Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Franchise Focus: Minnesota Vikings

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Joe Dolan (@FG_Dolan) invites Matthew Coller (@MatthewColler) of the Purple Insider to discuss the upcoming season for the Minnesota Vikings. The Franchise Focus Podcast series is brought to you by Underdog Fantasy (@UnderdogFantasy). New users can sign up to Underdog using promo code FANTASYPTS for up to $100 in bonus cash on their first deposit. Visit fantasypoints.com/underdog for more info. The podcast series is also sponsored by Evan's Sports Cards & Collectibles (@evanscards). Follow @EvansCards on Twitter for weekly updates and card releases, Like on Facebook, and head to evanssportsnj.com for more info, including the always-updated eBay store. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Back to the franchise focus series of podcasts here at Fantasy Points.com. My name is Joe Dolan, and today's focus on the franchise focus podcast series is the Minnesota Vikings. And I am very excited for today's guest because in addition to being a fantastic reporter who covers the Vikings at Purple Insider and hosts the Purple Insider podcast, he is a fellow greyhound lover. His name is Matthew Coller. You can follow him on Twitter at Matthew Collar, that C-O-L-L-E-R, not like a dog collar. Matthew and I just had like a long discussion off air about our crazy greyhounds. He loves his girl. I love my girls.

But Matthew, one of the things we found out about our greyhounds is they're all extremely different and never stop surprising us. Just a wonderful dog breed. I know everybody loves dogs, but I don't know. We seem to have a special connection there with the greyhounds. Yeah, we're certainly biased toward our grays because we adopted them and we love them. And ours were both racers, which is something that, you know, people should look into if you're looking for a dog. which is to see if there's a local chapter of, you know, Greyhound race adoption because there are people all over the country

who take them from racetracks and then find homes, which is exactly what we ended up doing. And, you know, we didn't really know what to expect from a dog that had basically lived its entire life in a kennel and then gone and raced. And that was it. But it's amazing how loving these dogs are and how kind they are. And you were talking about how yours started licking people's legs. ours wants to be friends with, yeah, ours wants to be friends with every single person that she ever sees.

So they're super, super kind and friendly dog. So if anybody is looking for one, I would highly suggest it. And, and I mean, my, my Scotchy, like, she is a true sighthound and she barks like crazy. And even fellow greyhound owners are like, you have one that barks? Yeah, we do. She's a nutcase, but she is such a lover. She is so, I mean, she loves aggressively. Like, and they love kids.

They love other dogs. It's just, just fantastic, the two that I have. Your girl is named Nora, correct? Yep, yep, Nora. And she's the exact opposite of what you were describing as far as barking, because we have had her for six years now. And I believe I've only heard her bark three or four times. And it's always at a dog park when another dog gets a little too much up in her face trying to play.

And she'll say back off. But she's never barked at any other people or any other dogs when they're having normal interaction. So that's funny. And that's the thing about Greyhounds is that all of them are so different. They all have their little personality traits and things like this. And eventually you figure out your dog's language. I'm sure it's like this for everybody. But Greyhounds is kind of specific.

It's like here's when I need something from you. Here's how I'm going to whine or here's how I'm going to even sit down. They do like if anyone's watched the Simpsons, they, you know, the Santa's little helper dog. is very accurate with greyhounds. It'll kind of sit down a certain way that says like, okay, I want you to do something with me now. It's really, it's really fun. It's been a super rewarding experience.

We were kind of like anxious about should, it was our first dog. So it's like, you know, should we adopt a dog? Should we go for it? And then the more we research greyhounds was like, I think we have to do this. And it's just been one of the best things in my life. Definitely.

And you know, what's funny though is we're recording this before the 4th of July weekend, before the holiday. I am dreading this weekend because my butterscotch, scotchy, she will want to fight the fireworks while my poor crimpet, my poor crimpets just going to go hide in the closet. Like, so even like the two who live in the same house are just drastically different dogs.

