Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Breeland's tweet and plenty to question after unimpressive Vikings win

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Matthew Coller and Brian Murphy talk about the Vikings' messaging after their sorry 19-17 victory over the Detroit Lions, including a bizarre tweet from cornerback Bashaud Breeland and an odd comment out of Mike Zimmer about conservative play calling. Why the Vikings are getting less out of more than they should be and why fans are exhausted of seeing Justin Jefferson left in the cold in the second half. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to remind you before we get started, the TickPick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. TickPick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collard here. Joining me for Monday Morning Murph, it is Brian Murphy, whose column is up, by the way, at purpleinsider.substack.com with the title, Sunday's Wild Win means we keep going down this road.

Brian, how are you this morning? I'm doing well. The weather's gorgeous. I've already gone for a walk, had some fruit for breakfast, so I think I'm already beating the system. So you didn't, say, have a post-walk tweet about anything? You didn't get have a post walk tweet about anything he didn't uh i didn't tell a reader to go you know what exactly should we say is that the the way we should say this i mean i like to keep it a family podcast uh we don't swear on the show but neither did bashad breland in his post game

tweet very creative yeah he used the word johnson which i feel like would be very much a uh like when you're in eighth grade and you're discovering universal yeah yeah you're discovering all the different euphemisms for it and so uh that's one of them that you come across but if you didn't if you don't know what we're talking about then this is really weird uh brashad breland please context yeah he tweeted out after the game let me yeah i'll just say um a very vulgar thing involving the word johnson uh directed at vikings fans and you know it just feels like brian we can't go a single week without a crazy ending to a game and somebody making a complete jerk of themselves on Twitter following the game. And as we look at all the different signings that the Vikings made,

the Bashad Breland one is probably the one that they would like to shoot off into space at this moment. Yeah. I mean, if you're the worst cornerback or at least one of the worst cornerbacks in the NFL, telling the fan base to basically suck my hmm is probably not the platform. like one of the most 2021 things ever. Like you have zero credibility as an NFL quarterback and you're telling the paying public to basically do something that you'd have to pay a lot of money for in an opium den is not the way you want to go. It's just not good public relations. It's not good media relations. It's not good fan relations and It's not good fan relations. And the audacity of, you know, somebody obviously got to him because he deleted the tweet fairly quickly. It just feels very like, of course, that's, of course, somebody's going to

come in and say, we, you guys are all wrong. We know best. We're not two and three we're five and oh what the hell you think you know who do you think you are and again you can't treat you know disdain for the audience is one of the worst tactics anybody could have so this is there actually is something to make of this in terms of an opinion other than than just being like, ah, Bashad, excuse me. What are you exactly thinking here? Uh, the tension and sort of disdain that has been shown,

uh, is not defiance like from Zimmer toward media. And I, I mean, I guess even fans, like the way that he addresses postgame stuff yesterday saying like I shouldn't have to explain this to you well your team got booed off the field so you actually do have to explain why you wasted 41 seconds handing off and doing nothing like you do have

to explain that because I heard 65,000 people boo you off the field so those people want to know what exactly you were doing. And by the way, you're an NFL head coach, which is a very public position. You're not the director of the CIA. Yes, you can answer these questions. Right. But also, but the sort of arrogance to say, I shouldn't have to explain this as if it should have been so obvious to everyone watching in the stadium that it was the very smart move to waste 41 seconds in with a team that has Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen and could very easily against one of the worst defenses in the NFL put more points on the board and guess what that does usually gives you a better chance to win and it was also just emblematic of everything they did yesterday where I looked at

Kirk Cousins pro football focus grade this morning, they graded him really well. It was like, yeah, that sounds right. All of the throws that he did make were accurate, but it's really the throws you didn't make that they can't grade. And it's the plays you didn't call. I saw a stat just now about how often they ran on second down and long. I mean, they're still doing this like you're still doing these incredibly inefficient things that just waste away drives and bleed points off of the board that you should have

and it's not illegal to throw on second and long no it is not and it's not illegal to convert on third and long and it's also not illegal to throw it to justin jefferson when you're winning they threw him the ball two times in the second half yesterday, two times. Do you know, Justin Jefferson is the second highest graded wide receiver in the NFL. And he's got, I think, what is it? Maybe 14, 16, a whole game or two's worth of targets less than Devante Adams, who's number one,

which I think also tells you a lot. So, but circling back to the Breland thing, it seems though that there is not a defiance as in, we know we're great guys. What's your problem? It's more of just a bleep my Johnson. Like it's more like from Zimmer and from Bashad Breland, just screw you guys.

