Vikings Shake-Up, Coaching Carousel Complete, and the Start of Super Bowl Week!

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1:06Welcome to the Ringer NFL Show. I'm your host, Shiel Kapadia. We are live here in San Francisco for the Super Bowl, but there's so much happening around the NFL. A shakeup in the Vikings front office. New coaches for the Vegas Raiders and the Arizona Cardinals. We're going to talk about all of it with my friend, Billy Gill, who is on the scene here with me. Let's take a break. We'll come back with Billy.

1:41All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show. Sheil Kapadi with Billy Gill in person. Look, I'm touching you. I mean, unbelievable. You can watch that on Netflix. Yeah, we are here in San Francisco and Philly. There's a lot of Super Bowl talk, obviously, but there's a lot of stuff going around the NFL. So we're going to get to all of it. The Vikings, the Raiders making a new hire. The Cardinals making a new hire. Did anyone notice? We'll talk about that. But first of all, how's your little Super Bowl taste going so far? Can I tell you something? Yeah. This is my favorite week of the year.

2:13Really? Really? Yeah. I'm wondering if it's the same for you because I think there's two trains of thought with the Super Bowl and like Super Bowl week, media week and all that. Is this like an exciting celebration of football or is this like a sad march to the death of the season where it's kind of depressing because after Sunday, there's no more games for months. It's not sad for me. I love the off season because I can't put myself in like Drake May's shoes, but I can put myself in like some John Schneider shoes, you know, and be like, oh, you know, what should he do this off season? Should you trade this guy?

2:48Should you sign this guy? So I love the off season, the trades, free agency, the rumors, the politicking inside the buildings, which we're going to get to. So not sad for me. You look like you're a little more sad maybe than I am. I'm sad. I'm sad. It's exciting while the week's going on. It's Monday. If we're going to be honest, Monday is like the slowest day of this week here. But like, there's already kind of like a buzz in the air. You're going to start seeing people coming, propositioning you to come on, you know, come on the show, promote some things. I have something that happened a little while ago before you got here.

3:19We were propositioned. So someone was walking around. His name was Ed. And he looked around. He saw the banner. He saw the ringer banner. And he said, that's Bill Simmons, right? And we're like, yeah. And then he's like, okay. I didn't have the heart to tell Ed Bill's not going to be here. But he was excited about that. And we thought like, okay, I wonder what Ed's here to sell. What's Ed pitching? What's going to go on here? And Ed gave us this flyer. Okay. What do we got? It's the Jim Ursa collection. He works for Christie's. So Ed is trying to let everybody know that Jim Ursa's private collection of memorabilia, both sports and music, will be up for auction March 13th to 17th.

3:58So if you want certain things like, you know, the saddle that Secretariat wore when he won the Kentucky Derby, you can have that. How much? Estimated$1.5 million to$3 million if you want that. If you want Kurt Cobain's Fender guitar, estimated 2.5 to$5 million. But this is what Ed's doing. He's walking around. He's telling everybody, hey, you know what, Mr. Ursae, Mr. Ursae, we talked about that earlier. That's right. Mr. Ursae passed away. Mr. Ursae's family is still running things over there in Indy. His daughter is kind of one of the stories of the NFL. Yes, absolutely. A woman of intrigue, I would say.

4:36Yeah, standing on the sidelines, wears the headset. Maybe we can find her this week. I don't know if she'll be here. I like that. Someone will be here on behalf of the Jim Ursa collection and Christie's. And Ed told us that if we wanted to, they have some of these items here in person that they could bring so that we could show the audience. Now, I don't know if we're going to get to that. This is one of those things where we tell Ed, you know what, Ed, thanks so much. We're going to run this by the host. We'll call you later, let you know how it's going. But I mean, what are the chances that you could get Al Pacino's annotated script from Scarface?

5:08Wow. I mean, that may be here. A Babe Ruth bat might be here. I mean, that's why there's so much security. That stuff is somewhere. That's probably what's going on. I would imagine. You know what I call this? What? The Netflix bump. Oh. You know, before we had the night, they weren't coming over here to show us guitars. And now that we got the Netflix bump, everyone wants a piece of you. See? I guess. You felt that, haven't you? All right. Can I point out to the audience something else real quick? Yeah. So, Shiel came, gives me a hug, says, hello. First time that we really interact in person. We've just been doing it online so far.

