Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Analyst Ollie Connolly: Vikings C Ryan Kelly is a GENIUS

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

Matthew Coller is joined by Ollie Connolly of Read Optional to discuss new Vikings center Ryan Kelly and why he's such a great fit for the Vikings heading into 2025.

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of purple insider, Matthew collar here and returning to the show is Ali Connolly. He writes the read optional.com also contributes to the guardian. And the reason I bring up the, the guardian Ali is because I was looking back. It's like, what have you written recently? Let me go find some stuff. And when you did a free agency analysis,

your winners and losers, the number one winner was the Minnesota Vikings. So I wanna start there with you, and then we're gonna deep dive into some Xs and Os. This is Tape Guy Week, where I'm bringing on a lot of the best tape analysts in the NFL to talk Vikings and football. But I would love to know your rationale behind naming the Vikings,

your top winner of free agency in that article. Oh, part of it was pure narcissism. I'll confess that upfront. Going into frenzy, my number one tidbit for any team in the league was go and get the Colts interior duo. Both of them are available. I think they have the best combination across League. This includes all the best center guard combinations of awareness and chemistry together, picking things up, passing things off and then a league which I'm sure we'll get to where everything now is about moving fronts and mug looks and all these

different wonky pressures people are throwing your way. Communication wins out above everything else. So if you have a clear issue, which the Vikings had, and they said, can we get two guys together who have the best chemistry in the league at picking a wonky stuff? That feels like the most A-plus thing any team did this offseason to me. This is a great place to pick up because that is one of the main things I wanted to discuss. When you mentioned Mug Looks, that's where the two linebackers line up over the A-gaps. Mike Zimmer was famous for it, but now it feels like everybody is doing it all the time. And what I've noticed, Ollie is that it used

to be, and this is even when I first started covering the league in 2016 with Mike Zimmer, first down was pretty traditional four, three look second down. If it's in long, maybe they've got the nickel and then third down. It's like, all right, here comes the magic. But what I notice around the NFL now is that first down could be the magic. Second down could be the magic from defensive coordinators. I, Brian Flores, if you get to second and six, Brian Flores is sending some crazy blitz at you. I think that that ties into the value of the interior offensive lineman because no longer is it like, well, I make my money on third downs. Like you better be ready for anything all the time.

And last year they got absolutely smoked on the stunts and twists and blitzes because they really weren't good at figuring things out like that and sorting things through it. So it feels like that over just the last maybe two or three years has really changed with the approach of teams knowing that offenses really aren't running past first down in 10 so they're just gonna go after it. Yeah and just on the Vikings quickly we're talking here and the guys are bringing a rookie quarterback game Ryan Kelly is a true genius and I don't use that word hyperbolically or very often with players

but he is a true genius at figuring things out so you move the communication system to a genius and you declutter that from the brains of a first year starter. That's pretty, pretty good work with all this stuff you're discussing. The main kind of macro trend across League with the Blitz work is not even just anything's available at any time. Most of the top smart elite coaches are doing something which we call inverting the downs, which sounds very fancy, but it's just taking the old school formula you described and flipping it on its head. It's not just saying we may go on second, we may go on first. It's first is our go time. That is the best opportunity we get. It's usually a 50-50 down, could be a run pass. And if we score a negative play, if it's just incomplete ball, stuff the run, TFL, that's our drive. That's how we win. We don't give these guys three cracks. These guys have Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes. We ain't beating them three times. It's not happening. And so what

they'll do is they'll crank up the heat on first down. They get a bit more into this simulated pressure zone pressure world where you keep the coverage numbers back and you keep a four man rush, but you're not quite sure who's coming. That's when you see some of the oddity stuff and you try and back off on third down and say, we'll play coverage. We've got the negative on first down. What do we care? We'll back up, play to the sticks. We'll get off the field. That's kind of the more macro trend of where the top defensive guys are going. Okay. I want to dive more into that because the Vikings have really leaned heavily toward playing zone coverages and rushing five all the time. But let me circle back to where you started that comment about Ryan Kelly and being a genius.

Can you go into more detail about that? Because I've been watching some all 22 Ryan Kelly trying to figure out kind of where is this guy a little later in his career. And what I noticed, we talk about usually with quarterbacks command of the offense. I mean, this is a center who seems to have complete command of the offense. But I'm interested in your perspective

on using the word genius. Well, it's as simple as going through all the quarterbacks he's worked with in the different offenses over his time, and they never ever move the communication to anyone else. They say, I don't care how smart you are as a quarterback. We bring in whoever it is, Matt Ryan, one of the all time great pre snap quarterbacks, they go, no, Ryan's better than you at this stuff. They just never allow free runners.

The whole NFL's principle in the pressure world is you punch the ALB gaps. That's what it's all designed for. People remember some of the nickel stuff because it kind of leaps off the screen more, you know, when you're watching red zone or something. But the world is built to get through the ALB gaps. The Colts don't allow free runners ever. Doesn't matter who's coming in, coming out of there. They had a bunch of injuries over his time. Obviously he had Nelson beside him for a lot of stretches of there. But they've, they cycled through last season, a ton of different people, no free runners. The whole league is built to design free runners.

They never happen when Ryan Kelly is running the protections. And that's so interesting because last year some of Sam Darnold's best plays had to come against free runners where he was escaping, you know, Seattle or one of the touchdowns against the Atlanta Falcons. And if you can avoid that, I mean, I, I talk about a lot, the PFF data and what it says about pressured versus, uh, not pressured drop-backs for quarterbacks, it's very clear that there is an enormous gap. If a quarterback gets pressure, he turns into a backup caliber player.

