Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Brian Murphy is taking 'a win is a win' attitude with the Vikings

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Matthew Coller talks with Brian Murphy, who is still in Jacksonville, about a bizarre win that brings the Vikings to 7-2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here. Brian Murphy on his Monday morning trip journey to Jacksonville where he is recording here this morning. Murph, you got the sunglasses on, the sun is out in Jacksonville. The vibes are, I guess, good because of a win. How are we doing? We're doing all right. Like, you know, I'm not, folks, I'm not, you know, I did have my share of

cocktails at the tailgate, but this is not a hangover sunglasses look. This is a glare off the screen look. I'm trying to just be able to see callers, see you as an audience and not be squinting like Mr. Magoo. It's been a fun weekend so far, but there's just a lot of bad energy among the people that I was around because of this game, and I think there's a lot of obviously bad energy surrounding Sam Darnold right now. This is who they are. I don't see there being too many surprises with what we see, except for the sustained, the perpetual habits that Darnold seems to have

about making bad decisions at the wrong time in the wrong place on the field. But at 7-2, can you complain? Who'd listen? If this wasn't Jacksonville, they weren't going to win this game. But they did have Jacksonville on the schedule. They have Tennessee on the schedule next week. They have Chicago the week after that. This is not a winning football formula per se,

but you can win these games playing this way with that kind of defense, with that kind of accuracy from your kicker, and just keep watching through fan fingers on Sam Darnold, I guess. Well, so this is the weird thing about that game is there's a lot of things that you could point to that you would say they can win with on a weekly basis, which is controlling the ball for 10 minutes on different drives, 15 play drives, running the football as effectively as they did. And then Brian Flores with his defensive plan. Yes, I understand it's the Jaguars, but they also completely shut them down.

They had one successful drive and the entire rest of the day, I don't even know, did they pass the 30-yard line of the Vikings the rest of the entire day? It was sacks. It was interceptions it was confused mac jones they shut down travis ctn i mean it was in my mind a very good performance outside of three throws but the problem is that based on sam darnold's history those three throws are not an aberration it's not like people were comparing it to Jared Goff's five interceptions. Jared Goff doesn't throw a lot of interceptions. That's a very weird, probably won't ever happen again in that guy's life.

He might never throw three again, but Darnold probably will. And I think, Murph, what dug so deep into people's brains yesterday in terms of the anger and annoyance was, I mean, of course, you feel like you should be beating Jacksonville by more. But I also think it's that everybody knows that the rest of the guys on that team yesterday played well and they were let down by their quarterback in a game where they should have won by 27 points. And then you start looking into the future going, okay, if you get to a playoff game and you have a good enough roster from number two to number 53 to win, and number one, the quarterback, ends up throwing red zone interceptions and you lose a playoff game, that's going to drive everybody crazy

because they have a good enough roster to be right there with any team. Yeah, and I don't know if there's a lot of wiggle room in Darnold's sample size here to really feel like this, I think as you mentioned, it's not an aberration. It's sort of who he is. And maybe people were a little more skeptical and thought it would emerge in weeks one through four or one through five or more symptoms of that. Instead, it's sort of been drip, drip, drip starting in the second half in Green Bay. Obviously, the Detroit game, the Rams game, the Colts game, this one was even worse. And it

just feels like he's gotten progressively either more trying to force throws, more panicky, a little less comfortable in his decision-making. You know, the games that I've been at in person, which were the Detroit game and this game in Jacksonville and the stands, I mean, you could see him getting the protection. You could see him going through his progressions. And you're looking over here to the right, and there's Aaron Jones wide open, or there's Jordan Addison, or there's somebody there.

And then you see him throwing where all the bodies are into a window that I don't think was open at any time. And you're like, what are you, you could, you could tell he was telegraphing it. And then the other ones were just poor throws. So I don't, is it, is it poor decision-making times the poor throw equals this is who Sam Darnold is probably he's going to have one or the other in, in a lot of his throws, and yet he's also the guy that can drop back five yards in his end zone and clear midfield to Justin Jefferson on a third down play. So Kevin O'Connell has the biggest challenge facing him yet, which is how to manage Darnold right now, how to keep him in the place in the

locker room where he needs to be. And I think a lot of the postgame speech was aimed toward that, soothing Darnold's maybe wounded ego a bit, saying, we've got your back. But now it's going to be, OK, when does he try to let him loose? You're going to have J.J. Jefferson chomping at the bit. Now you've got Addison coming into form. Hawkinson clearly, we knew how productive and how much of a weapon he could be.