5:41and the first thing you say to me is, I didn't think you were this tall. Well, listen, that's what happens. You talk to people in these little boxes on your computer, then you meet them in person and I always thought we were the same height. You know, I'm about 5 '10". What are you, 6 '1"? About, yeah, about those parts, yeah. I usually lie down about my height. I think I'm one of the only people that lies and says that I'm shorter than I am. Okay, that's weird. Because I don't want people, like, I'm not 6 '2", but I'm a little more than 6 '1". So I'll say six one or I'll even say six feet because I don't want to get caught.

6:13I don't want like a Diego Pavia situation where you're saying I'm six feet tall and then you go and have to have some sort of official measurement. You're five nine. So I always lie down. So that if people ever follow up with my doctors or whatever, and they're like, let's look into like Billy's actual height. I didn't lie about being taller than I am. If anything, I just said I was shorter than I am. All right. I'm a weird guy. I like that though. Six two. And listen, we're in this place. People are measuring left to right. It's a lot of football guys. So they're probably sizing you up. Now, one guy who was not deemed to be a football guy in Minnesota, Billy, that's where we're starting the football talk today.

6:46Because this Minnesota Vikings story, I think is the juiciest story in the NFL right now. So Vikings fire GM, Kwesi Adolfa Mensah. And you don't get GM firings this time of year. Either you decide to do it like right when the season's over, during the season, or you wait until after the draft. But there's a lot of reporting about this. it feels like there was some infighting maybe in the building. The athletic Alec Lewis and Diana Rossini did a lot of reporting about this. It sounds like to me, maybe Kevin O 'Connell won a little power struggle where they're saying, all right, who are we actually handing the keys to the organization to?

7:24You've read up on the story, correct? In between your Jim Mercey collection. I mean, I'm kind of enthralled that you could get, look at this, this Beatles drum. You could get it. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff. Jim Mercey had quite the collection. Quite the collection. But you've been reading up on this. What is the most interesting aspect of this story, Teal? So there's the headline grabbing situation with paternity leave, right? That, yeah. I think we'll get to that in a moment. It seems as though this was destined to happen for a long time. And they thought maybe this would happen last year.

7:55And then they signed him to an extension just to kind of let him go this year. No one was ever on the same page with him is what the story makes it appear. And there was kind of even Brian Flores, before he signed his extension, he let his contract expire because he wasn't on the same page. It seemed like he wasn't on, you know, happy with the direction that the front office was going. But I think the most interesting thing, and you kind of mentioned it was the timing, is they had him go to Alabama for the Senior Bowl. And he was going and he was talking to agents of players whose contracts are expiring.

8:26And he was kind of going through all of the motions as though, which obviously he didn't have any clue that this was going to happen. but they let him go all the way out there, do all of this stuff for the draft, just to, as soon as he got back, let him know, hey, by the way, this is done here. Mobile, Alabama, is not easy to get to from Minneapolis or from anywhere, for that matter. It's the start of the off season, you know, for a lot of these teams that are out of it. So you're right. That's why it feels like something happened. Now, one thing that might have happened is Sam Darnold got to the Super Bowl, Billy.

8:58And you can tell, Kevin O 'Connell hasn't hid this over the years where he's been like, Kirk Cousins, yeah, it'd be great to have Kirk Cousins back. And they're like, no, we're going to go in a different direction. And then they went 14 games with Sam Darnold. And it seemed like Kevin O 'Connell was like, yeah, it wouldn't be bad to have Sam Darnold back. You know, I think we can win big with him. But they used this first round pick on J.J. McCarthy. And so the organization decided we're going to have a walkaway number with those quarterbacks. And we're going to actually see what we have in J.J.

9:26McCarthy. It feels like that was at the heart of this, where Kevin O 'Connell maybe wanted some things quarterback-wise. Questia Dofa Mensa maybe said, well, we got to cut the cord. And we drafted this guy. We got to see what he's got. And maybe that's why the timing was so weird. They said, Darnold is one game away from winning the Super Bowl. And we don't even know who's playing quarterback for us next year. Well, he has had a very poor record in drafts. And we're now headed into the draft. And it seems as though the quarterback decision might have been made because he committed so much to that quarterback in the first round, in the draft where you let Sam Darnold walk, and now he's going, as you mentioned, to the Super Bowl, and then you have to start questioning, well, do we want this guy to now, I think four out of their 28 players that they've drafted under his watch.