Whereas, uh, Jared Goff, for example, is the MVP. If he would never face any type of pressure, but I feel like that is even ramped up for somebody like JJ McCarthy, who has never played in the NFL before. And it's even just the, think about the sheer number of pressure drop backs that even faced in college because they were ahead of the sticks all the time. They ran a lot of play action. I think that it's always valuable to have a great offensive line, but if you're Cincinnati and you got Joe burrow or you mentioned Lamar Jackson, okay, well you could still win a lot of games with that. I think as far as winning the off

season, the Vikings also understood like what they were doing here and what they were going to ask of JJ McCarthy when they invested as much as they did on the interior of the offensive line. Yeah. And to me, it was the two of them together as opposed to just you bringing one individual. I think Kelly, no matter any situation, would be good. I mean, just go look right now. Everyone pull up a list of your favorite scents in the NFL. Who are the best scents in the NFL? You will quickly get to probably sixth or seventh Hoyt Schott Froholt, who not many people focusing on. And that tells you where the level is at in the league.

That's no disrespect to Hjolt, who is actually a good player, talented run game player, not a genius and past probe by any stretch of the imagination. It's a pretty bleak landscape in a league where, as we just described, they're seeing more than ever before. They're seeing more creativity than ever before. These past, these guys are designing every week. They are one-off specific to who is the weak link on the O-line.

You used to blitz the weak link. You didn't used to build 12 different concepts with nine different looks, tailed to, well, where is he at his worst where one foot goes somewhere, if you shift weight one way, manipulating the front to force them into protections. That's the big thing you mentioned with the muggers earlier.

One of the main trends on Flores is a little different because he lives in his completely old universe of what he's doing to everyone else on the planet and I love him for that. People are using the low mugger more than they are the double mugger. The low mugger is simply I will stand one person somewhere along the front and it forces the offensive line to say well we have to account if he arrives therefore we must set our protection a certain way and what these guys have done by manipulating and moving their front with certain strategies is say I as a defensive guy We're often trying to figure out the protection. We'll set the protection for you. There's five guys. You got a block five

That's five or protection. It's man-to-man protection. Well from there I can tee off and have fun. I know your protection That's why we run all the stunts and the twist and we get you know This demolition in the backfield everyone's colliding into each other by design and they get to set the protection on their terms And they don't even have to send the single guy By the way, that can be a four-man situation So it is just an absolute nightmare right now to figure out what's happening in the pass rush game Who's coming from where different angles different body types and so to give yourself the advantage in a league where the centers are really poor Drew Dahlman is a below average player in the NFL

He gets a bag from the Bears because he's 26 and he's a really good kick and go wide zone player. That's it. The past pro stuff is really poor because they're looking around the landscape saying, none of these guys are out there. Where are these guys coming from? College isn't giving those two and they see different defenses anyway,

different offensive scheme. So to go and get someone at the true apex of his powers, I know there's the athletic limitations. I know there's injury concerns, but having that kind of mental two steps ahead quickness, it just wasn't available on the market with anyone else. I mean, when you look at even the Vikings decision a couple years ago to stick with Garrett Bradbury after he had consistently been one of the worst pass blocking centers in the league, I think that tells you a lot about just how difficult and challenging that position is

and how hard it is to replace, uh, that center spot. Now, as far as the left guard goes, they go in the first round with Donovan Jackson. We've just been talking about how challenging it is to play interior offensive line in the NFL. I think it's one of the things that I've talked about a lot of the, the challenge of coming from college to the NFL for young players. But I do think that Donovan Jackson is in a unique position because of who he has on his left and right.

Christian Derrissaugh to his left, one of the best, now Ryan Kelly to his right. But still, it's not going to be the easiest thing in the world. What do you make of how he fits and the difference potentially that he could make in this offensive line? Folks, as you know, over the last five years, I've built up Purple Insider into my own small business, but I realize as a business owner that I still have a lot to learn. That's where IDOU comes in. I'm learning to jumpstart my company's growth through IDOU courses and how to be more innovative and use their award-winning methods to help me lead Purple Insider confidently in a changing media landscape. One of the things that's overwhelming to me and many business owners is AI.

IDOU has a whole suite of AI and design thinking programs that are helping me learn how to combine AI tools with human created design to boost the creativity and solve some of purple insiders problems That's just one example, but there are all sorts of examples for every business leader out there at IDO You class starts soon. So enroll today for a limited time IDO You is offering my listeners 15% off sitewide. So go to Ideo you.com slash purple insider. That is i d e o u.com slash purple insider 15% off again, i d e o u.com slash purple insider. I love the fit. I love the upside swing. I love the in-out versatility of this injury concerns maybe go play him at tackle and pinch, but try and get himself down at God. That

could be injuries on the right side, right guard. I think the key thing is just the development art beyond the physical skills, physical skills are obvious to everyone else. But in this kind of conversation we're having is if you know people are going for your weak point, they're coming for the rookie and they come for the rookie no matter what. Right? So, you know, we got a pretty settled right side. Ryan can shade that way anytime he wants and he can build a protection plan in a way that is, let's make sure we help Donovan out.

Whether that's a tight to split, just, you know, one scan there before scanning the other way. He knows the right side will probably be sorted. So in terms of kind of encasing him in this phone booth you're talking about, like our right side, left side, teams will find ways to expose that. They can find ways with some kind of overload front,

one guy on one side, you've got all three big bodies on the other side. You make sure he has a head up player in front of him. Teams will find ways to expose that they can find ways with some kind of overload from one guy on one side You've all three big bodies on the other side. You make sure he has a head up player in front of him There's really easy ways to craft one-on-ones in the NFL now and then all the different read stuff where if you pop here We go there but having someone as intelligent as Kelly next you inoculate to in some sense anyway, then knowing well That's very clearly the weak point until we see how he plays on Sundays He might turn out not to be the weak point, but going in, we know that's probably where that tailoring the plan to write. The plan of attack is going to be at him buys you an

extra B, an extra advantage in the rep to say, well, we're going to check that box first before we scan for anything else. And if your weak point of your offensive line is a 98th percentile athlete who played at Ohio State, who is, you know, a very intelligent player as well. I think that's a good place to be. Also, I can't remember who it was. A coach told me this at one point about the offensive line is we can help one, but we can't help two. And you can play in the NFL with one sinkhole, let alone helping one sinkhole. You can get away with, you can move the launch point, move the party, you do certain things to kind of get around it. You change the rhythm of even, you know, coaches go into this kind of granular detail where, you know, we love our right guy, but in quick game,

he loses early. He's really good in the second search stuff, reaction stuff. We're fine. You know, we get into five, seven step drop, but this guy struggles on that side of things. You can build the plan in a way to kind of love that. So it's when you get to two, it's a nightmare. You get to three, you're all looking for new jobs and you know, got to figure out where the kids go to school and stuff like that. Yeah. And that's a, that's been the Vikings interior in the past. Also, Josh Oliver is a part of this equation as well that I think it's overlooked because he's a blocking tight end.