And how long can this continue is my question, Murph, because the fans are saying, for goodness sake, do something. Do something. Beat someone. Like, really, really do something here. Get back in this race. Win big games. Do something.

Prove it to us. And if you don't, we're going to boo you off the field. And I think that they are extremely fair in feeling that way. Well, yeah. Well, first of all, the public's always right. The customer's always right. No, I think there is a malaise in this market that it's wake us when it's real, wake us when it matters, wake us when you've proven something. You're right. This is, they're two and three. They feel like they're one in four. There's just, you're right. There's a sense of, I've seen all of this before. I felt all of these feelings before. Why am I investing in this? What brings me back week after week other than,

you know, sadistic entertainment? they've been entertaining games no doubt but if anybody that feels like anybody in Egan that's walking around with their chest puffed up because they got a W against probably the only 0-5 team that has six losses i.e. the Lions then I don't I don't think they're in touch with the reality and I don't think they're in touch with the reality, and I don't think they're in touch with what this market is demanding, which is sustained excellence and maybe a little bit of humility sprinkled in there with that. Because this us against the world, you're all wrong, we know better. Well, again, you can only gaslight so long. So, okay, fine. You're two and three.

You're hanging by a thread. Nobody's getting thrown over the wall today and suddenly on the unemployment line. But that's a very, very, very thin margin right now. And okay, maybe Carolina's coming back to earth. You squeak out a road win. You go into the buy at 500. Then welcome to the meat grinder, because I think by Thanksgiving, we're going to know everything we need to know. Yeah, I guess I just think there's like different tones that teams can strike. And now I have to apologize for always going back to 2017. But sorry, guys, it's the one good season I've covered here. But there was a defiant feeling in 2017, a little bit of you guys don't believe in Case Keenum, that kind of thing from the players.

Now, of course, Mike Zimmer was essentially saying, I don't believe in Case Keenum throughout that year. But from the end in March, they did say we don't believe in Case Keenum. Correct. We sent him on his way. Correct. No one has accused Zimmer of lying when it comes to his player evaluations. But the players, though, they would have sort of nobody believes in case. What's your guy's problem?

We've got his back, that kind of thing. And even I think they were overcompensating for their coaches' criticisms. But they played like that. They played like a team that was sort of trying to prove something like their defense had an edge to it that I've only seen that one year in 2017. But when you sort of consistently go out and show all of your weaknesses on a week to week basis, even when you win, you show a lot of your weaknesses. Like the first half of Seattle where they ran over them, they hit on big plays,

they seem to be able to confuse the Vikings defense. Like there has not been a game so far through five that you can walk away like saying, wow, start to finish, they were the better football team. And so I think that there's gotta be some realization within them that they're not a good team and i think they're trying to talk themselves into it and they're mad that we're pointing it out but it's not it's not the feeling that i'm getting brian that they're like banding together over this it's

more of just waving a middle finger on the way out is That's how it feels a lot more than we're coming together around all this media criticism and fan criticism. I don't get that real feeling. Well, if you want to rally around the nobody believes in us flag, I mean, it's a tired trope. It sometimes works. I don't know if a lot of the veterans in that locker room would necessarily buy into that. Of course, we'll never know that because we have no locker room access

to really ask the people that matter what they feel. But, and I don't mean we, I mean you guys, but I, look, they're, they're, they're grasping for motivation. They're grasping for validation. They're not getting it. They feel like they deserve it, and they don't. Because, I mean, you could argue that, you know, they really only have 1.5 wins because a victory over the Lions is as diluted as it gets. So, you know, you barely got out of there. Barely got out of there yesterday. Salvaged, Mike Zimmer was salvaged by a kicker, no less, who hits a career-long 55-yarder and a 54-yarder at the buzzer, but somehow leaves a 49-yarder short. The jury has not come back on Greg Joseph quite yet. He's had two really good moments to force overtime in Cincinnati

and to win the game yesterday. He choked in Arizona. He's left a couple of point after attempts on the field, which I guess everybody in the NFL did yesterday. And I don't know that 49 yard, like, I mean, like you mentioned, I think you tweeted it out. I mean, we've all grabbed a nine iron and thought we could make that green or that pin placement and come up short. It's very curious to see a guy that supposedly has that kind of big leg. So what I'm saying is you've escaped narrowly from the narrowest margin to win two games.

