Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Breaking down the Vikings' miserable preseason opener and Mike Zimmer's frustrations

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

From inside US Bank Stadium, Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom break down a miserable day for the Minnesota Vikings against the Denver Broncos, starting with a pick-six from Jake Browning and continuing on to Kellen Mond struggling in his debut. The QBs were hardly the only ones. Mike Zimmer expressed frustration with everyone from defensive backs to the punter. What does it all mean? Should we disregard the game because it's preseason action or analyze each element of this team's lack of depth? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the post-game podcast between the Minnesota Vikings and Denver Broncos, the preseason opener, the first preseason game we have covered in two years. And oh my, was it eventful, Sam? Somebody tweeted me. They said that I would say, hello, welcome to the podcast and woof. The Vikings lose 33 to six to the Denver Broncos in what was an extreme tail whooping. Now the Broncos played a lot more relevant players and good players. So not a surprise that they would be better. They had their starting quarterbacks. They had a lot of starting players out there, starting receivers, but they ran all over the Vikings. We had a safety because of a

hold. We had a pick six from Jake Browning. Kellen Mond got in the game much earlier than we expected and played a lot, played the entire rest of the way. We did not see the Danny Ettling era begin. And Kellen Mond, wow, did Mike Zimmer have a lot to say about his performance after the game. So you tell me, Sam, where would you like to begin with this hideous football game that we were subjected to? Boy, it was kind of like a car wreck where you just can't look away. I mean, it was more compelling to me, honestly, than your run-of-the-mill preseason game that kind of goes back and forth and then fizzles. It was interesting to watch the Vikings play this badly in a preseason setting

where they usually thrive. Mike Zimmer's defenses are usually much better. And we've never seen kind of their backup offenses struggle like this either. And maybe Mike Zimmer's having some tough realizations. Maybe it's him saying, man, I wish I had a backup veteran quarterback right now. Or wishing that they had invested more in the offensive line, which was not good. But at any rate, let's just talk about how there were so few strengths. Like the biggest strength today was a running back that averaged four yards a carry, who's the fifth on the depth chart and not going to make the team. Like that, it was all negative, man.

There were so few silver linings that I can understand why Mike Zimmer is surly. And you might say to any coach who's upset about a preseason result, calm down. But Mike Zimmer is almost justified in this with how bad some of these backups looked. And a number of them will be expected to play this year. It wasn't like players 80 through 90 of the roster were the ones struggling. It was like players 45 through 55, guys that are legitimately going to need to play. I kind of focused on that in my post-game story. And there's actually a lot to talk about. None of it very good for the Vikings. I think that you nailed it exactly for what the takeaway here is because I have long been of the thought that preseason does not matter

that anything that happens during a preseason game will be so long forgotten by week one and will never tell us anything about what's going to happen during the season it projects nothing remember how Kirk Cousins came out and threw an incredible touchdown to Stefan Diggs in the first drive of the 2018 preseason. And it was ultimately the offense that stalled out toward the end of that year and that cost them. And I've just seen way too many players shine in the preseason that didn't matter. Way too many players who are starters, but didn't try or struggled in the preseason games. And that didn't matter at all. But I think what this shined a light on was the just extreme weakness, one layer below the surface of the starters and Zimmer even called them the good players today, which I don't think I've ever heard a coach say the good players in referring to those guys who are the starters that sat out,

of which there were 31 of them. So again, when you take out your 31 best players, you're usually not going to be a very good football team against the other team that's playing some of them. But it wasn't everybody. It was Steven Weatherly and it was DJ Wanham. Cam Dantzler got absolutely toasted by KJ Hamler, of which I know Twitter was like, it wasn't his fault. Well, Mike Zimmer confirmed it was his

fault. There was a misread by the safety, but Hamler ran right by Cam Dantzler on that play for an 80 yard touchdown. Cam Dantzler could absolutely play. And so could DJ Wanham. And so could Steven Weatherly. And so could Dakota Dozier knowing this team. And so could DJ Wanham and so could Steven Weatherly and so could Dakota Dozier knowing this team and Dakota Dozier starts out the first three drives. He gives up a pressure on the first drive. He holds in the end zone for the second one to give up a safety. And then on the third one, he jumps off side and welcome to the Dakota Dozier experience that you guys chose. You chose this life of bringing him back here and not getting somebody who was a better backup guard as your just-in-case. And now you're hoping, and I guess Ole Udo not playing says that they're really locked into that.

