Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - A tough practice, JC Tretter and being robbed of a punt-off

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Matthew Coller and Sports Illustrated's Will Ragatz talk about Kirk Cousins having his roughest practice of training camp in which he threw multiple interceptions and was upset after practice. Also Kevin O'Connell responded to JC Tretter's accusation that the Vikings didn't call him back about their center position and the Vikings cut Jordan Berry. Plus Matthew and Will give their takes on the Manti Te'o Netflix documentary.  -- For more of Matthew's Vikings coverage, head to purpleinsider.substack.com For bonus discussions, interview clips, and more videos, check out our YouTube channel! Interact with us on Twitter! @Purple_Insider Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider inside TCO Performance Center. Matthew Collar here along with Will Regetts, where we have just witnessed a practice for the decades. Well, I guess maybe if the season doesn't go great, we'll go back to this one. But it was not a great day for the offense, but we have lots to discuss. In fact, I think Will, before we hit play or record, we came up with like five or six or seven things that we need to get to. So tell me where you would like to begin. I think we should begin. I mean, you, you segued into it.

Let's begin with this practice and our thoughts on whether or not it's something to be concerned about for the details are Kirk Cousins threw three interceptions in this practice, two to Harrison Smith, one to Eric Hendricks, two of which were really not great, and he threw a couple other passes that could have easily been intercepted. He threw one right to Zedaria Smith's chest, and Zedaria Smith, being an outside linebacker and a pass rusher, did not catch it.

Patrick Peterson also nearly came down with a pretty nice, it would have been a nice play in the end zone for a potential another pick. But I guess the question is, like, is this something to be concerned about? Because I tweeted out the fact that Kirk Cousins threw three interceptions and could have thrown five, and a lot of the responses were, oh, okay, that's good. Like, I'm not worried about the offense. It's a good sign that the defense is playing well. And I think part of that is, like, fans tend to find ways to, like,

I don't know if the word cope is the right one, but to, like, spin things in a positive way because we're going into a season where there's a lot of optimism about the Vikings and a lot of it is justified there's a new coaching staff a new vibe some new players on both sides of the ball so I get that but at the same time this season really comes down to can Kirk Cousins elevate things can Kevin O'Connell help him get to a level of winning games and completing passes at a high level and being aggressive and things like that and just playing well in general?

And today he did not play well. He made some bad decisions, bad throws. And I think even if, even if you want to spin it and say, oh, the Vikings defense, Harrison Smith, Derek Hendricks, those guys are good. Like, I think it's still a little concerning. That would be one of those, like you had to be there it was not the defense it was I mean the defense was in the right spots for Kirk to throw the ball right to them and not only that but if you listen to Kirk Cousins talk after practice the man was upset I mean he was really trying hard to not kind of go off a little bit it seemed I mean I kind of asked him like to not kind of go off a little bit, it seemed. I mean, I kind of asked him, like, how do you guys work through those things?

And he started talking kind of fast and maybe more aggressively than Kirk Cousins usually talks. He's like, well, we got to go back and we got to look at the tape and we got to talk about these things. And then, but I am going to the fair tonight, so I've got to shake it off. And it's like he is clearly upset. We've seen him that, you know, that way a few times after practices but not that many uh the most i've seen him upset maybe ever was after a 2018 practice and i think that this would rival that because cousins is not a guy who's gonna like throw his helmet and just start yelling at us about a practice but after practice was over and almost everybody had left the field,

he was still out there for a few minutes talking with Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson, just the three of them standing there alone going over some things. At one point in the middle of practice, he walked over and apologized to Justin Jefferson for something. You could see him sort of tap in his own pads like, oh, that was on me, and they kind of high high fived or whatever. And like this, this practice right here was supposed to be the most game like preseason like practice that they were going to have. Like they made a big deal out of it. This is going to be a scrimmage for us and it's going to simulate exactly what a game is going to be like as close

as it can, even to them having a pretend halftime. Like that's how much this was kind of hyped up by Kevin O'Connell and to throw three picks and two more that could have easily been intercepted. And not only that, but not just for great plays on the defense, not at all. Like these were throws right to defenders, but also even passes that were completed. There was hesitation with Kirk Cousins it was like is this when I throw do I get it now oh now I'm releasing it uh there's been a little bit of that throughout camp I haven't thought it was a ton but today it was kind of a ton so

whatever they were asking them to do today they were not able to execute that does not mean that it's freak out time okay like it just doesn't i mean remember 2018 the season started out cousin's second game he throws for 400 and something yards against green bay and plays extremely well like it doesn't mean the season's over it just means that i guess if your expectation is that the fingers have been snapped and all of the problems that have ever happened with this offense including right guard today was a big problem uh yeah i don't think that that's the case like i think that people would like to hear that that oh man they're just crushing it in camp everything's perfect o'connell and kirk are best friends they're like holding hands and skipping to the fair together that's not really what's

going on I mean at one point there was kind of a meeting with O'Connell and the quarterback coach and everybody there and it's reason to say they've got some things to sort out over the next couple of weeks here and you know even Kirk admitted that he probably would have played in the first preseason game which I guess I didn't know and hadn't been brought up. And I wonder if he is still, even though he said they were the best days to miss, still making up a little bit of that time when he had to be away and still trying to get down some of these details. But the last thing you want to see is Justin Jefferson

slowly walking off the practice field, kind of shaking his head. It's just not what you want to see from a late August practice. I'm not telling everybody to freak out, but it's just not the type of scrimmage practice that they were looking for. No, it's not. And we're just a little over two weeks until the opener. Like, the clock is ticking. Kirk Cousins, I mean, there's been kind of this preseason discussion,

and there are only so many things to talk about during the preseason. But what kind of risk, if any, are the Vikings running by not playing their starters at all in the preseason? Kirk has not played at all. Jefferson has not played at all. We saw a few of the linemen play in the first game, not at all in the second game. I don't think we're going to see any starters play in this third preseason game on Saturday. The benefit to that, and we understand that Kevin O'Connell and this new regime, they're doing all these things to keep players healthy, and they're limiting reps. And Kirk Cousins even today pointed out, hey, last year,