10:09It's been bad. First round picks have been bad, no doubt about it. So I think that the average is 368 starts over that period of time, over people that were drafted. This is according to Kevin Seifert. And what the Vikings have gotten is 172 starts. So they're like half as many starts as what an average draft class would, you know, give you yeah his drafts haven't been good you're now headed into another draft and i guess they decided you know what we can't continue this let's pull the plug now it is late i don't know why they waited until after the senior bowl after he was already going and doing draft analysis and evaluations they they also had like a weirder interview type thing where normally they send everyone out to new jersey to meet with the wilfs and this year they said you know we're going to do this over zoom this year which is probably not a good sign no billy the wilfs are going to go to in Minnesota, change is brewing.

10:56It's what they always say. All right. We got to talk about the paternity leave thing. Okay. Because, you know, you read the reporting on this. And my theory is that Cuesia Dofamensa is too well adjusted to fit into the NFL world in some degree. So a couple examples of this. One is the paternity leave and I'll read you the exact description in a second. And the other is when it comes to his poor draft record, he's like, well, the draft is kind of random, you know? which that's actually true. I actually agree with that. I'm not a GM. If I were a GM, I wouldn't be saying that after you're missing on all these picks.

11:31But that actually has been proven true. And there are other GMs, like Ravens GM Eric DaCosta has said this, like there's a randomness to the draft. So DaCosta says, because there's a randomness, we want to get as many picks as possible. Adolfo Menta didn't do that. You know, so he's saying it's random, but at the same time, he hasn't had a lot of picks there. So that's one, but we've teased the paternity leave thing too long. Let me read it to you. So this is from The Athletic. It says, following the birth of his first child, the general manager left for paternity leave, missing about two weeks of training camp meetings and practices and working remotely, Billy, during that stretch.

12:09Word of his time away from the team traveled quickly around the league. Among some rival executives and coaches, it was met with disbelief. Now, I think that's good reporting. I'm not making fun of the, I'm making fun of this NFL world where the guy, it's the summer. Okay. It's training camp. It's training camp. The draft is over. Free agency is over. You're churning the back end of the roster. They're practicing. He's working remotely. He didn't even take the two weeks off. And because of that, the guy's getting ripped around the NFL. Well, his hiring was questioned from the beginning, right?

12:45He didn't play. He didn't really have coaching experience. He was an outsider. Yeah. Yeah, he was a numbers guy. He was an outsider, as you're saying. It seemed as though they were looking for things to have him pin him down on, I'd say. You know, if things didn't work out, we could say it was this, it was that. So when he then takes off the two weeks of paternity, I feel like people were looking for that. Now, granted, we're leaving out the fact that the Vikings had the best record last year. 14-3! Yeah, like they had an incredible... During his four years, Billy, they were 43-25. Yeah, it was that.

13:15They weren't bad under his watch. The drafts were bad. This season went poorly, and it really might have come down to the Sam Darnold decision is why he isn't there anymore. You know, it seems like there was some relationship dynamics at work because we think about GM and we think draft, pick the players, manage the cap. I do believe that like the role of the GM now, you have to have good relationships with everyone in the building from scouts to personnel people, to coaches, to analytics, to training. Like that's kind of your job is to take the input from all these different areas, weave it together and make good decisions.

13:47And it sounds like he's kind of admitted that, all right, I was inexperienced. I was doing this for the first time and maybe I could have done a better job with that. So I'm kind of rooting for the guy and I'm rooting for him to have another baby, take paternity leave with another organization and do a good job at his job. Maybe have like a year off, have another kid, take plenty of time. No one will judge you. He's not tied to a team now. It seems as though he was also like unavailable to some people in the staff, right? Where he wasn't necessarily talking and the wolves had to sit him down, say hey you got to be more present here you have a general manager so then he'd go and he'd talk to the media and he'd say things that like general managers wouldn't say like ah you know it's kind of different from the spreadsheets to actually how things play out it's like don't don't say that like why are you a little too odd again i think it was too honest so honest right he worked off hours they'd say it was like that schedule doesn't work for me because he wanted to see his kids yeah like we're that's the thing they were making that's it like he's made out to be the weird person because he wanted to spend time with his kids and work around spending time with his kids.