I think that was clearly on display yesterday. You know, Josh Oliver, they've got four or five different options to throw to. I just don't know how many bullets O'Connell's going to be willing to fire at this point. And as you get into more playoff contending matchups, when you get Seattle down the road and you get Green Bay, Cardinals are pretty decent. You're going to have to open it up a little more. You can play conservative and rely on your defense in Jacksonville, Tennessee, Indianapolis, and maybe even Chicago. So going forward, what is going to be the level of expectation for Darnold and the level of confidence O'Connell has in letting him turn loose. It could be fun to watch or mind-blowing to watch.

Yeah, so I'm trying to live in two different worlds, which is reacting to exactly what we saw yesterday, which is Sam Darnold, not just three interceptions, but three of his fault interceptions, bad choices of where to put the football. Justin Jefferson was getting mauled by the corner and he just throws it there anyway when there was no lane at all. That was a tipped one, but still, that's not a good throw. The other two were unexplainable, inexcusable, also still need something from the refs to

tell me how one of them was an interception. Maybe it's a different game if they get a touchdown instead of an interception there, and we're only talking about two picks. But nonetheless, it was still a deserved interception that he threw nowhere close to his receiver. The O'Connell part of it is tough for me because when a play caller has 84 plays, 82 plays to work with and gains 400 yards.

It's really hard for me to go, wow, you screwed up, man. Because every single week, every single franchise in the NFL would take 82 plays, 400 yards, five yards of play uh but i do think that there are ways where kevin o'connell can curb sam darnold's sam darnoldiness uh one of them would be not trying to run a play action on third and one to put a dagger in the team when you're running great the entire day and you've worn the other team down this is why you do it this is why you have 10 play drives so you've worn the other team down. This is why you do it. This is why you have 10 play drives. So you get to the fourth quarter and that defense is gassed and you hand it off and you get one yard and you go home.

And instead it's not just a fail because you could have gone for it on fourth down. Now it's a seven yard fail because it's a sack. And when you get into the red zone, it's not something little underneath that someone can catch and run. It's gotta be a full field of receivers running into the end zone. I think that there are things that he's going to have to look at to say, this is a moment where I've set him up to screw up.

And I think that red zone is where he gets anxious and it gets tight in there. And they don't run for touchdowns. They don't really run in the red zone in general. And they threw, I believe, one screen pass yesterday, which is another way to just get Sam Darnold moving. The easy button stuff is not being given to him, I think, even as much as it was early in the season. Yeah, and I think it's, again, when you're talking about O'Connell, it's, is he, we don't

really have a track record of him pivoting mid-season with a philosophy or a game plan or adjusting to, I mean, last year it was slapdash with all of his quarterbacks. So you can't really measure that. He tried to tailor game plans to guys that were arriving on Tuesday to win, and that's hard to really compare with what he needs to do with Darnold, who he's clearly had in-house since April. So what is he going to want to do on that? And I hope he's asked about that going forward too.

At what point do you have to step in? How much is it you stepping in and boosting his ego and not, as you said, what all good managers need to do in any job is not put their employees in positions to fail, put them in positions to succeed. And if they exceed that and if they end up going, say, off script, they have the confidence of the coaching staff, and they also have the confidence in themselves to make something happen. I don't think Darnold's there. I think Darnold has now reached a point where he's got to be thinking in the back of his mind, do I force this in to make a big play, to overcome some mistakes in the past? Am I doubting what I'm seeing?

Are other teams picking up on that? They must be. There's more confusion in there. Because I felt like the protection was really good yesterday. And you mentioned he has a tendency to run backwards into sacks, but he did elude a lot of pressure as he's done the last couple of weeks to keep drives alive. I've kind of been impressed with how he's been able to pull it down, recognize that, have time to go through his progressions, but the plays collapsed and now he's got to take off it down, recognize that, have time to go through his progressions, but the play's collapsed and now he's got to take off.