Irv Smith Jr. got hurt for the season in a preseason game. So those are the kind of things you avoid. But at the same time, there's a give and take where those reps, those live game reps, they can't be truly simulated even in a scrimmage situation like this, even in a joint practice. Those are what the Vikings have said, replace the preseason reps for their ones. They wanted to get them a lot of reps today. But yeah, it's not what they wanted for sure. And Kirk said a couple things. He said, well, we did some good things early, which I suppose is true. But if you look at the notes I have, Kirk hit Justin Jefferson for a touchdown early. That was against the second team defense. His first series against the first team defense ended up with an interception that was too high for Justin Jefferson, went off his hands.

Harrison Smith picked it off. Their second series, they went nowhere. The offensive line was kind of under siege today. That's another thing we haven't really talked about. Z'Darrius Smith was living in the backfield. And, again, that's a good thing that he's playing really well. And he's been heating up a ton over the last two weeks, even those joint practices and all that.

But that series didn't go anything. Then they do a red zone series. Cousins throws an interception to Harrison Smith jumping in front of KJ Osborne. They do a two-minute drill. They did one where they started deep in their own territory that didn't go anywhere smith had another sack they did a two-minute drill and the last play of practice was kirk cousins throwing an interception to a leaping eric kendricks but

i mean it wasn't the most spectacular catch like he was kind of right to him like you said so really i mean maybe you're trying different things and trying to work the kinks out and that's another thing he said that you'd rather make those mistakes now than in the games, which is true. But you'd also rather like look crisp now and make some plays as well. And that that didn't really happen. So, again, don't want to overreact to this. I do think there's some validity to the idea that like, hey, the defense played well today. And that, that might be encouraging, but, um, it does raise the question. Like, is it the right call to not let these guys get any reps in the preseason? So I think of it a little differently and maybe this is because my entire football talking life,

I've been saying the preseason doesn't matter and I don't care if the starters play. So I'm sort of like trying to confirm the priors here but for me i'm not even sure how much anyone ever gets out of that like what did they get out of irv smith playing last year other than him hurt yeah like they in fact kirk cousins got smacked against kansas city and what if he had gotten like tko'd or something right like he was able to just dodge that but what if somebody hit him in the face and he goes down and he's out for six weeks or something? I mean, that's the last thing you need. Plus they don't really run a lot of schemed up type stuff. It's just, here's our base offense versus your base defense. How much do you get out of that? I've always wondered

where the question is popping up a little bit to me after watching this. And I'll admit that it might be a bit of an overreaction to one practice because in the joint practices, the offense was pretty good. But where it comes to me is you're changing the offense pretty much completely that this is not Gary Kubiak's offense as it was for three years. When Kevin Stefanski took over, they put in Gary Kubiak's Kubiak classic offense and some of it was antiquated but all of it was stuff that he had done with Mike Shanahan and so he knew the deep or he knew the offense pretty well and he adjusted to it and he knew the reads and he was really really good at running the outside zone boots and things like that I haven't seen him run

a lot of those like those those just you know what I'm talking about the bootleg boots and things like that. I haven't seen him run a lot of those, like those just, you know, what I'm talking about, the bootlegs and the deep crosses. I think there's a lot of different stuff here. There's just a lot of adjustments. And one of the areas that sticks out to me that is hard to see in practice to know exactly what's going right and wrong,

but about the Rams offense in general is you have these choice routes with wide receivers where if this happens you go left if this happens you go right and like Matt Stafford and Cooper Cup were amazing with this but that doesn't mean that Cousins and his receivers are going to get this just in practice so maybe there's something to them playing in the preseason or maybe it's something that they're going to have to work through just throughout the regular season of getting this right and this isn't also that new with the interceptions there was an interception that was pretty rough in joint practice uh there was a question from our friend judd zolgad to kevin o'connell about the interceptions and o'connell gave the kind of

well you know you're working through things it's august 25th though three interceptions and five interceptable passes in a practice is a lot and so i think that if you're pumping the brakes at all on the o'connell's taking him to the next level it's but you're having to learn an entirely new offense that just involves a lot of different things that you weren't doing necessarily with Gary Kubiak. So yeah, I, again, like just want to say not, this is not a freak out of one practice that we saw that just didn't go very well because we have such a huge body of work on all these people, Thielen, Jefferson, cousins and so forth. But when you see the quarterback and the receivers frustratedly having a long conversation with each other, You kind of have some flashbacks there.

And even to 2018 with Kirk throwing the ball in the road out of frustration with Zimmer's defense and with DeFilippo's offense. So they have to get it together. Like whatever happened today basically can't happen anymore as they get ready for the Green Bay Packers. Yeah, hey, we're just being the messengers here. This is what we saw today. This is what happened.

