Great answers from both of you the one totally agree 100% is moving Hunter to the highest bidder if he still wants to be the highest paid and would move on from Barr if he won't restructure
Re: Cleveland, isn't the most likely thing that they had him playing LG so that, a la O'Neill, he could take over the starting spot once he was ready? Maybe it's game 5, maybe in a year with no camp/offseason it's game 10. But it would be acute coaching negligence for the long-term plan to be he's the LT, but he takes no practice reps there in his first year. Zack Martin was a college LT, too. It clearly wasn't the Cowboys's plan to play him there in the NFL, and I haven't seen a single comment from coaches/front office that Cleveland is going to play LT.
My absolute favorite line in this treasure trove of answers was Matthew's response regarding Sharmar Stephen, "Nobody in the NFL is going to value him as much as the Vikings do."
Interesting questions and answers! And now the releases are popping in the NFL! KC releases their tackles???? Wonder how that will impact Reiff's value?
I enjoyed, as always, your podcast with Sirles but request some term clarification on his OL characterizations. What does phone booth, Winnebago, RV and mauler mean? I assume the latter means an OL monster who easily puts the DL werewolf war daddies on their keisters. Also, when he refers to schemes he uses the terms zone, speed, downhill and power?
it shows you that football players DO talk like that hahahaa. Phone booth means a player who's really good in tight spaces. That's somebody who's usually an interior offensive lineman with quick hands and feet. A mauler is Riley Reiff. Big strong dude who just wrestles D-lineman with his strength and competitiveness. Winnebago is an inside joke because Jeremiah compared on an earlier podcast the LG position to his neighbor's ugly winnebago lol
Zone scheme is what they currently run, it's inside and outside zone blocking, usually requires really good work in space and movement skills. Downhill and power are both like running the I-formation with pulling guards and running up the gut
I am going to tattoo your response regarding Barr pass rushing more and generally being "worth it" right on my damn forehead because of how much I love it. I was nodding like Jack Nicholson from Anger Management when I read that. It has been weirdly difficult to have what I thought was a reasonable back-and-forth on Barr for the last few years, as I feel like there is one camp that says that Barr is completely replaceable and we should cut him as any average LB can do what he does, and there is another camp that says that he is invaluable to the Vikings and that we can't lose him, and I always feel like I am alone in an abandoned camp in the middle. My understanding is that he is both painfully overpaid but also uniquely valuable to the Vikings because his intelligence and athletic gifts have let Zimmer had him handle an oversized set of duties (e.g., an oversized portion of the field) while other players can handle relatively smaller sets of duties (e.g., relatively smaller portions of the field), such that all of those other players are more likely to succeed because Barr is always taking things off their plate that would be their responsibility if Barr were not there.
Now, is that worth an average of 16.2 mil the next three years? Sure isn't! Does that mean we should have Barr instead change his stripes at his age to do something else that is worth that money? Sure doesn't! But also the Vikings under Zimmer's scheme will not be better as a result of them trading Barr. And ALSO, given how dependent Barr's utility to the Vikings is on his freaky athletic gifts, we should be aware that Barr's utility will likely be regularly dropping over time now that he is in his late 20s.
Otherwise, my personal hope is that the Vikes will be starting a rookie that they draft at 14 at LT or RT (with O'Neill at the other spot) and having a competition between 3 or 4 cheap vets and a mid-round draft pick for LG (similar to what Sirles suggested on your podcast), because the draft is strong on tackles, the draft is middling or below average on IOL, because they used Cleveland at guard from the very first last year, and because Bradbury's play has seemed to suggest that he does not play well independently but needs some solid and consistent play next to him. If we get two absolutely brand new guys for both guard positions next year it is hard to shake the feeling that our IOL is going to be a sieve even if Cleveland and O'Neill both play amazing at the tackle positions. Obviously if we start a rookie at LT or RT that means that we will probably have a lot of low-lights there because we will be having a player learn on the job at a high-stakes position that they have never played before in the NFL, but then that is the same story with Cleveland, particularly if they ask Cleveland to switch (back) to the left side. Granted, this take is based at least as much on emotion as it is on logic, but still I would rather they just give players a chance to just settle in on a position in which they have flashed (e.g., O'Neill at RT, Cleveland to a lesser degree at RG) rather than have both O'Neill and Cleveland change positions (especially after watching this song and dance fail so many times previously with the Vikings).
