't lose trades and all those things probably restricted them and uh from

making a lot of moves and what it makes me think of is what were we too hard on Spielman or like we weren't right but what what if he was dealing with the same stuff like what what if he was dealing with the same problems and we all sat here and said Rick are you out of your skull why aren't you just revamping this roster in 2020 and why are you trading for Yannick and Gakwe but if there was always an edict to make the playoffs and win, then he might have not had the flexibility to do the things he needed to do. Like, I'm sort of wondering if I need to rewrite all of my takes and how much I pinned on him, which the moves were bad, but whose fault they were, that I'm sitting here questioning a little. Yeah, Rick may have taken this theoretical edict too seriously. That was his fault because he did not care about losing a trade.

Let me tell you that. He was all right giving up any draft capital the team asked for. Hey, can we have a fourth for Chris Herndon, please? Even though he's worth about a seventh and a sandwich? Yeah, he gives a fourth so i i think that uh you know at at least quasi didn't go and you know kick dalvin cook money down the road like there he did have limits um now would you have liked to see a little bit of a succession plan at certain spots yeah and the draft you know like i'll wait a little bit to evaluate until the draft because if they go and they find like the next you

know really good safety and in a second or third round or if they go get um you know some top end cornerbacks i think that that does change the narrative but they do need to fill some veteran spots here in the next couple of years dalvin tomlinson's got one year left um harrison smith you know it's kind of kind of year to year at this point right as is adam thielen as is eric kendrick's eric kendrick's contract is legitimately cuttable after this year if he is not good like if he doesn't take to this inside linebacker role or if his coverage skills diminish like the second that he can't cover a guy i think eric hendricks is cuttable like and and he is a legendary viking he's great in the community

but the based on the contract his age trajectory like that that it might be a real thing so you not only do you have your existing holes to fill but you've got these like other theoretical holes to fill with these veterans that aren't going to be around forever and and none of them really have the kind of long-term security so um has uh quasi handled i guess this uh proverbial edict with with a plum i mean i guess he didn't you know he could have tied Kirk Cousins in for three more years and he only did one. Like there's always a worse scenario. And, and he's doing, you know, maybe his best to hedge his bets, but you know, all in all, I think this is still this is still pretty

problematic. You know, the way I am thinking of it is I've had cars in the past that I tried to nurse past 150,000 miles and you just keep going to the repair shop and you're fixing the carburetor and you're fixing the brakes again and you're fixing the alignment and everything else. And then you look up and you still have the same bad car, only you just spent a lot more on it. And that's how this roster has felt over the last couple of years. So you're mentioning like after next year, they can move on from some of these contracts and start the process of filling those spots. But if you had just bought the new car this year,

then you would have been, you know, not spending that extra money and not spending the extra time driving a car that might just like engulf in flames on you. And that that's where I think that the timeline was just so clear going into this off season of, Hey, you make these moves. You don't have to be terrible. You can fill in these other spots, but do it with young ish free agents. That's why Harrison Phillips is a good move to me. He's 26 years old.

He's a young guy and he could be good for all three years of his contract and match up with your timeline if you like him. But the Jordan Hicks one, I go, I would have rather seen Chaz Surratt. I would have rather seen, you know, maybe not Troy Dye. We've seen a lot of Troy Dye, but who knows? Like guys take a step forward and And Blake Lynch is Lynch. Yeah. I mean, he's an undrafted free agent who could have possibly taken another step when he got in the game last year. He actually played quite well and they were raving about him, but we'll never find out. And that's one of the problems is Eric Hendricks and Jordan Hicks are going to take those roles and they're going to play every single snap. And then if you have to move on from Hendricks after this year, you're going to go, can Blake Lynch play? I have no idea. We never played him. And, and, and this is like the Anthony Harris thing. Nobody knew that Anthony Harris could play until Andrew Sodejo got hurt and Anthony Harris stepped in and then

started making plays like crazy. You really don't know with some of these guys, they can show it in special teams and they could show it in practice. But if you're talking about a linebacker that's got to be operating at full speed in order to really understand if someone could play and so you're missing out on developmental opportunities here throughout this year to where you could be maybe surprised that instead you're going to go into the next year saying we don't know if Blake Lynch or Troy Dye or Chaz Surak could play so now we got to sign another linebacker or we got to draft one or whatever and you just Instead, you're going to go into the next year saying, we don't know if Blake Lynch or Troy Dye or Chaz Surak can play, so now we've got to sign another linebacker, or we've got to draft one, or whatever.

And you just create more long-term spots for yourself. You are, you know, you ever seen that guy who has the, what is it? It's like some sort of tape that he patches everything with. He's got like a hole in a boat, and he patches it, and then he's riding in the boat, and he's like, woo, I'm in the boat, right? The problem is that boat's not going to last that long. Like I bet that tape can get you from one side of the lake to the other side, but you're ain't riding around in that boat for year in and year out with that tape on it. I've bought it before. It helps

you the short term, but definitely not long-term. So that's kind of how this feels is you're taping it together. Once again, you're trying to get from one side of the lake to the other and then do the things you wanted to do. When instead you could have bought a new car, you could have bought a new boat and then see how it plays out. I did want to ask you though, what you think of the remaining quarterback market, because it has floated around in my head, like, minute what if they got to june 1st and some of this stuff wasn't resolved and then trading kirk actually is still possible uh but i mean you got matt ryan floating around out there you got the deshaun watson thing that's been wrapped up and it still seems like we're pretty far away from having everybody in the n NFL's quarterback situation settled.

