Luke Braun | Locked On Vikings Host; Vikings Insider

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That's betterhelp.com slash positive. Luke Braun has the Locked on Vikings Podcast. He's joining us now from LA. It's the beauty of the off-season, right?

This was a Friday news dump, if you will, Luke. Dalvin Cook gets released. It took a couple weeks, so the timing is interesting, but whatever options there might have been, why did it result in the Vikings releasing Dalvin?

The answer is, I think, just economics and markets and all that stuff. Look, Dalvin Cook was slated to make $14 million in 2023. That was never going to happen. I don't think that the team intended to honor that when they signed him to the contract in 2020. It was either going to be a pay cut or a cut or a trade, and this was always going to be the off-season where we deal with it.

Then it comes down to what other parties wanted. Dalvin Cook was not willing to take a pay cut. That's totally fair. He was not willing to renegotiate his contract for a trade.

I think that was a Mike Florio report. Totally fair. He doesn't want to take less money.

He would rather take his chances on the open market. If somebody's going to trade for me, then trade for my contract as I negotiated it. You hear people tell players, well, they signed it. Why don't they have to? How are they supposed to hold out or ask for more money? I think it's the reverse of that, right?

I was told I was getting this money. Let's see if anybody's going to honor that. Nobody was going to honor that contract though. Then it becomes basically, can he work out a new deal with someone to trade or we're just going to have to cut you and good luck wherever you go? Many months ago, they got really close with the Miami Dolphins. That almost happened, but it ended up for one reason or another, didn't go through. Maybe that was just Alvin Cook not being able to, not being willing to agree to whatever contract the Dolphins needed him to agree to, to make that deal work.

Whatever. The Vikings basically just sat on their hands after that and said, hey, we'll wait for the post-June deadline to come around. In that world, the Dolphins will have a different financial situation because of a post-June cut that they made with Byron Jones. They get a big influx of cap space in June. They waited through that, but that also meant they waited until after the draft. Dolphins drafted as running back in the third round, so changes the whole thing. They said, well, we'll try to negotiate something.

Didn't get it, so now he's released. Looking at this from Dalvin's point of view, he's not 30 years old and really hasn't fallen off the map, though he has dealt with some injuries. What type of market do you think there could be if not the Dolphins? That's the bet that he made. The Dolphins, I think, maybe are still interested.

He has been as vocal as you can be. His trainer has gone on a podcast and said this. His agent has gone on shows and said this, that he wants to be a Miami Dolphin. He's from Miami. It's a hometown thing.

Love it. He wants to be a Miami Dolphin really bad. It's a matter of if the Dolphins are willing to pay him what he thinks he can get.

That's the bet that he made is that, yeah, I think I can do better pitting teams against each other. There's rumored interest from the Jets, rumored interest from the Bills, the Broncos. If I can pit all those teams against each other, maybe I can get a better deal than what I would have had to agree to if the Vikings were doing the negotiation trade-wise for me.

Now, by the way, none of these teams have to spend a draft pick, so maybe they'll be a little bit more willing to give me that. We've seen lots of players make that same bet and get burned. If you look at Jadevion Clowney making that bet, that has gotten burned a lot. Ezekiel Elliott is still out there. A lot of players make that same bet and then end up not getting the same contract that they thought they were getting.

You don't really get to know how it's going to work out until you're in there, so that is the gamble that he made, but I think there's a reason that the Dolphins are the odds-on favorite at every sports book. Last four seasons, over 1,100 yards rushing. This past year, eight touchdowns, but not that long ago, 19 and 20 had 13 and 16 touchdowns. Is he still a feature back, in your opinion?

Feature back, absolutely. I think the biggest thing with him is going to be the health of that shoulder, which he had a surgery to repair it. He has been dealing with a shoulder injury for three years, the same injury that has been bothering him, and he didn't get a surgery on it because he thought he would be able to rehab it all of those years, and then it always comes back. That made him finish runs differently. When he's fully healthy, he'll lower his shoulder, he'll get hit into people, he will push the run a little bit further trying to make a move, and he'll sort of attempt to thwart more tackles, but when he's hurt, he would just kind of go down, and he would just kind of say, here's my yards, I'm just going to sort of dive forward and take it.