You're hoping that Ole Udo can transfer from tackle to guard. But what's your parachute? What's your backup if Ole udo can't do it when the real games happen is it dakota dozier still after what we saw today that absolutely nothing has changed with dakota dozier and then talk about one layer below the surface we see jake browning throw a miserable pick six which i think should have them seeing if a mccown is around right i mean you just can't have that. And then Kellen Mond, the internet is trying to tell me that Kellen Mond who went six for 16 today somehow

was decent. Well, that was not the takeaway of the head coach after the game who again said Kellen Mond was playing in slow motion and it's sounded like just wasn't really happy with his performance at all failed on two two minute drives there was some sort of back and forth about the uh whether the play was in or something like that with kellen mond he was criticizing mond's tempo getting people lined up knowing where he's supposed to throw the word processing came up so you don't have a backup quarterback right now as far as I'm concerned as much as the Jake Browning story was nice and he's still QB2 at this moment if you have to play Jake Browning

what you saw from Patrick Sertain is probably what you'll get you probably won't win games if you have to play Jake Browning and so this preseason action we kind of said there's some guys who need to show some things from what we've seen in practice, and they did not show some things here today, including and especially either quarterback. Yeah, there's just some terrifying realities that Vikings fans are going to try not to think about, and Mike Zimmer is going to try not to have nightmares about, but look at some key positions on this team and think about the next guy in line. At safety, it might be Myles Dorn. We've seen him get like some first team reps when Harrison Smith gets a vet day.

Myles Dorn today missed two tackles badly and gave up a touchdown in the end zone. And Mike Zimmer called that out after the game. At linebacker, Troy Dye, who started numerous games last year missing tackles losing assignments um just doesn't look very poised out there Mike Zimmer he did said again didn't see much from the backup linebackers you focus pretty heavily on the quarterback situation um on the defensive line the defensive line which they started they started four players that may very well make the team and a couple of them may play a lot. Weatherly is going to play a lot. Wanham is going to play a lot.

Armin Watts is right in that rotation. And apparently James Lynch is doing pretty well based on Mike Zimmer's evaluation. We haven't really seen it with our eyes yet. Maybe he's processing better. At any rate, they sent out a legitimate second-team defensive line. Four guys who might make this roster probably will make this roster they generated zero qb hits in almost one half and i don't think lock was ever pressured to be honest with you i mean there was no pass rush at all um and that's the next level

down and and kind of go across the board like amir smith marset who's trying to get in the mix for that wide receiver three job, dropped the ball, slipped on a kick return. He ran kind of a weak route on the pick six. Like everybody who's fringe on this roster, Brandon Dillon dropped the ball. Brandon Dillon had a penalty. He wants to be the third tight end. Nobody was Amir. If you were on the fringe today, you probably hurt your stock.

And you could see Mike Zimmer's frustration with this and you can feel it more and more with Mike Zimmer that he's pointing toward things that the general manager and the front office have built. And that's where you wonder about Zimmer sort of hedging some of his bets, I guess, with the way that he's talking about the roster and the players. I mean, you look at the guys who were struggling today. There's a lot of draft picks in there. It's a third round quarterback who you drafted, who went on the COVID list because he's not vaccinated and then comes back and isn't ready to play, goes six for 16 passing. And I know he made a nice pass to Wap Filer in the back

of the end zone that maybe a good receiver catches but still I mean we saw Mitch Leidner play halfway decently and Kyle Sloater play great late in preseason games and Kellen Mond was not doing anything like that today and so I don't think that they've liked a whole lot that they've seen from mon zimmer directly called out his personality saying if you're going to be a quarterback that you're going to have to i think he said do those things in referring to getting everybody behind you and being in command so he doesn't feel anywhere close to someone who could step in to a game situation at all and and I think that there's a lot of these little pointed comments of like, even on Christian Derrissaw being out, like this would have been an exciting

