Ari Meirov, The 33rd Team NFL Reporter

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You won't want to take your bird dogs off. We promise you. Ari, appreciate the time as always. How you been?

I'm doing well Zach. You know we're here in the month of June. Usually it's supposed to be much quieter in the NFL but of course the NFL never sleeps and as you said there's a lot to talk about. Yeah when we start with DeAndre Hopkins, I'm a Patriot fan. I feel pretty confident that they're going to find a way to land him. I know he was at Foxboro today for his meeting and he was with Tennessee last week right, I think it was on Sunday.

What does your gut tell you on where DeAndre Hopkins is going to land? Yep, I mean it's probably the biggest, biggest name for agent out there right now. To have him on the market in June usually does not happen and you know he did meet with the Patriots today. It actually just concluded about an hour ago and it sounds like it went well.

I mean he posted on his Instagram a picture of himself with Matthew Judon. Of course he had some familiarity there with Bill O'Brien and people have wondered you know the ending in Houston was so sour. What makes Bill O'Brien possibly wanting back? So clearly they possibly met today and talked it out and we'll see where that goes but for me you know things could definitely happen or he does sign very soon but at the same time a lot of teams you know front offices, coaches, players, this is now going to be their vacation time. You know people are going off right now and for Hopkins he doesn't have to sign right now.

There is really no urgency to do anything. It's not like he'll be on the field for for mini camp or anything. So if he wants to he could continue to take his time see if there are other teams who want him to visit once they get back to the facilities or something like that or he could wait you know for a potential injury to happen which happens every year at training camp. We see it all the time and we just saw one right now earlier this week with the Jets signing Adrian Amos who was on the market all season long. They had Chuck Clark suffer a serious injury and all of a sudden Amos finds a team who was willing to pay him a one-year four million dollar contract which he was not getting up until now.

So he could take his time if he wants to but so far he has two teams that sound like they have some interest in him. Yeah it's interesting that you bring up the Jets because Robert Sala clearly flirted with Odell Beckham Jr. along with Joe Douglas. We all saw it at the league meetings but then when DeAndre Hopkins was made available the Jets were like okay we like our wide receiving room we're good I was surprised by that. Yeah I think that might have to do more with Aaron Rodgers. I mean I know Aaron Rodgers tried to say that there was no official quote-unquote wish list but there are players who he wanted to just at least look into and one of them was Odell Beckham Jr. the others were including Randall Cobb and Allen Lazard who did sign and they looked into Odell and I think they did have some interest in him but they definitely were not going to pay him the one year 15 million he got from Baltimore and it looks like on Aaron Rodgers wish list DeAndre Hopkins was not on that list and everyone knew he was available for trade all season long and on top of that Hopkins kind of made it clear in his I Am Athlete podcast that Rodgers isn't one of the quarterbacks he wants to play with so it sounds like both players kind of don't have that much interest in playing with each other.

Which is just bizarre because Rodgers is a great quarterback Hopkins a great wide receiver you would think they would be a perfect fit together. Yeah I mean you know for especially for Aaron where you are going to the Jets and it's a one or two year window you want to get as many weapons as possible and it sounds like he's fine with Lazard and Wilson and Hardeman and Cobb and all those guys they have right now they would have been okay adding Odell I'm sure as I mentioned before they weren't going to pay him that much for him to join that loaded group but Aaron we know his friends with Odell and we know that he's added some of his friends and I would just guess that he doesn't have much of a relationship with DeAndre and he realized the situation with the Jets right now they are fine in that receiver group and it's not a must to add someone like that to the room right now. And I'm just going to guess here Ari Mirov also Aaron Rodgers I know Hopkins was out first and then after that followed Dalvin Cook I think Dalvin Cook is going to wind up with the Jets that's what I've been predicting do you think that has a good shot of happening? I wouldn't rule it out I know a lot of people have been mentioning the Dolphins and the Bills and the Broncos I haven't seen much of the Jets talk out there but I definitely wouldn't rule out the Jets as a team that will have interest in all of this. I do know that Dalvin is looking to take his time he is looking to get a contract unlike some other players who would be getting contracts at this time of the year so he does have two million that's already fully guaranteed from getting released in Minnesota this year but that money offsets with whichever deal he will sign here and for agencies so I would imagine he wants to get paid at the very least five six maybe even seven million maybe even more whatever it is but he wants to get a legitimate contract but as you said I would not rule out the Jets and actually would not surprise me at all if they end up being at least a finalist in this in the running for Dalvin Cook.