He would play a lot more conservatively, and there's an argument to be made for that. You know, you maybe fumble less, bad things can happen, fighting for yards too much and stuff, but ultimately I think it really, really hurt his production playing that way, but if he's had that surgery and that's truly, that problem is truly in the past now, which he insists that it is, but of course time will tell, then I think you can get somebody that's still got plenty in the tank, but I think it really depends on health. The injury thing is going to be the biggest thing, I think, making teams a little bit nervous about guaranteeing this dude, you know, eight figure sums of money. It's After Hours here on CBS Sports Radio, and surprise, it's mid-June, we're talking about another big move in football, Minnesota Vikings releasing Dalvin Cook, who's been their feature back for years, has spent all of his time in the NFL with the Vikings organization, and we're excited about Luke Braun with the Locked on Vikings podcast, our Vikings insider.

Where do they find that same production? How comfortable are they with Alexander Madison? Madison's the guy, they're going with him for sure. I think that their running back room does need an extra body for camp. I think they only have four guys under contract and then a couple of pullbacks, but I think they need at least one more guy just for camp. That might be an undrafted rookie or somebody from, you know, a mini camp or a workout they had, or maybe they are actually going to pick up somebody that will seriously inject more competition, but they're going to go with Alexander, I've been saying Alexander Madison and the Madisonettes. It's going to be Madison probably 60 percent of the time has been the guess I've been saying. That is more a guess than anything, but it will be Alexander Madison's three down running back. And then in certain situations, you'll have Kenny Wong Wu at Iowa State, who's our kick returner mostly.

He might get some. Ty Chandler, they're really excited about him as possibly like a compliment. They just drafted Dewayne McBride out of UAB in the seventh round. And those guys will kind of fight for the remaining scraps in camp. They're all in a big giant camp competition for who gets to be running back two or three.

If you're in a really deep dynasty league, you know, maybe bet on whichever one you whichever guy you think is going to win that battle. But it's going to be the Alexander Madison show. I wouldn't be surprised to see another name end up in there, but they're but but I don't think they're going to be looking, you know, I wouldn't expect to hear Vikings calling on Ezekiel Elliott or anything like that. In Kevin O'Connell's first season, the Vikings had a ton of success offensively. Of course, the passing attack flourishes with some of the young receivers. How much of an emphasis do you think Kevin O'Connell wants on the running backs and the rushing attack?

I'll say this. He wants to fix it because it was kind of broken last year. It was very one note. It was very bland and samey. The Vikings ran a lot of this Sean McVay 2018 style. We just ran a lot of outside zone and a couple of variants on outside zone. But it was a very non-diverse running game. And, you know, kind of complementing zone with duo run. And defense has figured that out.

And the Vikings kind of didn't care. They just said, yeah, we're just going to kind of keep calling it as much as we have to to set up our play action plays, but we're a passing team. But this year, he wants to have the run game actually work for him a little bit and not be something that you just kind of throw away a down because you got to get that on tape so that you can set up the play action for the third quarter, but rather have it be an actual productive part of the offense. So I think the emphasis is going to be not necessarily with the running backs. Alexander Madison can, you know, do what they need him to do, but more with, they signed Josh Oliver, who some would argue is the best blocking tight end in the entire league. They, they extended CJ Ham. So they bought even further into the idea of having a fullback on the roster.

Those guys are, I think going to be, and they hint at the schematic stuff. I think the Vikings are going to switch to, which is more stealing stuff out of the Kyle Shanahan side of that playbook. Like look at what the Miami dolphins did, Mike McDaniel kind of that stuff, a lot more lead blocking, a lot more running zone to the strong side rather than the weak side and get more guys involved or blockers create a little bit more of a push, I think, and have more answers to questions versus, you know, when you run a outside zone side, which means there's no extra blockers out there. It's kind of, Hey, if the linebacker can read this play, he gets to make the tackle.

Now it makes it a little bit harder for defenders to do that thing. And we've seen, you know, Kyle Shanahan worked that really well. We saw that work really, really well with the dolphins, with, you know, Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson and all those guys. Let's see if we can do something similar with Madison and the Madisonettes. What stands out from the practices that the Vikings have held to this point, even though we're still pretty early in that process?