time to see Christian Derrissaw play, but he's having a procedure on his groin. And so he's going to be out for an unknown amount of time, but Zimmer has been very blunt about that. Well, we thought it wasn't going to be a problem, but I guess it was a problem. And I, it just feels like Zimmer is being very straightforward about how frustrated he is with some of the players that they have that are just not up to par. And he knows the reality that guys get hurt and you might need people and you just don't feel confident in any of these guys. And it all sort of ties back to two different things. One is, sorry, Kirk Cousins contract. It always comes back to that. I know that there are people who will tweet me and say, Rob Brzezinski can make any contract happen. Rob Brzezinski will tell you himself

that he can't make any contract happen, not without serious ramifications. And where we see it taking up such a big percentage of the cap is that the next layer down from the starters looks like this. That's the reality of that contract. It's not just signing Joe Tooney, but it's also signing Terrence Newman or something like that. And I know they, they signed some one-year contract guys, but you're still one layer away. There's like, there's not enough cap space to make that all happen. And the other thing is that in 2015, they had one of the most incredible drafts. I think in NFL history, they pulled in two all pros, three, maybe three. If Daniel Hunter someday makes an all pro three pro bowlers, it does not ever happen. But since then, the guys that they have taken third round and passed are just a lot of this, a lot of too slow to run with KJ Hamler or gets hurt all the time or never pressured anyone in college.

So they're not going to pressure anyone in the NFL. is sort of reaching the point where he's not churching it up for us anymore with how he feels about the talent that they've been able to put out there beyond the Anthony bars and Eric Kendricks and Harrison Smith and Adam Thielen and the star players. And I think that that's what we saw on display that if you're going to have a quarterback contract that is that expensive, you have to hit on later picks to fill out not just great players but even what Anthony Harris did for them behind Andrew Sandejo or something like that they just do not have that on this roster which feels like again flying without a parachute where you're just like I better land with these players nobody better go on the COVID list because if they do

then all of a sudden we're playing Jalen Holmes or something. I don't have a laptop in front of me. I don't have notes in front of me, but I believe 15 draft picks last year, 12 this year. So that's 27 guys, most of whom are on this roster still. Other than Jefferson, correct me if I'm wrong, who stands out? Who's contributing in a meaningful way who's overachieved i can't think of many uh ezra cleveland you're hoping does if you're the vikings and this week we saw him go up against shelby harris a few times and we'll see if he can correct some of the things that happened this week but i'll give ezra cleveland some benefit of the doubt um and you know see if he can go to left guard, which still is kind of this whole thing with the offensive line.

I'll answer your question and not get off to the offensive line just yet. But Ezra Cleveland is going to contribute, and we saw what Dantzler looked like today. He also missed the tackle, so he only played a couple of series and gave up an 80-yard touchdown and missed the tackle. So I'm not sure there's a lot of confidence in Dantzler with the fact that Zimmer immediately went to Bashad Breland as soon as he was ready. So I'm not going to count Dantzler either. Maybe someday, but not right now. Aside from that, this draft class, Wyatt Davis was not playing until the second quarter.

And his first rep got slammed back into the quarterback and so there's not a whole lot of belief there i think also mike zimmer was very upset with wyatt davis for starting some shenanigans against the broncos zimmer called it stupid after um i mean that not today but in the practices right so no there really isn't i mean chas surratt made a couple of nice plays but he's not going to play as a linebacker. Troy Dye, as you mentioned, is just lost. I mean, and here's the thing about every draft these last couple of years. It's always, oh, man, this Troy Dye guy, I really liked him.

There's the draft people telling us, wow, they really nailed it. And maybe it feels that way at the time but as they as we sit here right now two years into the guy's career he can't play he can't you can't put him out there and so you're a nick vigil injury away or you're an anthony bar slow to recover from shoulder injury away and he's been sitting out a lot of practice from having to play troy die or ryan connelly because nobody else is stepping up and i think that that's where it really is standing out in a game like this is you just haven't hit on this. And I don't know if there is a development issue.

I have a tough time saying that because Mike Zimmer and his staff have developed so many good players the last time, but a lot of it comes down to luck. It's just do you randomly land on some guys who can help you? And the answer right now is there aren't a whole lot of guys comes down to luck. It's just, do you randomly land on some guys who can help you? And the answer right now is there aren't a whole lot of guys that are helping you. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like when you draft someone on day three, it's a little bit of a flip of the dice, you know? And it has to come up one out of five times.