But if you put him outside of Christian Derrissa, first of all, running to that left side is usually pretty effective, but you can have Derrissa help and you can even leave Josh Oliver against certain guys because he's such a good, you know, past protecting, uh, tight end. I also want to know, cause we're kind of building this conversation around like what's going to help JJ McCarthy this year. And I wonder what you think about where the running game fits in, in the NFL this year, because a lot of the discussion last year was like, Hey, running's back. And my childhood, you know, was full of amazing running backs and handoff on first down handoff on second.

And then quarterback has to win on third down. I don't think we're going back to that in any way, shape or form. But I do think that if you're the Vikings having this rebuilt offensive line, having Jordan Mason in the backfield, knowing that teams are going to play a certain type of defense because of Justin Jefferson, I think that they could make the biggest jump of any team in the league as far as how dangerous they are as a run game. What kind of value do you think that that has in the NFL today is we still know that passing is going to be what ultimately usually wins? Yeah, the run game has as much value as anything in the sport.

And it's from this standpoint, which is the play action. And I get into these fights all the time, all my friends who are real data dogs. And we get into the argument of does the run matter? If you ever go and coach defensive side of the ball, you realize the run game matters to play access of the way you build the fits. It is slightly less true these days for reasons I won't bore every listener with, but it is still essential.

What it is to me is it's about layering at the offense, which is how does your run game fuel your RPO game, fuel your play action shot game, fuel your drop back game? Everything has to look, smell, sound the same. That's how you get people to bite. That's how you trigger explosives. We don't commit to the run in the way you would do like Marty shot an iron rustling thing

where we slam it 20 times. We think it's going to tie the defense out. We commit to it so we can hit the ball over their head for 25 yards and score. That's the point. And we have Justin Jefferson. Anytime we get a chance to do that, we feel pretty good about doing that.

So to me, it's less about, OK, are we going to commit to the run game in certain respects? It's more, how can we recraft the run game to tie better to our play action world that fits JJ, that fits both JJs, I guess, that fits the deep passing game? And that's the interesting thing with me. What we've seen in a mini shift up is the style of run, the generic wide zone and boop just out, not worth investing in so much anymore. You want to be a bit more

gun based a bit more gun RPO based then get to the deep drop back game works easier right then if we're just to turn the back offense in the run game and turn the back and play action hard to get the turn the back deep passing game going you tip it pretty quickly he's just dropping back from in the center we don't see so much of that anymore so that to me is the key is how can they recraft the run game slightly and what we've seen from I would say the most sophisticated Offense is not that the Vikings is not sophisticated is this blending of these gap scheme pulling and moving guys Principles from spread formations That's not a huge thing that the Vikings have done and you just want to try and find a way essentially to mirror power-based

Football the stuff you're talking about growing up where we got two backs or two tight ends I'm a slam in the ball way with people. The top offense is right now who just keep people completely off-tilt, right? There's got no idea what's happening is they found a way to get the two-back football stuff. They rip out from the books from the seventies and eighties, those play books, and there's never two backs in the field. It's either an extra lineman, it's a flex. You mentioned Josh Oliver. It's using a wider C-vue condensed inside. You can hit people the way the Rams do with Robert Woods and Cooper Cook back in the day. That's what you're looking for.

That's the real joker style that Sean Payton's banging on about. That's the advantage all these guys are looking for is how can I run two back football against all these moving defenses? The way to get them to stop moving is to run the ball through their face. Once they stop moving, we trigger the play action shot and we score 30 points or three shot plays. I do miss Lorenzo Neal, Sam Gash, guys like that. But I think that's a great point that you see more offensive linemen coming in. Even the Vikings last year used Trent Sherfield as a blocking wide receiver.

So I think he had 400 snaps, but only a couple of catches because he's out there, uh, or whatever, you know, playing a lot. Uh, they had him at one point crack block Montez sweat and it actually works. So, uh, if you can find that guy, it's, it's got some serious value to him. Um, but yeah, I think the Vikings also have to be willing to ride the run game if it's working because there were a few times last year where I felt like they had leads in games. They had an elite defense and then Sam Darnold throws an interception against the Green Bay Packers in the red zone where if they kick a field goal,

the game is over. And that is something that most guys from the McVeigh tree, somebody like Matt LaFleur, like they'll do it. They'll stick with the run. Kevin O'Connell, I think has had a little more trouble trusting and believing in the run. And I go back to a game in 2023 where they were averaging five yards of carry against the Bears and Josh jobs through, I think four interceptions and 35 passes. It's like, Kevin, just keep running. And I do think that offensive play callers, they make their money on past designs and they're, they're not in a diner with a napkin and a pen drawing up a handoff, right? They're drawing up past concepts. I think that's the next step for him as a play caller. And I totally agree with anyone who says he's one of the best play callers in the NFL. I

think that that's clear, but there is a little bit to a Kyle Shanahan or a Sean McVay or a Matt LaFleur of like, I will just keep handing this football off to this man. And I think if they can do that at times this year, it will help them against a lot of really good offenses and defenses that they're going to play. I mean, I agree with that for sure. It goes back to that. All was like Brandon's daily run. I think he was taking a shot at ESPN about the run game or something where he was just talking about how this game is not

played on paper it really hurts to fit the run you know if you have a coach around young people when they have to fit the run like 20 times in a row they come to the sideline they're like I really don't want to do that anymore could we jog down the field in a seven on seven drill for three reps and get back after it so there's a real punishing element to running the football that I agree with you on the thing with Kevin O'Connell is he's from the world and the worldview, and offensive football speak of, it's here to trigger my shot, please. What I described before, he's not of that world.