I'll give you a couple of things. One is that Ty Chandler and Kenny Wong Wu are splitting second team reps. So they're in a true, true competition. Dwayne McBride is still dealing with hamstring injury, so we don't know where he slots in there yet, but we have Alexander Madison number one, and then we've got the other two guys sort of in a, in a true competition.

We don't know who's second team, who's third team yet. And then the other thing, and the Vikings probably don't want a lot of people talking about this, but I don't know, I'll say it. They have, there, there's a clip that I saw that was just them sort of practicing motions of CJ Ham lined up in like where you would put a tight end and motioning across, which looks like a play that I know as Zorro or an outside strong like lead zone thing, which essentially confirms the Kevin O'Connell wants to be like Shanahan more kind of thing.

So I would, I would look for the shape of that to look a little bit more like Kyle Shanahan. That's probably too valuable of information that they probably don't want the media talking about, but hey, that's how it goes. Luke Braun is with us from the Locked On Vikings podcast, talking about this big move, which is Dalvin Cook getting released. Certainly room for growth in this off season, despite how the Vikings played last year in Kevin O'Connell's first season.

It's after hours here on CBS Sports Radio. By that, I mean, of course, Luke, they had a great regular season, did not capitalize, did not translate into the post season. What else have the Vikings done that's notable in terms of their roster for 2023? So the roster has gotten rid of a lot of the big pricey veterans. These are getting out of a lot of the contracts that Kwesi inherited when he got here in 2022. Eric Kendricks, Adam Thielen, now Dalvin Cook, trading Zadarius Smith away. That's one that Kwesi did last off season.

So it's a much different group of people. They have picked up Byron Murphy at cornerback. They drafted Makai Blackman. They get Louisine and Andrew Booth back from injury. Those are a couple of second year guys that I know the team is really excited about. We have seen basically nothing from them and they're not even practicing on the first team right now. So we'll see how much of that is bluster, but it's going to be a very different group of people.

It's a much younger group of people. I don't know if that means better, but I think the biggest thing defensively is hiring Brian Flores. The Ed Donatell disaster, Ed Donnachelle as some people call him, the disaster against New York ends up getting Daniel Jones a big extension because it made him look so good, got Ed Donnachelle fired. And essentially, not only did it get rid of Donnachelle, but it moved the Vikings off of that scheme and onto an entirely different defensive scheme. Now they've got Brian Flores, blitz heavy, going to look like one of the old Patriots defenses. A totally different approach to defense, way more aggressive, totally different everything. So the defensive woes of 2022 were not lost on the Vikings.

They're changing a lot schematically. And also at the same time, trying to get out from under some of those albatross contracts that Rick Steelman left behind when he got fired after 2021. And Brian Flores is about toughness. He's about mental toughness.

He doesn't mind being the bad cop, so to speak, if he needs to. Remember when he took over for the Miami Dolphins, he was okay with the entire locker room hating him while he was making moves here and there and trading away pieces and essentially doing what management wanted him to do. But if anyone could bring a toughness and that kind of mental focus and discipline to a defense, it's Brian Flores.

And that's the hope. A lot of the problems with the Vikings defense in 2022, in my opinion, were more mental than physical. You know, wasn't guys being slow or guys not having the right athleticism. It was they had so much stuff to read before they could do anything. They had to look at the quarterback, look at the route concept back to the quarterback. What's where am I?

Now I'm doing my zone drop. And by the time they were actually able to break on anything, you know, the receiver had finished his route. It was just too much stuff for them to try to think about. And they were all new to thinking about it. So I wonder, you know, in an alternate universe where the Vikings decide to run Ed Donatell back and give him another chance, I wonder how good a year two would be.

But now that's all boot. Now it's all man coverage, mano y mano. Can our guys cover? And I think the concern there is that we've got a whole bunch of unknown cornerbacks and Byron Murphy, and we're about to ask them all to go one on one.