I think there's two things like Kirk Cousins we've talked about it ad nauseum he has sometimes issues with just like the decision making and the level of aggressiveness or not you don't want this to like discourage him from taking shots and being aggressive and start reverting to just checking it down a ton. I don't think that will happen. And again, I think Kirk Cousins is going to throw for a lot of yards this year. Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen and KJ Osborne are going to be very productive this year. But it's the plays in big moments and the turnover-worthy plays and things like that that I think are at least worth having some pause over as we head into the season.

And another one that kind of segues into another thing we should talk about is I think the interior offensive line is still a concern, and it's been a concern for a long time. You mentioned it a little bit, Ed Ingram. There were a few reps today that weren't great against the Harrison Phillips and Dalvin Tomlinson's and Armond Watts's of the world, but it's the center position that's still, like, is still a question mark. And they were just content to kind of run it back with Garrett Bradbury.

And the story comes out today that J.C. Tretter, who has been filling my mentions all offseason, yours as well, I'm sure, with people asking, hey, are the Vikings going to sign J.C. Tretter? Why don't the Vikings sign J.C. Tretter? And my assumption all offseason was, oh, it's got to be something with his knees and his ankle. And he's had these injury issues last year. The last couple years, he couldn't really practice. He didn't miss a game ever due to injury, which is kind of remarkable for the Browns. And he still played at a very high level.

But, I mean, Kweisi Adolfo-Mensah was with him for those two years. I was kind of just giving him the benefit of the doubt that, hey, the Vikings aren't the only team not signing J.C. Tretter that could use J.C. Tretter. So I kind of wrote that off. That's not going to happen. Today, J.C. Tretter announces his retirement. And he also does an interview with Sports Illustrated's Alex Pruitt in which he kind of talks through, hey, I wanted

to play this year. Like, he intended on playing a 10th season. He, in his camp, reached out to, according to this article, reached out to various teams. The Vikings were one of the three teams at the top of his list of ideal destinations. He grew up cheering for the Vikings and thought that that would kind of be a cool way to, a cool next stage of his career. Apparently, the Vikings never returned his call. And none of the seven teams that his camp reached out to reciprocated any interest. He says he wasn't asking for a lot of money. He says his knees are good to go.

He believes that his status as the president of the NFL Players Association has kind of caused him to get blackballed from the league. I don't know if that's the best term to use, but I don't know what other term there is. He believes that that is why he did not eventually get a job. With that, he came to a point where he was content with his career, decided to retire, and is now going to be focusing on trying to enact more change with the NFLPA. So you asked Kevin O'Connell about this today at his press conference, and O'Connell said, we never heard from J.C. Tretter. If he reached out to us, that never got to me.

That never got to Kweisi Adolfo-Mensa. That's kind of news to me. I think he alluded to hearing about Tretter's comments earlier today, but overall just said that there was never any dialogue. There was never really any consideration for bringing him in. I'm just curious, what was your reaction to that whole thing? Well, I think that that is a thing that they have to say, right? Because if they say, well, yeah, we were aware of J.C. Tretanor being interested in us and we didn't reciprocate

that because of why right like that's the follow-up like if you just say we weren't interested and it's like well why are you gonna say it was his injuries well you didn't have him in for a physical would he have been willing to do one yeah he says nobody even requested an mri or brought him in for a physical are you going to say that you have confidence in Garrett Bradbury because you already expressed that you don't? So you can't go back on that one and be like, oh, no, we were fully confident in Bradbury. And they're like, wait, didn't you have Chris Reid as part of a competition

until Chris Reid got hurt and then admit to said competition and admit to some of the issues in pass blocking and oh by the way jc treader's pass blocking stats don't look them up unless you want to be upset because they're really good it's one of the best pass blocking centers in the league last year now he also acknowledges in this article that he had a serious knee problem where the knee had to be drained constantly and that would concern you about signing a veteran player who has this issue. There might've been other ones too with him, maybe a back issue that someone brought up to me. But even then, again, you're not talking about a

physical that's being done. You're not talking about his medicals being shared by his team or whatever else. You're not returning the call. And it's hard for me to believe in an NFL where they would consider all options, all options where you have people working 24, seven, three 65 grinding tape on every free agent. And they went to one of the best players in the league by PFF standards last year. And with, they have the analytics gm and said uh oh no let's not even consider that let's not even take the phone call from jc treanor i mean that's just hard to believe uh it's not hard to believe that they didn't return his call it's just hard to believe that they just never thought about it and never and why would he name drop the vikings and the

vikings only for the team that didn't return his call? Right. Like he didn't just do that out of malice. And oh, well, you know, we called the front desk and they just wouldn't put us through to Kweisi. Like, I mean, that's not very likely. Right. And if that is what happened, then you need a better switchboard, I guess, to make sure that you're getting calls from top free agents. Like, wait, you're missing calls from top free agents. To me, I'm not making fun. I'm more of just saying that as far as if you're picking avenues of how to answer this, the best avenue is just like, oh yeah, I don't know. I don't know what happened there. That's a better avenue to take than trying to actually explain yourself i do believe that he

is being blackballed because it's not the first time that the president of the nflpa has suddenly become a free agent and not been able to get a job and jc treanor really pushed this league particularly in that article he praises other leagues for how they've handled player driven type of social issues and things like that and how they've organized extremely well like these are things that the nfl has never been for and somebody said to me once and i think this is right about colin kaepernick it wasn't the kneeling it was the fact that people were following him was the thing that made the nfl nervous and look you go back a few years,

