Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Answering Vikings fans training camp Qs after first padded practice

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Matthew Coller answers Vikings fan questions after watching the first padded practice of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and I am back in the studio following the Vikings' first padded practice. And so I recorded a podcast with Dane Mizutani right after practice, where we went through all the notes, everything we saw from Sam Darnold, JJ McCarthy, Bobby McCain is here and says his position is football. That's not a joke. That actually was what he said his position is. And we went through everything. What's going on with Louis seen the kicking competition that wasn't and all those things you can ask about any one of those subjects. But I figured since we went into detail about a single practice and broke down every part

of it from today that I would open up the floor on the live show. And I want to do this often when I have interviews from out there, which will run on the YouTube channel at 10 o'clock tonight. And we'll be on the usual audio area as well on iTunes, Spotify, and so forth. But that will come right after this conversation. So for the next 90 minutes or so, whatever you got, I as long of course as it's vikings related or not too weird that's how i put it so why don't we just dive right into it with your vikings camp questions after a single padded practice which was fairly intense but also kind of a mundane

practice as well wasn't that exciting just it. Just gets the blood pumping a little bit. It is so much different, by the way. And I always want to, over the first couple of days, give as much as I can for takeaways of who looks good, who's playing where. But until the pads come on, none of that really matters. And that's when everything ramps up. One-on-ones between wide receivers and cornerbacks. That was really exciting to watch today. Just Sean Jones was a guy that stood out

among the deep in the weeds players. Jalen Naylor was very good in those drills and then had a really good catch later on watching Justin Jefferson do one-on-ones is something else to watch. He doesn't do a ton of them as he doesn't need to and gives everybody else opportunities. But when he does, it's like, all right, everybody stop and watch Justin Jefferson go out there and do that rep. Those are always interesting. I thought actually Nick Muse stood out today. I didn't see Josh Oliver practicing too much. And so I saw a lot of Nick Muse in those one-on-ones beating some linebackers, making some plays. He might make a case for himself to be on the practice squad or even be the third or

fourth tight end. Him versus Robert Tunyon is a battle there for who's going to be behind Johnny Munt and Josh Oliver. So that was standing out to me and then you have the offensive line versus defensive line they go to battle one-on-ones and beau richter threw a guy to no owen porter threw a guy today in very impressive fashion got his hands on him and kind of ripped him and got to the quarterback if you you will. Every day, those are very intense and interesting to watch. And we start to learn more and more about how the team views its players

because now the reps start to matter, especially when we see situational stuff. Like, all right, we're doing a two-minute drill. They're not putting anybody out there just for a throwaway rep during the two-minute drill. It's the guys that they want to be out there on the first team, offense, defense, and even the second team. And then the guys who don't get on, well, it says something about where they stand too. So now is the time where we just start to begin

to learn about the 2024 Minnesota Vikings. So let me begin with NoDak2Mini says, it feels as though as there has been little to no coverage of Jonathan Grenard to start training camp. Now that pads are on, I would love to hear what you saw from Grenard today. The most interesting thing, I'll sit up in my chair. It's been a long day. The most interesting thing that I saw from Jonathan Grenard was him line up on both sides. That was something that I didn't expect to see too much of because they have other players that can line up. Grenard, let me test my memory. I believe that he lined up on the right defensive end and Will Anderson on the left

defensive end in Houston, and he didn't move over to the other side. He was not somebody that was sliding all over the defense, but today he got reps on both sides of that, on the right and the left. So did Andrew Van Ginkle and so did Dallas Turner. So they're really rotating those guys in. And the thing that I noticed from Jonathan Grenard is just a lot of different moves that you see from him. It's not, okay, he's a long arm guy.

Oh, okay, he always a long arm guy. Oh, okay. He always kind of does this and then spins or was not one dimensional at all that he has a lot in his toolbox. And I think we'll see that as it plays out throughout the summer and then into the season. The reason that he got 12 and a half sacks last year is because I think he's just a very technical rusher. He isn't lightning like Dallas Turner. That's where you see the rookie. The first round draft pick is that explosiveness. I see more of a guy who has worked a lot at his craft and offers a bunch of different things that he can do against the tackles. However, these great edge rushers are not going to have a whole lot of success against Christian Derrissaw.

I mean, it's just, uh, it's a learning experience for Dallas Turner, but Derrissaw just looks really good, really good out there as he always does. He's one of the best tackles in the NFL, but when he goes up against these guys, uh, they get their money's worth of reps and learning, uh, how to go against somebody of his caliber. They will not very often play against someone as good as Christian Derrissaw. So that's kind of the early returns on Jonathan Grenard, but he isn't somebody that should be pushing it too hard in training

camp. He's someone who should get his reps in for what he wants to learn, what he wants to accomplish, focus on in camp, usually veteran players pick a couple of different things. All right, this, this year,

I want to add this to my toolbox, but you don't want them out there doing rep after rep after rep. I will say that the defense was pretty good today in these situational drills, when it was at the highest intensity and at the 11 on 11s and the defensive line created and Brian Flores, a good amount of pressure on both quarterbacks that is something that they will desperately need but right now it looks the combinations look good and Patrick Jones is out there as well Patrick Jones in smaller doses was pretty effective in 2022 but in bigger doses was less effective as a starter he was one one of those, as the volume increases, the efficiency decreases. If he's mixing in every once in a while

as a situational rusher, that's an okay role for him. And those four, Turner, Van Ginkle, Grenard, Jones is a really good group. And you'll see more, of course, Grenard, Van Ginkle, and Turner than Jones. But those combinations can be, I think, pretty effective more than just what they had last year, which felt like Daniil Hunter and occasionally DJ Wanham, but mostly just Daniil Hunter.

Alexander asks, you've seen enough rookie quarterbacks throughout your years. Does JJ pass the eye test thus far? He he definitely does where he will end up landing on the spectrum of quarterbacks I do not know he could still after I've seen just a handful what do we practice number five still could completely bust or he could become a superstar or anything is on the table for JJ McCarthy and his future. We are far away from the answer to what JJ McCarthy is going to be. But to your question, does he pass the eye test? Then my answer is absolutely. He does because of the arm talent, which is really evident and how he has handled a situation that is generally very overwhelming for quarterbacks

and even running a two minute situational drill, getting people lined up, getting that call in facing a little pressure a couple of times today, face some pressure. And he found somebody underneath. He changed his arm angle on one play. He did the things that he was known for at Michigan, which was a, sometimes you just have to be the game manager type or not do something too crazy risky and just make the easy play, but the simple play that works. And he did that in those drills, but it's more about a demeanor for me with JJ McCarthy and the arm. The accuracy has been better from what we've seen than it was in minicamp. And that is a product of him understanding where the ball is supposed to go. If he was as inaccurate as he was in minicamp all the time,

then he wouldn't have been a top 10 draft pick. That was more of a product of him trying to get down the footwork that they wanted from him. So imagine if you're a golfer and they give you a new grip and a new stance and you're like, oh, okay. And the first one you hit in the woods and the second one it's in the, it's in the rough and the third one it's in the sand off the fairway. And then the fourth one it's in the fairway because that's the technical right way to do it. I think that's the same way as it is with JJ McCarthy, where he was getting used to that footwork and it's still not pristine.

It's still not flawless at most there was one pass today where it was a check down but it was a brett farve speed check down it might have been miles gaskin or kenny wong woo was 10 yards away from him and he just whipped it full speed and you know right there uh he's gonna have to on that touch, but as he has come to understand more of the offense and the footwork, then we've seen a little bit more from an accuracy perspective. But when you're talking physical tools, athleticism, arm strength, you start there with a clear first round draft pick. And then how does he handle the team is looking at you as the franchise quarterback, the head coach keeps talking about how he doesn't really want to play you right away

and is going to take this really slowly. How do you deal with coaching? How do you come across to everybody? And what I see is a Teddy Bridgewater ask. This person is more mature than their age would suggest. And also everybody kind of goes toward him. You know, he completes a pass people are coming over to dap him up there's just a vibe that you get from somebody who has been

a star quarterback and knows it for his entire life even if he has the humility to say i need to learn and i need to listen to o'connell and i need to listen to listen to Josh McCown, but he also has this, Hey, I win championships though, nature to how he practices and those things bode well for the future. Potentially. That doesn't mean that the reps have been perfect or even looked great at times, sometimes downright bad, but I'm not necessarily looking just that. Well, did he go six for 12 today with a tipped ball? By the way, he threw a pass today, tipped up in the air and caught it himself. And if he had done it in the game, he would have been wrecked. So maybe he needs to not do that.