So we'll see what happens there. But hey, if you just kind of blitz every down some guys, especially young quarterbacks in the division that aren't as used to it feels love, you know, Jared Goff has had his issues with the blitz. You kind of hope that you just blitz every play and guys fall apart and you don't have to cover. Are you impressed that I've gotten to this point, the conversation had have not really technically asked a question about Kirk Cousins.

I'm kind of proud of myself. The quarterback doesn't even take center stage in this conversation. But how is our friend Kirk Cousins?

Doing fine. There is a really interesting ongoing contract thing with Kirk Cousins, kind of always. But right now he's had his contract restructured to make some extra space going into the 2023 league year so that they could get under the cap for that they did that in March. And I think the idea was to go into the draft and try to get a quarterback and they tried I think more than than the public knows, they tried to get up into the top five from pick 23. They tried to go up really, really, really high, it would have been like a crazy, crazy trade. And it got closer than you might think. But ultimately, the Texans ended up trading up with Arizona.

And that was kind of the end of that. And then they didn't have any quarterbacks left that they liked. So now they're with Kirk Cousins, again, for kind of the foreseeable future.

My guess is we do the same we do the same thing in 2024. We'll see how this year goes, where we're picking how hard it is to get up. But what that might mean is that in the meantime, Kirk Cousins, who does not like playing on contract years, he says in the media that he's used to it, but he's very highly motivated not to and he's going to be really into the idea of an extension with that extra security. But we'll see if the Vikings want to give him as much security as possible. I think there is a pretty difficult negotiation there. I think there's some space between the two sides in terms of how much money to actually guarantee. But I wouldn't be super shocked to see them find some kind of middle ground on a one year sort of bandaid extension, or something that's kind of a, you know, a two year deal, but it's tradable or something like that, that that gives Kirk Cousins the money that he wants, but gives the Vikings flexibility. If there's a solution there, both sides are definitely motivated to find it.

There is not necessarily a solution, but there could be, and if there is, they'll get there. So see, always with Kirk Cousins, there's always something to do with the contract, it feels like. Luke brought us with us on After Hours, CBS Sports Radio. Before I let you go, Vikings did win the NFC North going away last season. Four games was their ultimate lead when the dust settled. Though the Lions came on strong, the Packers have obviously gone through a major change in trading away their franchise QB, the Bears, at least they've been busy. We'll see if the moves fall into place.

A lot of people seem to like what they've done. How do you see the NFC North now after a few months of wheeling and dealing? You know, you know how every year there's that division that puts like an eight win team into the playoffs? It was Tampa last year, you know, every once in a while the NFC East a lot, that four seed that ends up having to play a really good team and really people go, man, we should probably receive the play.

I feel like we're going to be that division. There are so many reasons for all four of these teams to fall flat on their face. You know, if Jordan Love isn't the second coming, the Packers are in trouble. The Bears I think are on a much, their eyes are on the future a lot more than their eyes are on the present right now. They've made some moves to be a little bit less embarrassing, but I think, I don't think that if you asked Ryan Polz, he would tell you that this is a complete thought yet. You know, I think they've still got building to do and they're doing that over a patient arc.

And then the Lions are the odds on favorite to win the division, but I think that there's still a lot that they have to prove. Can Jared Goff be a serious quarterback? There's a lot of young players, you know, are they going to take the steps forward in their second or third years that we all kind of assume that all these guys will take, guys like Jamison Williams, Aiden Hutchinson, Malcolm Rodriguez, all those guys, are they going to take the steps forward that we think? And as we've been talking about, you know, the Vikings have their fair share of questions as well. Who is covering receivers is a big one. You know, the offensive line is running back guy for guy and that was not always successful. So is that going to get better with continuity or are we going to have the same problems where, you know, Ezra Cleveland or Garrett Bradbury just has an awful game and it just holds the team hostage.

All of those things can really get in everybody's way. The division is truly wide open if anybody figures their crap out, but I don't know if I would bet on anybody figuring their crap out. Yeah, but somebody's got to win the division.

As you point out, eight wins could be good enough like it was for the NFC South. The good stuff, I know it's mid-June, but we always get excited talking about football. You can find Luke on Twitter at Luke Braun NFL. He's got the Locked on Vikings podcast and we always appreciate when he can jump on with us here on After Hours. You are the best. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Amy.

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