He hasn't been hesitant in doing that. I just would love to crack open that head and find out where he's at. He's not all that really self-reflective or effusive in his postgame comments. So you've got to wonder where this is at on him mentally. Is he in a here I go again mode? I mean, you couldn't blame him if that's what he thought. He still had more success here than he's had in his previous stops. But there are things that are baked into the Sam Darnold profile that are really tough to avoid. So it's a matter of can you ride the roller coaster and bring everyone along with you in the locker room and still set yourself up for maybe January success?

I don't see that today. I think the next few weeks, as we see how Darnold responds to this whole, you know, loss of confidence, if that's what you want to call it, what it becomes. Is it what he's going to be the rest of the way? Is it going to be a week-to-week headache? Is it going to be something he can write off with some soft opponents? The NFL doesn't make it easy for people to try to find themselves. No, it does not.

And this is where it comes to the big picture part of this for me. So I was looking back at 2021, the season that got Kevin O'Connell hired here by the Minnesota Vikings with the Los Angeles Rams. The league leader in interceptions 2021 was also the Super Bowl champion, Matthew Stafford, who came to Minnesota that year through three interceptions and beat the Vikings at US Bank Stadium in a really miserable and ugly game for Stafford, who went through a dip that year that they lost three games in a row. They barely survived the Vikings game. And everybody thought, okay, the Rams and they're all in approach.

It's not going to work for them. And then when it came to playoff time, Stafford got hot and they ended up going to the Super Bowl and winning it. Now, no, Sam Darnold is not Matthew Stafford got hot and they ended up going to the Super Bowl and winning it now no Sam Darnold is not Matthew Stafford he doesn't have the resume to argue he was Matthew Stafford but it's a very similar approach with a big arm dude who makes kind of brain dead decisions as Matthew Stafford used to do trying to use the arm in ways that would cause problems for him and Stafford used to take a lot of sacks trying to make extra plays too I think this is part of a philosophy that's similar

to what we saw for Bruce Arians for years the no risk it no biscuit where you are going to lean into the variance and just ride that wave and try and try to guide your team through it with positivity hoping that on the other side of it is the upswing for Sam Darnold and we've seen the upswing when they went for the first four games how good he can be I guess my only question is have defenses kind of figured something out that's causing this but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like these are just bad decisions. The last two weeks he's played really well outside of these high red zone interceptions. So I think if you're O'Connell, you're probably looking at this and going, I'm just going to keep throwing my home run hitter up there.

And if he strikes out, sometimes we'll have to try to make up for it. Because he also knows he's got a great defense and pitching staff behind him on the other side of the ball. If you want to ride out the baseball metaphor. I mean, yeah, the Vikings are in a position where if Darnold is going to be this erratic and this oh-my-God moments every game, they have a defense that can bail him out. The problem with that is how much stress are you going to be putting on that defense throughout the year?

It's a theme we've talked about every week. That's the beauty of even yesterday's ugly win was that the Vikings were on the field the whole time. So the defense came up with big plays because they were in a position. They weren't gassed. The field position wasn't awful every time. And I feel like they can. We've said this all along. So much intrigue about Darnold and the offensive weapons,

and that's all fine and good. But this team is defined by and only going to succeed by the level of play of its defense. And they had a little bit of a lull, but there's been a real good bounce back, I think, from Flores yesterday was fantastic. He's still going to have a chance to go down to Nashville and make it uncomfortable for the Titans.

I just feel like they're in a position where if the defense isn't going to score once a week, they're going to put you in a position to get an easy score somewhere along the way because there's just big-time playmakers everywhere. But the question is, can you sustain that over the next 10 weeks, nine weeks into January if your defenses run ragged? At a certain point, that's going to crack. So that's the balancing act. But that's why I feel like they can afford to, as you say, no risk, no biscuit. What's your alternative? You've got all these weapons. You can't get too conservative um you got to

take your chances and uh yeah managing Darnold managing what he sees what he thought he saw in his film reviews what defenses are throwing at him and how O'Connell can kind of steer him through this uh crisis as it were is is is what's really going to, I think, ultimately, we're going to look back on the season and go, you know, when they went from 5-0, let's say they get to 9-2, but everybody's worried about Sam Darnold. How are they going to manage all that going forward? And that's going to be, I think, the new thing to watch is how O'Connell