But he did. He pulled an homage to Brad Johnson today. I just mean that he's got the vibe of somebody that you think is a starting quarterback. And that's about as much as I could say, but you might be alluding to the Kellen Mond type of thing or previous quarterbacks we've seen in the past. There was no presence. There was no command there. There was just confusion, frustration in over his head. Like it's not that, but there's a, it's not a fair comparison. This guy's a first round pick. He should look like a first round pick. And I think

that he has, if I didn't know anything about him before, and I just saw him practice, you walked me out and said, Hey, you don't know any of these guys on this football team. What do you think of some of these players? I would say quarterback two has got to be a prospect he can't be just a guy right because he's got too good of an arm too much talent to be that and the way they respond to him uh sam says when can we get excited about mccarthy uh that is going to be determined still i don't have a date for you when it would be time but i think think just in general, the fan base will get excited when they see him for a preseason game. This is how it has always been, no matter how little Kevin O'Connell cares about the preseason, but he will maybe now care about the preseason. And that will be

fun, I guess, for everybody to have this drama, this storyline of the quarterback competition actually playing out in preseason games, even if the joint practices still are more important to Kevin O'Connell, being able to see that and not just look at the preseason as, ah, are we going to argue about Jared Hall after this, which is kind of what happened last year. Did Ed Ingram's three reps go well or not? That's, these are the things we were talking about last year. Very, very different from this year. And if JJ McCarthy plays well in the preseason, even plays well in just one preseason game, then there's going to be a lot of excitement about him from the fan base. As far as when you could get excited about if he is

something or if he is not something, I don't really know. All of this is kind of, we'll know it when we see it. When he starts to get first team reps, we'll know it. If that happens during this training camp, then we'll know, okay, something's happening here. The coaches are seeing something. If he starts throwing a warmups to Justin Jefferson and not as much Sam Darnold, okay. Something's going on

here. There's some momentum building. He goes into a preseason game. He throws two touchdowns and leads to scoring drives and looks totally in control. Okay. Something's happening. These things don't like click on like a light. They progress and go forward. And then you get into the actual games and it's a whole different level and it's way more difficult. And even CJ Stroud had a run last year of two or three games that were miserable for CJ Stroud. But in my experience of my entire life watching football, not just covering the league, but just watching, you always kind of, Oh, Oh, this is a guy type of moment, no matter who it is. It might've been something you saw early Mahomes. My dad talks about how

with Jim Kelly, he came into a game when the team was terrible in his first year and his first couple of passes. It was so obvious how talented he was that everyone went, oh, we got something here. From one padded practice, it's a little harder to tell. I can tell he's a first round draft pick. That moment of it's time to really get going if it's going to work is on the way. But everyone wants the answer now. The thing about this that I would just suggest about this entire McCarthy experience, we all want the answer right now. We all want to know, is he a bust?

Is he a success? Are they going to win a Super Bowl someday because this guy is the next goat? We can all, let me try to borrow from the football men. We can all enjoy the process. The day-to-day watching J.J. McCarthy grow into this offense, we know that he's going to start a lot of games and that they think he's going to be their franchise quarterback. That's what they drafted him for. So we can go step-by-step on this. And then when that happens, if it's going to,

probably like Chargers fans with Justin Herbert, that first game he had to come into after Tyrod Taylor had the medical issue and he just had it right there. It is. That's the thing you're looking for. If there's one of those moments, there'll be nothing like it for Vikings fans because you haven't had that from a draft pick quarterback, really probably since Teddy Ridgewater, maybe 2014 against Atlanta. And you knew that, okay, this person can get on an NFL

field and play, and we'll see where this is all going to go. But every step of the way, just appreciate every step of the way, as we witness a young quarterback for the first time in Vikings land, most of Vikings fans throughout the history of being fans, you're probably always in the mode of going into a season going, they better win this year or it's a problem. And with this time, it's not that you don't want to win or that you don't want to see McCarthy go in and take them to the playoffs like Stroud did last year. It's just that the patient approach of, Hey, let's see how he practices tomorrow and let's see how much he can grow by the time they get to those joint

practices. Let's see these preseason games. And then let's see that first start and let's see when the light comes on and all those things. If it's going to happen, it will be very fun for fans to watch every step of the way. And you'll want to keep just living the moment there with a young quarterback rather than, oh, hey, is he going to be a bust or not? Well, I can't give you the answer to that right now. Hunter says, according to a random guy on Twitter, I don't know. Sounds like Darnold struggled a bit today. There's always a random guy.

It was not a good practice. No, it would not take Joe Montana and Bill Walsh watching this practice to figure out that it was not a good day for Sam Darnold. It was a day where it looked like he was getting used to playing against Brian Flores at real speed. And there was a lot of, I'm not sure if I should, nope, I guess not. You know, a lot of hitching and looking for the second read and not letting it go on time.

And that's happened to Kirk Cousins in practices before, but it is a little bit of Sam Darnold's MO is not being able to identify things quick enough, taking too many sacks, and then he forced an interception. So your random guy on Twitter is well-sourced that it was not a great practice for Sam Darnold, which again, immediately makes us jump to that. Well, wait, wait so sam darnold had a bad practice and jj mccarthy is showing that he's got the talent so week one mccarthy maybe but tomorrow darnold could come out and play well and that's why all of a sudden every single practice carries a lot of weight and a lot of intrigue to it uh but it was not a great day for sam darnold and i think

he needs to bounce back tomorrow after they take a look at why the ball couldn't come out. And one thing that I do have a bit of concern about with Sam Darnold is that his timing on throws over the middle has not been very good so far. And I don't know if it was ever good in his career, but it hasn't been on point for those slants and those, those quick in routes and things like that to Justin Jefferson. There seems to be a little bit of hesitation to let it go on time,

but he's very comfortable pushing it down the field and he's thrown some beautiful balls so far, but those routes that require chemistry and timing, they have not gotten there yet. Chris says, is the 2024 draft a success if only one of the two first round picks becomes a hit? That's possible if the only one was Dallas Turner, but then they found their Brock Purdy somewhere else after JJ McCarthy wasn't good, then it is possible, I guess. But this doesn't really work both ways.

I mean, if JJ McCarthy works out, then it's a success and you'll figure out how to find another pass rusher. If JJ McCarthy doesn't work out, then even if you find a great pass rusher, there's only so much that person can do to drag your franchise forward. I mean, great edge rushers have played for a lot of teams. I mean, Brian Burns played for the Panthers last year. It didn't help them a bit. I mean, that's just the reality of this game is that it's all about the performance of the quarterback. Yeah, they could have a success as far as, you know, one guy becomes a great edge rusher and your franchise is going to go on for a long period of time. But you also, if your quarterback's not good and you don't find the next Brock Purdy somewhere,

then you might end up wasting the entire rookie contract of Dallas Turner. If he's the only one that's good. I guess my answer is probably not. It's probably not a success. If you only get one out of two, it really needs to be JJ McCarthy, a success in order for get one out of two. It really needs to be J.J. McCarthy a success in order for this whole thing to work. And then if Dallas Turner also becomes good, well, then you feel great about that. Then you have two of the most valuable positions that are on rookie contracts. And Turner is another guy that's handled himself extremely well. And you just get wowed by the physical tools that are there by the explosion, by how, how just quick he comes off the line of scrimmage, the fluidity of his movement I've mentioned before, but with the pads on, you see it, but he got shut down by Christian Darasaw

today. Shut down because Christian Darasaw is really great at football. That's why they made him the highest paid left tackle. And that right there, that's good for him. He's going to break that down with Christian Derrissaw and work through it. And this first camp might be one he goes back to and goes, you know what, kind of like Brian O'Neill with Daniil Hunter. You know what, getting whooped by that awesome guy was actually really good. Vin Garcia says, did Van Ginkle get any run?

How did the edge guys look? Uh, and deeper than last year? Well, definitely deeper than last year. Yeah. Van Ginkle's back in, he's doing his thing. They're not overworking any of these edge rushers. Uh, they're doing it very much a rotation of four edge rushers and Van Ginkle has looked totally fine. I mean, when it comes to Grenard and Van Ginkle, they don't draw as much as of my eye as other players, because I know what you have there. Van Ginkle is a really excellent veteran player who's been around, can do a lot of things. He can cover, he's a successful pass rusher. So when he's out there, I know, all right, I'm not really evaluating that guy as in, well, how does he look? How's he coming along? Because he's a proven NFL players, but as far as health goes, getting out there is

good for him. And yes, it looks a lot deeper than what we saw last year, which was one guy trying really desperately with a bunch of blitzers to rush the passer. And Daniil Hunter tried his butt off and did a great job for them. But I mean, DJ Wanham ends up with eight sacks, but not a consistent pressure player. So if it wasn't a sack, it wasn't really successful. These especially, you know, Van Gkel is really good at creating pressure uh grunard has been more of a guess you could kind of put them into boxes of more of a guy who when he wins he gets the sack but isn't creating pressure at the same rate as the top type of players tj watt

nick bosa miles garrett who are doing it all time. Every play they're getting in the backfield. Grenard's good at that. Pass rush win rate, pretty good, but not unreal. The combination of them, though, is you can only give help to so many players. And if you're worried about Grenard, Van Ginkle gets favorable matchups. If you put in past situations, three of them on the field at one time, so much that brian florist could do and this gives an opportunity for i think brian florist despite having weak corners to cause havoc with four rushers as opposed to always having to send or half the time having to send extra rushers to get pressure uh alexander says how did the run game look? Well, Aaron Jones looks

good. Uh, the explosiveness of Aaron Jones still appears to be there, I think. And he's just so smooth with his running movements. Does that make sense? He follows the right block. He makes the cut at the right time. It looks faster than it is because he's doing it right. And he's a pro. He's not taking a ton of reps. One thing that I did notice about the run game is that Kenny Wong Wu, this is his chance to be on the team as a runner if they need him, because he is getting a decent amount of reps. I don't know how well they're going. It's so hard to tell. You hand off the offensive line wins or it doesn't, they can't really tackle someone, but Wong Wu is going to get a chance because they're not giving Aaron Jones a ton of reps.