The floor is built completely differently where he's from the world of, he was on the napkin designing the wrong game. That was his job as a young guy. O'Connell's different. O'Connell got this job of essentially stripping down an overall in the Rams empty package and calling third downs. That was his job at the Rams, essentially.

So if you get the top gig doing that, then have success doing it, it feels like human eight say, I'm going down with a thing that got me here, as opposed to maybe taking a step back in the offseason. That's why it's so important to have the off season, the self scout, the decompress and go, man, I really got that wrong. Will someone remind me in the moment, it's have a get back coach has have a run game coach in my head say like, hey, man, you should maybe consider running the ball air.

I think it would be invaluable for them. Yeah, I agree. Sometimes he needs a headset on me in the press box. Just run the ball. They can't stop it with Kevin O'Connell. What makes him stand out to me is, uh, a play caller and as a play designer is that if you look at the average depth of target around the league year by year, it keeps going down, uh, in terms of the big picture, which by that, I just mean that short passing is king at this moment.

After 2020, where everybody was hitting deep shots, the Vikings went crazy with deep shots in 2020, Gary Kubiak is their play caller and defenses are like, all right, enough of that. And so now we've seen the offenses take advantage yet. The Vikings have gone the complete opposite way. They are like, no, actually we're going down the field more and trying to create more explosives. And when Mel Kuyper said they should ban too deep defenses, Kevin O'Connell

was like, what I built my entire offense to beat those. What do you think of that uniqueness? Like, why does that still work for them, even though every defense is designed these days to try to stop that underneath stuff? You know, I'd love to give you a really fancy technical answer. I think they have maybe the best player in the National Football League playing outside at receiver for them who is truly unguardable, uncoverable, whatever you want to say. Truly.

There's just no simple way of stopping Jefferson. The thing with O'Connell that's really interesting when you study him is there is nothing inventive. And I kind of love that, that there's not a mythos. I know he has the Kevin O'Connell offense is really successful. Everyone in the national landscape understands that they think he's great, that there's not a myth, though. So I know he has the Kevin O'Connell offense. It's really successful. Everyone in the national landscape understands that they think he's great. But there isn't like a Mike McDaniel circus element to it, where it's like, oh, he's hit on this new, fresh idea.

It's all the best of classics. You see every team try and really run at the perfect time. And he truly is. There's different kind of OCs as the play designers. Those guys often get a lot of credit. They're really good at designing one-off plays. There's builds take advantage of what they've seen on the film watching the defense there's play calls where it's all about sequencing and that's often the one people focus on because they get to watch it and they're Not quite sure who is calling the place often right in the NFL

It's really done by committee now where some guys in charge of the run game some guys says hey We want to run what we got some guys in charge of the run game, some guy says, hey, we want to run what we got. Some guys in charge of third down. The really great ones, the McVeigh, the Shannon, and I think O'Connell, is they just can combine all three as you get some innovative play design, particularly with him in the deep passing game. The game plans are off the charts good. Like everyone's playing catch ball all the time. They don't know what to do against him. And the sequencing is the thing with him, where, as I mentioned, how does a run game fuel our play action, fuel our drop back game. Everything is tied together so fluidly where you can even just see the guys

putting their hands on their helmets after play being like, we should have been ready for that. It was so obvious they wrapped the backside guy twice and they wrapped the guy with a poster, JJ. It's like, well, we should have known that was going to come with three plays later. How did we not know that? And it's already all over. So he's interesting in the sense of, as I said, it's not like there's some new brand

new Andy Reid type thing where it's like, Whoa, where did you get that from? And he reads got all these guys out on the internet looking up these Japanese football games to go and find cool play designs for him. That's not in the O'Connell offense. It's just here's the best 25 concepts in pro football. Let's run him and let's run him at the perfect time. And that's what he's hit on. I think it's funny that you mentioned that because Kevin O'Connell is the single

worst trick play designer that I've ever seen. I don't I don't know that they've hit on maybe they've hit on one for more than 15 yards the entire time that he's been their head coach. And he once had the tight end take the snap and pitch it to the quarterback and then just the quarterback got blown up immediately. Like, let's just not. Uh, but as far as running those concepts, what I think that he understands extremely well, and then there was a story I wrote last year that I thought told a lot about

Kevin O'Connell, they had this guy named Bobby McCain. I don't know if you remember Bobby McCain, just the safety nickel corner kind of guy. He'd been around forever. He was on their practice squad and every day in practice they would run their stuff. And then Kevin O'Connell would go to Bobby McCain, I think it was like 32 and had played for 10 different teams. And he would ask him like, what did you see? How did our defense respond to that?

How did this recovered coverage respond to that? And he would give them feedback. And I think what O'Connell really understands is defense. And there are some play callers who I think they love their plays on the napkin. And I think that they think that they have designed all this genius stuff, but they don't really fully understand assignments. And I was, uh, looking through Bobby Peters book, uh, breaking down the Vikings offense. And what you can see see is I don't know how the defense is supposed to cover everybody. Like how does the same linebacker or nickel corner cover

it underneath and something over the top of him? I think he just understands how defensive assignments work. And there's only so many different ways you can play, you know, cover one, cover two, cover four, split field. Like there's only so many different coverages you can play. And he gets all of them and what concepts work against them. Well, let's say the thing is the main thing with these guys

beyond the role play design, which like I said people get fixated on what does the play look like? Is that different than something I've seen before? And then how do they sequence the plays together? Probably if you go to the next level that's what people are looking for. It's a lot in that communication stuff, right? It's like, can you communicate your ideas?