and or Darnold can pull themselves out of this. And if they don't, will it even matter if they can still win games 12 to 7? They're not going to beat Seattle 12 to 7. They can beat Tennessee and Jacksonville 12 to 7. All that being said, they're fun to watch. And it feels like they're a team that is is growing they're winning ugly they're dealing with adversity and all of this stuff adds up and matters um because it does feel like it's it's them and detroit are the class of the nfc north

detroit may be the class of the nfl at this point until kansas city loses but it feels like the vikings have now positioned themselves as north contenders who are flawed but not fatally flawed and uh who aren't as predictable as reliable as we thought they might have been after turning five and oh but again we're still talking about a seven and two team that vegas had at six and a half wins. And all of that and trying to bake that into a reaction to a game is tricky for me, like juggling the different balls here, because I want to go back and talk about, hey, you know, if Darnold does this in a playoff game, you're going to lose. But as you said, what is the alternative?

There isn't one. There isn't another quarterback. There isn't isn't one. There isn't another quarterback. There isn't a benching. There isn't anything like that. Also, why would you do that when the guy has had such high highs? He's done this before, and we're just going to assume that he's going to stay as this quarterback. After the first four games, we were all saying he probably can't sustain that level of play. Then when the regression comes we're like

oh this is who he really is no that's not how roller coasters work they go up and down and hey by the way we called it the kirk coaster because kirk cousins would do the same stuff at times uh just in a different type of way but he would also have his ups and downs he was risk averse though right in a different way uh and i think that that's where i i come back to as well as we need to keep perspective on the fact that this is a really entertaining season and that we don't know where it's headed to get to seven and two there haven't been many seasons in the last 20 years where the vikings have been seven and two. And somebody said to me, oh, this is just like 2022 yesterday. BS it is because yes. Okay. It was a one score win, but that was a elite defense that was completely shutting down another team and winning you a football game. That was not happening in 2022. The defense is so much different. Also the high end of the quarterback

that we've seen this season is also different. So I think taking one game and saying, oh, well, they're just never going to score and he's going to throw interceptions every game. Well, that's not going to happen either. Just like he wasn't going to throw three touchdowns and complete 90% of his passes in every game. But I look around the league, Murph, and I see a lot of teams that are flawed. Washington lost to Pittsburgh yesterday, Detroit nearly lost, uh, and then barely had to pull it off at the end with a 50 yard field goal. And how about the Falcons just completely getting

outplayed by a really bad New Orleans saints team, which team is just perfect that you could never beat if you're the Vikings. And that's, that's why I'm not going to move after this one game that wasn't impressive. I'm not going to say, oh, well, you know, they're no longer a contender. So no, they are. They absolutely are. When you look at the rest of the teams in the NFC. Yeah. I mean, there are, they've been a very bad contending team over the last few weeks. That's the best way to put it. And I don't view their recent struggles as indicative of where this is, the whole season's going to go. But the notion that we got to bench Darnold to either send a message, punish him, or just eliminate the mistakes.

It's like, okay. And then what Nick Mullins is going to go out and win five more games for you? I mean, you know, it's clear, or you're going to go out and grab another big arm off the street because he's available and he's going to what, he's going to match Darnold's nine months of prep in three days for your next game. I mean, these are over the top, reactionary, unrealistic. I'm mad because I'm yelling at my TV moments. Better get used to it because I think this is where he's at. I don't think Darnold is going to be throwing three red zone interceptions a game or the earth may split

open at some point. But I do believe that he is going to find himself in situations where his decision-making may determine whether this drive fizzles or ends up on the 20-yard line of the other team. That's where I think O'Connell has to come and take maybe some of the stress off him inside the 20-25-yard line. Don't abandon the run. As you said, maybe not put five guys in the end zone to throw to because now you've got five defenders and it's just a war zone out there. Whereas, can you work underneath inside 20 yards? Can you find ways for Darnold to play safe so that he doesn't get tempted to force a throw to Jefferson because Jefferson's been double teamed all game, hasn't gotten his numbers, hasn't gotten his yards,