Look, I get it that people like to see things explode, but I think that maybe not everyone considers the impact on dogs in neighborhoods when you're doing that. And that's certainly the case for ours, where she just gets super freaked out when she's hearing them. Luckily, our house is near the airport.

So it's built specifically to kind of keep noise out because there's planes going over all the time, which I think helps. But you have to take her out or you have to let her out. And when she's hearing the loud noises and can't figure out where it is, it's very confusing and very frustrating with that. So be courteous to your friends and neighbors if you can. Yeah, now that I have dogs. Also, please stop.

putting doorbells in commercials, please, please, please. We don't have that problem. Yeah, we don't have that problem. Ours pays no attention to the TV whatsoever. Yeah, my old Greyhound Stanley was much more of a doorbell hound than these two are, but they still get kind of freaked out. Anyway, we'll talk about a different kind of fireworks here soon. See what I did there with the Vikings offense under Kevin O'Connell.

But first, I got to tell everybody that the franchise-focused series of podcasts is brought to you by Evans, sports cards, and collectibles, the best place for cards, collectibles, autographs, and more. Whenever you've seen a memorabilia giveaway at FantasyPoint.com, all of ours are from Evans, and Evans, and Evans always has the latest boxes and releases from Panini, Upper Deck, tops, and more. And it's one of those family-owned small businesses you can feel really good about supporting. Go for an in-person visit if you're ever in the Philadelphia area, but if you're not, it's just as good to visit the eBay store. Follow at Evans cards on Twitter for weekly updates and card releases like Evans on Facebook and head to Evansportsnj.com for more info,

including the always updated eBay store. That's Evansportsnj.com online and at Evans Cards on Twitter and tell them that the guys from fantasy points.com sent you. Okay, Matthew, we know what the Vikings are doing. After years of Mike Zimmer and his defensive mindset, you know, kind of run first mindset, they bring in Kevin O'Connell from the Rams. and we know what kind of school thought he comes from. And I know Justin Jefferson said recently he was like, this is not a run first offense. I'm really excited about it.

Do you think that's an accurate assessment, though, based on what you've heard from O'Connell, what you've heard from the new staff, and what you've seen at OTAs and mini camps thus far about this new offense? Yeah, the OTA and minicamp part is kind of interesting because in previous years, Mike Zimmer like to have pretty intense OTA and minicamp practices.

that was not the case for Kevin O'Connell. And it was hard to pick up on a lot because, you know, you get used to covering a team, the cadence of how things go. And it's like, okay, well, I'll just write,

you know, a bunch of takeaways from players making plays or how they're kind of going about things offensively. And we're like, oh, this is basically a walkthrough every day. So there's not a whole lot that we could really take away and say, oh,

this is different or this player looks like they're getting a different opportunity. And the players keep hinting when we, talk with them about this type of sentiment of, you know, Delvin Cook was lining up in the slot a bit. And then he tweeted out a video of him catching a ball out of the slot with sort of eyeball emojis. And so they keep kind of being like, wait for this offense, wait till you see what it's going to do. But, you know, I also think that there's reason to believe that you don't want to stray too far from what Mike Zimmer was doing. I think that the narrative about Mike Zimmer has been a lot unfair in this offseason.

Now, that's not me saying that he didn't deserve to be fired because I thought that they needed to go in a new direction that they had run their course with Zimmer and at the point where he and her cousins were, you just couldn't really keep going down that road. Like those two were not getting along and it was just time for somebody to go. So, okay, that's fine. But when you look at their offenses over the last few years, Delvin Cook is one of the best running backs in the league.

Justa Jefferson has more yards than any other receiver over the last two seasons. They did not completely ruin everyone. Kirk Cousins has three straight seasons of over 100 quarterback ratings and top 10 PFF grades and all those things. So I don't think it would be super wise to come in and say, oh, that previous coaching staff, they had no idea what they were doing. They had Kevin Stefansky and Gary Kubiak here in 2019 and 2020. So I think that you want to keep a lot of the same principles.