So I don't know if extending both middle fingers or, you know, pointing to your crotch and saying, you know, come get it is really the attitude that's going to, that's going to endear you to anybody. Yeah. And I think that if you were talking about in the public, what type of message would be received better than what they had yesterday? And of course, you know, Breland's is never going to be taken. Well, I don't think by anybody, but, but even, even Zimmer's where Zimmer said, you know, that he wasn't super pleased with the win, proud of the way our guys fought. And, you know, I think that there would be maybe a little more acceptance of

this is not good enough and we have to change something uh and yet you know it doesn't seem like there ever is any interest in changing in the second down and long runs yesterday um sam extram is driven insane by second down and long runs so he sits next to me in the press box and every single one of them i look like how you doing over there samuel like just because they're not the worst play i mean the worst thing you could do especially with a backup running back and it's a backup running back exactly uh but it's bad when delvin cook is there it's like it's like a guaranteed way to ruin your drive and yet they keep doing it and i think that's what that's what maybe is the frustration of the fan base

distilled right there is what's different what's ever different uh not even a change there's not even a change with an offensive court a new offensive coordinator is not even a change in philosophy it's still doing the worst thing that you can do which is run on second down and 10 and so it's frustrating to obsess over this for so long and continue to go back to say it but they keep doing it and and even then like we thought for a little bit they had a third wide receiver but then they didn't throw to him yesterday and you know it's oh look another number one receiver isn't getting the ball enough i mean i i joked yesterday that we were like one quarter away from justin jefferson saying there's truth to all rumors i mean that I think that's what if someone said anyone.

Yeah, we recognize that this is not going to work the way that we currently construct our philosophy. It's not working and it needs to change and we're going to change it. And you don't have to say that, but you can show that. And they haven't shown that either. And that's where I think that's where those tweets come from with people saying, you know, I still wish they kind of made a coaching change today, even though they won by two points. Well, and you know, if, if Jefferson had a bad first half, if cousins look like he was off the mark, then maybe justify getting the run game started to maybe create some

things for the passing game. Justin Jefferson had 104 yards at halftime. Right. Why does he not see the ball again? Why does Adam Thielen look like he's on the back of a milk carton? MIA, where is he? KJ Osborne, I didn't even know he played yesterday. You also have, you know, Zimmer tried to explain his philosophy for not doing anything when

he had the ball with 40 seconds left and timeouts as in, look, you know, we tried doing this in the past and we didn't do very well. We ran out of bounds or we did this wrong or we did that wrong. So see, you know, we ran the ball once we didn't get anywhere. So to hell with it. We're just going to go into the locker room. So things didn't work in the past. So you're not going to do anything different in the future because, well, things didn't work in the past. Help me out. Help me understand. I mean, this reminds people in this market of Denny Green taking a knee before halftime of the 98 NFC championship game when you had the greatest

offense in the history of football. You took a knee. Why? Going into overtime, I think it was. I'm sorry. Because Randall Cunningham had fumbled the last time prior to the half and set up the... Well, I mean, you don't... It's like golf. You don't compound a bad shot or a bad decision by making a fearful or worse decision. No. You grab the club, you choke it down and you drill the ball. I don't understand why if you have a quarterback who was on the cusp, it seemed like I'm having an MVP type season and three potential number one wide receivers and the ball and timeouts against the worst team in the history of the NFL, why you don't take a few shots? What's going to go wrong?

I mean, if you keep handing the ball off, Madison can fumble it. Dalvin Cook can fumble it, as they both did in key situations this season. You throw the ball 40 yards down the field on the sideline, okay, if it gets picked off, the Lions aren't going to march 60 yards. So you're twisting yourself into a plausible deniability that reeks of playing not to lose as opposed to win i i have yet to see how playing this conservatively actually avoids turnovers by the way because they had several yesterday and they were still not pushing the ball down the field and like you said

handing off at the end of the game to run the clock out and they could have lost anyway by doing that by playing that conservatively and then only when they are absolutely pressed totally up against the wall to play aggressively do they and it works and then and that there was adam feeling right that's the maddening thing is that you know it's well you know we can't throw that ball because they're playing two deep safeties like okay let me look around the league just for a second let me look at uh let's see what did uh what did Dallas do yesterday let's see they scored what 44 points yesterday uh what did Buffalo do last night against Kansas City did they play two deep safeties how about the the chargers? 47 points

