ladies and gentlemen. Welcome once again to the Packernet Podcast. I am your host and resident panelist, as always, Ryan Schlipp. Check us out online, packernet.com Find me on Twitter, pack underscore dad. So, yesterday we did a Caleb thing, because it was brought to my attention, I guess, that these kinds of things are being said, and I mean, it shouldn't be necessarily surprising. I mean, we've seen a lot of dumb things from Les. I mean, we've seen Justin Fields, who was dog crap, and we're being told that the guy was actually very, very good and was just being held back, and all this stupid nonsense was never ever true, as I think we all have come to realize. Shame on those that doubted me, but again, the the Bears are not the only ones having some fantastical ideas, and as I've said the last couple of days, the one that surprised me the most was the Minnesota Vikings, and so I'm more curious than anything to kind of dive around and see what the heck these guys have been doing over here. Again, they're quiet, they've been quiet, which you know, again, everybody's been kind of quiet, nobody's really crossing that line of like talking trash, but everyone's kind of in their own corner getting themselves fired up and in their tight little, their airtight bubbles, so that when you walk into it, it's holy cow, what have you guys been doing over here, which I'm sure they do to us as well, but I figured there's a nice little connection here, because yesterday we talked about the Chicago Bears quarterback and some of the nonsense that's going on, and although I'm not sure exactly what the heck is going on over there in Minnesota, aside from just a very cursory look, I do know that a big part of their belief in everything being different this year is, wait for it, the quarterback. Now, most of us hadn't even considered that this is very similar to when they got Donald, which, yes, did go very, very well. He's still playing at a very high level. I don't think many people expected that, and I don't think that that happens very often. I think that that's exceedingly rare. We'll see if Malik is another one of those, unfortunately, but there does seem to be an underlying confidence that, okay, we needed a quarterback, boom, we got this guy, and again, I don't know if it's so much that Kyler is going to be elite as opposed to JJ, was the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone ever anywhere, and anybody that is even marginally decent at anything is going to get us to where we need to be, because I guess we're just such a good team, we need subpar quarterback play just to be a playoff team, like if we just get to up to subpar, then we're good, but I figure before we kind of attack the issue, I want to find out what exactly it is, what are Vikings fans saying about their quarterback situation, because first of all, I think it's settled, but I, you know, they're at least not 100% going to come out and say that it's settled. The Athletics, Alec Lewis believes the Vikings will measure quarterback JJ McCarthy's development by assessing his accuracy, touch, consistency this summer, by the way. I will say, as Packer fans, we don't want JJ McCarthy to start. The reason being they went out and got this quarterback, Kyler Murray, with the full intention of him starting. There's never a question, JJ is going to be moved, McCarthy is going to be the guy, we're going to find a new quarterback, excuse me, Kyler is going to be the guy, and then we're going to find a new quarterback and move forward that way, unless we can get Kyler to be really good, even then it's kind of iffy, they're probably hoping for a second Sam Darnold situation, then they don't mess it up and get rid of him, but he's 30, and as a mobile quarterback, age is a much bigger issue. He's not quite 30, but he's getting there. Once you start hitting the later years as a mobile quarterback, you have to learn to stand in the pocket and throw, and if you can't, then it's not great. Plus, the size and injury stuff, his, he's not going to be a 40 year old quarterback, it's not going to happen. So, the shelf life here is much shorter than, for example, Sam Darnold. So, with all that said, with the expectation of moving on from McCarthy and moving in a different direction, if. McCarthy starts. It's because, holy crap, he took that step. So that's the only, the only path I see, pending some, you know, injury or whatever, where they start JJ McCarthy over Kyler Murray, which would suck, because that would, that would be bad. So why don't we start here, and I know this guy's like extra biased hypey for the Vikings, but it's still a good spot to kind of be like, all right, what, what, what's what's the vibe over here?
What's going on, Jerome's so the storyline of the off season that
this is Purple FTW podcast, by the way, if you're interested in supporting, or whatever.
I don't know, like it should get hype, and it seems sort of glossed over that the Vikings signed Kyler Murray, who's still getting paid almost 40 million bucks from the Cardinals for $1.3 million and
he's Asian, he can do that.
The good thing, a two-time Pro Bowl quarterback in his prime,
so note number one, they're doing the whole, you know, two-time Pro Bowler thing. In his prime is another one. These are little notes that you can set to the side of what there is to be excited about.
Still under 30 with revenge on his mind, as long as he's not playing video games to basically captain this ship, man, whether it's Kyler, whether it's JJ. Yes,
it is funny that it transitioned so quickly from, dude, this guy is legitimately, he's legitimately elite, and nobody's talking about it, and that's crazy, or maybe the other guy who's also good don't sound super committed, there. That's interesting.