Getting to Dalvin Cook's old team Ari Mirov does a great job for the 33rd team covering the NFL you can always follow him at my sports update. Minnesota was 13 and 4 last year in the regular season but they're not as good as what their record stated that they were and we kind of saw that in the postseason when they lost to the Giants no more Zadarius Smith no more Patrick Peterson now Dalvin Cook is out how do you kind of view the Vikings heading into the season? Yeah you know when last offseason when they hired a new GM Quesadilla Dofomento that was a very out of the box hire what I mean by that is that he wasn't really your traditional you know scout by trade GM hire this is a guy who you know used to work in Wall Street he's very into analytics and numbers and many people thought that they would change the way they operate and last offseason they really didn't they actually kept all those players around they even added more players like Zadarius Smith and Jordan Hicks and they went for it and as you said they were 13 and 4 they made the playoffs they won a lot of one score games but ended up losing in the first round to the Giants team at home in the playoffs this offseason we're finally seeing Quesey put his his vision for this team as you said they moved on from Cook moved on from Thielen moved on from Eric Hendricks those are three guys who are franchise cornerstones they traded Zadarius Smith they let a couple guys leave in for agency so he's now finally putting his own fingertips on this roster and the thing that came out yesterday also which was interesting is that Kirk Cousins will not be signing an extension here this offseason which means now he's slated to become a free agent next year so this is a team that in transition basically on the fly and you know I still wouldn't discount them as a good team going into the city they still have a lot of good players but they're finally moving off all those players that were there for so many years those core players who were there during the Rick Spielman era they're moving those guys out moving those guys out and we're finally seeing what Quesey wants to do with this roster I think next year is really the pivotal year where we finally really see the vision that he has when it comes to adding players to this roster who is the quarterback he's going to want and those type of things so the Vikings should still be a good team I don't really know how sustainable it is to win what was it eight or nine one score games doing it again this year so they're gonna have to find a way to you know separate themselves in some games or not have those teams come back and then the way they did last year but we're finally seeing a different Vikings team after all those years of having those players in the building when I hear all those things about the uncertainty with Kirk Cousins Dalvin Cook no longer there maybe some regression based off the the great record that they had last year I think it's imperative that they better get a deal done by week one with Justin Jefferson because Ari the last thing you want in in some uncertain times this season is at the end of the year him to be frustrated not want to be back with Minnesota no you're absolutely right there's probably two big extension that they have to get done this offseason one is Justin Jefferson who more than likely will become not just the highest paid why receiving the NFL but I would expect it to be by a wide margin right now it's Kyrie kill it says 30 million dollars per year but really has 25 million per year when you look at the real numbers I would not be shocked that Justin Jefferson is unique to get a true 30 plus million dollars per year on his new contract and the Vikings have to figure out a way to make sure they lock him up for the long term before there will be some more significant change in that franchise and the other one is TJ Hawkins who they traded for last season from Detroit he is also in the final year of his contract to give up the second round picking that trade he was very very productive for them in that offense and he might be aiming to become one of the highest paid tight ends in the NFL so they have two big deals to get done now I'm pretty sure those two guys are part of the future they're for Kwajale-Doflomensa and for Kevin O'Connell but those are two big deals very complex deals and they could potentially both be market resetting deals so those are two things that will be priority here once um you know they get back into some negotiating care after they get back from some vacation. I think one of the more fascinating questions right now in the NFC we know Philadelphia is the best team and the 49ers are number two if you had to pick a third team in the NFC who do you think right now on paper is the third best team in the NFC? Who'd you say was number two says Philadelphia and who? The 49ers.

Yeah I would probably agree with San Francisco that even though really nobody knows what their quarterback situation is right now um it's it's such a difficult one to say um let me think of here like I want to say Dallas but they've let they've kind of let us down so much in the past where it's like I don't really know if it's them um you know what let me go with um another team in the NFC West I mean Seattle has I think shocked everyone last year with what they did and it was pretty cool of them you know there was so much talk during the draft about you know what yeah we signed Geno Smith but that contract even though it was reported as a three-year 105 million dollar deal really it's a one-year deal to get out of it if he doesn't play well well they didn't draft any quarterbacks and they give even more help where they add Jackson Smith and Jacoba they add Devin Witherspoon um at the fifth overall pick um added some more players there in the draft as well I mean they really surprised everyone last year and it sounds like you know this is a roster that only got better this offseason I mean one of the things that was um a big problem for them down the stretch was the interior defensive line they signed Raymon Jones in for inches so they've had a lot of talent and I know some people are still not fully maybe sold on Geno Smith but he pretty much did it all year last year and again they he behaved Jackson Smith and Jacoba as well now along with Tyler Lockett along with DK Metcalf Kenneth Walker was second offensive rookie of the year voting even another running back in the second round as well because you know how much Pete Carroll loves to run the ball so I think Seattle people should start giving them a little bit more respect especially in the NFC like you mentioned which is really wide open after you know Philadelphia and San Francisco yeah that was my answer last one for Ari Mirov right now how did you react to everything that transpired this past week with the the Buffalo Bills and Stefan Diggs yeah I mean I really didn't want to overreact but when a head coach who like Sean McDermott who is so measured at the podium usually really doesn't tip his hand at all comes out and says he was very concerned like that raises your eyebrows right so it was a bit odd to see that I'm not fully sold and everything is fully good right now and it's all resolved because a we've seen Stefan Diggs do this in the past but the reality is there is no way of like getting out of that contract this really gets mayhem they they restructured his contract in March he's under contract no matter what you really can treat it because the amount of dead money that would hit would be way too much and extreme especially for their cap so he's gonna be there this year but Josh Allen kind of tipped his hand and said it's a communication problem they gotta do better there so knowing Buffalo and their front office and their coaching staff and how great they've been over the years I'm sure they'll figure it out but this is a player who you really have to make sure it doesn't spill over because whenever it does like it did in Minnesota we have Rick Spielman here on our team at 30-13 like whenever it spills over it's difficult potentially to control them so um they're gonna have to make sure they keep that um keep that keep that in house and make sure it doesn't spoil over the way it did right now but um it sounds like they've done a little bit of a better job of controlling it and hopefully it stays that way come training because if it doesn't um it can get a bit noisy Buffalo. They pump out a lot of great content on the 33rd team just did see a conversation they had with Bill Belichick make sure you check them out at the 33rd team fb and also make sure you follow at my sports update for all the latest on the NFL with Ari Mirov. Ari appreciate the time as always. Thank you. Anytime, Zach. Thank you.