and these owners usually do a tremendous job of handling social issues and everything else. But you go back a few years before we knew Case Keenum was going to go 11-3 as a starter. Sam Bradford goes down, Colin Kaepernick is available, and they don't make that phone call. How about right now? Sean Mannion and Nick Mullins are your backup quarterbacks. There's no Colin Kaepernick workout in what world is Colin Kaepernick,

not a better quarterback. So there, they will allow political issues, whether, you know, and I don't even mean like in the bigger picture, I mean, NFL politics to play into their decision making as well. So if there is issues with the blocking at center, I think we have to go back to, you guys said that you didn't, or well, you know, this player said you didn't even return his call and he might've been an upgrade

even if he played 10 games or 12 games, might've been an upgrade. And I think if it goes the way it's gone with Bradbury and it's costly and you miss the playoffs because of it or whatever then that will be something we remember as well you didn't return the call of a player who wanted to play for you and would have been an obvious upgrade yeah I think there's just it's just a confusing thing to me like either something's missing or maybe it's as simple as he is, in fact, getting blackballed. But, like, that seems like kind of a ridiculous thing because the Vikings have this blatant, blatant weakness at center in Garrett Bradbury,

who has been at the bottom of the PFF pass blocking grades every single year of his career. This is a team that's all in, that wants to win this year, that kind of needs to win this year to defend the approach they took this offseason. And you have this potential major, major upgrade, if he's healthy, if he's not going to cost that much, in J.C. Tretter. And you don't even look into it because, what, because there's a memo coming down from ownership that hey stay away from this guy he's he's a rabble rouser i mean there was there was a quote in this article that treanor's agent

called him in june and basically said i didn't realize how many people you pissed off like he's been very active in on a lot of fronts and i recommend reading the article like trying to mobilize players the cba does not expire for a long time. They recently had a new one. But he understands the power that can come from getting these big-name players. There was an example cited of when the players were not satisfied with the NFL's COVID response and they wanted to play. He organized this, and they got Patrick Mahomes and Drew Brees and a bunch of players to tweet out, like, we want to play. Oh this and they got like patrick mahomes and drew breeze and a bunch of players to tweet out like we want to play oh that's right and and that became

a huge thing and that kind of forced the nfl's hand and there are things like that that you can do if you get all of the players in this union to kind of come together and enact collective change and help make things better for the players, whether it's more guaranteed contracts, which Kirk Cousins was the first, which is always kind of a funny little Minnesota tie-in. But yeah, I mean, it's just bizarre to me that that would be enough to keep you from making such a conceivably, theoretically like blatant, obvious upgrade. Okay.

I've got an article. This is from April 29th, 2010 veteran center. Kevin Mawai became a free agent on March 5th and nearly two months later, he still doesn't have a job. This is from Greg Rosenthal pro football talk at the time. So what gives Mawai thinks that he is possibly not getting a job at even at his age of 39 because he is the president of the nfl players association i am unemployed and hoping someone

will call it's kind of befuddling to me that i just came off my eighth pro bowl and a 16 game season and i can't get one phone call. Does this sound familiar? This is an offensive lineman who is in his older years, Kevin Mawai. And J.C. Tretter is 31. Right. He's not 39, and he's a top 10 center easily, maybe top five. Yep.

And so this is another quote from Kevin Mawai. I've said in the past that I hope our management and the owners can look past the fact that I am the president of the Players Association, but right now it's not looking that way. And Mowai never played again in the NFL. I mean, Kevin Mowai was a pro bowler, just as J.C. Tretter was very good last year and could not get a job. This is apparently a thing they do. I mean, I don't know what it accomplishes, but it's apparently a thing they do. We got to put our tinfoil hats on right now. I mean, I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming, right?

I mean, look, let's go through players. How about this? Zedarius Smith just whooped some fools out there today in practice. But the guy failed a physical, or we believe likely failed a physical in Baltimore still signed a contract here despite back surgery like the NFL signs players who have recently been hurt or have how about Anthony Barr I mean Anthony Barr played basically half the season last year missed almost all of training camp the word degenerative has been used about his knees and he just got a contract with the Dallas Cowboys.

Right. So if you have great numbers from last year, you're probably finding a job late in camp. How about, look, Everson Griffin tweeted that the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings was ass. He put that in a tweet, and they brought him back.

Despite his issues, despite his tweet, despite his tweet. If you can play football, you get a job. Deshaun Watson got 230 million guaranteed. Right, right. But that's a separate thing,

but late career injuries don't normally scare these teams off. They usually scare them away from guaranteed money, but not of a player. So I think that him naming theings puts them at the center of this but it's everyone and everyone is wrong for doing it but i also understand why the vikings would not break rank just because he's if if that's what everybody is doing and of course no one can prove it but if everyone is holding a beef against this guy because he's the president of the pa you can't be the team or the owners who signed that guy.