Does everyone know the assignment? Does everyone know the responsibility? Can they read the game in the moment? Can they feel it on the fly? You mentioned before about some of your concerns around removing from the run game. That's like a real skill. Can you actually read what's happening? Or do you have a whiteboard offense? You can go and see in terms of like innovation. People just use that as a standard for good all the time, right? The good ones must be innovative. Shane Walden's offense in Chicago last year was more innovative than a lot of offense in the NFL. The guy got thrown out the building

as quick as it's humanly possible. They couldn't block anyone. There was an inability for him to communicate and tie all those ideas together. And the thing that O'Connell asked that is in kind of the re category is, it's an unbelievable point that you've mentioned there of spending time to figure out

what are the rules of the defense? There's these coverages, people know them, you mentioned them right. We've got quarters, we got cover six, we got two, one, we got zero, all that stuff. Everyone has individual rules and people tweak their rules depending on your personnel. They don't face Justin Jefferson every week. So they're going to change their rules based on that. Where are the landmarks and certain zone coverage? What are the responsibilities? Hey, we're going to match it this week. Hey, we're gonna lock the motion this week because this guy's better than anyone we have. And we're terrified of him getting behind us.

He has a great ability to take your rules and break you over the head with your rules. Is to say, I know instantly, you see it in their first two drives all the time, which is the information gathering drives. Go and look at the bundle of formations, the movement he uses, the first two drives, and then look at the sequencing after that.

It's the same stuff over and over again, right? He'll throw everything at you in the first drive, say, I've got all your rules down for this game really quickly, the tee off Jefferson, so now watch me break you apart. And it's really basic stuff. You mentioned it's high-low concepts, it's the backside digs, everything everyone listening is really familiar with. Those work all the time. You think, how can they not sit in the backside dig? Cause he knows based on the formation, the positioning of Jefferson and his alignment, what the defensive rule is going to be. And therefore it looks effortless when they just rip it to the middle of field over and over again.

Yeah. And it's funny that sometimes when it goes wrong with those concepts, something weird happened. Like I remember an interception that Jalen Johnson had where he just said, yeah, I didn't even play my coverage. I just ran right back. I just guessed completely and it worked out for an interception. Uh, but the high low stuff, all you're talking about is like an underneath route and then something over the top of it on the same side

of the field. But in a lot of ways, like football is a simple game that has been proven where the lot of the right things work. And you remind me when you mentioned like sometimes a genius offense is so complicated, the players don't get it and then you can't win. That was, that was John D Filippo in 2018. I think his offense was great, but they couldn't run it and they definitely couldn't block it. And I think for O'Connell, that has been a little bit of the issue because they want to take shots. They want to get those, those long developing dig routes. But you know, last year Sam Darnold was one of the slowest snap to release because he's trying to throw it down the field, which connects into JJ McCarthy's a different quarterback than Sam Darnold.

He's a different quarterback than Kirk cousins. I wonder what you are going to be looking for with this transition into a new quarterback that we're all finding out about. I mean, I've seen more practice time than other people. I've seen, you know, a preseason game like the rest of the world, but I still don't know the nuances of how JJ McCarthy is going to play because I don't think you can use Michigan and Minnesota. They're two very different situations of very different defenses.

So how do you feel out what's going to work for JJ McCarthy in a season where the roster is really good and there's a lot of pressure to win? I mean, there's a ton of pressure to step into that situation where it's like, Hey, we got some down on the bag out of nowhere. No one thought that was going to happen. And Hey, I might be the best offensive mind in the league right now. So prepare yourself. We also just brought in a genius at center. You don't have to worry about the communication stuff. You could not, you know, throw someone on the bus for any

breakdowns in protection and communication. That's a ton of pressure on a young guy to step into coming off an injury. I almost feel for him with that kind of pressure. He probably doesn't care because he's JJ McCarthy. I don't think he has that kind of mindset. It's probably why he's playing in the National Football League. And we're doing the podcast that we're doing. Um, I think I also can't throw a football. Yeah, it's really big. I have very small hands in comparison to NFL guys. The number one thing for me that I'm just interested in, I got no answers.

Kevin O'Connor's better at this stuff than I am is the empty stuff. This is where so much of the leagues, if you look at what Kingsbury's done, what Liam Cohen has done, what McVey has done, is said, okay, if these guys who, by inverting the downs, doing what they're doing with the front, having all these moving, roaming fronts and these different created, these Kyle Hamilton plays you can play on the first line, second line and in the secondary, and who knows what's happening every snap, we got to get these guys to stop. These guys are all rolling and rotating on the back end. They're using all these weird fronts up front guys are bouncing and bouncing. No one knows that better than Minnesota fans, right? What happens to the defensive from

can I get these guys to stop for a second? That's like what everyone's trying to do. Truly the best way to do it is to get into empty. It just limits the coverage palette. It limits what you can do in the blitz game. You can't cover all five guys, right? You send seven. Don't worry. I'll flip it out. There's two open guys there essentially for us. So a lot of teams are either using tempo. It's like, well, they can't, you can't roll and rotate all that much. If we're using tempo, even we don't snap the ball quickly. If we just go no huddle and we get there quickly, it's difficult for them to get a line. They don't know we're not snapping it quickly. So they all go to really base defense. And

traditionally they have some kind of trigger, which is like, we're just going to play cover one. We're just going to play cover three. and like I said before though Connelly you can learn those rules in like four snaps oh they triggered the cover one every time we got these guys we're gonna clown them that's what Kingsbury did for a lot of last season the same is true with empty okay if we go empty and Jefferson's the widest guy what's the trigger what's the clear rule can we then no huddle into that really quickly to get 20 shot designs? And it actually, I have this argument with people all the time about going into empty. I remember when Justin Fields was first coming out, they bought him an empty a bunch of people were horrified. He's getting hit a bunch of time. It makes life way easier for the quarterback. I get all five

eligible right away. I know the play. These guys on the other side don't know the play. I got this offensive line where we just signed this genius and this right guard, we drafted this left guard. These guys going five on five, they should be able to block everyone for me. If it's five on four, I'm laughing. I got to sit back here and look downfield for Justin Jefferson. So that's the main thing for me. And O'Connell, as I said before, really made his name with the Rams, where he completely overhauled that deep passing game by getting into empty. And it was really, really created. It was him being very innovative. It was an empty set, so there's five guys out in the pattern, but it was from still the Shaw MacBait tight, congested,

condensed alignment. So it was a bunch to one side and a stack to the other side, or two stacks. And you would always get one or two guys out free cleaning to the route, because you can't press both guys off the line of scrimmage. And most automatics to empty is some kind of zone coverage with a hard reroute on whoever's in the stack or the bunch.