He just doesn't need them. And it's not a good idea to wear him down. But when he's on the field, if they weren't wearing jerseys and no one told you who Aaron Jones was, you would know exactly who Aaron Jones was. He is leaps and bounds better than anyone else. It doesn't take any work to figure that out. But, I mean, Ty Chandler is still explosive. We kind of know who these guys are. Offensive line-wise, this is the first padded practice. I didn't think it went great for them in the first padded practice.

But, I mean, you know, Derisaw was really good. But aside from that, you know, the running game was, was really good. But aside from that, you know, the running game didn't seem to have a ton of push on a lot of the reps, but we're, we're nitpicking away at that. There was some pressures and so forth in those situational drills. That's going to be a day-to-day thing where we need a lot bigger sample size to see it, how the running game is actually going to progress. Intrepid fool says defense was excited to get more physical and outplayed the offense today. Well, the thing is that a lot of the players who were on the defense last year in the secondary are here now. Josh Metellus, Harrison

Smith, the guys who caused problems, Ivan Pace Jr., Byron Murphy, they were here and you have new quarterbacks. There's an advantage to that. Harrison Phillips, Jonathan Bullard, these guys were here before. There's an edge in the fact that Brian Flores can call a lot of different things and give a lot of different looks to the offense. And almost, I don't remember too many times where after the first padded practice, we said, wow, this offense just lit it up.

Just went absolutely crazy in that first padded practice. You would have to be a really bad defense for that to happen. I just think that timing is so much a part of the offense that they need to get going. So we'll see over these first three or four. And then when we get to that point we can look back and go all right through the first we can look at them in stanzas the first stanza is getting to pad of practice sam darnell looked fine to good somewhere in there that now we've got the next one the next phase and it was a bad start for sam darnell but a good start for the defense are you

happy you're sad uh but a good start for the defense and the way they play disrupting sam darnold he probably hasn't seen a lot of this before of what floris is throwing at him or what the receivers are doing uh it's gonna you know take a couple of days and then we'll see all right three days in now is sam darnold getting it or is he not getting it because they accumulate on each other. And then over whatever number that we get to see of those situational drills, which I think are the most important and 11 on 11s, you can really get a feeling of, all right, is a guy operating this effectively or is he struggling? Today was a little more of a struggle. Folks, US Cellular noticed that the way we use

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Ironic. Let's find us again with Us Mode from U.S. Cellular. Visit uscellular.com slash built for us to get started. Maxwell says, one thing I've always been curious about is the mental strength players possess in your role. Do you get any exposure to this aspect of the game? Constantly, constantly. Yep. All the time. When you follow players careers, you see all the things that they go through when you go on the road and they lose, and then they have to fight back from it. You see adversity is talked about all the time, but you have a tragedy that went on within the team.

It's not the first one that I've been here for. You have all these players who have, some of them have been through a lot to even be in the NFL, where it's overcoming circumstances or injuries or setbacks in some way in their career. Sometimes three teams got rid of them before they got to your team and it separates players because if you can't mentally work your way through heartbreaking losses, how about guys who just can't deal with not playing and not being the star. Imagine that you grew up and you were the best player in your town by far. And everybody showed up at your high school to see you. Then you

went to college and everybody told you you were the best, whatever it was that your position, you're playing forever and your team won and everyone was happy with you. And then you get to the NFL and the coach tells you that you're on the third team. There are some people who can do that and who can work their way through that and can have a really good career. And then there are other people who struggle with that and are delusional and think that they should just always

be getting the first reps and they should be the star and yada, yada, yada. I mean, it's a hard thing mentally to deal with. And those people who can work through that, that's why they keep bringing back CJ hams. One of the most mentally tough people you're ever going to run into. He will take on any role. Anytime we'll handle any position and they know that. And so there are players on every team in the NFL where their fans go, why is that guy still here? It's probably mental toughness is probably the reason he's still there because physically there's a lot of players physically who could be in the NFL. It's almost

always, can you master the technical elements and then can you handle the strain and stress that goes on over an entire season? It's incredibly difficult, especially the quarterback position, which is why you have to, you know, J.J. McCarthy mentioned his ways of working himself through it. Well, I think that's really important because you have to have answers to when things become really overwhelming for you when you lose two or three games in a row, which has never happened before. How is he going to manage that? And that's what we, we don't know. And that's what either makes or breaks a lot of people. Grant says one name I haven't heard much about who I thought might be a better fit in three, four is James Lynch. Is he still coming back from the injury?

Couldn't he be a useful rotational guy? Yeah, he's been out there. He has been out there with the second team. A lot of players, the second team is all the backups, but the second team, because there isn't really a third team as there used to be with Zimmer. And that threw me off at first with O'Connell because a lot of players are just kind of popping in and out. So you'll wait. Oh, he got second team reps. He got, it's all the second team. Um, James Lynch anyway, has been mixing in with the second team. How he's looked after one padded practice where I didn't really look for him, I cannot say.

But from two years ago, and remember he had an ACL, he didn't have something that should seriously harm him for the future. An ACL, I think Kevin O'Connell liked him. It was Ed Donatell's defense. I agree with you though because when they play their base they play three guys that are defensive tackles they call two of them the defensive ends it's sort of silly the way that we still do that but James Lynch is a 3-4 defensive end type who was above average when he played in 2022 at stopping the run. The thing is they have a lot

of players who are kind of like that, like the, the Bullards of the world, the Harrison Phillips is of the world. And even Jaqueline Roy, he didn't have a ton. And I, and he stood out to me today, just his power is so evident that, uh, you know, someone like Jaqueline Roy is younger than James Lynch, might have some upside as a pass rusher where Lynch got a ton of sacks in college, but has just not been that guy in the NFL. He's been more of a nose, more of a run stuffing three tech. And there's just a lot of competition for that role here. I think as of right now, I would probably have him on the team because they seem to like him, but that one is very fringe. That one is he's going to have to be really good in those preseason games

and in those joint practices because he's one of those guys among a sea of them. Levi Drake, Rodriguez, another one that's just getting in, just getting in, just getting in, getting out, rotating. That's a real battle going on in that second team. Ezra, do you think that the Vikings are done adding to the cornerback room? That's an interesting question because, I mean, Bobby McCain is more of a safety, and Brian Flores said he was going to be a safety. Jay Ward moved to corner today.

Does that mean Jay Ward is a corner or is he another one of these guys that Brian Flores loves that are corners and safeties and linebackers? That was Jay Ward's MO. I didn't see it as big breaking news that he was moving out to corner at least for the day and that may sustain or it may not or they may have wanted to look at it first before they made a decision that might have been a conversation in the coaching room hey let's take a look at jay ward at corner and just give me just give me a practice against some good wide receivers and i'll tell you whether

i can work with that or not that might have been what happened to give them a little bit of extra depth or it might have been we are so short at this position. Let's just get Jay Ward out there, throw Bobby McCain where he's comfortable in the defense because he played safety under Brian Flores in 2020. So that's where he played today. Ton of reps for a guy that just showed up. It was kind of ridiculous actually, uh, how he was able to just arrive and then know where he was supposed to be. Very impressive. Bobby McCain, once you've been around for that long, I think this is his 10th year.

I mean, I guess you're just a pro's pro, but you don't see that too much. A guy arrives and then in his first practice, he's playing a ton of reps out there in 90 degree heat, but he can play nickel corner. Jay Ward can play corner. They may feel that they're flexible enough with some of these players to not add to the cornerback room, but I would guess that they still do. I think that they still would do that where they would add another player to the list. It's just, is it going to be someone who's been an undrafted free agent or is it's that's bounced around or is it someone that has more of a name? And we've gone through

those names. You can go look them up if you want to. They, I thought hinted a little bit at one of those names when Kevin O'Connell talked yet at the same time, if they had someone right on the tip of their tongue, other than Bobby McCain, would that person be here? Uh, does somebody like a Dory Jackson or a Keller Witherspoon? Do they want to come here? Like, I don't really know, uh, if they actually want to show up here or not, uh, because they might also be looking for better opportunities where they can start because right now the Vikings don't have a starting spot open. Shaq Griffin is not going to be out that long. It's Murphy and it's Griffin, and they like a Caleb Evans enough.

And I imagine they would want to see a Caleb Evans become a success after he had some success last year through about half the season. So I'm not really sure that they're going to add someone who is a name. They might just bring in another camp body or somebody that they've scouted that's available. This might be your group. And if it is, I think that's all right if that is the group. But let's have a few more looks at practices. If they're getting smoked out there and they just seem to be done with Andrew Booth Jr.

The first day he was mixing in some more, but then we didn't see a whole lot of them today. We haven't seen really first team reps from him very much over the last two years. I guess if that is how they feel, then you do have to go out and get somebody else to be in that position. I'm not sure. I think this could go either way. They're going to add probably someone else, but it could go either way as far as do we see a bigger name veteran who's out there or not? Evans says, what do we know about Bobby McCain? Do you like the signing? Do you think we still need to add another player?