I don't know if Kevin O'Connell's going to do that, but there's also a reason why they wanted to be run first. It was not a random decision from Mike Zimmer. It's not that Mike Zimmer and I had in common that we both love 90s football. I think it's also because running and running play actions off that was really Kirk Cousin's strength. If you look at his numbers on play action over the last few years, he's one of those best quarterbacks in the entire NFL. And I think there is a pretty strong connection with the way defenses wanted to play against Delvin Cook. So running first did have positive things to it. They probably overdid it a lot of times.

But I think if Kevin O'Connell is going to go some sort of route where he's just opened it up and running three wide receivers and throwing all the time, well, we did see an offensive coordinator in 2018 who wanted to do that in John D. Filippo and Kirk Cousins turned the ball over a lot. He had a lot of strip sacks. He had a lot of interceptions. And that's the reason. why Mike Zimmer wanted to go to the run first offense.

So I think I guess I would caution maybe just, you know, outside observers as well, but also Kevin O'Connell himself a little bit. Like if you lean too far into this, I'm not saying there can't be improvements, but if you lean too far into this, you might sort of throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know what? What I think is funny about this offense, though, is like even if you get like a season tape Watcher, like our guy Greg Costell at Fantasy Points always says the McVeigh offense, though, all the past game concepts are based on the run game concepts. And you've got that outside

zone run game. And it's a play action heavy system. So in a way, I almost feel like Kirk Cousins kind of fits in like a glove with this new offense. But in knowing that Dalvin Cook is also a really good zone runner, man, I feel like this offense is great for Dalvin Cook as well. Yeah, I think that it should be. And maybe, you know, when we talk about the things that they can improve on, like maybe one of those is just making sure that Delvin Cook remains healthy through the whole season, where I think Mike Zimmer was so desperate to win in the last few years,

knowing that there was a lot of mounting pressure on him that it was like, who's our best player? Oh, it's Delvin Cook. Let's, you know, ride that man like crazy. And if you look at his usage numbers, I mean, it's just, you know, it's him and Derek Henry. that are just getting pounded into the ground with the number of carries. And now we're kind of entering that age 27 type season where you get a little nervous about the usage of your running back. And they have Alexander Madison and they have Kenai Wongwu.

So I think that there could be a better usage, a better rotation of those guys. And I think that the running scheme has been mostly good and effective for Delvin Cook. So that's another one of the things where it's like you don't want to change that too much. This guy was a pro bowl caliber player and one of the best. in the league running in the zone because it really fits with his skill set. But if you dial the carries back, so instead of, you know, running at a pace for 300 carries over a season, maybe look for 200 carries and fit the other guys in. And also, you know, the screen game has been really ineffective over the last two years

for the Vikings under Kevin Stefansky in 2019, Delvin Cook average almost 10 yards catch. They could get back to that. And, you know, it's really interesting about the McVeigh offense because last year, McVeigh changed it up so much with Matthew Stafford. So are they going to run here what they were asking Matt Stafford to do, which I'm not sure is the smartest thing because of the differences in physical ability for the two quarterbacks? Or is it going to be more Jared Gough-esque with a better version of Jared Gough, which is Kirk Cousins. I think that that's,

that's really yet to be seen. That's not something that we can really figure out by just watching a few OTA practices. And I think as everybody knows from a fantasy perspective, I mean, We know what Dalvin Cook has done, but this is a very friendly offense to running backs and their ability to put up numbers. And as you mentioned, a large part of that has been the ability of running backs. You remember Todd Gurley a number of years ago before his knee injuries really wore him down. Man, putting up massive numbers in the passing game. And you think Dalvin Cook has an ability to do that in this offense. Yeah, I do. And it's funny about the whole running back thing with being a part of the passing game is we all looked at Christian McCaffrey and we said,

Ah, yes, this is the future, everybody. But when you look at running backs in the receiving game, it largely hasn't changed. Like, there are not too many Eric Metcalfs or Thurman Thomases who are going down the field. It's like basically since the 90s, the running back is the same job as it was. It's just that they usually rotate them a little bit more. And, you know, a lot of teams will have multiple running backs, but as opposed to that one bell cow.