against that Browns defense that held you to seven. And the bills had 38 last night against Kansas city. I mean, these are bad. You could say, Oh, well, these are bad defenses, right? So are the lions. That's the point, isn't it? Like, I mean, that's, that's the thing. If it wasn't the lions, you know know sometimes you get in one of those sort of slug fests with a good team and and you just have to battle it out and sometimes like arizona so yeah right you get it right you get in a slug fest but uh in this case i mean it's it's the lions like there's no reason to respect what they're doing. They're playing backup corners against Justin Jefferson. It's like maddening. And so here we are, think about it years later,

here we are talking about after Stefan Diggs ran out of town, screaming, throw me the football more. The bill said, okay. And then went to an AFC championship and just beat the chiefs. And, and who's there catching a 50 yard pass down the fields, the fond dicks like, gee, I mean, are you doing that again to Justin Jefferson and Jefferson for now is like, no man, I get it. You know, that wasn't the read or whatever, or I I'm not the play caller for now, but I mean, he's got to read his mentions right so i don't know i i that that's the hard part for me murph is when you keep coming back to these same criticisms and they're doing

the same things that can that we already know the results of and then the message is you guys don't know anything i mean is that is is it as simple as zimmer is just stubborn? He's an old grizzled guy who thinks this is the way we can be successful. I know that. I'm going to tell everybody in the building that. And anybody outside of the building doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. Okay, that's fine. You know, you can rant about that in the unemployment cafe. Because this is unsustainable.

Absolutely unsustainable. They're going to go on the road against a Carolina team that seems to be regressing. But I didn't see anything in the last three weeks that resembled a complete performance that will put them in a position to get on a run here. It is going to be lurching painfully through every, every game is going to be a knife fight and it's going to be, it's going to come down to who makes the fewest mistakes, uh, who doesn't see the light. And, and I, I, is that it could be entertaining, but I, I think it's maddening and I don't know if it's not sustainable.

Let's put it that way. It's just not sustainable what they're doing right now. Folks, Minnesota football is back and there's no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the internet for Minnesota football tickets anymore because TickPick, that's T-I-C-K, P-I-C-K, is the original no fee ticket site and the only one you'll ever need to go for NFL tickets. TickPick got rid of all those awful service fees like the other ticket sites charge, which lets them guarantee the best prices of all of their NFL tickets. Don't believe it?

If you can find better prices for the same seats on another ticket site, TickPick will give you 110% of the difference on your purchase price. We've got quite a slate of home games in downtown Minneapolis, including Revenge Game for Cleveland when they return to Minnesota, and plenty more. Visit TickPick.com slash Insider today and use the promo code Insider to save $10 on your first order for Minnesota football tickets. Hey, by the way, Cordero Patterson yesterday had 54 yards rushing and he also, hold on. It's not letting me scroll down the box or also caught seven passes for 60

yards. Interesting that when you have a dynamic playmaker and you give him the football, he succeeds. That's another guy sort of gone wayward after he had the talent to be a difference maker on this team. Hey, we'll give the front office credit for taking a flyer on that, right? That's what they want. They want to be patted on the back. Look at the talent that we recognized. We couldn't hang on to them, but we saw it early on. So here's what it comes down to for me, though. The big question when you're evaluating, like, is this the direction? Are these the people that you want?

Is, like, does the process actually work as one? And the answer has been shown that it does not. And I would guess, and I haven't looked, but I would guess that Vegas the vikings is an overwhelming favorite not to make the playoffs as of right now so just to sort of give you the objective view is like nobody is respecting you um and and gave you way too much respect against the lions probably to be a 10 point favorite or at least they certainly showed that um but the other the other thing that outside of just, Hey, does their philosophy work is, are you getting the most out of what you have? And when I look at what they have on defense, I think actually it's been fine.

Like I never expected them to be a number one defense. They got run over again yesterday. That brilliant run defense we heard about after the Browns game. Yeah, still not great, but, but that that's okay that's not a huge deal bad quarterbacks uh like Jared Goff um are worse against the Vikings uh Mayfield who is a decent quarterback overall was very bad against the Vikings some of that his own doing some of it theirs but I think what is the most frustrating part for fans is that you have a defense that is good enough to win you games and it's like a solid nfl defense i think that's what they're being shown to be it's not going to be great but it's not going to be losing you games