Is JJ McCarthy being thrown under the bus at times? Yes, yes, but quarterback competition, we all know we love JJ. You know what I love more, the Vikings. So whoever it is, whatever it takes, done to them, and also we say we said we just need a captain of the ship, we need somebody
to thought he was gonna say Carson Wentz, I was like, please just say Carson Wentz, it'd be hilarious if you also, if that doesn't work, we got Carson Went, skip ahead here just a touch,
and with Kyler, this is a chance for some full on career rehab, right. Justin Jefferson, his corner is going to be good to go, and his time with Arizona didn't end the greatest, right? You know, got his contract, even though he's playing his video game. Still never going to forgive Steve Keim, but last year Kyler Murray, you know, five games before he got injured, he did some stuffings and things, you know, completed 68% was best, which Kyler doesn't get enough credit for being an accurate thrower. The football was good to go, and I know a lot has been made, is like, well, what about his a dot has averaged up the targets, but now last couple years, have you seen the Arizona offense? Like, there has nothing been there's
to be fair, the reason that matters is because if you're going to talk accuracy, you kind of have to look at it as an accuracy per area of the field thing, right? Because if, if the a dot, the average depth of target is the reason for the accuracy, then you're not actually that accurate of a quarterback, you just throw easier passes. I'm not saying that's the case, but that's the reason that gets brought up.
Ben, there's never been a more podunk checkdown offense since watching like JV football. It's essentially what it is, man. But Kyler went two and three as a starter. Jabroni Brisket went one and 15, by the way, or one at 11, plus enough, really good at math, yeah, but Kyler is on the full on career rehab trajectory, and the odds reflect that, in terms of comeback player of the year. Now, Mahomes is probably just gonna be handed the trophy, right, because ACL
pretty much probably, yeah,
come back all that good stuff, he's the prohibitive favorite across all of the books. Kyler is interestingly enough coming in second, either plus 600 so six to one, you know, 550 in a couple places as well. And I know that everyone's pissing, Mona, like, well, why is Michael Parsons odd so low? Parsons
not a quarterback.
Parsons tore his knee up late in the season, so there's no guarantee that he's going to be back early in the season, and may not even be himself by mid season. It is what it is, so that's why his odds are longer.
Plus, he's not a quarterback, plus, like you said, Pat Mahomes. Good luck beating Pat Mahomes. Pat, I mean, Pat, Pat Mahomes doesn't even need to actually be like a top 10 quarterback, you can see that already everybody already putting him in the top two as far as the rankings, like today, even though he hasn't been in four three years since he's been, I think you'd have to go back four years before he'd be in the top three conversation, but he just needs. To come back and have a winning football team and look like Pat Mahomes, and he will win Comeback Player of the Year, Kyler Murray. If Pat Mahomes doesn't do that, Kyler Murray does make sense to be the next best in line, because he's a quarterback, and if they can make him look good, which again, he doesn't need to be like, you know, PFF grade, top 10-ish. He needs to be healthy the whole year. The Vikings need to have a winning record and needs to look like it's on the back of Kyler Murray, and if they do that, and Pat McHale's isn't in the way, he will win that again. You could say, well, I mean, that's pretty impressive that he is ahead of Michael Parsons, that does say something, maybe kind of, but very much to his point. Micah Parsons is going to have a very difficult time when you're going to miss at least the first four games of the season to dominate to such a degree, and basically the only thing that matters here in this conversation, if we're talking about comeback player of the year, is stay healthy, get a bunch of sacks. I mean, good luck getting the number of sacks you need minus an entire quarter of the season. So, yeah, I mean, I guess, but if you remove Micah from the equation, who is Kyler ahead of in the odds? Malik Neighbors, Daniel Jones and Deshaun Watson. Basically, it's a two-man race with Pat Mahomes at the top, and then Kyler, if he can play, and Mahomes, you know, if he gets hurt, then we'll just hand it to Kyler. And if Kyler can't do it, then Micah has a chance. And the fact that Micah is ahead of all these other guys, which makes sense, have not even having a full season, I don't necessarily know everybody else's situation, but Deshaun Watson isn't even guaranteed to be the starting quarterback, although his odds are way off. Basically, it's not a very large pool, so you know to look at and be like, well, he has the second best comeback odds. I'm not necessarily saying he's doing this, but to use that as evidence that, like, Vegas believes he's going to have a great year, it's an unbelievably small pool of people that could even be considered for this award,
because he's going to have a truncated amount of time to do some damage. You have Malik Neighbors, Daniel Jones, Deshaun Watson. Why is Watson on there? It was, but Kyler, second place at getting around six to one. I do think it is Mahomes award to lose, but you know, the media does love a good story, and if and when Kyler Murray is, you know, he wants a starting job and just absolutely lights it up with this freaking offense, which there's gonna have a rededication in the run game. Kyler still has enough mobility where it's a threat to the defense. You got Jefferson, Addison, and Jennings. This offensive line should be good to go, because Darrisaw's leg hopefully won't fall off this season. And then you got Jackson, whoo, Blake Brandle, the solid veteran, getting acclimated at center. Will Fries going to prove that he's worth, hey dirty baby, I'm worth the money. Don't you worry, I said, hey, okay, we got some fries.
All right, all right, all right, let's, let's, let's calm down, let's go ahead and skip a little bit here.