And then everyone else looks at you and goes, uh, I thought we kind of wink winked and nodded, nodded about this. Um, however, I still think that, uh,

I mean, blackballing a player is like not legal. And Colin Kaepernick got a settlement from the NFL because of it, because clearly there was proof and maybe some John Gruden emails that were out there about Colin Kaepernick. But you're not allowed to do that. So that means to me we can criticize the Vikings for doing that if they did. And if again, if there's the problems with the interior line, you're going to look back and go, well, there was a guy, but he was good at organizing players, so we couldn't have him. It feels like more of a when than an if to me with what we've seen from this interior offensive line

for the past few years. Let's hit a couple other topics here. We have a couple other things from practice today. I mean, Nick Mullins is the new quarterback. We did not really see anything from him he took kind of one walkthrough series he was throwing after practice with Myron Mitchell um Sean Mannion was the last guy on the field again which I know you you noticed the other day but um yeah Nick Mullins like I think we're both assuming that he is going to be this team's backup quarterback kind of without much debate.

But I don't know. That's probably got to be all based on his previous production in this league and what he's put on tape with the Raiders in a couple preseason games. Because I don't know if we're going to see him on Saturday. I don't know if he's going to be familiar enough with this offense and ready enough that the Vikings will feel comfortable throwing him out there because if you put him out there and he's not really prepared with the offense and he looks bad that's not a good look it's not really all that helpful for his development within your system so I think we may just see more Kellen Mond and Sean Mannion on Saturday night I don't know how do you how do

you see that playing out well the fact that Kellen Mond basically didn't take any reps all all week like none at full speed that I saw not a single one right today when it was the twos it was all Sean Mannion all Sean Mannion I think it's possible Sean Mannion just plays the whole game or maybe at the end of the fourth quarter we see Nick Mullins I'd be surprised if we see Kellen Mond I mean after that if especially if you're planning on cutting a guy then you don't want him to get hurt and then you have to keep him because you can't just like cut well you can but then you have to pay an injury settlement so like you don't want to do that you want to be able to just cut the guy and that's it um they will take on some dead cap regardless if they have to do that but it's I think it's clear that he's not going to get a lot of work if he does

and that Mannion has won that job between those two. Where Mullins fits in is interesting. Remember P.J. Hall? Oh, yeah. Vikings legend. He had a two-day tenure. Yes. Stephen Ridley is another example.

You guys know how much I love Stephen Ridley. Sometimes they acquire players and then they get them and they go like ah no it's just not you know we can't get them up to speed fast enough or whatever I would assume though that Sean Manion gets cut and signed to the practice squad and then elevated for the first couple of weeks I think you can elevate a guy what like three times so whatever number it is three two or three he gets elevated and then depending on how they play in practice i guess it's either manion or mullins ends up uh getting cut i i really don't know i mean the thing about nick mullins is you know people looked at some of his stats as yards per attempt or something and you're like well it doesn't look that bad it's not it's not good either i mean it's not like there's it's not like oh man this guy is so far ahead of what sean manion would have done

under the same circumstances it's not like that and uh manion knows the offense inside and out it's gonna be hard for somebody else to catch up so it would not totally totally shock me if we all made this big deal out of absolutely nothing because we've definitely done it before it wouldn't shock me if manion is cut and they're well aware that no one else is signing manion so they can put him on the practice squad and elevate him uh the only option that seems like it's absolutely not happening is kellen mon being the backup of this of this team no that ship sailed um That ship sailed when he threw that last interception against the 49ers. It's not happening. We haven't seen much of him this week. I still think that

Nick Mullins is a fairly significantly better quarterback than Sean Mannion. Mannion has the advantage of being here longer and knowing the offense and things like that. But there's a reason why Nick Mullins has started 17 games in this league. Mannion has started one or two out of necessity. Not that Mullins' starts weren't also out of necessity due to injuries, but he's played better in the NFL. He has the ability to just make slightly more high-level throws, I think. Sean Mannion is still just this below-replacement-level guy. I think Nick Mullins will be just this below replacement level guy. I think Nick Mullins will be the backup, even if we don't see much of him this week. But the one other thing that I wanted to talk about,

at least one other thing for this last preseason game, is that we were robbed. Totally robbed. We were completely robbed because earlier this week, Vikings special teams coordinator Matt Daniels, who is one of our favorite people to talk to in press conferences, told us we were getting a punt off because Jordan Berry and Ryan Wright were both still on the roster. They both had very similar, they had the exact same, actually, stats through two games. Five punts for 243 yards.

I added this up because I'm a sicko. What about their net? Did you do the net? I didn't do the net. Oh, the net is what matters. Everyone knows it. I know. It was fairly simple.

But Jordan Barry had slightly more hang time. Oh, okay. And a slightly better PFF punting grade and a couple fair catches. And I was assuming that Jordan Barry, being a veteran and having this rapport with Greg Joseph as a holder, was ahead in that competition. But that we were going to get a punt off in this last preseason game in Denver, in the altitude. We were going to get the two splitting punting reps.

And whoever punted better, maybe that wasn't going to be the sole determinant of who won the job. But it was going gonna play a factor and I that gave us something to look forward to in a otherwise mostly I'm expecting a mostly uneventful third preseason game and then today the Vikings released Jordan Barry so they can bring back uh cornerback Ty Smith because they've got some some injured cornerbacks Andrew Bo booth jr is not practicing with his ankle injury um i'm i'm i'm devastated well the fact that andrew booth jr and lewis scene won't be playing that's also another good thing to point out both of the vikings top two picks neither one participated today neither one's gonna play on saturday we think isn't it a wild ride following this i'll

get to the punting thing but like isn't it a wild ride following like they draft a player and then everyone wants everything to mean that that player is going to be the next great thing and then there might be some signs that they're not but we don't really know yet because it's like it takes years sometimes for guys and so we just go on this roller coaster of like well lewis seen got a couple of first team reps so it won't be long and then he never got them again and now he got hurt. And Andrew Booth Jr. is healthy for the first time since high school, which actually is a really bad thing. And then he's hurt. And then but he was really good at the start of camp and he can really move.