You might have to hit somebody productive or even one out of seven or one out of 10. I don't know. And the Vikings are spinning that wheel a lot right now. And it keeps coming up empty because when every time you make one of those picks, the odds are like 20% or 10% that you're going to hit. Sometimes you're going to hit a cold streak. So that is a little bit the nature of things, but their inability to get anything and to sometimes keep guys on the field maybe beyond how long they should because they so desperately want to make them productive and it ends up being a liability. So today's performance is almost reflective of Mike Zimmer's fears that he knows that his starters can't get hurt or this is who's going to play. Therefore,

I'm not going to play the starters, but the drawback is I have to put on display sort of my greatest anxiety at the same time. And that was definitely at play. Now, do you think this has any greater ramifications for what this team can be this season? Because I do and don't like, I definitely don't think this is a 33 to six or the 33 to six loss is reflective of what the starting group is going to do. But I look at every successful Vikings team of late, most of them had to rely on key backups at some point. And that's what we're talking about here is that I don't know who fills in admirably in some of

these spots. Now, maybe it helps being surrounded by better talent and not mediocre talent like it was today, but I think that Zimmer's kidding himself if he can cocoon his starters from getting injured because even today, a couple guys got hurt. Cam Smith, concussion. Kene Wangu, knee injury. So stuff's gonna happen might maybe early in the season and i don't know where this team stands as far as its depth and that was one of the most disappointing things of the day by the way that kenny wongu got hurt because we wanted to see him he's looked so explosive in practice and then he comes and ends up with a knee injury i think on his kick return but i'm not 100 sure on that because we didn't see

him early on right and he did have kick return. And we were sort of wondering like, why aren't they playing Kenny Wong Wu? And I think that that was why, but, um, to your point, will it matter? Does it make a difference? I mean, that's sort of fundamental to every preseason game of what we're asking. Like, what about this? Are we supposed to take away for our analysis? And it's to me, it's it will matter if dot dot dot. Like if X, Y and Z happens during the regular season, we will go back to this and say Zimmer knew it. And Zimmer, he always has a great sense for what the worst things can happen are, because you could see his anxieties play out right in front of us. And even with the vaccination issue, you could see Zimmer's anxieties playing out right in front of us. These guys need to get vaccinated because somebody is going to go on the COVID list and, and he's a coach. So he thinks of every possible scenario and well, he nailed it because two

quarterbacks, three quarterbacks went on the covid list almost right after he came out and made that statement and i feel like he's sort of doing the same thing here where he's telling us i know that this is going to be a problem at some point if these guys play like this so it's if if someone gets hurt who is in a key position and it's if jefferson needs a little more time, if Jefferson, for some reason, needs two more weeks because of his AC joint sprain, if Harrison Smith falls wrong or hurts his ankle like he did in 2016. I mean, you are playing Cameron Bynum, a recent cornerback who botched an assignment here today, according to Zimmer like that's what's going to happen a guy who's nowhere near ready to play the safety position who I like and I think that he has a chance to be a good player at some point an Anthony Harris like but not now and that's even on the defensive line like if you're talking about too much of Steven Weatherly or DJ Wanham neither one of those guys look like they're

ready if you're talking about Michael Pierce having more calf issues Pierce is a monster but if he goes down and you have to have James Lynch or Armand Watts I mean you're just going from really good players to guys who I think we've started to realize either aren't anywhere near ready or just can't play in this league in general and that to Mike Zimmer has to be very scary. And that's what we saw here today. And that really also pertains to the offensive line because they're putting a lot on only Udo to say, Hey bud, I know you were a tackle like six weeks ago, but start for us at guard. Like that's a lot to ask. And here's Dakota Dozier, the one veteran. And he just comes out and says, look guys, you can't possibly do this again with me. Like three, three drives that said, you can't be serious. And the day that he signed,

we were doing a podcast going, you can't be serious serious and he just immediately comes out and shows that go across the line blake brandle mason cole dakota dozier i drew samia was playing again today like once again you are somebody getting a head cold away from playing these guys who are just going to destroy what you're trying to do on offense with Delvin Cook and Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen, these marvelous players. And in recent years, it's felt like that's been taken apart by the offensive line. And here you are, you're staring at it. If you came to the game today, you went, oh no, those are the guys who could play if something goes wrong. You know, it's bad when Dakota Dozier is playing on a line with Zach Bailey to his right,