It's offense, I know that people like to poo poo on the Vikings, and I know that we generally have a very sunny disposition when it comes to the Vikings, but if you're not drinking the purple Kool-Aid, honestly, it takes a special type of hater and loser to look at this offensive unit and be like child, please, and not even mention the defense across, which is going to be hellacious, is going to be extremely good at getting their ass off the field, good field position, taking the ball away, everything's gonna be good. So I honestly do believe that Kyler, you know, everyone and their mom, all Cardinals fan, you know, blaming Kyler for everything, but it's okay. It's okay, he can take the heat, he's gonna be motivated, he's gonna be mobile, agile, hostile. Give me all the six to one, baby. Just I feel like Kyler's on that comeback train and is going to be good to go, right?
All right, good enough. So that's a position, and I look again as a Packer fan, even though they are in the division, and, but we got a lot to cover, and a lot to talk about, and all that stuff, and I think for the most part we've been looking at the NFC North through a 30,000 foot view. I haven't spent a lot of my life looking at Kyler Murray and his career, occasionally dabble over the years, just kind of like, oh, what's he, oh, he's, he's really good now, oh, he sucks now. Oh, whatever. I think kind of, kind of the big picture plan that I had here was let's look at Kyler, because that's another big thing. I don't want to go super in depth. We may have to, if I can't, you know, make this a big enough podcast in and of itself. And then perhaps we'll see, I don't, I don't want you know, sometimes I like my themes maybe a little bit more than I should, but the thought would be tomorrow we would do something similar with the Lions with the final crescendo, and maybe we'll just skip part three and go straight to the crescendo, being let's just look at the NFC North quarterbacks, and let's be honest about it. Let's look at golf, let's look at Kyler, let's look at Kayla. And then love, I don't know if we need to do this for the Lions, because I don't know that a lot of Lions fans are sitting around going, "Dude, we're going to be dope because of our quarterback. Last I remember, they started to fall out of love with him a little bit, but maybe that's the best. I'll do a tiny bit of digging to see if there's some golf hype. There probably is, and if there is, then we'll, we'll play this game as well, just so we can kind of get the receipts, and then hear specifically the arguments being made for them, and then we'll, and then again we will crescendo. What the heck does that word mean? Boy, I had no chance of spelling that crescendo, c r e s c r e s c e n d o, a gradual increase in loudness, force, or intensity. See, that's not what I was going for. So, a crescendo is the swelling, it's not the.. so now we're doing the crescendo. This is the swelling portion. Should stop using both of those words, swelling and crescendo. Well, see, I didn't want that to be the.. I didn't want that to be the word I was looking for. There's got to be a different word. Other related terms: fortissimo, sforzando, and tutti. Fortissimo is what we're going to go for, so we'll do the, we'll do the crescendo now, and then it'll get to the fortissimo. Definitely not the other thing, also not 2t We're not going to do a 2t We, there will be no two ting here on the Packer Nut Podcast. But let's take a break, and we'll be right back, you right, let's move over here. This is Menace, excuse me, Purple Daily, Minnesota Vikings chemistry. It is a Q and A segment, I believe. I don't know, but this.. this first portion is
Brian continues and says, let me get serious now. The national media narrative on Kyler Murray is that his deep ball has regressed, but a quarterback's downfield accuracy is heavily tied to his targets. When he had DeAndre Hopkins a few years ago, Kyler was one of the better deep ball throwers.
First of all, I don't think that's true at all. We'll get into the actual breaking these things down, but just to be clear, you would have to prove that to me. That's one of those things people on social media like to do, where they say things that they think sound smart without having any regard for whether or not you have to look that up. I don't think that that's true. Why? I mean, why would that be the case? I mean, the assumption is, well, if you got somebody wide open or whatever, but that's kind of irrelevant, and the stats don't really take that into account. It's just a question of whether or not you throw a good ball, and saying, well, if you look back a few years ago to when he had this person, then, then, yeah, but you're kind of, you're not really answering the question, you're just kind of giving a different explanation for it, while acknowledging that there has been regression. Yeah, well, a few years ago it was good. I know that's the entire point. It was good, and now it's not good. And you're saying that it's, it's only because of the players, and I'm not saying there can't be some kind of a relationship there. Maybe it goes to confidence, or, you know, I don't know, could also be things like offensive line, you know, if you're throwing on the run in a panic, as opposed to a comfortable pocket, there can be all kinds of variables, but on some level you're going to have to actually prove that correlation, which is again a lot of work to do, significantly less now with AI, but I doubt anybody's actually going to bother doing that, as opposed to just saying it because it sounds good
in football with Justin Jefferson and the best supporting cast of his career in Minnesota. Is it creative
to prove that as well? I don't know that that's true, but perhaps
easy to think Kyler can regain that accuracy and launch himself right back into the MVP conversation, like in 2020
This is how you know that somebody's just saying stuff when, when we go from 'trust me, bro, I'm just being rational' to 'Should we be talking MVP? Why would we go to MVP again? It's not that it's impossible, but why would your mind be sitting there? Why, why, why would that be the case? I mean, if we say it's possible for all 32 quarterbacks, and then work backwards, how far do we get before Kyler gets taken off that list, I. You know, if we're going off of most likely, I don't think he's at or near the top.
He won with D Hop, if he stays healthy for the majority of the season.