Yeah, that's what I was just talking about that one part. But as far as what we know about Bobby McCain, he's a veteran. He's a guy who's played a lot of football. I think it's almost 6,000 snaps in the NFL. He kind of reminds me of a Terrence Newman type that has been everywhere, seen everything you could put him in at any position and he'll probably be able to work his way through it. Xavier Woods was kind of like this, not a super physically gifted guy. He's only five foot nine. He plays safety, which I think says maybe a lot about his toughness and his numbers have been okay. He's been over the years when he's started, he's been an average player, but he didn't play almost at all last year. And so I wouldn't count on him to be

a key role player or anything. First, he's got to make the team. They got to see where he's at. And then it's much more depth, but it's depth of someone that, oh, you got a nickel corner hurt. Well, Bobby McCain can go play nickel or somebody gets banged up in the safety room. All right. We could just slide this guy into that position. We don't have to move everybody else's job. We could just have him take it because clearly if he could just arrive today and then have a practice,

we got a high football IQ footballer on our hands in Bobby McCain, but an addition that doesn't move the needle in the same way that a Stefan Gilmore would. That's for sure. Hey, everybody. I know it's summer, but might I suggest a quick trip to Las Vegas to stop into Circa Sportsbook in Nevada? Because guess what?

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Again, the Millions and Survivor Contests are back. Kinetic says, get excited now. JJ is great. I started getting excited about JJ, I assume you mean four years ago and he's never made me regret it. Or do you mean four weeks ago? he's never made me regret it. Or do you mean four weeks ago or have you been drinking and commenting as far as getting excited about? Or do you mean Justin Jefferson when you say JJ?

Maybe Justin Jefferson, you may you may mean this was a this was a thing today, by the way, in a press conference, a question was asked about JJ and Brian Flores thought it meant Jefferson, but it was actually McCarthy. So then there had to be a follow-up. This is how exciting my life is that that was a notable thing that happened today. But it is funny because we got to like reporters calling him jets is weird. I don't feel comfortable calling somebody jets. I had just gotten don't feel comfortable calling somebody Jets. I had just gotten used to the idea of calling Jefferson JJ and then now they change it on us. But as far as getting excited about JJ McCarthy,

I think that on draft night, you start to look at what the landscape of the NFL is and how teams are built and how you can potentially succeed. That's where you could start your excitement level because the Vikings have just not had this in a long time. And it was totally different when they did, when they had Teddy Bridgewater for two years on a rookie contract before he got hurt, quarterbacks were making a lot of money but it was not so clear yet that you just are in trouble once those big cap hits start showing up and that the numbers were going to go so far beyond what anybody else uh was getting paid on the field 55 million versus justin jefferson's 35 million

this is why i refused by the way to make the correlation when we were talking about Jefferson's contract. Well, isn't it going to be hard to work around? No, not in comparison to what a quarterback is. It's $20 million in difference. At the same time, teams are becoming more and more aware of what they can do with the salary cap and how they can manage those money around their roster. So the Detroit lions have managed Jared Goff's money around a younger roster. And now that they've paid another guy, there will be a point where they can't afford everybody and something has to happen for the Detroit lions, but it's going to be in a couple of years. So this advantage for the Vikings will exist and it probably won't really show itself until next

year's free agency where they can be one of the big spenders and everybody's going to link them to every single free agent, but it's not quite the same, uh, as him actually having a $55 million contract. I mean, uh, Jordan Love, but you can get, but what I meant to get back to is you can get excited about the fact that you have that advantage for the first time in a long time. It's been six years of huge cap hits, free agencies that were boring, or you're adding Delvin Tomlinson and hoping and dreaming where this is now an opportunity to spend a lot of money on this roster. And it's not just free agent signings.

It could also be trading. I mean, they've done this before with trading draft picks. So you could trade next year. Even I maybe prefer them to pick someone, but you could trade for a player two years down the road. That's disgruntled. And the team isn't in a winning window or something. It just gives you all the flexibility in the world. And you don't have to even try to look around and find teams that have taken advantage of this in one. That's the excited

part without even talking about what he's looked like at training camp. That is such a big part of it. Even with Miami and Tua where he struggled the first couple of years, they added a bunch of talent that all of a sudden they're so much better. That's on its face. Like if you're sorry, when to get excited, well, to get excited about that advantage and then when to get excited about him as an actual player, we're not there yet, but there also haven't been any negative signs either. And there's been, I think, much more positive than negative on JJ McCarthy so far. Alexander says, how are we supposed to act as fans with confidence in our kicking situation? Let me throw this out there.

Let me toss this out there. I might say this quietly. I don't think that the Vikings kicking has been unusually bad. Oh, since Blair Walsh. I mean, okay. There was the Dan Bailey meltdown,

but Kai Forbath hit the kick in the Minneapolis miracle. Greg Joseph was totally fine. He wasn't great. He got the yips a little bit on extra points, but it wasn't that bad. It was all right. It wasn't, he missed one that to lose against Arizona. These are normal things that have happened outside of the Blair Walsh thing. Since Gary Anderson, I think the kicking has been okay for the Minnesota Vikings hot take. It's been okay. It's that Gary Anderson's miss is so devastating that it lingers still many,

many years later, 25 years later, it lingers over a franchise, but they're kidding. I mean, Ryan Longwell was pretty good. And then you have, you know, the Blair Walsh incident in a frozen, literal frozen stadium. I don't know. Overall it's had its ups and downs like almost any other team. I don't know that the kicking specifically is the curse thing. It's just that one incident was so unbelievably bad. I don't think that they're the same thing. Anyway, how are you supposed to act? I know you're all still very leery about kickers. Daniel Carlson is in there as well as a thing that happened drafting a kicker and he misses a few and all that. I mean, I don't know if Will Reichard is going to be good once he starts actually kicking. It's just very obvious that he has excellent,

excellent talent. Once the pressure is on, we were talking about mental strength earlier. That's when we will really find out about Will reichard is when he has those pressured moments but it didn't seem to bother him at alabama which is not an easy place to kick and it hasn't seemed to bother him here he just does his thing and has a really big leg and it's very accurate repeating over and over with the same thing i guess i i would put it this way stop with the terror over kickers with every kicker that shows up it's oh no and even media people i cannot tell you how much i have cringed in the past when there have been a handful of local media people that have asked kickers so So are you aware of the kicking history here? Huh?

What? That happened so long ago. Why would Greg Joseph care about whether Gary Anderson missed the kick? It has nothing to do with him. Don't ask them that. Let it go. Don't, I mean, you'll never let go of the Gary Anderson thing, but let go everything else.

Just move on. It should be fine, I think, or terrible. Hard to say. He's very talented, so you can look forward to that. What about Bob? I could see why coaches love McCarthy. Seems to like football and relationships are all he is about at a core level. If he could squeeze a lot of his talent to go with the work ethic, we will have a franchise quarterback. Yeah, I mean, what happens with quarterbacks is the margins are so thin between being great, really good, pretty good, not good enough.

And then the terrible is far away from there, but somewhere in between that range of being, and maybe greatness, maybe Patrick Mahomes is on a totally different stratosphere along with Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. But the difference between someone like Phillip rivers and someone like Sam Darnold might be only a couple of things. It might be pretty small. It might be circumstances part of it, but it also might be the moxie, the confidence. It might be football intelligence. It might be teammates. It might be coaching. It can be very small.

So when we all want to know, is it going to work out for McCarthy? I think what we can see right now, what we have ascertained early on is that we know what it's not going to be. If it doesn't go right, it's not going to be because his teammates didn't rally around him. We didn't, it's not going to be because he didn't show up to meetings on time or because he was doing crazy stuff off the field or he was entitled or he wouldn't take coaching. If it doesn't work out, it will be because it is those thin margins that he just doesn't have

something. It maybe it's with Kirk cousins. It was athleticism and pure arm talent. He could get the ball going if he got his whole body into it, but if he had to make an off-balance throw, he really wasn't good at that. And he kind of had that little panic button in him that would go off sometimes,

and you'd end up with the Kirk coaster. Think about how close Kirk Cousins is, though, if you're the 12th best quarterback in the league. So is McCarthy going to be someone that gets over that hump into the Phil Rivers range, where you are this phenomenal star that's surrounded by great talent and leading your team and everybody rallies around you and you're a baller, or is it going to be just like Kirk, where it's okay and it's pretty good. And sometimes it's good. And sometimes it's bad,

depending on what happens around him. Or is it going to be a level down from that, that we've seen many, many times in the league where someone is just okay. Like a Mac Jones, if the weather is good, he's good. If the weather is bad, he's bad. And that's who he is. The difference between them. Not that much, really not that much. And the work ethic and his love of football and his love of his teammates, they will get you pretty far, but not over the hump to tell which one of those categories you're in that that's where it's going to be about. Are you accurate enough? Are you enough of a playmaker? Can you scramble for those key first downs? Can you make plays when everything's going crazy? Can you lead that entire group when everything is falling apart

and bring them back in games? And that's mental toughness. Kirk was excellent at that. He just never seemed to waver when they had lost two games in a row or when he was getting criticized and how you respond to all that. There's so many things that go into it, which is why quarterback is the most fascinating position in all of sports and why this whole thing is so interesting. This is what we waited for, for a long time with a quarterback that we didn't have the answers already on.