Mason Cole to his left, Drew Samia two spots away, and Blake Brandel three spots away, and Dozier is still the one that stands out. If we were exiting this game saying, man, Zach Bailey looked bad today, I don't think we'd be that concerned. But because Dakota Dozier, who signed another deal to come back to this team, and I believe it was non-guaranteed, so they could still cut him. It's hard to believe that he is in the starting conversation, but that's reflective of the state of affairs. When Drew Samia is another guard candidate,

and Wyatt Davis is another guard candidate, they just don't have depth at that position. Yusamia is another guard candidate, and Wyatt Davis is another guard candidate. They just don't have depth at that position. They neglected to apply much money to it in free agency, and now this is the bet they've made when kind of your solution is to bring back the guy who was one of the worst in the league last year. And I also think it's a little bit presumptuous to think that Ole Udo doesn't need the reps at guard when he just made this transition. And I know you want to protect them from injury and you're terrified about having to plumb the depths of your guard room. But man, I mean, he doesn't have that much time under his belt. They must have really liked what they saw in

joint practices because for them to put him on the shelf when this is one of the only three chances he's going to get and almost certainly won't play in the third preseason game, maybe they dust him off for number two. Do you think the Vikings treat that at all like a dress rehearsal or is it going to be more of what we saw? Because Mike Zimmer seemed very adamant that he wanted to get this group that we saw today back on the field at practice, scrimmaging against each other. Do you think that carries over to the game? I do think that the next game we'll see a couple series, and we won't see 31 players rest. I think that he did that because they had very hard practices against the Broncos, and we were out there for both of them.

They were. I mean, there was a lot of intensity out there and I've heard players say before that those joint practices are like playing games in terms of how stressful they are on your body. So you could see where you'd say, all right, well, you guys have really been battling hard against the Broncos in these practices. I liked what I saw. So especially I thought that the defense for the Vikings was pretty solid. The first team defense and especially the defensive line was downright great at times. Even without Daniil Hunter in there, the interior of the line was really good against the Broncos. So no, okay, all right, no problem. You guys had good practices.

But I think next week we will see some of that to at least get those guys a little bit of work. I don't ever really advocate it because look how thin your roster is and look at Kenny Wong will getting hurt. Like if someone gets hurt, you are just so out of luck almost immediately with this roster that you can't play Adam Thielen in a preseason game. You'd rather have rusty Delvin cook than injured Delvin cook because someone blew up drew Samia and hit him in the knee or something. Right. So I think that they will. I don't think that they should. Um, can I circle back to the Kellen Mond thing and Zimmer's comments after, because we sort of bounced back and forth and reactions. And I didn't ask you what your reaction was to Kellen Mond comments and then Kellen Mond's

own comments in which he sort of disputed things that Zimmer said a little bit in the press conference. I think that Zimmer is being very hard on certain players right now, possibly players who wear masks because, uh, because they're unvaccinated. Let's make that clear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Matt masks fine. But I mean, the unvaccinated players have to wear masks. Um, he was very hard on the punter who's wearing a mask. Um, he was obviously very hard on, on, uh, Kirk cousins, but I thought his comments about Mond, they matched up with what we saw. They were also pretty ruthless in general. Like you've done nothing. You missed time because of your decision

and I'm just pulling the gloves off. Uh, but what, what, what are we supposed to feel about Kellen Mond right now? I mean, it wasn't good in minicamp. It wasn't good. The first couple of days, Jake Browning, as we've called him all the the way is a low bar to clear as you saw out there today for Kellen Mond and I mean he's going to start this season as QB3 and he needs to have much better performances than this to give any confidence that they could play him at all at this point it just sort of makes you struggle a little bit of well you guys seem to really need to get this quarterback in the draft you went to the third round where traditionally that's not a great place that means it's at very best a developmental player probably

a backup is your most likely thing to happen in the third round and And I am not at all saying Kellen Mond's a bust. I'm just saying that they touted him at the draft as this guy's going to be our backup. I mean, that guy's nowhere close to playing right now, the person that I saw here on this field today. So give me your reaction to what Mike Zimmer had to say about him. Sure, sure, sure. So I think, first of all, some wires got crossed during the week where to our best understanding, we don't know this for sure, but it sounds like Mike Zimmer misunderstood a question and answered it incorrectly and basically said Mond was not going to play today. He claims that he said he might play. So let's take Mike Zimmer at face value and assume that he planned all along

