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AutoTrader. Great. How you doing? I got no complaints. I know someone else who has no complaints is Justin Jefferson. Was there any doubt? We heard rumors over the past couple of weeks that they looked into drafting a Malik neighbors. Was there any doubt in your mind that they were going to ante up and give them the big bucks?
Well, first of all, the Malik neighbors rumors, that one confused me because it doesn't make any sense. I mean, logically, it doesn't make any sense. And for someone to come out anonymously and say, well, the Vikings were talking to the Giants and see if they can move up like, well, of course they were. I mean, they probably did their due diligence on a lot of teams to move up to see if they could get a quarterback just depending on how the draft is going to go. Now, with those conversations always necessarily about Justin, I never believed that for a second. So when I heard that, I'm like, that's just that's kind of dumb.
That's ridiculous. I don't see that happening. That being said, for every week that went by, I personally was getting a little nervous because I just, you know, Justin's been very quiet and very secretive about what his intentions are. The Vikings were saying all the right things in the case. It's our number one priority. We're going to get this done. But, you know, we all know that what teams say isn't isn't always true.
And it takes two to tango. So I was growing a little concerned. But I think in the end, when Justin, his agent looked at the wide receiver market, knowing that all these guys are probably going to sign deals, they probably want to see how everything shook out and see if it kind of fell the way they thought it was going to fall before they signed the deal. Without a shadow of a doubt, Ben Liebre is joining us, a Vikings analyst. When you look forward to who's going to be throwing him the ball, we know it's not going to be Kirk Cousins. What have you heard? What have you seen in regards to J.J. McCarthy?
How long do you think it's going to take before he kind of just moves Sam Darnold out the way? You know, I guess that's the big question. And right now, everything that I've heard is has been great. I mean, very positive. I think they his personality, his natural leadership, the way that he he has a gravitational pull to himself. I think that that sort of surprised even the people that that did talk to him and did, you know, go through the pre draft process. They were like, hey, we knew we thought we knew what he was.
And then he gets in here. And within that, the first few days of the rookie minicamp, everybody was blown away by by how quickly he assimilated with the new guys, how they all sort of gravitated towards him. He's got that magnetic personality. And J.R., you know more about this than anybody else as far as being in sports like it's you need those guys that have that that factor.
And it seems like J.J. has that factor. Now, is it going to translate physically on the field? Is he going to be a high, fast processor, you know, a faster processor than than what he did at Michigan into this NFL offense?
I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. But I think the Vikings are pretty comfortable with Sam Darnold right now. They know that he's got a big arm. They know that he can he can scramble and elude some pressure and escape a little bit more than Kirk Cousins.
It's just whether or not he can make the sound decisions and the snappy decisions that Kirk was great at. Ben, there's a lot of talk about the Vikings offense. They didn't do too shabby in the defense as well, picking up Dallas Turner, who a lot of people expected to be down here in Atlanta, picking up Bernard from from Houston. This team might be a little bit more well-rounded than I think people give them credit for.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, now the thing is, it's just how much better did we get compared to the rest of the division where it seems like the rest of the division has gotten a lot better. I mean, I argue to say that this might be the most competitive division in all of the NFL. I know a lot of that has to be played out, especially in Chicago.
But we know we're going to get out of Detroit. We saw that the way that the Packers finished the season and the way Jordan Love sort of finished the season and how he sort of figured things out. So, yeah, I'd like to think that the Vikings got better, but I don't know. I mean, we got to see how everybody else got better as well.
I will say this, that the defense, I think they got more athletic. And that is the one thing that they wanted to do as much as Daniel Hunter is a great player. He's very good against the run. We all know that he can get after the passer. I think that this is a level of position flexibility that he didn't have that I think that we're going to get out of Bernard, that we're going to get out of Van Genkel. Getting Cashman in there, a little bit more athletic at the linebacker spot. You add in what we already have in the stalwart that is Harrison Smith along with Josh Metellus. Now you've got a really formidable inside part of that defense that has a lot of position flexibility.
