Friday Mailbag: Hot seats and scoring after turnovers

It may be a holiday weekend but Vikings fans' questions never stop

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Friday everyone! Hope you have an enjoyable holiday weekend.

Purple Insider will be taking the week of July 4th (mostly) off, so don’t panic if you don’t see a newsletter on some days. When we return, it’ll be the beginning of previewing the start of training camp and then we’re off and running. Almost there folks, almost there…

Anyway, let’s get into your questions.

@SKOLkid90 Multi-question: 1. If not this year, do you think Zimmer gets a job in the NFL next year? 2. If yes, which position and team? 3. Who is higher on his revenge game list, the Vikings or whichever team Spielman finds a job with?

1 — I do think that Zimmer returns to the NFL. Even if he ends up being a senior defensive assistant, it would be pretty stunning for Zimmer to be completely left out in the cold when much worse head coaches ended up getting gigs again i.e. Freddie Kitchens/Joe Judge.

2 — Whether his revenge game is against the Vikings depends on if Kirk Cousins is the quarterback. Not only because of their very uncomfortable relationship over the last few years but the fact that signing Cousins ultimately led to his downfall. Spending that much at QB simultaneously made it harder to keep his defense together and raised the bar for how much they were expected to win. But I do think things got pretty messy between Zimmer and Spielman at the end, so he might have that one just as high on his revenge game list.

@benchwarmerjim Todd Bouman once won NFC Offensive Player of the Week. Dont know why thats stuck with me for 20 years but it has. Any other random backup QB pop in your head that won OPotW?

I can’t say I’ve ever paid attention to the player of the week winners unless it was on Madden and I was looking for my players to get their due. But I did a little research just for you and here’s my favorites since 2000:

— Ryan Fitzpatrick won it five times

— Trevor Siemian in Week 3 of 2016

— Cleo Lemon in Week 15 of 2007

— Kyle Boller, Week 14 of 2004

— Anthony Wright, Week 12 of 2003

— Tommy Maddox, Week 1 of 2003

— Vinny Testaverde and Jon Kitna went back-to-back in Weeks 15 and 16 of 2001

— Tony Banks and Elvis Grbac in Week 2 and Week 3 of 2000

We are blessed to live in a world where Cleo Lemon can get player of the week in between weeks where Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger won it.

@HotHouseHusband You can push salary down the road with void years but can you move any forward to avoid a players cap hit in the future? If your team is $5M under can you pay your QB or whoever extra to lessen their impact in the future? Also does excess cap space roll over?

The only way to move cap space up would be to renegotiate the deal. It’s hard to find a spot where that would be possible because there has to be a benefit to the player in the form of more money or more security. It’s a lot easier to fiddle with a current contract and turn base salary into roster bonus than it is to rip the whole thing up. When a team does an extension, they could make the higher cap hit years earlier, that’s just not generally beneficial because (almost) everybody wants to win now.

Yes, you can roll over cap space. Teams end up with an “adjusted” cap.

@J_D_Cameron What is the football equivalent of Emilio Págan blowing 4 saves in a week, against a division rival, in games the Twins had at least an 85% chance of winning?

If every NFL game is worth 10 baseball games, that’s like missing four chip shot field goals in a row. These games shouldn’t ruin the season for the Twins in the same way that missing easy field goals doesn’t have to cause a loss but you might get to the end and look back and go… oof.

@headcoach21 Which head coach you think is most likely to get fired in season this year??

Matt Rhule has to be a pretty heavy favorite. Mike McCarthy also has a chance if Dallas opens the season horribly. It looks like they really want to give Dan Quinn or Kellen Moore that job. Aside from those guys, it seems like we just had a huge clearing of a bunch of guys who were on the hot seat.

@kyriakos_tj I'd like to hear your thoughts on the potential backlash of a shorter 6-8 game suspension for Deshaun Watson. I feel a reckoning coming in terms of NFL player punishment. How do you feel about the Vikings being on the Watson list for however brief it may have been?

It’s certainly interesting that the NFL put it out there that they want Watson suspended for at least a year. Maybe they did that so if the ruling from the judge ends up being shorter they can always say, “Well, we tried!” I suppose you could argue that he’s had time served by already missing all of last season but I don’t think that will be satisfactory in the public eye, especially after Trevor Bauer was booted for two years by MLB. I’m not sure it will change how suspensions are dolled out because this is a very unique situation.

I don’t know to what degree the Vikings were “in” on the idea of Watson but they should be thrilled that he didn’t want to become a Viking. You could argue that after the suspension the Browns will still come out strong because they still get a great quarterback but they also have an insanely expensive QB who might also be a ticking timebomb for the future. No thanks. It was a bad idea to even inquire.

@alrmpls If you were a head coach, and by circumstances out of your control were forced to either start Kellen Mond, Kyle Sloter, or Bo Levi Mitchell at QB in a playoff game, who would you start?

Easy: Bo Levi Mitchell. It’s not unprecedented for a CFL quarterback to come into the NFL and play well. Mitchell has gone 84-22-2 in his Canadian career with two Gray Cup MVPs. I’ll take a veteran QB who has played in a ton of pro games and had a lot of success versus two guys who haven’t been able to sniff QB2 reps.

@JamesOw02568686 Is anyone going to give Sloter a shot?

Maybe he gets on somebody’s camp roster but he’s 28 years old. What’s the point? I’ve never seen someone this irrelevant be talked about so much by a fan base.

@asiddiqui15 Bubby Brister

Yeah man. My favorite Bubby Brister moment is when he had to step in for a handful of games with John Elway out in 1998 and there’s a Monday Night Football game where they’re playing Kansas City and Bubby takes off and runs for a 38-yard touchdown. It was magical. He went 4-0 that year and helped them get the No. 1 seed. What a legend.