I don't know how many times I said it like, I don't, we already know what Kirk is. It's, I mean, he's good. And we all respect him for that. And everybody believes that he can win games under the right circumstances, but yeah, what's it, we already know what it is. And with this, we don't. And that's why it is fascinating to watch it develop. Uh, Jeffrey says before OTAs, what would your pie chart have been for JJ McCarthy's future? And then now, uh, it would have been exactly the same. I mean, I, I like that you're going, uh, with the pie chart, but even though during the draft process, I was more skeptical of McCarthy than some of the other quarterbacks. At the same time, I also, every single discussion we had said, I have no idea. And right now I have no idea. I know that the early

returns look pretty good. And I think that it does correlate to success when your teammates galvanize around you. It does correlate to success when you work super hard at it. And when you look in control and you look like this is going to be my team someday, that's how McCarthy, that's the vibe that he has. All that's good. All that pushes the needle in the right direction.

So maybe I would say a little bit less off the total bust, but sometimes guys have their knees blow up. Like, I don't know. How could you ever know at this point in the game what somebody is going to be? That's what I love about it. But also, you know, the day he was drafted, I think I said, throw out all the draft analysis. If somebody says, here was my thoughts about McCarthy at Michigan.

I'm like, what? Who cares? He's had training camp practices. It doesn't matter. Michigan is gone and dead. And in the past, the only thing that kind of matters to the analysis is what's going on right now. And we don't have enough information yet for me to change the pie chart. So the pie chart would just be the general expectation for a quarterback that probably 40% of first round quarterbacks are busts. And then another 40% end up being good enough to make the playoffs and potentially went on a great

team. And then 10 to 20% become pro bowl, all pro Superbowl type of champions. And he could fall into any one of those categories. He does not strike me as someone who could be a total disaster because we already see enough to say, all right, this looks bad. I've seen total disaster. It looks better than that. But is it going to be the higher end of disaster where it's good enough to

convince people that you're that the Sam Darnold, it's good enough to convince people you should keep getting shots. Is it going to be, Hey, this is a franchise quarterback with limitations who gets paid anyway, like Tua or Jalen hurts. I mean, there's a lot of different places that this could fit in and so many moving parts as well. Uh, Aaron says any UDF phase or other rookies, not counting JJ and Turner moving up the depth chart. Yeah. Um, for sure. Dwight McClothern. And that might be because there's no one else on the team at cornerback, but I truly think, and I'll talk about it a little more. Uh, if you watch the video where we broke down the pad of practice in more in kind of a stupid amount of depth,

uh, but McClothern's getting a lot of snaps out there and he's big and he moves really well for his size. Everyone, you know, we always want to say, could it be the next Ivan Pace? That's really, really rare, but could it be a guy who becomes a contributor to your team and maybe someday starts or you feel good about him getting in possibly. So I have my eye on him. I have my eye on Owen Porter is another guy who has gotten a lot of reps off the edge that I I'm just, you know, noticing from time to time. And those are the two that I would say have stuck out the most. And then in one-on-ones, I just Sean Jones was really good today. And I've probably mentioned just Sean Jones more times than I should for

someone who hasn't gotten a lot of reps out there on 11 on 11s and hasn't moved himself up yet. But if he keeps winning one-on-ones, then he will get more of those, more of those actual reps when it comes to the situational drills and stuff like that. It's the first day of pads, but he, when he goes one-on-one against somebody,

he's a good route runner. He ran kind of a deep hitch where he created a lot of separation. So I'm keeping an eye on him. Mark says, having great respect for drafting and player evaluation, why was everyone wrong about Lewis Seen? The debate wasn't that he was terrible, but Seen is a top safety prospect. Well, here's the thing about Lewis Seen. He was, and this is why I was against trading down.

He was the 32nd overall pick go to drafthistory.com while you're listening go to the 32nd overall pick and just scroll down and look at all the names and come back and tell me how many turn out to be great of course there probably is one or two who have become good players from the 32nd pick. But once you get past that top 15, it's a total crapshoot. I think that just over the years of the draft and yeah, I know they got Jefferson and Darisov, but this is what I mean by crapshoot. It could be a great player. It could be a terrible player. The, the, there's just such a wide range of outcomes. Once you get past that top 15, where the most talented players are i've always thought

that the 15th 17th 20th pick versus the 42nd pick could all have about the same odds of succeeding because of exactly what i'm saying is that the top players everybody knows who they are and then everyone else is based on fit and based on how they transition into the nfl with lewis scenes capabilities physically there is a reason he was 32nd because he is a better athlete than kyle hamilton on paper hamilton is a good is a really really good athlete but lewis scene is the top of the line at his position and And yet 32nd overall, maybe that was some team seeing stuff personality wise. I don't know. I didn't hear anything when he came out that was negative. We always want an explanation for everything. If you walk out in the street

and you get hit by a car, you want to know what was the driver doing? Why were you walking there? We always want an explanation, but sometimes you're walking down the street and a brick randomly breaks off of a building and falls on your head. That's the draft. Sometimes there is no explanation that just the guy was a good prospect and got here and could not figure it out. It's fast. It's physical. It's taxing. It's difficult.

It's complicated. And that's what it looks like. How were you supposed to know? And this is apologizing for a pick that I didn't like. How are you supposed to know that a guy was not going to make that transition into the NFL when it was so different. It's like living in your house versus living on a deserted Island. Like, yeah, you seem to survive in your house where everything is given to you and set up nicely. And they pat you on the head and you have your warm blanket. How are you going to do on survivor Island? So you ever seen the

show naked and afraid? I'm not a fan fan but i've seen a few minutes of it and that's what it's like in the nfl it's like going off to an island you got to survive you got to fight for your own food and not everybody lives on the island sometimes they just don't make it uh tyler says who are the second team inside linebackers well kamu gruge hill is one and then i believe they've been mixing in after that i'll have to take note of that tomorrow who the other linebacker next to kamu gruge hill has been he's the veteran type of backup but this is what makes it a little more tricky to keep track of is how it's one player. It's another player. So I didn't look that much at that position. I was watching more of the wide

receivers today. Obviously the quarterback didn't take note of that, but definitely Grugier Hill. He's a veteran. He's been around a long time, Houston, the New York giants, all that. And he's, he's the one that's going to give you the sort of quality play there at, at backup linebacker. I shot you 99 says, I know you aren't following men video games, nor is it really that accurate, but I'm curious to your opinion on the team's player ratings of men 25 versus

things that you've seen. I haven't taken a second to look at madden 25 ratings in 15 years probably i think the last one that i played because it's all it's all old school gaming to me now i've just accepted my oldness and that i will never adapt to a ps5 6 7 px midnight whatever the next thing is going to come out. It's just not going to happen. Uh, so the last group of a quarter of ratings for Madden was when Carson Palmer was a quarterback and ranked like a 78, but had 95 throw power. That's probably the last time I cared. Uh, as far as like, I think they try really hard to rank the players correctly.

But one thing I do notice very much over the years is that enough players through hissy fits about their Madden ratings that now everyone is rated good, terrible players who have no chance to make teams are 74, 74, 74 used to be, I can start you at a position. You'd be a number two wide receiver with a 74 on madden but now the 74 from 10 maddens ago it's like a an 88 or something now my it doesn't really compute with my brain i wish i had a better answer for you there but it just adjust them to yourself is what you should do for your own team if you play with your own team adjust them yourself uh no dac to mini if you could still do that i don't know if you can

do you think that the vikings prioritize weekly prep with mullins or keep hall as qb3 with an eye toward eventually being the backup i would guess all four quarterbacks are on this team in some way, but that would be Jaron Hall on the practice squad with Nick Mullins as either the backup or QB three right now trending toward JJ McCarthy's the backup and it is Nick Mullins as QB three and Sam Darnold is the starter. That's how it looks right now out on the practice field. There's no reason to make a change here. Nick Mullins is a very good veteran who, if you need to play, can provide a lot of entertainment and give you a shot to win a game. He could certainly throw the ball toward Justin Jefferson. And Jaron Hall is a guy that you hope by the end of the year that he reminds you of Nick Mullins,

where, A, good to be in the room. and somebody that if we had to put it in case of emergency, we could, that was not the situation last year, but he's a rookie and there's no reason to look for somebody else. Just keep him here. He seems to be a class individual carries himself really well. Just keep them here on the practice squad. If you need them, you need them. There's not too much to think about either one of those guys though. What about Bob? Not sure why the last two drafts, the Vikings didn't take a running back other than the late round flyer on McBride. And it's not a good flyer so far. Not many flashes of Dwayne McBride that I've seen. Maybe in in the preseason he'll do a little bit more but it's been more kenny wong woo which you really didn't want to see kenny wong woo when we

did the the running back preview i mostly didn't mention kenny wong woo because i just assumed well he's really the kick returner i thought at the time, based on some reports, they might bring back Cam Akers. There may still be another guy in the mix. Miles Gaskin could make this team. They brought him back. They liked him enough to do that. If I had to guess, I would say it's because Kweisi Adafo-Mensa is more analytical in his mindset and maybe drafting running backs when you had so few picks was just not on the radar. That's, that's probably why they just haven't had many picks. You could say, why didn't they pick a dozen things? Because they just haven't had that many of them to use. Now, would you go back and knowing what we know now about Will Reichert's leg, would you pick Will Reichert instead of a running back?