That is where Judd's camp notes come into play. I gotta see the arm strength, because you know he's not wrong. Look, like we have seen,
you might be wrong, but I guess we don't know that
highlights of Kyler through the years with Cardinals, with some nice deep passes. In fact,
again,
kind of begging the question here. The question is, is it regressing right? So, if you go back and say, well, if you look back several years ago, it looked good. That doesn't answer the question of is it regressing.
If I'm not mistaken, he beat the Vikings on a deep pass to the late Rondelle Moore in a game. So I'm curious to see what the arm strength is now, and
again, the question wasn't about strength, although that would be a part of it. It was specifically about accuracy, which is a different thing. Doesn't have to be. I mean, if you don't have the strength and the accuracy of getting the ball to where it needs to be, as opposed to falling short, naturally follows. But now we're just kind of answering why. But he may have strength and not accuracy, so he. so, in other words, what is probably going to happen that doesn't answer the question is he's going to get in cap, he's going to launch a 55 yard ball, and everybody from Purple Daily is going to go, "Well, that answers the question. Everybody was talking about his arm strength, and there it is. No, no, that's not exactly what was being questioned. It was his deep ball accuracy, which is a different thing,
and if it was just, but it's weird, because was it the receivers, was it the play calling, because he still had
play calling, what the hell does that have to do with his accuracy, or arm strength, for that matter,
some pretty good receivers, or so we thought with the Cardinals, but it definitely dissipated, so stage one is what I would say, stage,
so this, this theory, like, like the downfield theory of he just has, he's had bad targets, and I'm maybe I'm wrong on this, but I feel like that logic could apply for sure to the 25 plus yard air throws, right? So, all right, this is kind of a 5050 ball. I'm putting the ball way down the field, and over the last four years on passes that travel 25 plus yards in the air down the field of all the qualified quarterbacks, like the, like the 45 qualified quarterbacks, Tyler is dead last incompletion percentage, 21% on passes that travel 25 or more yards.
I wasn't going to look at it quite yet, because that was going to be more of a tomorrow or two days thing, but I'm staring at he's looking at something else, because it's 25 yards, he's probably over at Pro Football Reference or something. I'm looking at PFF, which is 20 plus yards, and I'm not looking at the rest of the field, but I can see he has a 76 grade, which sounds good, but this is when you're talking deep balls, this is the area where you've probably got five quarterbacks with a 99 grade, you've got the, you know, probably 20 in the 90s, so being at a 75 he's going to be relatively low. His completion percentage is at 37.5% which that usually is low. So, I can't speak to where that's at, but I'm guessing this is not very good compared to the rest of the league.
Yards in the air, yeah, dead last in expected points added per attempt,
that's bad.
And dead last in yards per attempt, you could say. Well,
well, that doesn't even make any sense. You wouldn't look at yards per attempt when you're already looking at 25 I mean, that's kind of just a weird anomaly, I guess. Well, I guess, and again, this is, there are better ways to do this than yards per attempt, if you were really concerned, but if it's 25 plus as the final thing, you could say that he has a weak arm because everybody else has these 60 yard, 50 yard throws, and his, his or more in the 2530 range. He's really not airing it out as much. You could say that, but that doesn't even necessarily answer that question. I think that's just a stupid stat to look at yards per attempt when you're looking at the, when you're looking specifically at yardage,
yeah, I mean, give them a, give them a reliable target down the field. Here's where this is, this is where Judd's camp notes are going to come into play even more. It's the 10 plus yards in the air being bad that makes me more nervous, because that now includes the intermediate stuff, kind of the like the deep intermediate, those in cut routes that Kevin O'Connell loves.
They're doing my homework for me. I appreciate this.
Right, since 2022 on passes
and going back to 2022 this encompasses some of his good years.
The travel 10 or more yards down the field, Kyler dead last in expected points added per attempt. Yeah, that's 41st out of 43 in yards per attempt, and 36 out of 43 in completion percentage.
The yards per attempt make a little bit more sense there, but still, it's even in general, I think yards per attempt is kind of a stupid stat. The only time I would really care is if it was exceedingly high or exceedingly low, that's where you kind of put a little asterisk next to some things like accuracy, and say, okay, we need to kind of do a little bit extra digging, but I genuinely don't care all that much.
Yes, having Jefferson, Addison, Juan Jennings is going to help him, and any other quarterback, but like those are valid concerns over the past few years that we need to see what that looks like throughout mini camp, training camp, OTAs, etc.
but do we think so? I guess let's go back to 2024 with Donald. You pretty quickly picked up on,
don't, don't start. Don't listen. Here is another thing that we're going to have to, again, this, this is kind of just immersing ourselves in, like, what is the conversation over here? What are we doing? What I'm not going to tolerate is, yeah, but we said this about Donald. Darnold was a one-off. Okay, now I am not saying that Kyler, who's already unlike Darnold, demonstrated an ability to be a very good quarterback, if he got, if he was healthy in Arizona, he might have been good this year in Arizona. And I think Kevin O'Connell is a good coach, a good play caller, they have a good offensive line, they have good wide receivers, or mostly good offensive line, and at least one good wide receiver. There's every reason to believe that this could be one of his up years in a career that's been very like really good, really bad, really good, really bad. What I'm not going to do is play this game where you know, look at what happened with Donald, and so we should expect that to be a thing that happens all the time. That is a once in a lifetime situation. What happened with Arnold
on in watching him at training camp? He had a great deep ball, like his depot is,
he has a very good
impeccable.