It's like this, you know, this roller coaster at all times, even with Kellen Mott, where it's like, okay, they drafted this third quarterback, this third round quarterback. And RG three is laughing at Kirk cousins on this draft broadcast. And then he gets here and we go, Oh, okay. He can't throw. That's not good. And then, and then he has this horrendous camp, but maybe people want to blame Mike Zimmer. And then he comes back and he does it again. It's just like one of the things that will always in forever captivate the audience is whether rookies are busts or stars or whatever. And I guess I would say with these two, it's not going the way they hoped. Like they hoped that scene would be their starting safety.

And they hoped that Andrew Booth Jr. Would be good depth because now their depth is whom? On the outside. If Andrew Booth Jr. does not come back before week one or is slowed, they brought back Ty Smith. Chris Boyd has to be on the team because he's played some football. Maybe Perry Nickerson is elevated from the practice squad. That sound good to you?

Well, I guess a Caleb Evansans too but he's really raw we just saw him uh in a the ones against the twos um today had a total miscommunication with safety mike brown the non-drafted guy that left justin jefferson just wide open for a touchdown yeah so so it's not yeah it's not ideal not ideal no because also i mean if they don't trust scene to be the backup or he isn't healthy because they said it's not yeah it's not ideal not ideal no because also i mean if they don't trust scene to be the backup or he isn't healthy because they said it was not a huge injury and not a big deal and kevin o'connell said he wasn't worried but then scene doesn't practice all week so you're like okay well i don't know then um and he seems very optimistic about these injuries and timelines and we haven't yet gotten a sample size to figure

out whether those are going to be accurate or not. Like he says, Irv Smith's going to be ready. We're two weeks away from the season. Irv Smith is not catching passes yet. I don't know if he's going to be ready. He was catching a few passes off to the side today, like some over the shoulder light, light stuff. Yeah. Not in real drills. I'm not saying that he's like lying to us i'm saying that his optimism for these injuries might like prove uh that we gotta wait and see if that's yeah just saying it's intentional uh people like to fill in the gaps sometimes but uh to the punting thing it is crushing it is crushing because it gave us this one really hilarious thing to track stupidly close would be like how many yards was that what was the i was gonna have my phone out like the net like so i could tweet it live here's

exact here's or the uh the hang time like here's exactly what it is and then ryan right just wins it um and i was tracking it today ryan right punted a bunch today in the scrimmage his first one only went 39 yards oh no not great second one 50 yards with good hang time fair catch that's pretty good third one again only 39 yards and he also got blown up while it happened and troy die like got hurt on the play it was it was kind of bizarre so maybe a little excuse there fourth one 56 yards that's that's the ryan right they're looking for however on that one smith marsette was able to return it he outkicked the coverage he did yeah you can't be doing that so hey the fact that you

wrote down the distances is pretty great but all right there is one serious question that needs to be asked though about this punting thing and you know what it is the holding are you comfortable with ryan wr Wright testing fate? Because remember, Jordan Berry and Greg Joseph, they had a good season together last year. This seems to me, even if he is a slightly better punter, to be fiddling with fate. Dancing with the devil here. Tempting the football gods. Oh, tempt they do. Yeah, and there was a practice earlier in camp

where Greg Joseph has been lights out this entire training camp. Like, we don't want to overhype him. It's just the reality he has not missed very many kicks. He's been great. He's been drilling them from like 50 plus, like almost 60 yards, 58 a few times. There was a practice where he went six for eight, and he missed two field goals, and the holder on both of those missed field goals was Ryan Wright. And that right there, I was like,

Jordan Berry is going to be the punter because the holding thing matters so much. Like punting, whether you punt differences of 10 yards and various hang time. And as long as you're not getting it taken to the house frequently, it but it's a marginal thing getting good holds down like having the laces lined up the right way putting in the right spot making joseph feel comfortable with everything is very important because a single missed extra point or a single missed 43 yard field goal can change seasons. And we saw that last year. Like, what happens if Greg Joseph makes that kick against the Cardinals in week two? I'm not blaming Jordan Berry for the hold on that kick necessarily. But, like, it's an important thing.

And that's why it was surprising to me today that they let Jordan Berry go. They still have some time. Like, Ryan Wright still needs to prove starting on Saturday night and throughout these practices that he can punt well and hold well or the Vikings will not hesitate to bring somebody else in I wouldn't think but yeah anyways we were robbed of a punt off and now now all I can hope for is that T.Y. McGill gets two more sacks that's as worked up as you've been about anything, like, really, ever. I mean, you're really upset about that.

No, but it is true that it goes back to the, we will look back to this if it goes wrong. Very much like the J.C. Tretter thing, only in a much more absurd fashion. Like, if they can't get the holding operation right we're gonna be like what this i mean the same thing this happened like two years ago with austin cutting where they went with the inexperienced long snapper and then he got the yips and then they couldn't make field goals and then dan bailey got other yips of his own and it was just like what is going on here and uh you you really don't want to test

fate with that but uh aside from that you know not that serious uh what um what's got you excited you excited for saturday yeah isn't everyone yeah not really i i kind of wish it was an afternoon game and it wasn't gonna like take up my whole saturday night 8 p.m central start big plans otherwise yeah i mean i might have i might have gone to the state fair or something oh yeah i think i'm gonna do that tomorrow night though friday night so good call so we'll be good but yeah i mean it's i'm we do this every day like this is i think i'll be able to find some interesting things to watch as a sicko who does all the 53-man roster projections and things like that. The next day, I'm going to update it for the final time because cuts are Tuesday.