Because I would have said on draft day, maybe they should have just picked a running back because lots of mid and late round running backs end up working out. But now Will Reichert looks good, so maybe we shouldn't say that. They picked up a backup tackle, who I wrote about, by the way, Walter Rouse, if you want to check that out on purpleinsider.com.

But you draft a swing tackle and not a player who could maybe be at a skill position as a running back they seem to think that it can be a year-by-year thing where they assess it look for a free agent they're not developing one it's not really developmental position but also you know ty chandler is still fairly inexperienced and they spent a fifth rounder on Ty Chandler. And maybe that was the one swing at that position, but you're right. I mean, there might be a, there might be a, a theory or a way of thinking about it that you should draft two or three of them early on, uh, or, uh, early. Well, no, not not early on you should draft two or three of them early in day

three fourth round fifth round because if they're great they're getting picked in the second but then you can forget about them in the middle rounds at times maybe that's where they should have looked for them but you only have so many draft picks maybe that'll be something they look at in the future i don't know the running back room long term doesn't have a very clear answer it's just that who does it's usually a year-to-year thing with almost every team paul says sorry if i missed it but is jay ward at corner going to be a permanent thing do not know we did not uh talk to brian fl after practice. It was before, and he didn't offer up the information of what they were going to do with Jay Ward.

We just saw it. So now we'll have to ask somebody what's going on there, or we'll just observe that he's there day after day after day. It may have been a trial thing. Let's put him at corner. Let's see how he reacts and then decide, do we need to sign somebody in here or not? And if he plays well over a couple of days,

then maybe he holds someone off. They can do that. I mean, it's not panic time. We haven't reached August yet. So they don't have to say, oh man, you know, we need a Dory Jackson today. They could sign him next week and it's not like that would put them way back.

So they could spend the entire week evaluating. What does this unit look like? If we don't add someone, they could do that. And that might be the smart play evaluated with Jay Ward in there. What does it look like if you don't do anything? And then if you don't like that, what is it now? What is the free agency landscape and what would it look like if we did something? I thought Jay Ward looked fine, though. I mean, I didn't watch him every single rep, but he looked comfortable at that. He played that position in college. I'm for giving it a week or maybe even more to find out what does he look like as we go forward here uh Wrigley says

has Jabril Cox been getting reps on the second team could he win a linebacker spot he's more of a special teamer but mostly a camp body I haven't noticed too much of Jabril Cox getting in there if he gets any type of job it would be a huge win for him as a guy who's bounced around and had some injuries. Jaw vision, anything interesting, interior offensive line combinations, not on the first team. And the second team Dalton Reisner has taken right snaps and left snaps that I've seen. Looks like he's just working on being a swing guard. That's how it, that's how I see it. Every time Kevin O'Connell talks about it, he says, Oh no, he's competing for a starting spot, but then we never see a first team rep. So he's not really competing, but you also don't

want to say the guy's not competing at all for a position. You never hear a coach say that. Uh, Ian says, uh, how was Levi Drake Rodriguez? Well, he's big. I have noticed that he's big and he has gotten in on some second team reps. Looked a little bit more like a madman than a technician today. And that's probably what you're dealing with at this moment

is somebody who needs a ton of refinement over the next year or two in order to be someone who you can actually put into a game. He's a great story and he's absolutely big enough to be an interior pass rusher. And he did it really well at college, but his college was so far away from this in terms of talent. He looks like he is a guy that went to a smaller college and is going to need a lot of development could make the team because there was other teams interested around draft time. I kind of would expect that at this moment. Uh, how does Dallas Gant look? Taylor asks that. I do not know to

tell you the truth. I do not know. That's another undrafted free agent who I can't honestly tell you that I've noticed. But as we go on, that will be his job to make sure that I notice. There's been so much going on with the quarterbacks, cornerbacks, wide receiver, three, four, et cetera. I just haven't noticed them yet. What about Bob says Flores is forced to find the new five safety coverage in this camp great tackling but lots of loose receivers running around so the thing about the cornerback group is if it doesn't go any more wrong than it already has and shag griffin returns and byron murphy jr is playing and a caleb ev. is playing and a Caleb Evans is playing.

That doesn't sound horrendous to me. That sounds below average, but it doesn't sound tragic. Like you're just going to get slaughtered by everybody. Every quarterback who comes in is going to run up and down the field. It's not 2020. You cannot cover anyone no matter what. If someone gets hurt though, that's where it sounds pretty bad. Where then you're talking about, is it Bobby McCain playing nickel corner? Or is it because they can use Josh Metellus in the nickel so much to the point that they don't really need to run three all the time. Ideally, you would have preferred to bump Byron Murphy in to the nickel spot, and maybe they'll do that sometimes if they have their starting three, that they will be able to

still do that. But as far as the depth, they just don't have any with Andrew Booth Jr. there. They're obviously hoping that Dwight McClothern or Jay Ward can do something. These are rolls of the dice that they're having to make. That's where there is the case for just leaving it because the starting group doesn't terrify you. They can play football against other teams and they can do what Brian Flores asked them to do and win some and lose some. It won't be an above average group. Uh, but because of Josh Metellus, they don't have to have three out there all the time. That is part of the key, why they could survive this and why they survived it for a lot of last year. Uh, job vision says, has Jaqueline Roy flashed at all a little bit today? Yep. When

he goes one-on-one, he is such an enormous mammoth dude with so much power that, uh, yes, he does flash almost every time I see him with his strength. Uh, Brett says, I don't see guard guy in here. Where is guard guy? Hasn't asked about the guards uh how do the guards look i didn't think that they had a good day today because there was a lot of pressure on sam darnold and the thing about sam darnold over his career is that when pressured it's been pretty pretty tough when he's been pressured and that was what it looked like he was dealing with I wouldn't say seeing ghosts but I would say that he was getting a lot of rush in his face and a lot of confusion from Brian Flores I mean Ed Ingram needs to be better than he was last year I think Ed Ingram is who he is which is

a guy that can be pretty good one week and then struggle the next week. Blake Brandel, I have not watched as closely and that I guess we'll have to put on the list. The fact that they haven't mixed in anyone else and it's been Blake Brandel the whole time makes me think that they like what they see, because if he was struggling, they would mix in somebody else. I think that with Brandel, it's looked okay thus far. But day after day of padded practices, if it's going to be a problem, then we'll start to see it. And I imagine Brandel is going to play in the preseason more than you would

usually expect. Let's see here. Continue to scroll. I've gotten to the point where you guys are reacting to the kicker things. I'm sorry that I get behind on the chats because I try to give good answers or as best as I possibly can to everybody. And we'll hang for a little bit longer, but then I've got my conversation

with Dane Mizutani from TCO Performance Center coming your way here on the YouTube channel. So just football all night long. Am I right? JP says not praising Darnold or anything close to it, but even Cous cousins struggled last year against brian flores defense yep that's right uh so it's understandable why he had a bad day let's hope he gets better no this is not something to completely overreact to when you report like i do or any other

reporters hey it's pretty tough day for sam darn. We don't have to make more of that than what it is. It's the first day of padded practice. It's against a, and I say this in the nicest way, a lunatic in Brian Flores, who has this crazy defense that can be really difficult to go against. And heck Vikings quarterbacks struggled very much against Zimmer's defense when it was great. When you had all that talent out there, the defense is always a little better at the start of the padded practices than the offense. And you're very much right that even toward the end of training camp in 2022, Kirk Cousins still had some problems getting on the same page with receivers and things like that. I mean, this will take an entire

process for them to get to the point where they feel good about it if they're going to end up getting there. And that's what we don't know. And what we're trying to find out day after day is, are you going to get to a point where Sam Darnold is comfortable enough to make this a good offense? Or are we going to have practices in late August where we're still coming away saying I'm not sure guys it looked pretty tough against the Cleveland Browns which I do expect it that that to be a real battle with those two teams over the it's really gonna kind of present itself over the next couple weeks are we gonna go into the season pretty nervous about where they stand or feeling like hey Hey, you know,

Darnold's got, got a chance here or McCarthy is going to start. And here we go. Uh, that's why this camp is the most uncertain that I've covered. And this is camp number eight for me, but by far the most uncertain, you just don't know what's going to happen with how it's going to develop. But I think it's a fair enough point as far as being patient and letting it play out. Because even a very, very good quarterback in Kirk Cousins had his struggles early on in Kevin O'Connell's offense. Go get him. Have you ever identified someone in training camp that you knew was going to be special?