He always did
his
medium range stuff was okay. I mean, it wasn't a disaster, but it certainly was not great. But if you have issues with the deep ball and you have issues with what you just talked about, which is the intermediate stuff. What would you say you do here? So, like, that's going to be really intriguing to watch. It seems to me like, like one or the other has to be efficient, and quite frankly, if I only can take one, I'm probably taking the mid-range stuff, because those plays present themselves a lot more, like
I mean, just, just as a, so if we look at it, and this is going to be pretty, I don't know, that this, let me look at Jordan Love real quick, because this feels a little off, and again, his seems like he's known for throwing a lot of short passes, yeah, so, and Jordan's probably not a good example either, because I think he throws more deep balls than your average quarterback, but so he's at 15% of his passes are 20 plus, 20% of his passes are in the 10 to 19 yard range, so again, that's probably closer than most who would throw probably less deep balls for Kyler, you're looking at nine compared to 17, so yes, of course, you want the 17% to show out better than the 10% For reference, Jordan Love has a 94 passing grade on deep passes, a 91 passing grade on medium passes, 84 on short, and then 62 at behind the line of scrimmage. Kyler is 7174 6976 I'm not even gonna tell you directionally which way we're going, because it doesn't matter. He's just like a mid 70s across the board, and 41% of his passes are the zero to nine yards, with 24% being behind the line of scrimmage, so 63% of his passes came nine yards or less, and for Jordan Love it was, let's see, 55% so still a big chunk, but again you got 35% beyond that, with Kyler Murray sitting at like 25% of his passes, which is pretty crazy, one in four passes traveled 10 yards or more, Jordan was closer to one in three, and about 50% of Justin Jefferson's receptions came 10 yards or further down the field. Anywho, sorry, let's continue,
but yes, that will be, that'll be very interesting to see. And you can always say, hey, look, I mean, with the Vikings, you're gonna have a top three receiver tandem that's really, really good, and that's,
you know, the this is another thing that all four NFC North teams. Do is they, I think, over inflate. I don't want to sit here and say except the Packers, but I do think accept the Packers, because I don't think a lot of Packer fans, and I've talked to, if anything, they undersell the group. Well, Watson's never healthy, and Reed's no good, he's going to get traded and golden, and they're the underrated group in my mind, but top three receiver tandem. What are you talking about? Again, this is what I said. Remember when I told you that they massively overrate Addison? This is fricking crazy to me, that you think you have a top three. You don't even have a top three receiver anymore. This Justin Jefferson is the Pat Mahomes of wide receivers, he is a very good receiver who hasn't been a top receiver in three years, but everybody still says he's a top receiver, and yeah, maybe he bounces back, that's possible, but also until you do, I don't think I'm going to call you a top guy anymore, he ranked 14th last year as a receiver below Davante Adams. Now, I mean, no offense to Devonte, but I mean we know Devonte is slowly drifting in his 30s. Stefan Diggs has fallen off faster than Devonte, by the way. Christian Watson ranked 11th, so we have Christian Watson on this team who graded out higher than Justin Jefferson last year, and again, blame the quarterback all you want, that's fine, but until you actually prove it on the field, I'm not going to just say, "Oh no, he's still the top receiver. By the way, Pookan Akua, criminally underrated, everybody knows Pooka is good, he had like a 96 receiving grade, I don't think I don't think Jefferson has ever had that, and by the way, I was wrong. I was looking at Stefan Diggs; he ranked 17th last year. Justin Jefferson, his best year ever was a 91 so his grades have been 9190 9091, The last, then it dropped to an 88 which is still very good, but first time he's ever been below that, and then an 80 in 2025 that is a shocking drop off. Puka Nakua had a 96 receiving grade, that is better than than Jefferson has ever been by a mile. Jackson Smith and Jigba had a 93 grade, that's better than Jefferson has ever been, ever. So we still talk about Justin Jefferson, because again we fail to recalibrate, but he's not up there anymore. By the way, Aman Ross St. Brown, the last four years, 9091 9091 Aman Ross St. Brown has been as good as Justin Jefferson for four straight years. In other words, he's having a four year stretch that Jefferson had his first four years and is currently the better wide receiver in the NFC North. So, Jefferson isn't even the best receiver in the NFC North anymore. In fact, again, if we're just going off of last year, if we look at the did it, do, do, do. Let's, this would have been easier to just not do this. NFC North, Aman Ross St. Brown, then Christian Watson, then Justin Jefferson, with Luther Burden being nipping at his heels with a 78 great Romeo had a 77 almost as good as Justin Jefferson, Jameson Williams at a 77 I mean that that group is all right there with a minor gap between Jefferson and Watson, 80 to an 84 and then Aman Rah by himself at a 91 The only real blue chip wide receiver in the NFC North right now is Aman Raw St. Brown, until Justin Jefferson proves that last year was an anomaly, I had some stuff going on, our quarterback sucked, whatever, but I'm back fine, but again, until you prove that, and it's been, you have to go back not to 2025 or 2024 but to 2023 as the last time you had a 90 receiving grade, and again Pooka had almost 100 receiving grades. That's one of the best receiving grades that any receiver. I don't know that Devonte has ever had a grade like that, but yet we're still going to sit here and allow Vikings fans to talk about Justin Jefferson as though he is the premier receiver in the NFL, and that you have a top three receiving group, bro. You absolutely freaking do not. That is, that is an.. that is an absolute joke that you believe you have a top three receiving core, and.. and if you try to add your bum tight end to that, I'm gonna laugh in your face. I'm sorry, you might have the fourth best receiving core in the NFC North. I