So immediately the rules were just all over the place of these defenses. And then he would give them deep reading option patterns essentially. So down the field, 15 to 20 yards, break to grass, just run to grass and Matthew will go find you down the field. And he's Matthew Stafford, he's really good.

But I would assume the idealized version of JJ McCarthy in four or five years with the power arm and more mobility would be, can we look like Matthew Stafford with the Rams? We're winning Super Bowls, that seems like a pretty good idea to get to. And they just weren't an empty base team last year, I don't know if it's Donald, personnel, issues with the offensive line, whatever it was, but the kind of combat what's happening on the defensive side of the ball across Lee, whilst sticking to his principles of how he wants to dial things up. I think really ratcheting up the empty amount to make it actually easier for JJ McCarthy would be what I'd be looking for. Well, and that's the challenge a little bit because now he does have a year learning the

offense. So it's not like he's first getting the playbook today. He's had it. But this is a guy who was under center a lot in college and was playing in a run first and then play action offense. I think it's probably trying to mix both like picking your spots early on and then if he eventually becomes a Joe burrow who's sitting back there and the other part was too that you mentioned like you got to block it up and with the Rams won the Super Bowl, I think PFF had them as the number one pass blocking offensive line in the entire league. So I mean, that's something that I think O'Connell really wanted them to invest majorly in to be able to do more of that stuff and not have to feel like half of your job is covering weaknesses.

I also think they have to start to understand they have to feel out like what throws is he comfortable with? We've talked about a little bit on the show when we've seen him in practice. This is not that telling, but throwing outside the numbers right now doesn't feel like anywhere near as comfortable as letting it rip to the middle of the field for Sam Darnold. I'm sorry for JJ McCarthy, but Sam Darnold was amazing at throwing outside the numbers because of his arm talent, his anticipation, his accuracy. So how can you kind of feel that out, but also play to his strengths? That stuff is interesting though, because McCarthy in college, he had bad hang time on balls outside the numbers and he is a, he can drive the ball as you know, and

he can rip it from muddy base, you know, feet on the line properly. He can sling it three quarter release, all that stuff. Once you get to the pros, what these guys realize really quickly if you go watch Justin Herbert, who is the best this when it's a 10 yard out with Justin Herbert, it is a handoff. He just places the ball into the face mask of the receiver. These guys throw the thing off the sideline. I got NFL receivers. I got Justin Jefferson. I got Jordan Addison. What a time to be alive. Hawkinson is a big guy. He can go get off the sideline for me. You throw it to your staff. You don't throw it to the player. And he really struggled with that in Michigan, obviously, as you mentioned, wider ash, wider field, but he had bad time. He was trying to throw it to the landmark of the break of the

receiver, as opposed to saying, go throw it to giant trees off the sideline. They'll come down with it. They'll do the Julio Jones stuff, toe tap, and the balls outside the numbers. That stuff often comes way easier with these guys than you expect early on. It's more the returning back to the football where these guys really mess up their rhythm and timing when it's a route that breaks back to you. These guys, I mean they spend some guys never ever get it, right? That's part of the issue, but their rhythm of the passing game is so precise, so specific if you are a hair off that stuff is just dead in arrival. So more of the outside the the number of stuff with those weapons he has, I'll be shocked if that was not kind of one, the money throws for

him, even it's not his preferred throw, if that makes sense by the midpoint of the season. Well, and the fact that you have Josh McCown working with him, Kevin O'Connell working with him, like if there's something technically that's happening with some of those outside throws, like they're going to find it and fix it. The one thing about him though, and I asked him about this at the end of mini camp, about where he had grown as a thrower and he was talking about how he was kind of a one speed, like he threw the ball as hard as he could every single time and he's learning to anticipate a little bit more. That anticipation though does take a lot of time. And that's where I am interested to see, do they try to have a little

more routes where you could just stick it on the dude as opposed to, I mean, there were times last year where with Darnold and I've just been wowed by his arm talent. I mean, from the first day of mini camp to the last game, even he had a few throws, even in that horrible playoff game where you're like, wow, this guy has an incredible arm, but you would freeze the tape when he started to raise his arm and look where the wide receiver was. And then you see where he throws it to, and it's 20 or 30 yards different. Sometimes you're like, wow, I don't think that McCarthy's there yet because

he's got to throw a lot more footballs. And I think that has to go into KOC's design of understanding that it's going to take a lot of time before he can be a Kirk Cousins or a Sam Darnold in terms of anticipation. Uh, let me just flip over to the other side of the field real quick here on defense last year. I, one thing I don't think people realize fully because the coaching staff is back and a lot of the key players are back.

It's just how much of the Vikings roster has changed from last year. This defense is very different now with Jvon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen and Dallas Turner expected to play a heck of a lot more than he did last year. How does that front seven in your mind change things from last year? They were basically a run stuffing, uh, interior to now a penetrating interior D line. Yeah. In the run game, I do not know.