They can give you a ton of different looks. The other thing with Metellus last year is people were shocked at how we were able to use him in the defense and get really creative to give a lot of different looks. You had no idea who was blitzing. And you add in all the athleticism, like you said with Dallas Turner, and all of a sudden now guys can move inside, they can move outside, up and down the defensive line, give you a whole bunch of different looks. It is going to be chaos for these offenses to try to figure out what we're doing defensively. Ben Lieber is joining us, covers the Vikings, K-Fan amongst many other things out in Minneapolis. What is going to be the grace period for this season? What are the expectations from the fans just to see what happens and what takes place? Are people going to start looking at Kevin O'Connell or Quese and start going, what are we doing? Is this a, I don't want to say a lost season, is this a development season?
What is this? Well, they keep using the term competitive rebuild. And I think that for the first year and a half, I think everybody was like, well, what does that really look like? What is the plan? And not that they have to tell the public what the plan is, but I think this offseason to me really solidifies their vision and what they want it to look like. And I do think that we're going to be competitive, but yet again, we're still rebuilding. So it fits right into what their buzzword is that if they can get a little bit out of Darnold just to see, just to give McCarthy a little bit of time to get ready, not force him into that quarterback spot, let him just naturally mature.
Because remember, he's just turned 21 years old in January, so he's still a young pup. And TJ Hockinson is not going to be 100% ready. So that big weapon that we had at the tight end spot, he's not going to be ready for probably the first quarter of the season. So I don't know, I think that everybody around here is just, they're going to play the long game. It's about the long game. We want to be competitive, we want to be good, but we know if we win seven, eight games this year, I think people are fine with it as long as we're trending in the right direction.
So it's going to be patience. But of course, it's Vikings fans, of course, at the NFL. We drop a couple games early, people are going to get real irritated, real frustrated, but I just want to tell them to stay the course. Well, Ben, is any of the attitudes from the fan base going to change about Justin Jefferson if the quarterback doesn't work out? Knowing that you're paying a wideout $35 million, Addison is damn good as well, you know he's going to look for a payday in a season or two, and you're paying the wideouts, and if the QBs don't work, this could go down in flames, no? You know, maybe I can see that because he's highly dependent on the balance of this offense and about a quarterback getting him the ball in the right situation. The thing that I want to caution even myself with is that you don't have to force-feed Justin.
There are times when, yes, you want to go to your go-to guy in a gotta-have-it situation, give him the opportunity. If it's a 50-50 ball, we know that he's going to go up more times than not and make that play, but you've got Aaron Jones now. You've got a running back that I think that you can really trust in a three-down situation. Once you get Hawkinson back and you've got Addison out there, I really think that it is about ball distribution, being patient with the offense, everybody's going to eat. It's just, Justin's going to get his when he gets his, and I think that if we go into the season like, oh, all right, we've got $140 million invested in this guy, but we've got to run this whole offense around him? No, no, they've got to find more balance than what they had last year because we got really, really one-sided when it comes to the pass-run ratio. So, I think having Aaron Jones in there is going to bring that needle a little bit more back to middle, and by doing so, I think that you get more opportunities. You get more one-on-one opportunities where they don't bracket Justin and they don't put guys over the top of him. It's going to be really hard to cover all of these guys throughout the whole game if they find some balance. Yeah, maybe Aaron Jones will wake up and have another 20 touchdowns like a couple seasons ago.
I doubt it, but maybe, possibly. Hey, Ben, thank you so much for the time. Where can people follow all of your work out in the Twin Cities, man? Yeah, I appreciate it, Jar.
So, let's see, on the old X handle, this is at Nacho Lever and Instagram, it is Ben Lever official. That's it. Hey, listen, you got some good action. If things don't work out between Donald and McCarthy, can we get you back out there? Can we get you a QB? Can I get some of that quarterback money then?
Yes, absolutely. I can hand the ball off. Well, how much do you want to slide in at 40 like that? Do you want a 55 like Burrow? What do you want here? No, actually, I'll take 15, 20 per year.
I mean, it's not that much. Believe me, I'm a check-down guy. I'm a West Coast guy, so I might have to move the offense a little bit more towards my weak arm. Hey, I can dig it. Well, listen, Ben, I'll work on it for you. We'll catch you on down the line, okay? Alright, sounds good.
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