for Kellen Mond to play. Now you look at it through a different perspective. That first day, even at walkthrough on Tuesday, Mond was doing a ton. They threw him right in there. He was taking the majority of the reps. Then against the Broncos, that's his first padded practice in the NFL. Kellen Mond is out there doing just as much as as Jake Browning arguably um and then they throw him in this game and play him two and a half quarters so in retrospect I look back at this last week and I almost say this was Mike Zimmer not like handling Kellen Mond with kid gloves. This was Mike Zimmer, maybe even knowing this would be hard on him, throwing him into the fire and saying, this is what you missed. This is where

you need to get to. You're not there yet. This is what NFL football is going to be. And he kind of, I'm not saying he left him out to dry, but he gave him a wake-up call. Now, did Kellen Mond receive the message? I don't know if he did. I think when you have a yards per attempt that's less than two, it wasn't a great day for you. 31 yards passing on 16 attempts today. People are going to get excited about some of the mobility. That's nice. But I think the sum of the parts was he was flustered under pressure he was a little bit inaccurate he only made one maybe two good throws he had one throw to Dylan between the hashes over the middle and then he had the throw to failure in the back of the end

zone that was dropped other than that I didn't see a whole lot from Mond and then after the game and I was combing through the transcript, trying to find kind of a takeaway quote that summed it all up, and his quotes did not match up with the eye test. I mean, he was trying to spin everything in a very positive way, whereas Jake Browning, who had kind of an equally unimpressive performance, really fell on the sword and took a lot of accountability for that. The two press conferences, back-to back to back were starkly different. And two players that kind of have, they both have every reason to struggle.

Browning kind of accepted that he struggled and Mond didn't seem to. So that tells me that, you know, and maybe that's just his tact of approaching a press conference, but he's not really on the same page with the head coach right now. Well, and he certainly wasn't when I asked him directly what he thought of Mike Zimmer's criticisms of him and the unvaccinated players. Correct. And his answer was more or less, that's just his opinion. It's like, well, that's true. It's also the opinion of the most important person in the organization. So, I mean, I just an odd response, and there were several odd responses here that sort of reminded me of lacking self-awareness players we've seen before. Where I remember Jaleel Johnson saying, I think I'm an elite player.

I was like, what? I mean, like, I know you can come out and not want to like trash yourself, but saying, I think I'm an elite player when you are a fringe NFL player is a little odd. Just like saying that's just like your opinion, man, to the head coach is a little odd. And then we sort of relayed a criticism of Zimmer's and he rejected that right away. Oh, that's not true. Basically. And it's like, okay. I mean, this is not the guy you want to sort of butt heads with if you're Kellen Mond.

And some of these players come from college where they are the guy. And I don't, I mean, we saw this from Jeff Gladney last year and I'm not trying to say there's anything like off the field with Kellen Mond, but just with Jeff Gladney, it seemed like he didn't understand. In the NFL, that's the guy.

Like you can't walk by that guy when he's trying to talk to you. You could do that to your college coach. You can't do it here. And so I wonder if Kellen Mond has some maybe understanding of how things work in the NFL to go because you're just a guy now. Like you're not special. And Mike Zimmer is making him know that for sure. So that will be something to watch really interestingly is like how does he take sort of a step forward from this does he look more in command

does zimmer still tell us next week he's playing in slow motion which i thought to say it again to go back to that line a third time basically really telling yeah that he said that several times about kellen mond and again for me the big takeaway there is like Kellen Mond is young and there's a lot of time to go in his life and career but the takeaway is more that guy can't play right now he you can't if if cousins were to go out you can't play that person because you'll just lose every game and the same thing with Jake Browning is kind of how it looks let me just throw one thing out that I've sort of found to be interesting. And look, if you want to play her by player, I don't know. I did some takeaways on the website, purpleinsider.substack.com. You