14:49Monster. My bottom line on this firing is that I think it's fair to say he didn't do a great job because they are not positioned right now to be a contender. I think their quarterback situation's uncertain. I think that aspect of the job he failed at. I think the draft, yes, there's randomness, but I don't think his process was the greatest with the draft. And then again, you got to build those relationships because this is what happens. When you have a powerful coach like Kevin O 'Connell, it's like when ownership gets put in a position where they say, coach or GM, and then they look at both your track records and then they go with the coach.

15:23But I will say this about Kevin O 'Connell, though. Do you remember how he said, was it last year or two years ago? He was like, quarterbacks don't fail organizations. Organizations fail quarterbacks. Do you remember this? Don't say that if you're a coach. Well, he said that and he got all this love for it. everyone's like see that's why you know these organizations the jets they don't put and and guess what now he it looks like he thinks he has a quarterback who's failing his organization and he wants someone else building that's what i'm saying you keep looking around you look very nervous no i'm just trying to punch me you're saying a lot of bad things about the nfl i don't know if ed now knows that we're not going to buy jim mercy's guitar like so kevin o 'connell yeah don't when the good times are good don't say these crazy things then you have to kind of backtrack on when the bad times are there because now you feel J.G.

16:12McCarthy is what we could be saying if we're following you by your word here. Could be. Now, listen, it's a little tease. We're going to talk about the Raiders and the Cardinals. I may have a quarterback idea for the Minnesota Vikings. So let's take a break. We come back with the Raiders, Cardinals, finding new head coaches and maybe a quarterback. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods Market Peach Apricot Rose Italian Soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango yuzu chantilly cake.

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17:35Play your game with FanDuel, official Sportsbook partner of Super Bowl 60. Must be 21 plus and present in select states or 18 plus and present in DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wage or amount. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789. 7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, we're back here on the Ringer NFL show. All right, Billy. So these head coaching vacancies are now all filled.

18:15We think the ink isn't dry, but we think I know you might have an issue with the process, but the Raiders are going with Clint Kubiak, the Seahawks offensive coordinator. That's according to ESPN's Adam Schefter. And then the Cardinals are going with Mike LaFleur, the Rams. Can we just start with this? Are the Cardinals the most irrelevant team in the NFL? Like I was looking at it going, does anyone care? Are there any headlines? Are we the only people in here discussing that the Cardinals hired Michael LaFleur? Like if we went out and did a, not even a man on the street, like a reporter in Radio Row.

18:48And we said, do you know who the Cardinals hired? How many, I don't know what percentage would actually know or care. So Michael LaFleur, he coached a number of places. He played in college, played three years in college, quarterback for two years. Then he stopped playing quarterback and he was a safety his last year. And then the very next year, I guess he realized this isn't going to work out for me. So he went and he was coaching at his college. He coached at college a couple of years and then he bounced around. Now, here's where things got interesting. He coached in college from 2009 to 2013, but Mike LaFleur is the little known coach or one of the little known coaches from the Falcons super coaching staff that they had in 2015 to 2016.

19:26So when he was there, the head coach for the Falcons. Remember, this was a situation where his brother was the offensive coordinator. He ends up going on and they had, this is a staff that included - Let me guess. Yeah, go on. Mike McDaniel. Mike McDaniel. Kyle Shanahan. Uh-huh. Matt LaFleur. Matt LaFleur. Dan Quinn. Dan Quinn. That's all I remember. Raheem Morris. Raheem Morris. Assistant head coach, wide receiver coach. Oh, right. Jeff Ulbrich was there. He was a linebacker's coach. So this now, in retrospect, going back, this 2015-2016 Falcons staff, almost all of them ended up becoming head coaches.

20:05Now, Richard Smith, the DC, we haven't heard from him. I don't know what Richard Smith is up to. Do you know what Richard Smith is up to? I don't know. I don't know what Richard Smith is up to. Well, maybe we'll check into him. Maybe in the next coaching cycle we'll go back. He might be around here, like you said. He could be here. That's why we've got to keep our voices down. Don't scream out Richard Smith's name. He might appear here. And then, I mean, the real problem is then we have to talk to Richard Smith. Yeah, we don't have a lot of good questions. Yeah, exactly right. We don't want to talk to him.