think you have the fourth best tight end again. You're, you're, when you, when you look at not just the, the top end, but the talent. I mean, if you look at Detroit, they've got Sam LaPorta, Jameson Williams, Amon Ra, St. Brown. I would take that. Met over Jefferson Addison and TJ Hawkinson, for reference, Jefferson 80 grade, Addison 61 which is the second lowest wide receiver grade. I think we already covered this in the entire NFC North, also ahead of Cole Commet, but that's kind of irrelevant at this point, but as far as wide receivers, just the second lowest, and then as far as tight ends, TJ Hawkinson is the lowest, not including Cole Commit, because he's not a number one tight end. It goes Coast and Loveland, then Sam Laporta, then Tucker Kraft, in terms of receiving grades, with all three of them being relatively close, 8683 and 83 between La Porta and Kraft, Hawkinson 62 he's not in the same category. Hawkinson is not good. There are three good tight ends, and Hawkinson is not one of them. So I would take Detroit without hesitation. Let's look at Chicago. Chicago has Colston Loveland, who is the, according to receiving grade, the second best receiver period in the NFC North. He was very good last year, had almost 1000 yards as a tight end at 906 Roma Dunes, a with a 71 grade, and Luther Burton with a 78 Now, you could argue that Jefferson currently is better and probably bounces back even more. So, would you rather have that? Honestly, no, because you can have one Justin Jefferson with a terrible supporting cast and a subpar tight end, and no real running backs to speak of, which we're not even discussing, or you can have an ascending a doomsday, an ascending burden, and a guy that could potentially be the top tight end in football here at Colston Loveland. Of course, I'm taking Chicago's group over Minnesota's group, and then you get to Green Bay. Well, as I said, Christian Watson already graded out higher than Justin Jefferson last year, and we have Matthew Golden, who we barely even got to see this past year, who almost graded out as well as Justin Jefferson did. He graded out better than Jalen Naylor and Jordan Addison. Obviously, there are other two receivers that were there, Naylor now a Raider, but it doesn't matter. They don't have good wide receivers, and then Tucker Kraft, who again is significantly better than what they have. The Minnesota Vikings have the fourth best receiving group. They're not even top three in the NFC North, and he's talking about, say that again,
with the Vikings, you're going to have a top three receiver tandem that's really, really good.
Oh my lord, you might have a bottom three receiver tandem. Dude, shut up. I mean, not really. Justin Jefferson is going to preclude that, but it's just.. it's not good. It's just not you. You have to get Justin Jefferson back to being a really good receiver. And again, even then, in today's NFL, he's not.. I don't know that he's going to be top five, because there's so many really, really good receivers. It's going to be hard for him to surpass Aman Ross St. Brown, who is currently playing at a level that Justin Jefferson played at at his best. Jamar Chase is already up there. Jackson Smith and Jigba and Pooka are already better receivers than Justin Jefferson, as I said, ever was. Drake London is up in that category right now. Pickens is up in there, there's a lot of guys that are that are kind of playing in that range. I think at best he gets back to what he was and ends up being third, but in a pile of probably three to four other guys that are about as good, but probably not as good as Jackson Smith and Jigba and Pooka Nakua. And again, I don't, I don't think there's any real reason to believe, pending Amon Ra falling off, that he, like, massively surpasses Aman Raw St. Brown. So, again, Justin Jefferson, I will, I will say this again, is the Pat Mahomes of wide receivers. He took the title of being the top receiver. And listen, I've always been flattering of Justin Jefferson, all right, because I, because I tell the truth, and if it's true, then I say it's true. He has been a very good receiver. I've always said he is a very good receiver. I have at times called him probably the best receiver, but this, this is not 2021 by the way. I don't know if he's ever been better than third. If you go back, I'm going back to 2020 now. Yeah, and that's that's the thing with being so, so, because he's been consistently like top three, top five. I've said he's like the best in football, but he's, I don't think he's been better than third. Justin Jefferson in 2020 was behind Stefan Diggs and Devonte Adams. In 2021 he was behind Devonte Adams and Cooper Cup. In 2022 he was, he dropped a fifth from third, and was behind Amon Ra, Devonte Adams, Jalen Naylor, and Tyreke Hill, which I mean, that's three years in a row, Devonte was ahead of them. 2023 he is fourth behind Amon Ra. And an Iuk and Tyreek Hill, and then again the fall off can begins in 2024 so he was top three, then the last, then the next two years, 2022 and 2023 he was top five, and now he in 2024 drops to top 10, being eighth behind T Higgins, Drake London, Aman Raw St Brown, Mike Evans, AJ Brown, Nico Collins, and new to the scene, Puka Nakua. By the way, in this year you had Nico Collins with a 92 grade, which again Justin Jefferson has never had. And then in 2025 is when you have him dropping out of the top 10, not even top 15, he becomes a top 20 receiver, ranking 17th. Hilariously, his 80 pff receiving grade is closer to Michael Wilson of Arizona than it is to Aman Ross St. Brown in the same division. I bring that up, obviously, because his new quarterback, it was in Arizona, so anywho, let's take our final break, and we'll be right back. And I'll say this just to start off this other site, but first of all, the Purple Daily, they do a good job being much more centered, and they have been this whole time. The top three thing kind of set me off, obviously, but, but for the most part, the conversation is centered around, you know, we'll have to see where he's at, and if he's any good. The fella in the middle here, I don't know their names, but he brings up a good point. I won't play the whole audio, but he's he's looking at 2021 and saying this is what Tyler's best year was, and he's going to go through how good it was as a point of being excited toward him, or whatever, or what he's capable