can check it out. I talked about AJ Rose running for a hundred yards. So Patrick Jones had several nice plays. I want to give Patrick Jones his credit. He was probably the best player on the field today, Patrick Jones. Mike Zimmer has become the central character of this football team more than ever. Every time he speaks, there's something. He went on TV today and trashed the whole team. And everyone on Twitter, like the other writers, the writers who don't follow the team are starting to like sort of take notice. The national media is going to sort of take notice of how aggressively honest Zimmer has been. And I think in a way, Zimmer is sort of putting it on himself a little bit, like putting the target on his back here by just coming out and being very aggressively honest, more than we've even seen him in the past over these last few weeks. And I wonder just what that means for everything,

just how that impacts it, because he is now sort of the central figure of this season is Mike Zimmer. Yeah. I like how you put that in perspective because after, um, see he is, and he isn't in a way, mostly he is today after, after today's game, he really put it back on the team. Um, I think if this happened in a regular season game, there'd be more of a mix of, I need to get them ready better. I need to do this better, prepare them better. There was not a lot of that. Today it was on the players. And maybe he can speak like that because they're younger and he didn't have as much of a role in developing them. They kind of are who they were drafted as. But yeah, he's really putting himself on the radar and I'm here for it. I enjoy covering this honest

Zim. I think it's refreshing because let's face it, there's some coaches on this team and they might be amazing coaches. They don't give us much. They are very close to the vest. They are somewhat boring in a press conference setting. Mike Zimmer is not boring. Mike Zimmer is coming out guns blazing every time he steps up to a mic, not afraid to levy criticism, particularly at the younger players. So if this continues, I think it could go one of two ways. If they win and Zimmer kind of keeps this iron fist, people are going to say, man, Zimmer is like, you know, giving no bleeps this year. Mike Zimmer is absolutely, you know, he's got this team discipline.

If they're losing, it's going to be, well, Mike Zimmer is just deflecting blame. Right. That's what I meant by the target on his back. Yeah. Because when you are this honest, then like you said, if things go sideways, people are going to say, well, Mike, you've been throwing out criticisms for everybody else. How about you look at yourself? So that, that's what I meant by that. And I think it's a very interesting development that he's taken this and turned it up to 11. And I just wonder if he doesn't care anymore, how it plays

with anybody. If he's like, look, the quarterback has made it very clear. He's not going to listen to me and he's not going to lead you guys. So whatever I'm just letting everybody know what's going on with this team and how I feel about Darisaw and the backups and everything. And it's, if it doesn't work, then this is the type of thing where you go, all right, if they don't get the message when you're being this loud about it, then they won't anymore. And so that's why I feel like he, during this camp and preseason has really ramped up what this season means for him. And, uh, who knew that we would get that after a preseason game against the broncos but we really got another full dose of it today full dose of it sam come on right oh come on fell asleep at the wheel you were what you were just staring at the vikings logo here in us bank stadium and just

watching fantasy island on fox yeah well that it is it always funny. Where we do this is in one of the coaches' boxes. And after the games are over, it's just like whatever was on TV. And so I don't know what's happening in front of us. Anyway, well, I'll end it on that tremendously bad pun. And I'll just say that overall, my general feeling has always been don't overreact preseason games. But I think when Zimmer has a reaction like that, you have to adjust your sliders for how much you talk about it. Right. Instead of saying, well, you know, whatever. Who cares? Obviously, he cared a lot. Like in just a quick juxtaposition, the last preseason game the Vikings played 2019. Do you remember this? They melted down against

the Buffalo bills. Like I think they blew a 20 point lead and they lost the game. And those were backup players all the way through. And Mike Zimmer after the game was like, Oh yeah, we got a little tired at the end, but now that's all right. Not today. Right. I've never seen him react like this to a preseason game. Never. No, me neither. He wasn't even excited when Mitch Leidner led a game-winning drive. He doesn't get too high or too low about preseason games. He was the one who would kibosh kind of the great quarterback play of Kyle Sloater. Never bought into some of those big, gleaming preseason box scores. But again, he's been a good preseason coach.

And maybe this is just Mike Zimmer hating to lose this much because I think his record was 17 and eight. That might have been either again, no, 17 and eight against the spread, something like 20 and five coming in in the preseason. So he really hates to lose, really hates to lose like this when I think the depth of his team is brought into question. All right. So we'll do this again soon, Sam, next week, we'll be back at it. And it's officially the end of training camp. Uh, even though we basically continue training camp like things, we just change how much we can tweet from practice, I think. So we will carry on and it never is not interesting around here.

So we'll catch you next time here on purple insider.