It's a quick turnaround. This is kind of the last chance. Not kind of. This is the last chance for some of the bubble guys to make an impression. And I wrote an article earlier this week kind of talking about some of the guys who maybe need to have a strong performance. I would say Zach Davidson stands out as one. Maybe it's too late for him with the drops and the struggles blocking, but the Vikings have given him every chance to be this number three tight end to get it on the roster. And I think maybe he still has a chance if he plays well.

I think the back end of the receiver room, I think top four are for sure set. Maybe the top five, BC Johnson might be safe. So then it comes down to Jalen Naylor, Dan Chisinau, who's injured. Myron Mitchell, Tristan Jackson. Are any of them going to stand out? I think I have Naylor as the favorite right now,

but he muffed a kickoff in that Raiders game, which is one of the appeals to having him on the roster. Ole Udo is in other Zach Davidson territory where he desperately needs to play well to have a shot of making this roster after what we've seen throughout camp in the preseason and him getting passed up by Blake Brandel. I don't know if he's even going to make the team at all. I think it's looking like he won't. Janaris Robinson as like the fifth edge potentially. He's really struggled. Blake Lynch and Troy Dyett inside linebacker. James Lynch up front.

There's a lot of guys like this who are on the bubble, and those are the guys to pay attention to on Saturday night. So preseason football usually stinks. That 49ers game was about as bad as it gets, although it can always get worse. But there will be some individual guys to keep an eye on that will at least, I think, make this moderately interesting. We could still track the punting, I guess. And T.Y. McGill. It's always T.Y. McGill season. T.Y. McGill. He has captured the hearts and minds, but still was with the third team today. So I don't know. I guess maybe the team is not quite as sold. Jonathan Bullard is

like ahead of him. Yeah. Oh, and there's no question. I mean, Bullard's been in the league like he's he's played a lot for teams before. So, yeah, it seems like he's going to be that guy. But maybe McGill is practice squad. Yeah. Trying to fill out like who's going to be practice squad, who's getting cut down. Now the practice squad is so big that if you get cut, you're just probably not good. It's not like these teams are just struggling as much as they did because the practice squad, the fact that you can elevate guys,

they're basically on your team now. So you're talking about almost 70 players. Is it 69 players? I think it's 69 right like 53 plus 16 yeah there you go nice nice so there you have it uh but yeah i mean when you have a 90 man roster and you get to keep seven out of nine players i mean those last guys were all going to be going like well sorry mike brown tough break but i wasn't sure you were ever real in the first place i'm sure that uh you know guys like wyatt davis are going to try to make that last push or maybe chas surratt did i see did i not see him today out there um i don't even know but like yeah i mean there's not enough really to look at it's only just for those guys though there is no and

i used to enjoy the preseason overreactions, like first team is struggling out there. It's going to be a problem. Like, yeah, maybe. I don't know. Like, who cares? But there is like guys' careers on the line, and that's worth watching, and, you know, it's football.

But aside from that, if you're skipping it to go do something else and just want to listen to the recap podcast, do not blame me at all. Do you want to take four minutes talk about man titan i was going to ask you this yeah because we we hinted at that when we were talking before the show um because you have not discussed it on the show yet and we were both very captivated by this two-part two-hour netflix documentary on the whole man tit Teo situation 10 years later. People who haven't watched it may not really understand what we're talking about. You're obviously familiar with it. When it happened, it was a huge story. I would recommend that you do

watch it, and people that have watched it will understand what we're talking about. I think the debate, not really debate, the discussion between the two of us and other members of the Vikings beat while we're out here watching practice has kind of centered around how much, if any, does Manti Teo, how much blame does he take for this whole situation?

And we agree that it is not much. He is not the primary culprit um naya the person that catfished him is comes off really poorly i think in this documentary even if they tried to like frame it at times like like part of her transition to being this transgender woman and try to paint her in a good light she comes off terribly she really didn't express much remorse some of the things that she did just like faking dying in a car accident as lanae kakua vantai teo's not real girlfriend faking dying in a car accident then later getting leukemia then like breathing heavily over the phone as if this person was on life support and like needed

him to talk to her like it's it's insane but at the same time if you're Manta Ateo how do you not even in even in the I'm just rambling here but even in the like context of it being 2012 and catfishing not really being a thing that people knew about how do you not verify at some point that this girl exists yeah so if you want to know what it's like on the sideline while the players are stretching and we're waiting for things to happen it's like this like we all watch the Manti Teo documentary and are just like it's it's fascinating in disbelief of how crazy this person was the Lene Kukua uh Well, no, that's the fake person. Renia Tuyasopo is the real person.

How insane that person was and how sociopathic and calculated to figure out all these different ways to keep this going. And then when the man actually has something really bad happen in his life, takes advantage of that to punish him for living his actual life and being happy at Notre Dame. Like, Oh, you're not paying enough attention to me. Whoops. I'm dead. Like what? The only thing that I would say Manti Teo deserves some criticism for is not telling anyone exactly how their relationship worked. So if you're going to say like, here's an example. So all of us here that are on the beat, we all kind of know everybody's situation. Andrew just got married and you know, Dane's got a girlfriend or everybody kind of knows, right?