of, I should say, and he brings up as a counterpoint to his point before he gets started, as a caveat, he knows that this is a very long time ago, five years as an eternity in the NFL, and brings up Deshaun Watson. If you remember, Deshaun Watson was the dude in Houston. He was freaking amazing as a quarterback. It feels like that never happened. It was such an eternity ago, another world ago, because, considering how much he gets made fun of for being garbage, he was unbelievably good as a quarterback, but if you were to try to convince anybody that he is good or could be good, as opposed to this dude fell, I can't explain it, but it's over. It just goes to show five years is an eternity, and without playing this, I'll just add one final caveat, and that is, you know, the NFL sometimes speaks to us and tells us what they think, then sometimes they get it wrong, clearly. But the Vikings did not inherit a guy that the NFL believes is elite. The Arizona Cardinals are paying him to play for another team right now, paying him a massive amount of money to play for the Vikings, and the Vikings invested like a million dollars to get them. They paid nothing for him, and anybody could have gotten him for that. And the Vikings just let him walk in. I don't think there is a single team out of 32 that believes in Kyler Murray anymore, and I think that's evident by the way that this whole thing is panning out. There was not a massive market, there was not a bidding war for him, there was nothing. They, they are paying a huge amount of money to let him play somewhere else, and this obviously ties into the Jefferson thing as well, because not only Vikings fans, but I'm sure Packer fans will listen and say, "Oh, come on, of course he's elite. And again, I believe he - I mean, he's young enough that I'm sure he'll have a bounce back this year in a better situation. My point is things change in the NFL, and we don't change with it fast enough. The Pat Mahomes thing, the Justin Jefferson thing, things change rapidly, and we constantly.. but this is where free agency gets stupid, because people will hear big names and go, 'Oh, you gotta get him. Not realizing he hasn't been a thing in three, four years. This is also why I don't think Pooka gets his proper due, because I mean, we know Pook is good, but I mean, you know, he's not Jocelyn Jefferson, bro. Come on, stop it. The torch has been passed, and Puka is what Justin Jefferson never was. And this is with all due full respect to Jefferson, who I have been. If you're a Vikings fan and you've been listening a while, you need to acknowledge I have been very flattering to Jefferson. In fact, when I talk about top receivers, he's always my go-to, and I believe he can get back to like a 90 grade this year. It's entirely possible, but I think he's going to try to fight to get back into top five. At a minimum, I would guess he gets back to top 10, but it's also possible that his reign is over, and he is just a good receiver, not a great receiver. And as Packer fans, I need you to understand a couple things. When I try to get people to understand the gap in understanding here, in other words, we put Justin Jefferson on God tier, and Watson is good, but he hasn't really. Reach that level, like he's a solid guy. We need a number one. Watson was above him, better than him, higher category. And the fact that he was 11th to be a top 10 receiver is incredible. It is, there are so many elite receivers, it is hard to crack the top 10. He was 11th, Justin Jefferson was 17th. The inability for Packer fans to grasp this, I think, fully, and I say this partially to myself, because it's, it's, it feels impossible, but we don't fully appreciate how good Watson was this past year, not, and this isn't even necessarily AC, he's been good this whole time. Like I said, he had a breakout, he came back from injury and was like, holy, the same same with Tucker, except it's the opposite with Tucker. Everybody always thought Tucker was great, and I was like, you guys are overrating Tucker. And then he became the beast that everybody said he always was. Now I think he's still overrated, where people say he's the number one tight end. I think he could be, and he's in a conversation with a pile of tight ends, including two others in our own division, Colston Loveland and Sam La Porta, but I'm not, I'm not really interested in fighting that battle, because he's a very good tight end, and you know, if he ends up being the fifth best instead of the number one, I'm, you know, whatever. Fine. Just call him the best. I don't, I don't really care. It's not worth fighting over, but there is a severe lack of understanding how good Christian Watson was in the limited time that we saw him. By the way, he came back healthy and just played, so we might have a top 10 receiver all year if he can stay healthy, not to mention hopefully a breakout gold, and not to mention Tucker Kraft continuing to ascend, hopefully, or at least maintaining his position that he was at last year. You want to talk about top three receiving duo, or a group, or whatever? I don't know that the Packers crack that, but boy, do they have a good one. They're at least fighting in a very tough division to be the best receiving group in the NFC North, which is again going to be very difficult when you have Aman Rah Saint Brown and Sam La Porta. We're going to have to rely on depth, which the Bears also have, so they're also going to be better than the Bears. So, in order to be the best in the division, you have to be very good and very deep, and that's not going to be easy to do, but this is a to go off and complete my tangent that has nothing to do with the original topic. This is a very good and underrated group of receivers. I think this is a very good take here too. I think his name is Jud. I'm not sure, but this is this is this is essentially, I think they do a very good job of putting things in their proper context, the way that I try to do, and to try to step back and be like, okay, let's, let's be calm, and let's think about this. He highlights specifically, sort of the fan problem here,
because it's funny when you're, when you know a guy and he was a big name player, and he gets signed by the team that you cover a lot of times, you, you go in thinking that the highlights that you've seen are him, or what you've heard is him, and then you find out it's different.