and oh, by the way, it looks like he's single covered. You know, Hawkinson showed, as he did last season, if you're going to take away J.J. Jefferson, you can't account for him. And it may not be sexy, eight yards at a time, but that's how you win football games. And I feel like Jefferson's going to have his moments because they're not going to be able to hold him down forever. The question is, is Darnold going to be able to recognize when those moments come and deliver,

or is he going to be feeling like he has to force a pass into the end zone because it's third down and I threw a pick the last drive? That's why I would love to know what he sees in his film review, how he self-assesses. He's not going to reveal that publicly, but that's really what's going on here. And is he going to be able to process that as a grizzled, hardened, neglected, rejected quarterback who's got some scar tissue to deal with that? Or is he going to maybe go down a rabbit hole of self-doubt and questioning himself, which clearly happened in New York and Carolina? Yeah, my theory. Yeah, my theory.

Well, my theory on the interceptions is they all seem to have a pretty similar theme, which is he goes through his progression and then he sees something kind of flash as the way that Kevin O'Connell talks about it and thinks, oh, I can do that with my arm because he's always done that just his entire career at USC. And he's always done it at other places that has caused problems. It's sort of this thing that pings in his mind. Like if you, not that you or I are like this, but let's say that if you curse all the time and you're trying to stop yourself from swearing, it's going to take a long time, but usually that sort of instant reaction of, oh, I bumped my knee. Oh, bleep. It's sort of like, oh, a guy's open

throw. And there, there isn't something that you can necessarily coach there. They just kind of have to work. And some of his best throws this year have been like that, where he just sort of sees it flash and lets it rip. And we go, what an arm. And then other times we go, what happened? But the biggest thing is not even the decision of where to throw, but I think the actual throw, when it flashes like that that he loses his technique for throwing his feet don't get set he doesn't get a full body into it and then it's just a bad throw and it ends up getting picked off and this is why you just have to to ride through that variance it's kind of like with a strikeout home run hitter you you could say to them why do you keep striking out because when

they have big swings they get off sometimes and then it takes a while to get back onto it and there isn't an easy answer of oh well O'Connell should just do this in fact I want to say over the last two weeks that O'Connell has done a tremendous job of adjusting because the biggest issue facing them was that they weren't on the field very much the only times they ever scored were quick drives and then they'd have three and outs and the defense would get worn down well that wasn't the case at all yesterday where it was all long drives the same with uh indianapolis so after yesterday after seeing the lions game what happened to the Bears,

where do you feel like this Vikings team fits in? And the Eagles, by the way, put on a heck of a show against the Dallas Cowboys, and they are on their way, Philadelphia, to turning around their season. Another example, by the way, of the roller coaster, because Nick Sirianni was going to get fired after like three weeks, and now they are completely rolling. So where do they fit in here? Well, I think it seems clear now the record says they're a wildcard contender. They're still in contention with Detroit. Detroit just feels like, and I'm not being a homer on this. I'm just telling you what I see. I just feel like they're,

they feel like a team of destiny because the things that are happening for them, the way they're able to win big games in big moments, those are teams that really, they're on their way somewhere. And they've already experienced some difficulty last year at the end, losing in San Francisco. They feel like they're on a mission. There's a lot that can happen, and clearly they could have some things go wrong in January as well. But the way this team looks, the way it feels, they're probably going to run away with the division. If the Vikings can

be within a game going into week 18 at Ford Field, that'll be a hell of a clash. But as flawed as the Lions are, they're flawed in a sort of entertaining, they're equipped to overcome this way. The Vikings are still trying to figure out if they're going to be equipped long-term to overcome some of the things that Darnold and the offense are doing. I would argue that the Vikings' defense is better than Detroit's. So what factor is that going to have going forward when you're going to have some low-scoring games and some bad weather?

It just feels like as the season goes on, the Vikings are going to be chasing Detroit. I feel like Green Bay, there's obviously going to be question marks with Love all the way through. They've shown some moments where you doubt their viability and the Bears. Boy, has there ever been a single play that has just daggered a franchise on and off the field as much as that Hail Mary in Washington a few weeks ago? I mean, the locker room is imploding. The coaching staff is imploding. It's really a sad thing to see. You know, I never really had too many feelings about the Bears franchise.