But yet how they use them in the passing game isn't that different. It's who can execute it the best. You know, can you get the most out of those screen passes? Can you get your offensive line out and moving? Can you get Delvin Cook the football in space? And I thought that it was a little underutilized the times where you can motion him. You can throw him a bubble screen. You can run him out of the slot with a reverse or something like that.

I mean, there are things that can be done that are just a little bit on the clever side that I think the Vikings left on the table after Kevin Stavansky left after the last two seasons. And, you know, I think that those can come back and help Delvin Cook. But the thing from a fantasy perspective that you're always concerned about is just his health. And this is another area where Kevin O'Connell could be doing things that we can't really see from the outside that end up having a big impact. Mike Zimmer was old school in the way that he wanted to practice. I mean, if he could have, he would have had them hitting in practice every single day. Like he wanted these guys to practice hard and play tough. but a lot of the sports science tells you that these fellas are in pretty good shape and they don't

need to practice themselves into shape. More you're just wearing down a lot of your players. And Delvin Cook's second half numbers versus first half numbers have been so much different in the past few years that I think the more sports science approach could really play in Delvin Cook's favor. I just want to do a quick aside. Alexander Madison is still in Minnesota, but he's on the final year of his working contract. The Vikings did draft High Chandler in the fifth round. Do you think that's them bracing for life post Alexander Madison? Yeah, I mean, I think they could even start that process this year with Kenai Wangwu too, because last year, Wongwu had a really impressive training camp and was getting RB2 reps,

but then he got hurt. And so when he came back, it was still Alexander Madison is RB2. And Kenai Wongwu just did kick returning and was absolutely fantastic at kick returning. But I think this year, there's going to be more of a debate of which, guy is behind Delvin Cook because Madison is a good player. He's very, very intelligent. And I think he has better hands than Delvin Cook at going down the field and catching the ball. But Wong Wu's explosiveness is something like I've very rarely seen. I mean, if you look, go back to his combine, he runs a 4-3-2, his 10-yard splits in the 98th percentile. And then, you know, we saw a couple of carries from last year. He's got some chops as a running back, even though he was not the feature back

at Iowa State. I think he's somebody to watch again with a new coaching staff. You know, it wasn't these guys who drafted any of these players. So they don't have sort of preconceived notions. They may watch Kenne Wongwood with the football and say, yeah, this guy needs to play. Now, Ty Chandler, we'll see.

But I think that's probably rights, though, that after this year, Madison will end up going somewhere else because it's just not all that efficient to pay two running backs who are good. You always want some of those guys on a rookie contract. but I'm very interested to see if Ken A Wongwu can pass Alexander Madison on the depth chart. How's Adam Thielen's health looking? He's fine. Yeah.

I mean, I'm sorry, Adam Thielen had a, I almost called him Alexander Thieling because we were talking about Madison. But Adam Thielen had last year just kind of one of those freak injuries where he got tackled wrong against Detroit and hurt his ankle. And there's nothing you can do about it. But it's not one of those injuries where you come into the season and you go. go, oh man, this guy is coming off whatever. You better be concerned. Like Zadari Smith, for example, is coming off major back surgery. They kept him out the full regular season last year.

That's something to be concerned about that, you know, Zadaria Smith went to Baltimore. They signed him, but then they all of a sudden didn't. And you like, oh, is that health related? There's nothing like that with Adam Thielen. Now, I doubt that he's as fast today as he was when he was 25 years old, because that's the natural progression of being a football player. in the NFL, but Adam Thielen has never won with speed. It's always been with route running details and with an unbelievable ability to track and

catch the football, which, you know, seems obvious. But I mean, he is so on another level of this that it kind of makes me think about Larry Fitzgerald later in his career where it's not somebody, I mean, Larry Fitzgerald was probably running a four seven by the time he was later in his career, but he was still very effective. I look at Thielen as being the same way. He's not one B or one A like he was with Stefan Diggs here. It's clearly Justin Jefferson, but I wouldn't be surprised if he still ended up with 80, 90 catches. And he's always had really great chemistry with Kirk Cousins, especially in the red zone. So I don't think that his health is necessarily a concern. Anybody can be victimized by a