Delvin Cook. Yeah, Delvin Cook. There's an article somewhere. You'd have to use the way back machine on the internet to probably find it but delvin cook several practices in was so much better than anyone that i had seen up close that like okay uh i think that guy's gonna be a superstar and i remember grabbing terrence newman after practice in 2017 and just asked him hey so what do you think of Delvin Cook so far and he said special man just special and talked about

having Delvin Cook run into him and feeling the the strength and the power of Delvin Cook the second round pick and you never really know but it was instant that you could tell he was different had he stayed a little more healthy through his career, probably would have had a better overall career. It ends up being good for him. And he got the contract, he got his money, but it should have been more, but the ACL then recovery from that the next year with the hamstring, something in the way a lot of the time for Delvin Cook from being true greatness on the level of someone like Adrian Peterson. That one was pretty easy. And I also want to give a slight pat on the back to myself,

not a big one, but slight, ever so slight, tiny, tiny pat on the back for Ivan Pace, because I want a milkshake because of Ivan Pace. I thought that he would get the starting gig and Andrew Kramer thought it would be Brian Asamoah as training camp played out and it ended up being Ivan Pace. But in the first practice that he was the starter, now special is a hard thing to say, but really caught my eye. I was in this, this guy is a Wolverine out there. He's hitting everything. He's fast. He's in the right spots. Uh, I'm not going to say I found him. They found him. Oh, but also those of you who are OG listeners, you are aware that my former intern Haley English, one of her Haley's heroes. Now she does data for the Detroit lions, but Ivan Pace was one of her Haley's heroes. Now she does data for the Detroit lions, but Ivan pace was one of her Haley's heroes.

So we together identified Ivan pace, but it, it was, it was super clear with Delvin cook. That was one where I didn't have to hem and haw over. Well, you know, I guess maybe it was,

no, this guy's going to be great. And, uh, he was, uh, let's see. Max says,

is Naylor a real thing? Well, he is most certainly really talented. Is his health a real thing? I almost feel uncomfortable saying it because health is a lot of luck in football. Does somebody fall on your leg or not? Do you get a concussion or not? It's just bad luck to get a concussion last year after he came back is he talented though oh yeah uh he can go up and get the ball he can run past people he has long speed uh that he just seems to have an ability to separate and deep into a route but he also tracks the ball extremely well they they didn't make this up out of nowhere. They didn't just pick them out of a hat and maybe they do this sometimes. I don't think so though. They don't just get a

fishbowl and put all the players names in it who aren't going to make it and go, yeah, let's keep praising this guy. There's a reason why Kevin O'Connell keeps coming back to Jalen Naylor is because he's seen the talent. He just hasn't been able to make something of it. There's a reason why they didn't go out and get somebody else because they probably thought if this guy comes through, he might have a chance to be maybe KJ Osborne ish, maybe a case, a KJ Osborne that fits better with what they do this year because Osborne struggled with what they were doing last year. But maybe that type of caliber of player, you're not talking about 80 catches, but if you are talking about 40 catches and a handful of big plays, then he would be extremely, extremely good

for them in that role. And you still have Brandon Powell. I don't think it's been a good start for Brandon Powell overall. That might not be his fault. That might be quarterback's fault. He was open on a throw today that Sam Darnold didn't get the ball to him. Should have been there. Should have been a first down. He kind of dove for it. Couldn't make the catch, but Naylor has more talent and especially as, as a deep potential threat, I think it's a real thing. It's just, can he stay real healthy? If he does, then they might have something here. And then the whole idea of not picking up Hunter Renfro and just saying, make it happen, guys.

We drafted you or picked you up for a reason. Let's see it. It would really play well for them. It would work out excellently if jaylen naylor was able to emerge as that guy uh caleb says do you think the spy scandal for michigan hurt jj mccarthy how do you think that could play a role in the quarterback that he is after harbaugh was suspended is when mccarthy's numbers really dipped I don't make anything of that. He won the national championship after that, didn't he?

I saw that, right? Yeah, I think so. Yes, he did. He won the national championship after that. He also had the ball in his hands against Alabama. Alabama, where he needed to drive the field. I mean, you're right that against Penn State, they didn't pass the ball at all. And that was concerning. And there are still things from evaluating him in college that you would say, I've thrown all that out personally,

as I watch him play in front of me, but that you would say, if you were putting them into the evaluation, the stuff from college is what you think of as odds of succeeding. The number one thing that we always kept coming back to was why didn't they throw the ball more? Why? Right. And that happened more in the second half of the season where he didn't have bigger games in the second half of the year. The spying though, never came into my mind this entire time. If anything, what I liked about the way that JJ McCarthy handled himself was the whole world was going on TV, social media reports, all these different things about his team and his coach gets suspended and he didn't seem to change or have any problems. He kept leading them and they won and they went to the biggest stage and won. And

he worked his way through when the whole world was kind of against them. And that's not to say it was a good spy thing. And also do we think this is the first team that's got a spy? I don't think it's the first team that's got a spy. Uh, but as far as how that plays in the evaluation right now, not, not at all for me, I never even thought of it as we were going through this. Uh, I just thought that if somebody could lead their team to a national championship after they, uh, dealt with their coach getting suspended and the circus that Harbaugh created. Well, the NFL is a circus all the time. So you have to be able to deal with that.

That's the best I can do. I mean, I don't, how many passes did he throw to a receiver that they knew were going to be open because they spied? Well, I, I can't tell you that. I can only kind of tell you what I see in front of me. What about Bob? Is Reisner just the backup or going to push to start? I think just the backup that's the way it's looked. And until that changes, that's what I'm going with. They didn't bench at Ingram through the first two seasons when he was

last in pressures allowed and bottom five and pressures allowed. Why would they do it now for someone who can't run block? Reisner is great backup. Great. They might have the best offensive line depth in the league. Questenberry is good. Rouse has looked good so far. And then Feeney has been in the league before. He can play if you need him to, multiple positions.

And then Reisner, this is a starting group for like a bad team. Normally, uh, as opposed to this group is could start the Vikings backups could start for the new England Patriots. And it might be just as good or better of an offensive line. That's not bad over 17 games. That's going to help either JJ McCarthy or Sam Darnold or both. And hopefully not more because we don't want that to happen uh young purple how many sacks for jonathan grenard i will go nine and a half little regression there but also still a very good and effective player that's where i would go with jonathan grenard i don't think it's quite going to be as high as it was before but they will have i'll throw this prediction they

will have more oh, it would be hard to do that. Well, they have more total sacks than the Vikings edge rushers from last year. But what if we include the whole defensive line? They will have more sacks this year across the whole defensive line, edge rushers, outside linebackers, defensive linemen. They will have more this year than they did last year. There we go. Ty says, I hope this year's QB class is more like 2020 than 2022. I think you mean 2021. Yeah, where Mac Jones and Justin Fields. It really speaks to how little we know, right? Because the 2020 class, Jordan Love was not liked enough to be a high pick. Jalen Hurts was not liked enough to be a high pick.

And Washington passed on Justin Herbert and Tua, right? Nobody knows nothing when it comes to quarterbacks. It's wild that way. Okay. Jonathan says it definitely won't be like 2022. There's a reason only one quarterback. Yeah, I think he meant 2021. Yep.

Joe says, is Hawk out there at all? He is, but he's not practicing. He is out there doing his rehab, which has to be one of the most miserable and brutal things as an athlete who's been healthy and has played for a long time because he's just running on the side. There's a hill, like artificial hill that they've created, running up the hill, just doing things to get that leg stronger. It's talking about mentally taxing. It is very mentally taxing.

But the tight ends have mostly been Munt, Oliver, Nick Muse mixed in. And we've seen a little Robert Tunyon, but maybe not enough of Robert Tunyon to be getting as excited as we were about him in minicamp. Have not seen him use, or Kevin O'Connell use Tunyon at all in the first team. It's been all Johnny Munt, Josh Oliver. I don't think I saw it today, even though I didn't see Josh Oliver out there as much. Trying to think if he was even out there today. Saw a little more Nick Muse.

That room's got a bunch of talent. Matt, out of 32 rosters, what number would you give our cornerback room? I don't know every single third corner off the top of my head in the NFL with PFF grades and all the research that I would need to answer that question to the utmost accuracy. So I'll take a shot at it. Probably say like 25th. It might not be the worst in the league because Murphy is a pretty decent player and Griffin has had his history where he's been good. And even last year when he was split between two teams, his numbers weren't horrendous. And a Caleb Evans had a run where it wasn't horrendous,

but there's no dude here where you could say, well, at least they got that guy. At least they got the shutdown guy, but they don't have depth. 25th might be healthy. It's probably below that. And there aren't guys where we can say, well, they have to prove that it's more than that.

These are already players who have played enough in the league for us to mostly know who they are. We do know that there's more there maybe for a Caleb Evans, but not way more. He's been in the league for two years. We've seen him. We've watched him play. We know what his limitations are and his talents. It's not, it's not that high.