Great points. Only overpaid if they can't afford him, right? If we figure that it takes a mix of good and great players to create a top defense, maybe Barr is closer to good than great but he's way better than mediocre or bad so that means you want to keep him. If they had cap space, 100 out of 100 people would keep him. That whole "overpaid" notion sometimes turns into an attack on what the player isn't perfect at doing. CANT PAY HIM IF HES ONLY THE 20TH BEST AT COVERING TIGHT ENDS... right but there's 60 linebackers in the league and another 20 of them can't cover a tight end to save their life. So is he worth it vs. the cap situation? Probably not. That doesn't mean he's not valuable.
I think your stance on the Hunter issue is the first one I’m on the other side of, Matthew. I just don’t see how Hunter can have any leverage coming off a neck injury and not playing football in over a year. Maybe once OTAs start or something and they see he’s fully healthy that could change. But right now I don’t know why they’d make a move before they see how healthy he is. Is it possible he plays out this year to prove he’s back to normal and then we revisit this next year? Or is that wishful thinking
Hunter hurt his neck and had surgery, he didn't lose a leg haha. He has the most sacks in history before the age of 26, one injury isn't going to seriously damage his value. He knows they are desperate to get him back and how many teams would be interested in a trade. I do not see it as possible that he plays it out to prove he's back with no guarantees left on his deal... that's your wishful thinking lol
Oh come on you know what I mean. I’m well aware how valuable he is and I agree with all of your points! All I’m saying is neck injuries aren’t anything that’s a for sure recovery from. We’ve seen that first hand with Mike Hughes, which is probably why I have this stance
Yep; after all, S. Floyd had "minor" knee surgery. Kalil was never the same guy after his rookie year. There are no guarantees for how someone comes back from injury.
An underrated point: the new CBA drastically increased the fines for holdouts *and* restricted the ability for teams to forgive them. Watson might hold out, but he has so much $ left to make and there is nothing comparable to the mess in Houston. Pass rushers can hang around, but they stop making real money in their early 30s. Hunter might hold out, but it seems unlikely, and it would be incredibly stupid to trade him when his value is at its nadir.
A) Floyd is a complete outlier. How many players have a minor knee injury end their career? Peterson had that same injury in 2016 and he’s still playing. B) How many players have a season missed in their young career and come back fine? All sorts of them. I’m not going to pretend to know what his surgery exactly entailed but I’d be shocked if anyone in the NFL was suddenly afraid to touch a 26 year old after a surgery they weren’t even sure he was going to have.
Also those CBA rules are not relevant with Hunter. He made $40M in cash over the last three years. He can handle fines. Those rules matter to guys looking for their first contracts. And again, what good does it do to let him set out? That helps nobody.
I don't have the CBA handy, but believe the fines are now more harsh for vets, too. Peterson is a horrible human being, but he's almost a Nolan Ryan-type outlier (given how SPs age vs how RBs age). Career-wrecking injuries are common in the NFL.
In any event, the key point here is nobody knows how Hunter's body will react to football again--even him, but especially other NFL teams and us. Trading anybody when their value is at its nadir is incredibly stupid. If Hunter can go in Sept and he picks up where he left off, while the Vikings underperform, by all means tempt a stupid/desperate GM to trade for him then. If it takes a handshake deal that he's gotta get back on the field and then he'll be traded or paid, fine. The risk that a non-QB misses a season in his 20s is low, especially given what happened to Bell.
The penalties are like 50k a day for missing camp, which Hunter can absolutely handle with his recent pay checks, especially knowing that a new deal is going to be on the way one way or another. He's got no incentive to come back without guaranteed money. We can guess until we're blue in the face about his injury but coming back without any guaranteed money would be insane.
What happened to Bell was a four-year, $52M deal with $35M guaranteed.