random injury, but there isn't like the hamstrings or things like that that you think are a big concern. So I don't see any reason why his play should fall off as long as he is health. So I feel like I kind of have an idea of where you're going to go with this. But to wrap up these podcasts, I've been asking all of the guests, somebody who may maybe on the lower end, maybe somebody we haven't talked about already, who has a chance to put up decent number. I'm not talking about 100 catches, but maybe somebody who could catch 50, 6.6. passes or carry the ball 150 times. We're not really talking about who might make a fantasy impact.

Who do you think that player is on the Vikings this year? Yeah, I think that a lot of people in the fantasy world are already on top of the idea of you know, Irv Smith Jr. coming back and being a main target for for Kirk Cousins. That's kind of the first one that comes to mind. But, you know, fantasy people are pretty sharp about these things. So I think they probably haven't missed that one. If there's one guy, I mean, there's two I would nominate for wide receivers. one is if you're in a relatively deep league and the other one is if you're an extremely deep league

that has I don't know how many teams. Give me this slot, man. I live, I live for this stuff. So lay it on me. Okay. I'm in a WNBA fantasy league where there's 10 teams. There's only 12 WNBA teams.

So you're like looking at who's coming off the bench and chucking threes or something in that league. So if you're in that kind of thing with football, I would say Amir Smith, Marseed is kind of intriguing. He was a fifth round pick out of Iowa two years ago, came out, or I'm sorry, last year, came out last year, didn't get a lot of playing time, but at the end of the season when Adam Dillon was out, he worked his way in and had some big splash plays. And he's a guy that's got physical ability and an ability to go deep and make plays that is kind of intriguing.

Now, that's if you're in the super deep one and you're like, I don't even know half of these wide receiver fives. But KJ Osborne is one that I think will get a decent amount. on a looks because Kevin O'Connell, one thing we do know about his offense is he's going to run three wide receivers. The Vikings previously loved to run two tight ends. Last year, they had to go to three wide receivers because of Smith Jr's injury. And really, KJ. Osborne was the breakout player of the year for them. So I would look for him as a guy that could end up topping what he did last year. And if there is an injury to Adam Thielen, then KJ. Osborne is going to be the next man up because he

really thrives with the intelligence part of the game. He's got a playmaker element to him. So, you know, they trust him to be able to do pretty much anything. So I guess I would keep an eye on both of those guys as like the deep cuts. His name is Matthew Collar. I did not expect him to go Amir Smith-Marset deep. I thought KJ. Osborne was going to be the guy. I love that you teared that for us, by the way, because we're going to have dynasty players listening to this. And then, you know, the average fantasy player might not know KJ. Osborne has a shot to put up numbers this year. So Matthew, thank you for covering all the angles. And make sure you say hi to Nora for me. My butterscotch and crimpet will be sending her good wishes for the

4th of July holiday. Yes. And good luck to you as well with your greyhounds. And I really appreciate having me on and having a little dog talk. Yeah, you were awesome, Matthew. You could follow him on Twitter at Matthew Collar, that's C-O-L-L-E-R. Make sure you follow his work at Purple Insider and listen to the Purple Insider podcast. As you are well aware, just by listening to this 20 minutes, he is capable of dishing on the Vikings for a long time. There was so much more I could ask Matthew. There was so much more that we could have. But hey, I want to keep these short.

And I want you guys to check out the franchise focus articles at fantasy points.com. So for Matthew Collar, my name is Joe Dolan. I promise you, I will be over the COVID voice soon. It's taking a little longer than I wanted it to, but the show must go on. And that's why I have these great guests to help me out. I hope everybody had a good Fourth of July holiday since this came out after that. But I hope you all have a great week, too. And I'll be back with more from the franchise focus.

Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoint.com.