Honestly, Brian Flores will come up with something brand new we've never seen before in football. He probably bought all the safeties down there and we'll be like, what is happening? Why is Jonathan Allen 15 yards off the ball? This makes no sense. And he'll probably work and we'll have to rethink football again for the fourth time in four years or whatever he's doing at this point. I think and tell me if this is too deep. And I apologize. What is so magical about him, what makes him such a wizard is he has this huge roller decks, the pressure stuff and his ability to tweak week to week,

which one I'm going to get to while everything looks the same the entire time. I'm not talking about changing the path slightly. This guy goes here, this guy wraps around whatever. I'm talking about the principles of how you do pressure. He just changes it week to week. Now. I don't know how you communicate that I don't know how these guys execute is unbelievable stuff what these guys have been able to do What is necessary with that from is you need either? I don't know if I can swear in the cell

I won't swear but you need even the oblique factor, right? When you play with that style of defense where you got all the mug looks there needs to be panic in the offensive line So if you just have raw speed off the snap, this is what makes Ivan Pace so effective as a blitzer. He is not a technically good blitzer at all. I just wrote about him actually on the site, but he is so quick over two steps. So you have to go, oh no, well we have to correct for Ivan Pace. All of a sudden someone else is springing free. So they now have, as you mentioned, more first step quickness, more explosivity, which gives you that oh no factor, the shock off the snap to get someone running free. And I also think they've got more guys are just command doubles where, and not pre snap,

the post snap like oomph off the ball and you get speed plus power means someone's got to help their buddy out because these guys are too big, too strong for us. And then once again, well, we're crowding the line with seven, someone is popping free. And so I think that is the raw design, and more of the nuanced mechanics of it, how he changes the blitz system, which he changed last season from the year before, but with the coverage behind, and how the principles, as I mentioned, of the pressure package.

He changed it from one season to the next. Then he flipped from week to week as we got to, I think it was week six onwards. He would just kind of bounce back and forth between principles. That stuff is beyond belief. I don't know how anyone could ever do it. And like I said, I don't know how the players keep up with what he's asking of them. Yeah, no, I think that the biggest thing is that Brian Flores knows the type of mind that

he wants as much as body, like when teams go into the draft, you know, it's like, well, we like guys who have this kind of wingspan that used to be a Zimmer thing, like this arm length at the defensive end, we like this height, this weight. And I think that a part of it, and maybe this is Brian Flores, scouting background or background with the Patriots. I think he also looks very closely at what kind of brain does this guy have for the game and how much can we put on them? When they signed Byron Murphy jr. to the contract they signed him to, there were a lot of people

who went like, yeah, okay. I mean, I guess he's all right. It's like, I don't think you fully understand how much they ask Byron Murphy jr. to do out there to make all this complex stuff. Because if he didn't understand and couldn't communicate with his teammates and wasn't one of the leaders of that communication, then they would have to simplify it. They wouldn't be able to do this stuff.

So when you look at the guys that they have and everybody loves a young team, oh, man, they've got all these young players. That's great. But I think what Brian Flores is I got a smart team, Harrison Smith's not fast anymore, but he sure is one of the smartest players that you're going to find in the entire NFL. And you bring in Hargrave and Allen, it's the same sort of deal. And this is also why Dallas Turner was brought along slowly. I think if you started, if they didn't sign Van Ginkle, they didn't sign Granada and they started Dallas Turner, he probably gets eight sacks

last year based on just his sheer quickness. And he's not that valuable for you, but instead they've developed them into this. And I saw your article and you mentioned Dante Hightower. It's interesting because that's who Brian Flores brought up with Dallas Turner. And I think that we were all a little shocked by that. Right. We were all a little like, I don't know if I see it, but I think we're going to start to see it with a versatile type of role that involves him lining up in a lot of different spots. But he needed a whole year of training to really understand how this was supposed to work first.

I mean, I hope Brian's getting enough sleep because Dante, how it tied down might be like the best pure football play we've had in 25 years. So if we've got another one, trust me, no one's going to be rolling around the floor with excitement more than I have. I'll be very, very pleased if we get another one along the way. You're right, when they drafted Turner, my impression was, well, they just can't keep the rate of the blitzing the way they did before. That's just not sustainable year over year. It was kind of a break glass situation. And they figured out, and now we mentioned for the inverts and the downs, oh, he's trying to fashion more of a traditional foreman passers-by with like gimmicks or little things thrown on top to make you think it's something else.

But he's really got this like dip and rip power rushing guy going on the outside. And it seems like he's saying, no, this is who we are. And I'll just change the coverage profile on the back end so you would never know what's happening in the back. All those moving parts we talked about where there's all the movement up front, there's all the movement on the back end.

But what I really need is quicks off the ball. I need real quicks off the ball and quicks off the edge ideally, which is what Turner will hopefully give us. So you get the power inside with the speed power rush, then you just get flat out speed on the edge and probably Turner, as you mentioned, he's probably gonna move around a whole bunch anyway.

I mean, it's really, really exciting. It's exciting as a neutral. I can't imagine being a fan. I think I'll be I'd be pretty excited. I was just going to say like your your energy for the Minnesota Vikings here, I can imagine you going on certain podcasts and being like, I don't know, maybe it'll work or whatever. But it seems like you're pretty jacked up for this this group.

I mean, I'm excited for my new sure football anyway. You know, we just told Blitz Pass when you said let's do some trends in football. I was, you know, as I've never been happier in my life. The fact is talking trends in football with Brian Flores is the backdrop is is me in the happiest of happy places. Yeah, there you go. One more thing on that. Just the

playing zone behind all this stuff. Yeah, they do have a different personnel group now in the secondary, there's more questions, but they bring in Isaiah Rogers. They have McKay Blackman. These guys are faster than Shaq Griffin and Stephon Gilmore. I wonder how you, what you think of the way that the league we talk about trends has changed with going to

more zone defense. Cause I was looking at the PFF data on this not too long ago. And it, I mean, even when you go back seven years, five years, you find a lot of corners were just beyond an island. But I think that the bunch formations, the condensed sets, the motions, they've kind of made this impossible. And I think Flores is in the right spot. I mean, I know Vikings fans, they want the Xavier Rhodes, they want the

next Durell Rivas or something. I just don't think that that player is really in the league so much anymore. No, the only one we have is Pat Sutan, who can do anything you ask him to do on earth. I imagine you ask him to direct a Marvel film. He could probably do it. The guy can literally do anything he wants. But yeah, you're right. I mean, the main thing is just the condensed nature of it. The motion is shifting is somewhat of a problem. Teams address that in different ways. You can essentially lock one guy, say you're a man, we make it look like man to the offense. Everyone else is in zone. Everyone freaks out and has a panic attack. Tom Brady actually

threw an interception against Bill Belichick, if you remember the return game, against a lock motion like that. So you can do different things with it. It's mostly about the way the league is with how condenses. Everyone is a pseudo slot now. there is so much grass on your outside shoulder. You're the boundary corner, but you're really playing tight line of screen. So you got to flip and there's a two way go situation. Even three way could be vertical, could be in, could be out. So you've got to be loosey goosey in the hips and try and chase this stuff down. It's just a lot of space to cover.