Great answers from both of you the one totally agree 100% is moving Hunter to the highest bidder if he still wants to be the highest paid and would move on from Barr if he won't restructure
Re: Cleveland, isn't the most likely thing that they had him playing LG so that, a la O'Neill, he could take over the starting spot once he was ready? Maybe it's game 5, maybe in a year with no camp/offseason it's game 10. But it would be acute coaching negligence for the long-term plan to be he's the LT, but he takes no practice reps there in his first year. Zack Martin was a college LT, too. It clearly wasn't the Cowboys's plan to play him there in the NFL, and I haven't seen a single comment from coaches/front office that Cleveland is going to play LT.
My absolute favorite line in this treasure trove of answers was Matthew's response regarding Sharmar Stephen, "Nobody in the NFL is going to value him as much as the Vikings do."
I laughed really hard at that.
I mean, they compared him to Tim Duncan once. No disrespect, he's a fine player in the right role but they really really love him
Interesting questions and answers! And now the releases are popping in the NFL! KC releases their tackles???? Wonder how that will impact Reiff's value?
I enjoyed, as always, your podcast with Sirles but request some term clarification on his OL characterizations. What does phone booth, Winnebago, RV and mauler mean? I assume the latter means an OL monster who easily puts the DL werewolf war daddies on their keisters. Also, when he refers to schemes he uses the terms zone, speed, downhill and power?
it shows you that football players DO talk like that hahahaa. Phone booth means a player who's really good in tight spaces. That's somebody who's usually an interior offensive lineman with quick hands and feet. A mauler is Riley Reiff. Big strong dude who just wrestles D-lineman with his strength and competitiveness. Winnebago is an inside joke because Jeremiah compared on an earlier podcast the LG position to his neighbor's ugly winnebago lol
Zone scheme is what they currently run, it's inside and outside zone blocking, usually requires really good work in space and movement skills. Downhill and power are both like running the I-formation with pulling guards and running up the gut
Thanks for listening to the show, as always!
I am going to tattoo your response regarding Barr pass rushing more and generally being "worth it" right on my damn forehead because of how much I love it. I was nodding like Jack Nicholson from Anger Management when I read that. It has been weirdly difficult to have what I thought was a reasonable back-and-forth on Barr for the last few years, as I feel like there is one camp that says that Barr is completely replaceable and we should cut him as any average LB can do what he does, and there is another camp that says that he is invaluable to the Vikings and that we can't lose him, and I always feel like I am alone in an abandoned camp in the middle. My understanding is that he is both painfully overpaid but also uniquely valuable to the Vikings because his intelligence and athletic gifts have let Zimmer had him handle an oversized set of duties (e.g., an oversized portion of the field) while other players can handle relatively smaller sets of duties (e.g., relatively smaller portions of the field), such that all of those other players are more likely to succeed because Barr is always taking things off their plate that would be their responsibility if Barr were not there.
Now, is that worth an average of 16.2 mil the next three years? Sure isn't! Does that mean we should have Barr instead change his stripes at his age to do something else that is worth that money? Sure doesn't! But also the Vikings under Zimmer's scheme will not be better as a result of them trading Barr. And ALSO, given how dependent Barr's utility to the Vikings is on his freaky athletic gifts, we should be aware that Barr's utility will likely be regularly dropping over time now that he is in his late 20s.
Otherwise, my personal hope is that the Vikes will be starting a rookie that they draft at 14 at LT or RT (with O'Neill at the other spot) and having a competition between 3 or 4 cheap vets and a mid-round draft pick for LG (similar to what Sirles suggested on your podcast), because the draft is strong on tackles, the draft is middling or below average on IOL, because they used Cleveland at guard from the very first last year, and because Bradbury's play has seemed to suggest that he does not play well independently but needs some solid and consistent play next to him. If we get two absolutely brand new guys for both guard positions next year it is hard to shake the feeling that our IOL is going to be a sieve even if Cleveland and O'Neill both play amazing at the tackle positions. Obviously if we start a rookie at LT or RT that means that we will probably have a lot of low-lights there because we will be having a player learn on the job at a high-stakes position that they have never played before in the NFL, but then that is the same story with Cleveland, particularly if they ask Cleveland to switch (back) to the left side. Granted, this take is based at least as much on emotion as it is on logic, but still I would rather they just give players a chance to just settle in on a position in which they have flashed (e.g., O'Neill at RT, Cleveland to a lesser degree at RG) rather than have both O'Neill and Cleveland change positions (especially after watching this song and dance fail so many times previously with the Vikings).