a lot better than it was last season and so you look at what you have an expensive quarterback who can throw the heck out of the football receivers who can't be stopped a running game that is generally successful, whoever is in there. And you're two and three with a two point win against the lions. And you go, these things, these things just don't match up. I don't think that they're a championship roster, but they certainly should not be this. And I, that, that is what i came away with yesterday it's not a championship roster probably but it's not it shouldn't be a two and three roster that beats the lions by two points either well and again we go by feel and we go by aesthetics too and that may not matter inside that building but you can't tell me this two and three feels okay. I mean, you can't tell me that yesterday's performance,

the performance against Cleveland is giving anybody confidence right now that this is something that there will be meaningful games played in December and January. I mean, I look, you know, we talked about this heading into it, but the meat grinder is getting sharper and sharper because now you've got, again, Carolina's three and two. They got the buy. Dallas looks really good at four and one coming in here on Halloween. Baltimore looks really good. You're on the road.

You're on the road against the Chargers who look great. Then you're at home against Green Bay. So, you know, by Thanksgiving, I mean, how many wins do you see in that stretch? I mean, the only teams with losing records they face between now and the end of the season are Pittsburgh, who may find themselves in a little bit of a better place by the time they come here in December or not. San Francisco, I don't know if they're two and three. Are they going on three and two? What their feel is. It's definitely a decent team. And you're on the road. And the Lions again. So the margin of error is shrinking. And even the victory over the Lions, I think, shrinks the margin of error because of the way they perform.

So if you can find me seven more wins in that schedule, I will be very impressed and surprised. And even seven wins, I'm not certain that that gets you into the playoffs. Perhaps not. I don't know what the new 17 game math is going to look like at the end of the season uh nine used to be a fairly safe number but nine and eight maybe this year's seven and nine all right let me see if i can find it somebody created a chart of this yesterday based on the 17 games like what the odds are with each record so even if you're two and three like your chances right now are only at 30 percent at two and three like that's how that's how late early it gets in the nfl oh it's a long season guys it's a long season well yeah but you know when you're climbing out of that hole it becomes

very tricky so let's see if we got uh eight losses would be that puts you right at at 50 percent. So like nine, nine and eight is a you need a ton of help. Right. You're going to be playing that hole on January 8th. You're going to be playing that hole. Well, if this team loses there and they don't score as many points, you know, you're now you're doing tiebreakers. And, you know, OK, then then you're going to limp in. Right. And then what? That, right. It's a coin flip. You have to get lucky to get into nine and eight. You have a 91% chance if you get to 10 wins, but to get to 10 wins, quick math here. I mean, you've got to do pretty well the rest of the season. You got to do really well. You got to go eight and four.

You got to wait and four. Do you see eight wins in there? I don't see eight wins. Not after yesterday. No, I do not see eight wins. Not after yesterday. No, I do not see eight wins at all. And so that's the, that's the thing that it comes down to here with Carolina. And it is, uh, it's always hard to talk about when fans want their team to lose. Uh, I was in Buffalo when they, the hockey team tanked on purpose for several years. They're still bad by the way, which is always the concern when you tank. And on top several years, they're still bad by the way, which is always the concern when you tank. And on top of that, they're mismanaged. So that's

even better. And that's why they're still bad. It's not because they tanked it's because they're mismanaged and their ownership is insane. So, uh, but the point is though, that, uh, I covered a hockey game where they're playing the Phoenix coyotesotes or Arizona Coyotes, and we showed up to the game and people had signs because the Coyotes were the other team competing for the top pick. People had signs that said, Go Coyotes, who are wearing Buffalo Sabres jerseys. It gets dark. It gets ugly. But I feel like that's this week.

I feel like there's going to be a lot of Vikings fans who are saying, Hey, if Sam Darnold puts up 400 on us and we lose by 20 and there's a change, I'm okay with it. I think that we've reached that point with a large percentage of the fan base. And once you've gotten there, there's no rewinding that clock unless you, like you said, I don't even know if eight and four is enough to do it. Does a 10 and 17 inspire anybody? Does a nine and eight team inspire anybody?

I think it's got to be better than that. I think it's got to be like a magical run of win 10 games, win the division. The Packers look fallible. It's that still has to be, think the standard or we'll go back and say well wasn't this just 2020 2019 2016 wasn't this just that again yeah I've seen this movie so many times I can quote every line so and sometimes that's fun sometimes it's just annoying so especially if it's a you know your buddies are quoting the lines over and over again and you hated the movie anyway. So I, you know, the one thing that that'll be interesting is if they if they do lose next week, I put them at two and four.