We all assume that you've met the girl. You say you're dating, dating right like all of us kind of know right what's going on with each other and if somebody in the room said their girlfriend died nobody would think like oh like a facebook friend like no one would ever think that so even though deadspin claims that they didn't mean to embarrass mantiteo sure you didn't. And they were just trying to dunk on the New York Times and ESPN. At that point, who would ever think he would have not met his girlfriend? The guy's a superstar football player. She's got a profile that you can find and looks like a real person. Like, who would ever think, oh, man, I better call to make sure there's a death certificate. Like, what? would ever think oh man i better call to make sure there's a death certificate like what uh so i think

that him not saying if all he had said was my grandmother died and someone else who i was close with another friend you can have online friends and be close with them people would have still been like oh dude tough that's so hard well that's the thing he like he didn't do anything to kind of like minimize the situation like he brought her up unprompted in tv interviews and yes he told reporters that he had met her at stanford in person which obviously wasn't true because she didn't exist and various things like that like again if you watch documentary, you understand kind of how this happened to him. Because he grew up in this Mormon faith, this Polynesian community, Hawaii. A lot of the factors were present to allow this to happen, where he was just all football, football, football, football.

So having this online relationship, this long-distance relationship that he thought was real with this person kind of fit perfectly into his schedule and into his life. But still, but still, it's not the way that he characterized it. He did not characterize it as someone who I was close with that I never met also died. Like was girlfriend like that's just so different and whether he intentionally did that to kind of get more attention no one would ever admit to that i would not blame him for not admitting to that but exaggeration is a human trait i don't think it was he did it intentionally i don't think so either help his heisman chances but the reality of it is that it did right like that's that was a huge story that entire season the adversity that he had battled through losing his grandmother and

his girlfriend on the same day is like that's kind of how he made it to New York I mean he was a very very good player but like he was an off-ball linebacker right in like semi-modern football I don't know absolutely played into it and once that ball started rolling, it's almost like the first time he said girlfriend, and then that ball got rolling and did all the interviews. He kind of couldn't stop it. Right. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube and then it's just out of control. The other area is, and this is, we could say as adults and not someone who is 21 years old, because 21 years old is probably not old enough to fully be held responsible for all of your actions for the rest of your life. And I sympathize with Manti Teo.

And I thought the end was beautiful. I thought that like his, his speech at the end. And if you're looking for this, it's on Netflix, but his speech at the end about forgiving the person who catfished him and wanting to help people. And it's okay that people make fun of me. I'm going to just do, do my thing. That's great. It's a great message for everybody. But if you were to tell people how you could really help them in the future, it's fess up before it comes out. Because if, when he found out that that person, whomever it was,

was still alive, if he went to Notre Dame and he said, look, there's something going on here. I need you guys to organize me telling the local media what's going on because the local media in a college town like that, I mean, they are going to be more sympathetic just naturally. Like that's college sports. And I'm not accusing anybody of being biased toward the team, but like college is kind of you know they honk for the team the south bend tribune would probably have been a little forgiving yeah yes and if you call the press conference with only the locals and said here's exactly what happened to me i was catfished this is bs well i think it goes over way different if he comes out with it first and

says, I'm the victim. Then if someone else catches you in the act, and then of course, it makes it much worse that on the stage, he brings it up out of nowhere where he could have said anything. And he says, my dead girlfriend's like, Oh no. So, uh, absolutely wild stuff. But I do sympathize. I give him some percentage of blame. But I sympathize more than anything because, gosh, they made a whole show for a decade out of people who have had this happen to them. It's a horrible, horrible thing to do to somebody. Yeah, the overarching thing is just you come away feeling really terrible for him and what happened to him, what this person did to him and how it materially like he would have been a first round lock. He goes to the second round. he loses out on money that way he admitted to feeling like really he wasn't in the right mental headspace for his first several years with the chargers because of this whole

situation he became this this laughing stock like you just feel really bad for him and for what this person did to him um we our debate of like there's various there's various amounts of blame you can assign like should he have done various things to not perpetuate it um the media i think is another interesting point we gotta wrap this up but like dead's been kind of running with the story before having all of the information and in their article insinuating that Manti Teo was somebody said he was 80 percent in on it like that was really damaging too yep they the two Deadspin writers I don't think come away from this looking very good um so just a fascinating documentary if you haven't seen it uh highly highly recommend it and uh let us know what

you think after you watch it yeah and I think that the other thing too was like, two other things was how fast the media landscape changes. These people were going on Dr. Phil and like Katie Couric show. We said this now, if it happened today, it would be like, oh wow, that's crazy. And then two weeks later, no one would really be talking about it.

On to the next thing. It just happened at the perfect time with the rise of social media and memes and stuff that it stuck with him for a long time. If I even named the biggest story today, by three days from now, you wouldn't remember that it was the biggest story. Like, that's how fast we move now. But at that time, it just stayed. So anyway, yeah, go find it if you haven't. It's on Netflix.

And great stuff. This was very energetic, Will. Well, go find it if you haven't. It's on Netflix. Great stuff. This was very energetic, Will. We had a lot to talk about. It's like intense with punting and Lene Gakua. JC Treader and Kirk Cousins throwing three interceptions. A lot going on. Season's almost here.

Season's almost here. Season!