They need that one guy. They need that one corner where you could put on anybody, anytime, anywhere. They don't have that right now. What about Bob punter competition? What's the steam? Haven't seen too many punts. They were punting a little bit today. Game will determine

that. I believe that they will really have that play out in the preseason game. So when it comes to preseason, I don't care if JJ McCarthy is starting. I am leading my article after that and the podcast with the punter competition. How did they do Seth Vernon versus Ryan Wright? Seth Vernon's got a chance, but the incumbent might be hard to unseat unless they really, really like Vernon. Shane says, JJ start for you. You mean if it was my decision as of right now, would I go, JJ, you're starting? I might, I might. There's something I kind of believe in a little bit and I don't disagree with their direction at all. So this is just me. I am not criticizing Kevin O'Connell. I think he's got it right. I think he and Josh McCown are, are coaches that we could say that

we trust their decision-making, right? There are some coaches, Matt Rule in the past, or a dozen other ones, Matt Patricia, where you would not trust them. And I would feel very free to second guess. So this is not a second guess. This is more of just a statement of fact that there have been quarterbacks who have been drafted high in the past, who are very talented and have great mentalities and are smart and are hardworking who go in there and they get beat up a little bit and they fight through it and they show you what they got and their numbers aren't that good. But at the end of the day, you go, that guy's got it. That's Joe Burrow, his first year, Josh Allen, his first year. And I wouldn't be afraid of JJ McCarthy being that

at this point, I wouldn't be terrified of a bad throw, an interception, a fumble, a mistake just because he's inexperienced. I would rather just go sink or swim. Let's see what happens. He'll figure out a lot of it along the way because he's got great athleticism and arm strength and all right. So let him, let him take his lumps and just play. I mean, it's probably destroyed some guys, uh, where they've been knocked around so much, but that's not going to be this situation with the tackles that they have with the coach, with Aaron Jones, with the receivers. It isn't going to be a situation where the quarterback just gets demolished because he's

got nothing around him. The fact that he's got those things and looks all ready to me, like he understands what he's supposed to be doing, getting the play call and where he's generally supposed to be thinking or seeing. Sure, I'd do it. But I would probably also pare down the offense and run a lot of play actions and screens at first and treat them a little bit like Jake Browning was treated by the Bengals last year. So I might take just a different tact. What O'Connell's doing is fine. And I think he knows

what he's doing with downloading the entire offense into JJ McCarthy's brain and then playing him as opposed to slowly building up and playing it safe at first and then growing and growing on top of it. Kevin O'Connell has said, Wes Phillips has said, the office doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that you can just kind of pare it down and work it slowly up until the point where the guy is healthy. It just doesn't work that way. And I believe him over under 34 and a half sacks. Is that for the whole team or just for the defensive line group? Because you know, Blake Cashman, Josh Metellus, Harrison Smith, they're going to add to the sacks. I think they get to 45 as a team. 34, would that take 10 by Grenard?

Maybe 7 by Van Ginkle gets us to 17 if we give Dallas Turner 6, 23. You can't get to 34 and a half with the defensive line because Harrison Phillips might get 2. Jerry Tillery might get 2 or 3. Can't quite get there with the defensive line because Harrison Phillips might get to Jerry Tillery might get two or three. Can't quite get there with the defensive line, but as a team, probably 40 to 45, what were they at last year? Maybe 43. Uh, sloth, who do you predict will score the most touchdowns of preseason? Eileen, Nick muse. I like that. You could also see the, maybe it won't get enough reps. I was thinking maybe the Nikhil Harry or even Dwayne McBride just hit the end of fourth

quarter scoring touchdowns. Nick Muse is a great selection. The goal line threat, he's always showed up in these circumstances and that's why he got the job last year. So Mike, did I see Judd Zulgad, former lead Vikings beat reporter out there? I see Judd Zulgad every day. It's one of my best friends. Absolutely. Uh, yeah. Judd is one of the best, you know, because sometimes I tell stories from when I first got here, but not that often. I'm usually focused on all this stuff, but since we've gone 90 minutes, which is what I promised, I'll talk about this a little bit

that when I arrived in Minnesota to work for 1500 ESPN, I was well aware of Judd and the star tribune and how good of a reporter he was. It was a little bit intimidating when I first got here. So we went to the preseason game, Vikings preseason game, Vikings Rams. That was a big breakout game for CJ Hamm. And Judd, I mean, immediately just started talking hockey with me, said, Hey, it's your show as the Vikings reporter for our station. So do your thing, do it the way you want to do it. And I'm here to help you with anything. And he's been one of my best friends since uh one of the best people i know so always love when i get to hang out with judd out at vikings camp and this is eight of them

we used to do podcasts together we still every once in a while i have him on the show yeah no i mean uh oh gosh says you're telling me you'll have john the show he's been on the show a bunch of times we don't do it all the time because he has his own job but uh he he and uh Chip Scoggins came on if you want to check it out it was fun he and Chip Scoggins came on and talked about the draft they talked about their favorite draft memories and stuff so yeah yeah Judd's always welcome on the show for sure okay two last questions this funny one first thoughts on Xavier Rhodes claiming he's going to be back in purple hey one of my favorite players to cover great personality, Xavier Rhodes. I hope he's doing well. I don't think he's going to play though, but I hope he's doing well.

Sue says, what do you think the team will do if we start off? Oh, and five, three draft picks going into 2025 best to tank and acquire the first overall pick. Uh, Oh, and five would be very interesting from that perspective, because at that point you couldn't argue, Hey, we're not that far off. We could make the playoffs like they did in 2020.

And last year, that would mean Aaron Jones goes out the door. Does somebody have an injured quarterback? You could trade Sam Darnold to they would be tearing a lot of stuff down at that trade deadline like they didn't do last year but also you're going to have a head coach that would probably understand that a high draft pick would be great but also not want a 3 and 14 record to his name. Uh, they're going to keep fighting. I would imagine as they always have, and they have a little bit too much talent to be the number one overall pick.

You can't really just tank unless people get hurt because you have Grenard, you have Van Ginkle, you have Harrison Smith, you have Justin Jefferson, but if people get hurt and it happens like that, the natural tank, then yeah, you have no choice other than to trade people away. The coaching staff will never tank. Brian Flores will never tank. And I don't think that this season is going to go like that, but as far as, oh, and five would be pretty shocking, but how about two and four? If you're going into the trade deadline at two and four or two and five, that's a, that might be more difficult because you do want to get more draft capital for

the future. And this was always supposed to be a transition season and it might be pretty tough. That starts of the season is very, very hard. Definitely is. But I don't think Owen five is going to be quite that defector coming on the show.

Yes. You mean Drew McGarry? Yes, absolutely. He will be. So he does his thing every year of why your team sucks. He does that, that bunch of articles. And when that comes out about the Vikings, he'll come on the show. Yep. Does anyone here go to games? I assume you mean, are you talking to other people? Cause I go to every game. Uh, let's see. Oh gosh. Says, uh, seven wins. That's all I'm really asking for. Yeah.

Seven wins is seven wins is the least amount that we could go. Okay. All right. Yeah. It was a season, a wins. You might think, and I mean, it's just one win, but you might walk away with eight wins going almost there in a year in transition. Good sign. Nine wins. You definitely say that, but six wins is going to feel farther away. Funny how it works like that. That's only a game or two,

a field goal or two here or there that will absolutely go in and it will go over the height of the field goal posts. Let me leave you with this. Uh, okay. I'll answer a couple more questions. I'll answer this one real quick. Um, am I going to go on Alec Lewis's show anytime soon? Uh, probably, but it's actually what we're going to maybe do is a little crossover and have some of his content over here, or at least on my audio podcast feed to kind of get his audience built up because I know he's going to do a really good job with that. So definitely help him any way that I can. Charles says, what would you say McCarthy's weaknesses so far? His weakness is that he's 21 years old. That's probably the biggest weakness

is that he's just never played NFL football before. He doesn't have a ton of reps under his belt and zero until now with pads on. Everything is just so new to JJ McCarthy and his biggest weakness is going to be touch on the football. That one is going to take probably years to figure out if he does, because if you throw checkdowns that are rockets, then they're going to go through people's hands and end up as interceptions. If you have routes that are supposed to go behind linebackers and you try to throw it through the linebacker, NFL linebackers will catch it. That's something that won't be fixed this year. And I'd be fine with dealing with that and dealing with the interception here or there, or the past breakup here or there,

because he hasn't got it yet, but it's something that will have to be worked on as we go forward. Joe says, do you think that the game against Atlanta gets flexed for Kirk cousins revenge game? No, I don't. I don't think it's going to be relevant enough.

I really don't. Maybe it would be fun, but is that really a revenge? Does Kirk, what is Kirk getting revenge against? This team gave him so much money. Who's getting revenge against who? Anyway, well, thanks everybody for a really fun chat. Great crowd tonight.

Super fun chat. And I'm just going to do this a lot. There are going to be lots of articles that are coming out over purple insider.com. Make sure you check out mine today on Walter Rouse. I put a lot of work into that one, sat down with Walter, really interesting stuff about his relationship with his grandfather who won

a championship in the NCAA basketball tournament, 1963 purple insider.com. Go see that. It's on my Twitter as well. grandfather who won a championship in the NCAA basketball tournament in 1963, purpleinsider.com. Go see that. It's on my Twitter as well. And yeah, look forward to at 10 o'clock central. We're dropping the video with me and Dane breaking down the practice, more Vikings discussion. So it's going to be great. Make sure you check that out. That is coming up very, very soon, but thank you so much for a really really fun chat and uh look we're going live after every practice day that means tomorrow we'll be live again we'll see y'all then football