Yeah. Wow. I mean, the Watson thing is explosive. That's, I mean, there's so many layers to it that would take a whole show. I wrote about Matt Ryan before I went on my trip and I'm not surprised that he's, he's not getting moved. And now not only is he not, you know, he's still kind of hanging around, but now he's got the knowledge that Atlanta tried to make a move on Watson. And now that's awkward. Like your longtime girlfriend is like calling around, calling some other guys. But, oh, sorry, didn't work out. I'll come back to you.

Yeah, and they restructured him for like the millionth time, too, to help that cap hit. So that's weird. Atlanta's in a horrible spot. I think worse than the Vikings. Four years of sub 500 play and they're still kind of running it back. Pittsburgh feels like they're in that drafting position. Seattle, Drew Locke, question mark. Is that, is that the plan? I mean, they're in a brutal division. I know it's going to be hard for them to compete. I don't know what that, I mean, I think they're in a worse position than the Vikings too. So it could be worse, Minnesota. You could be Seattle or you could be Atlanta. So I think there's still probably moves to be made. Baker, Baker's got to land somewhere. I would assume that, uh, that whoever signs Baker probably

still drafts a quarterback. I think he's that one year fix that I wouldn't have been upset to see him in Minnesota for a year. And by the sounds of it, the Browns were willing to listen to calls. I mean, they've got the, they've got Kevin Stefanski on speed dial around here. They could have made that connection pretty easily, but they didn't go that route. I don't have strong opinions on where I think guys are going to go, but I do think that – I don't think Seattle ends on Drew Locke, and I don't think that – I would be surprised if Pittsburgh

just rolled with a rookie. I think they'll have a stopgap. New Orleans is another one. New Orleans, yes. Another domino to fall, yeah. The odd thing is that there's teams that are actually good, that have good rosters, that don't have quarterbacks still. And yet the Vikings opted themselves out of potentially trading their very valuable assets to teams that have far better rosters than them. And that with the extension just said, Nope, we're out. Sorry,

guys, you can't have this quarterback when, man, it just feels like if you got to a certain date after Watson had decided where he was going and then looked around and went, who wants to come back to the negotiating table with some new offers? Because you guys all missed on your big prize and he went to Cleveland. So what now saints, right? I also wanted to say on the matter of Deshaun Watson, you don't have to have an opinion on everything. I mean, that's just a,

it's like a fundamental 2020 thing where people feel like they have to have an opinion on everything. And if you're not educated on this sort of thing at all, when it comes to sexual assaults or whatever else, it's okay to just sit this one out. I would throw that out there for my fellow media members and things like that. If you do research and listen to experts and things like that, and you really want to understand some of the realities of trying to convict someone of sexual assault and the requirements for that legally and studies that have been done on these things, then go ahead. And I know what you'll find because I have. You'll find that only 2% of reported sexual assaults actually end up in a conviction. So that's one of the reasons that it's so hard is that it's a he said, she said thing. And there's only two people in

that room with Deshaun Watson. It's very hard to create enough evidence or to find enough evidence to be able to meet the standard that it would take in order to go farther with that criminal situation, which is why it's a civil case for the most part. So but if you're not educated on it and you haven't done that research and you just want to talk about football, then you should do that. But, you know, don't don't be telling other people what they should think about this unless you actually are well read on the situation is what I would say. So anyway, well, that one, that one's going to be tough. I know that the guys on the PFF forecast podcast, every time they talk about the Browns, they're going to donate to somebody who works to help sexual assault victims,

which I think is a good idea. I know that some Browns people have stopped creating content. People who are like us that do podcasts or articles or whatever have just said, we're not doing it. We're just not going to cover Deshaun Watson. And I'm going to tell you the truth, man. If the Vikings had traded for Deshaun Watson, I don't know.

I mean, I'm just not sure I could do this every day. I'm not sure I could. Because even when I talked about it on the show the other day and just said, look, if you're the person who is, you know, just going to root for your team, sure I could because even when I talked about it on the show the other day and just said look if you're the person who is you know just going to root for your team no matter what I'm not going to hate you for it but if you're the person who says I'm never watching football again I don't blame you because this is this is pretty dark and setting up the contract to make sure he

doesn't actually have to pay any money if he's suspended that's that's gross that's even worse and uh this is it's it's not for the easily made queasy the nfl that's for sure um we know that but if we had to talk about that every single day that would have been incredibly miserable there's no way that i could just be like oh look man grand jury uh you know so anyway that's that's kind of that yeah there'd be a lot of caveats that would have to be given with every conversation about about the quarterback and when you cover football on a daily basis you kind of have to talk about the quarterback a lot and you have to give that quarterback a lot of credit many times especially if they're really good and that feels a little weird when you don't you know maybe, maybe believe in them as a person. Um, so I mean, they've got some,

some serious PR, um, issues to, to sort out. Yeah, for sure. Bringing somebody that, um, could be a predator in their community there and signing them to the biggest deal ever made is just really hard to wrap your head around so anyway well great to have you back sam and like i mentioned quesia dafl mensa scheduled to do a press conference in the middle of the week i think it wednesday or thursday and whenever that is of course we'll be doing our thing uh at tco performance center breaking that down so thanks for your time and we will talk to you all later