I know they were kind of, they can't get out of their own way, particularly at the quarterback position, but to watch a team just literally fall apart in the middle of the season is a rarity. So I'm almost looking at this as like a biological miracle to kind of study and be impressed by. And you can tell generations down the road, this is what happens when you make one bad play and you're undisciplined at the wrong time. It can completely inject poison into an organization.

So I don't see the Bears going anywhere anytime soon other than just cleaning house and starting over again. So long story short, it feels like Philly is emerging again as an NFC power. Atlanta we were wondering about, but I don't know how you lose to a team that is that bad and just can't have their coach. Seattle, L.A., there's still some teams emerging. Vikings are in a really good position because, again, they should be able to pick up at least one or two more wins

the next couple of weeks. They're in a position because of the early success that they had to ride out some adversity and to ride out some poor performances. And you know there's going to be a clunker defeat coming. I mean, whether it's Darnold's fault or whether it's just a combination of some mistakes or bad special teams, there's going to be a game where they blow. There hasn't been a game where you felt like they blew yet. So it's all common, and it's how they're going to manage it.

I think how they're going to manage it emotionally, they seem like from a distance a team that can weather a lot of that. But the darn old stressors are going to be immense in the next few weeks if they don't correct. And I think people are so also emotionally attached to all of these plays because they're all red zone interceptions or within the 25-yard line. So you do have this long, sustainable 10-play drive, and you're on the doorstep. Now everybody's almost anticipating disaster. And now it's becoming manifest destiny a little bit.

So it's kind of all of this. If he threw it at midfield on the first series, maybe people wouldn't lose their minds with how ugly it looked. But because it's the same look, it's the same bad decision slash poor throw into coverage that everybody in the building sees is there. It seems to be a flaw every time they get down into the red zone. So I want to see how people react if he does it again in Tennessee.

I want to see how O'Connell reacts if he does it again in Tennessee, because are you going to overreact now, or are you going to stick with what you know, which is he's probably going to come back and make the throws on the next drive that he needs to make because he's pretty resilient. But how much risk do we want to keep taking when we're inside the 20-yard line? Just to circle back to the Chicago Bears, I think that their response to the Hail Mary really showed what was really going on behind the walls because we've seen under O'Connell a lot of things go wrong,

and we've never seen a team start calling out the coaching staff and then things like that. They had the bad loss against the Rams, and we didn't see immediately second-guessing of what they were doing defensively and calling out. And I think we don't see that in Kansas City or Buffalo or places where they've had success and they believe in their coach. It's more, I think, a signal.

Instead of saying, it was just a random thing. It was a bad bounce. That's why we lost. We outplayed them. It was fine. Just got a bad bounce. It was, let's point fingers at everybody because that's what's really going on here behind the scenes. It was almost an opportunity for them to let the floodgates open and say what was really

on their minds for the entire season. And just instructively for the rest of the league, if a coach is on the hot seat, don't pair them with a rookie quarterback. You have to fire Matt Eberflus after last year and find the coach for Caleb Williams. Now they're probably going to have to fire Eberflus and bring in a new coach and then have him learn a new system and all these things that I'm sure Sam Darnold's eye is twitching, reading about it. Like, you know, it's exactly what they did to him. I could be in Chicago.

Yeah. Yep. Todd Bowles was his coach. They fired him they brought in adam gaze and all the hell broke loose from there on sam darnold uh so let me go back real quick to the bigger picture also which is at the beginning of the season our the mantra we settled on murph was let's just see what happens because we didn't know what we were supposed to think of this team we didn't know

what was around the corner i don't think that we can change that they're in position to race for the nfc and maybe yesterday was their clunker and they survived and they'll get it turned around but we don't know we don't have patterns from the past on this team this defense this sam darnell this is not the kirk years where we always knew where the train was going. So I think there was a lot of overreaction, probably the angriest people had been after a win that maybe I've ever seen. I just thought, okay, well you did win the game and you did outplay the other team onto the next week. You have to get these at some point during the season. You're not going to beat everyone by 30 points

so anywho uh tell me about your trip this was your big trip go to jacksonville with the boys every year you have one where you go on the road did you have a good time yeah and it's still ongoing we have an 8 p.m departure so we got to get out of the house we rented here in jacksonville beach uh but within the hour. It's winding down. It was a good scene. And, you know, I was fine. You know, I'm always meeting new people that are either adjacent to this group or we meet people that are here, other Vikings fans, you know, a lot.