I actually think the buy makes the decision a little more deliberative and a little easier, probably for management or ownership in the sense the sense that you know he's not Zimmer's not going to lose his job Monday morning maybe but throughout that 10-day gap I think there's going to be a lot of soul searching and I think there's going to be a lot of hard truths that are going to have to be acknowledged again aesthetics are everything because if you just said 72 hours ago, the Vikings are going to be two and three on Monday morning, you'd have been like, yeah, I guess I totally expect that. Well, it was wholly unpredictable how they got there. And I think it looked worse. The win is tainted.

And everybody will say, well, a win is a win is a win in the National Football League. Not when you're hanging by a thread. Not when everything is under the microscope, not when you've got a GM coach and highly paid quarterback that are facing a reckoning. So aesthetics matter. And the general public booed, 65,000 people booed the team off the field not once, but twice yesterday.

And you've got a cornerback going online on Twitter and basically, you know, telling the fan base what they can go do with themselves. And I just, you know, these are the things that all curdle throughout the weeks, throughout the season. It's not, you know, victory can help wipe away some of the stench, but no matter how much dirt you pile up, it still stinks. And I think the bye is going to allow management, if they do lose next week, to really take a look and say, look, what are we wasting our time on? What are we spinning our wheels on? And then the debate comes, well, what do we gain by sacking Zimmer?

Because now we're going to hand the reins to Clint Kubiak, who is clearly underwhelming in his play calling right now, or Andre Patterson, a lifer who I can't see leading a locker room, but I'm, I'm not that close to it to know. So now you're saying, okay, we've got, um, 11 more games to go stay interested in us because we're building for, what are you building for? I don't know. Yeah. So the slightly interesting thing about Kubiak and, and I don't know what they would do, but the slightly interesting thing about kubiak is that

one thing we know about zimmer is that he's always put the shackles on his offensive coordinators and we've seen that from kevin stefanski in cleveland that they still run the football but they run it a lot smarter and a lot more efficiently and then they hit shots down the field and they throw a lot and they're aggressive on fourth down. Like Stefanski wanted to do these things, I believe. So the question would be, is Clint Kubiak running on second down and 10 because he's supposed to? Is he, I mean, he doesn't make the call to run the clock out with 41 seconds left in the first half. That is not a Clint Kubiak call. So that's the only thing that would be intriguing if they, but it, but it would be at least something intriguing, like at least something different, even if it completely failed and he was just the same guy

and they went seven and 10, at least it would be something where you could go, okay, well, this will be very interesting to find out how Clint changes the philosophy if he does. And then does he put himself in a position coming? Does he come back from two and four, get them back in the race and that is you know is there sort of a freeing feeling to this team i don't know right but uh at this point i'm sort of willing to find out if they go to two and four and if they go to three and three then i look at it like this murph okay mike you three and three you got the reset button go ahead yeah right go ahead you said you're good You said you got bad breaks.

54-yard game winning field goal seems like a good break, but I'm just saying you got your breaks. So go do it then. Now you got 11 games to go win eight of them. Exactly. Go for it. Prove it. There's no excuses left.

You've got the players. You've got the team. You've got the wide receiver who can win games by himself that even though you don't let him go do it and and that's i think that this particular game uh is so so um i guess uh defining defining is the right word yeah thank you that's exactly right so well they never said it would be boring murphph, when I got here, 2016,ing as the 2010 season. When they threw all their chips back in to get Brett Favre here and all the things that went bad. Most of them man-made or God-driven calamities they couldn't control.

But you could smell an incredibly interesting return. And boy, if they could just get over that hump, they're going to make it happen or it's going to go down in flames. And I think we're really teetering on that right now is at that point of they put all their chips in again. They figured this is the way, you know, we're all in on Zimmer, Spielman and Cousins.

Well, I mean, they haven't had the roof fallen yet, but I mean, it's getting as you said, it's getting late early. As Yogi used to say, it's getting late, very early. Fire alarm went off yesterday and I thought it was. Yeah, that's I wasn't there, but I saw the tweets and I thought, man, there's just too many metaphors. Brian, your column is terrific. Again, purpleinsider.substack.com. If that's hard for you, type in purpleinsider.football. That also works. I bought that because I thought it was fun. So it's called Sunday's Wild Wind means we keep going down this road. And I always appreciate your perspective. And I just wanted to mention

that in terms of download numbers and so forth, these podcasts with you, Brian, have been some of the top performing ones, I think, because people really enjoy your perspective. So thank you for your time. And we will do it again after Carolina.