20:27I mean, I'm sure he's a lovely man, but. So, anyways. Hopefully he's alive, Billy. If he's not, we'll edit. I'm just saying. We'll edit. If he's not. Why did we go in that direction? Because I don't want to. Hold on a sec. Hold on a sec. Richard Smith. While you Google that, I will say Mike LaFleur now has to coach against Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, and Mike McDonald for six of his games. To have you found out, Richard Smith. He's still with us, it appears. Good. I hope he's in good health. Let's see. Where is he? Okay. Richard Smith. He's a Bears linebackers coach right now. There you go. So he's still in the league.

20:59Now, here's one thing about Michael Fleur that I wonder, and I'm not ready to say that it's a red flag or not a red flag, but it is something that I was wondering. So after that season, the coaches all kind of split up in part ways. Kyle Shanahan goes to San Francisco. Mike follows Shanahan to San Francisco and has never worked with his brother again, never worked with his brother beforehand, never worked with his brother after the fact. So now I'm kind of looking around and I'm wondering what's going on here. Well. What's going on? Is there a rift here between the brothers? Does, you know, does Matt know something about Mike that we should know that he doesn't know?

21:41Like, if you're not going to work with your own family, is this something that we should be excited about? It's an interesting question. And I do remember he was with the Jets. You remember Mike LaFleur with Robert Sala with the Jets. I do remember thinking he was doing a good job there. Okay. And, you know, he kind of got a raw deal because their team stunk and didn't win a lot of games. Blessing in disguise going from the Jets to the Rams. And now they both have, and now Mike LaFleur and Robert Sala, who are running the offense and the defense for the 4-13 Jets in 2021, are both head coaches in the NFL.

22:11Let me ask you this with the Matt LaFleur, Mike LaFleur thing. Is there a non-zero chance that the Bidwell, I think Mr. Bidwell, that's his name, right? Sure. That he thought he was hiring Matt LaFleur. He looked up like pro football reference. he's like LaFleur whoa this guy wins a lot of games how's he out there you know maybe someone sent him there was the athletic article this year like you know Matt LaFleur's coaching for his job so he thought and then there was those rumors remember he thought they actually happened and he thought he's hiring Matt LaFleur I think there's non-zero do you think there's like a no takesie backsy situation where it's like they signed him now they can't I mean obviously yeah five-year contract that's a lot that's a big commitment every coach is just getting that's a big commitment for someone who's never coached before these coaching agents they're doing a good job i mean billy good for them i suppose right that's right i'm a little worried by the way if i'm a cardinals fan where he was not their first choice they wanted kubiak and then kubiak which are we gonna get to kubiak we'll get to kubiak the only thing i'll say is that you know all this happens all the time in the nfl where a team doesn't get their first choice and it's a blessing in disguise did you know the ravens wanted to hire jason garrett and then they had to settle for john harbaugh back in the day did you know the eagles at one time wanted to hire ben mcadoo and they had to settle for Doug Peterson who won them their first Super Bowl.

23:27So that happens all the time in the NFL. But Clint Kubiak, so you're right. He's kind of going Arizona, Vegas, who wants me? And he's having those conversations. He's still coaching in the Super Bowl. Thank you. Can we focus on the Super Bowl? He had conversations with both teams Saturday while he should be preparing for the Super Bowl. You said, I have a wandering eye. This guy's not paying attention. You're learning from Clint Kubiak. Kubiak, yeah. And here's the thing about Kubiak. Yeah. I don't know if you know this out there on Netflix land. Yeah. Six years, six different places he's been.

24:00What's going on with him? Commitment issues. Red flag, number one. Can't stick with a team longer than a season over the past six years for whatever reason. Yeah. Biggest game of the season, obviously. The Super Bowl. What is he doing to prepare for the Super Bowl? He's talking to the Raiders and the Cardinals. Character issue right there. If you're spending your Saturdays talking to the Raiders and the Cardinals, It's kind of like, what are you doing with your life? But that's what he's doing. He's going out there. And then he's telling one of them, hey, you know what? I'm going to be your coach, but I can't sign until after the Super Bowl because those are the rules.