Exactly right, exactly right. And that could be positive or negative, right. This is why the Kyler Murray thing is probably so polarizing, because if you're a Vikings fan, you think highlights, and if you're a Packers fan, you think Call of Duty, right? Do you think the guy's a freaking bum and a lazy in and wait a minute? I don't know how Call of Duty works, but don't they have certain, like, releases or whatever? We gotta, I want to see something long-running NFL meme that Kyler Murray tends to play worse after a new Call of Duty game comes out, or during a big Call of Duty event like Double XP weekends. Hold on, wait for it. So, probably not September. When is our next game? Oh no, is it late? Oh, november 15. Yeah, that might. So, we might have missed it. According to this, mid October is the highest risk period for a new Call of Duty drop. There's also there are weekends for double XP. This is so funny that we're going to be able to make fun of them for this, but apparently they don't announce that until a few days or like a week until presumably the Thanksgiving period is when they're going to be having some kind of events, and we play the Vikings november 15, so probably too early. Dang it, when do the.. what does the Vikings get? Who's.. who's.. I hope it's not the Bears. So mid October they've got the Saints, which would be hilarious if they dropped that one, possibly the Colts. That's kind of late October, and then you've got the Thanksgiving time, which would be roughly ers, Falcons. Yeah. Oh, well, we'll have fun with it. I think we can maybe end on this. No, this is a very long video, and there's plenty of other Kyler stuff, but just again, just trying to get a general vibe on this one other thing that was. Mentioned as a person that called in or wrote into their show and talked about the potential problems with a, as the writer put it, a Kevin Hart-sized quarterback playing in cold weather. Now that's a very good point, obviously it is a dome team, but they have to play two games in, well, I guess one in Green Bay, which I think is, uh, when is that? Yeah, the first one is there, so that actually works in our, then, yeah, the november 15, so that that works massively in our favor. Let me take a peek at their schedule here. So, when is it going to start getting cold, probably not till October. Warm weather, warm weather, pretty much everybody's a freaking dome now. Lions are a dome, Buffalo, but that's at home. Yeah, so I mean, they don't play a cold weather game, I think until november 15 against the Packers. They play the Patriots in New England december 10. I'm trying to remember who has a dome and who doesn't, Patriots, I don't believe do they play the Jets january 3, so I think those are their only cold weather games, but still worth mentioning, and obviously by virtue of how cold weather works, these are all later in the season, so if you have an injury-prone smaller quarterback that has already taken his lumps, now has to start playing in cold weather games. You could see a situation where the Minnesota Vikings possibly get off to a hot start, but similar to what you see with older quarterbacks, they start to diminish toward the end of the season. This is why, by the way, Green Bay always talks about how they like to get bigger guys, and they've always kind of liked getting bigger guys, in part just as a general NFL theory, but also because of the cold weather situation, and even if you think you're not a cold weather team because you have a dome, you still have to travel, you're still gonna have to play in it, and theoretically, and hopefully you're going to struggle to get through the later portion of the season and stay resilient as it starts getting colder, so hopefully that does end up being a bit of a hindrance. All right, so here's the plan, tentatively moving forward. I'm going to do some general due diligence today to see if Lions fans are hyping up golf. I'm guessing there has to be some. On one hand, you've got like the I think if you, if you just had a room full of Lions fans, they're probably not hyping up Goff a ton. They feel like he's maybe kind of holding them back or something. I don't know, but if you were to have an NFC North discussion about Jordan Love and Caleb and who's the best quarterback, I'm guessing you'd see plenty of Lions fans come out and say, give me a frickin' break, it's golf, and that's all I need, that's all I need to go off of. So I will see if I can find some of that. We will discuss that quarterback situation and how they feel about him, and then that will.. what the heck was the word for Flino? I don't remember something Italian and Effie. We'll do our breakdown of my thoughts again, kind of like I've done before, in terms of I don't want to go in, find where Jordan is the best, pretend that those are the best stats, and then say, ha ha, we win. I want to start with the stats and then go find them and then rank them accordingly. Start from a standpoint of, here's what I think makes you kind of like what Colin Coward did, but he did it like an idiot. Start with your criteria, and then go look at the quarterbacks. But I'm going to leave it at that for today. I will talk to you all later.