I mean, that was basically U.S. Bank Stadium South yesterday. What I also noticed, too, is Jaguar fans, God love them. They're gracious folks, nice people. They're just used to snowbirds coming down here to kick their team's butt and take advantage of the weather. So they kind of just, they give you the stadium. They say, hey, welcome. When you speak of us, speak of us well. There's not an angry, you know, Philadelphia, how dare you wear purple? I'm going to shank you kind of vibe here. What I love about this trip though is it's, again, it's a lot of similarly aged guys, a little bit scattered around the country. They're all huge Vikings fans. I've been having fun with

them about the Lions a little bit, but it's not so much about the game. It's about the experience. It's about hanging out together. It's about, you know, checking out, walking in the beach. We saw Joan Jett in the Blackheart Saturday for free because I don't think I'd pay to see her now. But there's just little things you find along the way that we don't even expect. Random people you meet at a restaurant or a bar that are either from Minnesota or... I've got some military guys in this group,

so it's Veterans Day today. They're kind of bonding with the big military town down here in Jacksonville. And they keep reminding me, I'm 4-0 on all these trips I've come with them to Chronicle. It was L.A. in 21 against the Chargers, Washington in 22, Vegas, which was an uglier game than yesterday, and a victory, and now here in Jacksonville. So I don't know where the schedule is going to take us next season,

but I don't think they want me to not come anymore because i'm four and oh well also uh i had mentioned to a couple of fellow media members that you were doing this trip and they all said can't wait for the murph article so purpleinsider.com will be when that goes up a little later in the week the tale of your your time in Jacksonville. 7-2, Murph. How many wins do you think they end up with? Let's end up. Keep going there. I've been saying 10-11, but now, even as flawed as they look, I'm going to say 11-12.

Okay. Just because they're stacking them up. But I think Detroit's like 13-14, so I do feel like it's going to be a home wildcard game they might be targeting here. I don't disagree. Some very winnable games still on the way. Murph, I'm glad you had a great time in Jacksonville.

I was able to catch my flight yesterday, myself and Ben Gessling and the Star Tribune scrambling through the Florida rains to catch our lift ride to the airport. And then they pull my bag because this always happens with all the equipment that I carry. They always pull my bag out of line. Got to take another look at it. I'm going, we're boarding.

We're bored. Come on. And so I got to the gate just as everybody's going in, made it back just fine. So a decent trip nonetheless. So thanks for your time as always, and enjoy your final couple of hours there in Jacksonville. All right.

Thanks everyone. I'll stay around and answer a few more questions here. I also haven't gotten in any of the ad reads yet, so I have to do that, but questions, comments, thoughts, what we've been talking about tonight,

where the Vikings are going to end up this season after what you've seen now through a half of the season, what your vibe is, how you're feeling. It's been a real mixed bag tonight with the comments. Some of you are feeling like you're so frustrated with Darnold and you think that he can't take them anywhere. And some of you are looking at yesterday like,, Hey, you, uh, won these games. So you should be happy with them. So let me know in the comments.

We'll hang around for a few more minutes and answer any remaining questions that you have. But I got some new sponsors for the show, which is very exciting. So I want to tell you about them, a brand new sponsor called future fans. Uh, have you ever tried to explain football to a little kid? It could be almost impossible. And a lot of my friends who have young kids will talk about their funny efforts to get their kids to watch the games. That's what Future Fans can help you with.

It's a new brand that helps kids become big fans through storybook-led activities. It's very, very unique at explaining the rules of the sport and embedding the concepts into parallel games and activities and a storybook. It's a really fun thing. They sent it to me to take a look at it. It's very interesting looking through that. I think kids would absolutely love this. So if you want to share your love for football with a little one,

your kid, grandkid, niece, nephew, future fans is the best gift for a sports fan and their little one in the holiday season. $49.99 at futurefans.com. Use the code purple to get 10% off. That's futurefans.com with the code purple to unlock a lifetime of memories with a kid in your life starting now. Also, hey, if you're ready to kick off some extra fun on Football Sundays, grab the game Catan and keep going off the field. While Minnesota's football teams are crushing it, you and your crew can build, trade, and outsmart each other in the ultimate game of strategy. Whether it's during halftime or between plays, Catan brings a whole new level of competition and excitement to your game day. Visit Catanshop.com, use the code PURPLE, and get 10% off discount for Catan brings a whole new level of competition and excitement to your game day. Visit Catan shop.com. Use the code purple and get 10% off discount for Catan.