Great points. Only overpaid if they can't afford him, right? If we figure that it takes a mix of good and great players to create a top defense, maybe Barr is closer to good than great but he's way better than mediocre or bad so that means you want to keep him. If they had cap space, 100 out of 100 people would keep him. That whole "overpaid" notion sometimes turns into an attack on what the player isn't perfect at doing. CANT PAY HIM IF HES ONLY THE 20TH BEST AT COVERING TIGHT ENDS... right but there's 60 linebackers in the league and another 20 of them can't cover a tight end to save their life. So is he worth it vs. the cap situation? Probably not. That doesn't mean he's not valuable.
I think your stance on the Hunter issue is the first one I’m on the other side of, Matthew. I just don’t see how Hunter can have any leverage coming off a neck injury and not playing football in over a year. Maybe once OTAs start or something and they see he’s fully healthy that could change. But right now I don’t know why they’d make a move before they see how healthy he is. Is it possible he plays out this year to prove he’s back to normal and then we revisit this next year? Or is that wishful thinking
Hunter hurt his neck and had surgery, he didn't lose a leg haha. He has the most sacks in history before the age of 26, one injury isn't going to seriously damage his value. He knows they are desperate to get him back and how many teams would be interested in a trade. I do not see it as possible that he plays it out to prove he's back with no guarantees left on his deal... that's your wishful thinking lol
Oh come on you know what I mean. I’m well aware how valuable he is and I agree with all of your points! All I’m saying is neck injuries aren’t anything that’s a for sure recovery from. We’ve seen that first hand with Mike Hughes, which is probably why I have this stance
Yep; after all, S. Floyd had "minor" knee surgery. Kalil was never the same guy after his rookie year. There are no guarantees for how someone comes back from injury.
An underrated point: the new CBA drastically increased the fines for holdouts *and* restricted the ability for teams to forgive them. Watson might hold out, but he has so much $ left to make and there is nothing comparable to the mess in Houston. Pass rushers can hang around, but they stop making real money in their early 30s. Hunter might hold out, but it seems unlikely, and it would be incredibly stupid to trade him when his value is at its nadir.
A) Floyd is a complete outlier. How many players have a minor knee injury end their career? Peterson had that same injury in 2016 and he’s still playing. B) How many players have a season missed in their young career and come back fine? All sorts of them. I’m not going to pretend to know what his surgery exactly entailed but I’d be shocked if anyone in the NFL was suddenly afraid to touch a 26 year old after a surgery they weren’t even sure he was going to have.
Also those CBA rules are not relevant with Hunter. He made $40M in cash over the last three years. He can handle fines. Those rules matter to guys looking for their first contracts. And again, what good does it do to let him set out? That helps nobody.
I don't have the CBA handy, but believe the fines are now more harsh for vets, too. Peterson is a horrible human being, but he's almost a Nolan Ryan-type outlier (given how SPs age vs how RBs age). Career-wrecking injuries are common in the NFL.
In any event, the key point here is nobody knows how Hunter's body will react to football again--even him, but especially other NFL teams and us. Trading anybody when their value is at its nadir is incredibly stupid. If Hunter can go in Sept and he picks up where he left off, while the Vikings underperform, by all means tempt a stupid/desperate GM to trade for him then. If it takes a handshake deal that he's gotta get back on the field and then he'll be traded or paid, fine. The risk that a non-QB misses a season in his 20s is low, especially given what happened to Bell.
The penalties are like 50k a day for missing camp, which Hunter can absolutely handle with his recent pay checks, especially knowing that a new deal is going to be on the way one way or another. He's got no incentive to come back without guaranteed money. We can guess until we're blue in the face about his injury but coming back without any guaranteed money would be insane.
What happened to Bell was a four-year, $52M deal with $35M guaranteed.