It's easier to say we're just going to sit into a zone and actually static zones. They don't do as much of the match principles where, you know, depending on the route combination, we convert into what looks like man coverage down the field. It's just, we're going to sit and we'll rally. And it works with what Flores is doing because of the pressure and because of the heaters. I didn't think it could work to the degree it has

where he's too deep and he just splits his defense in a third. That's my pressure group. That's the midline. Two guys stay deep. Never thought someone could get away with that at the midline. Two guys stayed deep. Never thought someone could get away with that at the pro level. Thought the quarterbacks were too smart. Somehow he managed to do it. People did catch up with him. The midpoint of last year, that's when he changed. I mentioned some what he was doing in the pressure game specifically, some of the

nuances of how they got to stuff. So he's always just gotten the ability to know, I can fall back on things we've done before now. And that's the exciting thing with the continuity to me is when you can tweak the mechanics of the pressure game that's specifically week by week based on personnel or just you think you've pushed something to its limit and you can flip back to something else because you've got some continuity defensively and within the staff then it just becomes everything is available to us at all time and these guys near the sidelines have no idea what's coming out They probably are in their heads. Oh, we think of what has Brian got prepared for us It's probably gonna be something we've never seen before and so you're just two steps ahead already and it's not normally that way for defense

He is the guy pioneering of we are gonna set the terms of engagement for these guys again. Rex did it for a while It was really successful. Everyone else tried to back up. No, this is an attack defense. We get after them It's on our terms and you talk about being able to change on the fly and things like that. They have a lot of players that they've had for this defense for now three years with Brian Flores, so they can continue to add different layers or change on the fly and have different options. If something is not working and it's really unique and particularly with the way he's playing, this is not small stuff. So one of the things he changed was they started two years ago, they had a re-blitz situation,

right? Which is essentially if you pop to me, I drop. So we get a free runner every time, right? They call it rain blitz in Brian Flores language, the verbiage is somewhat irrelevant. So we're going to put two guys over one player, whoever the lineman tries to block, he drops out into coverage. The other guy goes. We win every single time. What teams, and no one has ever done it to the volume he's done it before. No one's ever done it with like three or four readers.

That was what was so wild about what he was trying to do. Usually you do it, you mentioned earlier the double A catalog. That's how you always did it, right? He's doing it from all these different looks or whatever. Teams start to say, well, if we know we can kind of set the read, who we popped with dropping, we can make sure the guy we want to drop into coverage drops and we'll isolate him one on one.

That's what we'll do. So once that code was kind of cracked, Forest returned last season and said, everyone's going. These guys are waiting for reading and we're just sending or dropping, right? So now it's just defined. They think they're ahead of us. We're just going.

Then when he plays the Packers in London, he says, I'm going to get Aaron on this one. We're going back to the read system. Rod just tries to make sure he can isolate. Who is the dropper based on the read and based on the fact he knows they're all going, excuse me, right? Cause he's changed the system and someone does the read

and drops out. I think it was Van Ginkle, right? Throws it right into his lap, picks six. So he just got one of the, you know, the great thinkers of the sport. He is able to bamboozle him immediately by flipping from one system he ran the year before. He started with the second system and then flip back for one week

to the system from the year before. No one else can do that. And a lot of stuff is so befuddling anyway. If that's just your system, do you have to flip between the two week to week? It's just you just can't keep up with that. It is a special situation here that, uh, I think like take it in because this is not something, I mean, the connection between the players and Flores and how it all works together is something that's very rare to get

to happen even just with personnel. Because a lot of times you're just trying to cover up for this guy or make up for that guy and they have a deep roster of players who really understand how this works. And then he can get in his bag and do whatever he wants. Last question before I let you go, Ali, and it's been phenomenal football. We just been tossing footballs at each other, hitting tackle dummies. What July? Are you serious? We're playing football right now. Let me ask you a TV style question.

How many games you think they're going to win? I mean, it's so McCarthy. It's so McCarthy based. The roster is so good. The coaching staff is what? Top two in the league, top one in the league. It's that level. I was not a huge McCarthy believer pre-draft. I am such an O'Connell believer. I don't think he would have acquiesced on. Let's just kick Sam to the road. If he didn't think he had something in McCarthy, having watched him for a year in the background. So I'll go with 11, but there's multiple playoff wins. All right. Yeah. I mean, 11 is where I went to. And I think divisional round is a fair place to set the bar for a team that's this talented and has really been built several years in the making of the slow progress

to have the rookie quarterback contract. We've seen it work before. And I think that's where the standard is. Even though they do have a tough schedule, they're not playing the AFC South. So you don't get those four free wins to start with, but I should be fascinating to watch these coaches work together throughout another year and now train a quarterback that is completely unproven. The read optional,

read optional.com is a must. And also you have a special offer for our listeners. I do. When you invite me on to talk nerdy football, I was like, I got to do something for these guys. So people go to read optional dot com slash podcast offer podcast offer. There is a special discount for if anyone enjoyed this. And we do a pot over there. It's like six hours long.

It's the dokiest football talk you could ever have in your life. You'll probably be tired of it after two weeks. But if you want to sample it, you can go and find over there. Read optional dot com slash podcast offer. That's right. Gotcha, beautiful. Olly Connolly, one of my favorite guys to read. Every time you post an article, I click on it.

You are one of the best breaking it down, sir. And a thrill to get together again. We will definitely do it again soon. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. Thanks, man.