And I would not leave you guys. Keep throwing in some questions there. How old can the kids be? I think you're looking at eight and under for that is for that. But future fans.com, you can kind of check that out. Keep the, keep the questions coming. I'll get back to you guys one second but i could not leave you without of course your great friends at us cellular gifting is hard so you got to give the gift of the connection to us cellular if you're not sure what

that means here's a more specific hint you could choose four free phones and get four lines for 90 a month from us cellular the good news, even if you don't get hints, or even if you're not good at wrapping presents, is that you can take a hint to get four free phones and four lines for $90 a month. U.S. Cellular, built for us. All right, what do we got? Final questions.

Top Bob's Casino Secrets says, I'm just going to call you a Bob, I guess. Uh, like her cousin said, R E L A X. I think that was Aaron Rogers who said that. And maybe there's a little of that required for this situation. It's complicated. I mean, that's why I like it as a discussion topic, because how to feel about this team right now, after the last two games two wins that were ugly it is a complicated thing uh it's we always look at it with the

vikings and minnesota sports through the lens of when will you guys win a championship again it's been since 1991 on the men's side of things, everybody except the links. Uh, and, uh, also they're now named the frost, the hockey team won last year. Once again, on the women's side there. So on the men's side, uh, the twins, the wild, uh, the wolves there, the wolves got so close last year, the Vikings have gotten close so many times that it can be really hard to stay in the moment when you're getting frustrated and not go back to the same spot, which is, oh man, if this team can't win the Superbowl then, but we don't really know what's going to happen here in the future.

And one thing I know every single week is that I'm shocked at a lot of the results. And I will admit to you that my Super Bowl pick was probably the worst Super Bowl pick anyone made this entire offseason. I don't know. It could have just as easily gone the other way. And in the past, sometimes I've made good picks. This is why picking games is fun because you never know what's going to happen. Some years you'll be great. Some years you'll be great. Some years you'll be bad.

It's an unpredictable sport. But if you put yourself in the situation metrically with the numbers, with the right offense, defense, point differential, DVOA, record, playoff spot, matchup, that you've got a chance. And I think that putting yourself among the best teams to have a chance, evaluating it, I said earlier in the year, evaluate it through a championship type of lens. Well, if we do that and we compare them to the other teams in the NFC, they're right there, just not with the Lions. The Lions are blowing out everyone in terms of point differential, but Washington and Philly are like plus 70 something. And the Vikings are plus 64. You're

right there. Everybody else is quite a bit behind. Okay. Right in the mix. Uh, even no matter how ugly the game was right in the mix. So to that end, relax. Yes. If it keeps happening and the victories aren't impressive and they are ugly and the interceptions keep coming and the turnovers and it's limiting the offense and what they can do and the frustration is building even if they get a few more wins then we're going to look at it a little differently i tend to think that if you get 400 yards every game that it's that you're going to have more luck than you did scoring, uh, than they did yesterday. So it's a moving target a little bit, but it is a fascinating subject because a lot of people will look at it as you won. So what are we complaining

about? And then a lot of people will look at it and say, well, you know, this team is too flawed to go deep in the playoffs. And, uh, Alex asks, are you convinced this defense won't get shredded against a good offense? No, I'm not. I'm not convinced of that because they do still have some flaws. I will say that there isn't really a defense in the NFL that won't get beat sometimes by good offenses. It just doesn't work that way anymore. There is no defense that I can remember in the last, I mean, how many years, when was the last defense that you watched?

Was it 2015 Broncos where you said they could just win with defense that they could just crush everybody with their defense, the defense, their performance against the lions, their performance against the Rams will still linger in our minds. Blake Cashman being back was a pretty huge deal. It'll still linger in our minds. But when we look at the, and even the Texans, their offense does not look as good as we thought it was then. The 49ers were not as banged up then as they are now. They had their receivers. They didn't have McCaffrey. But really, I mean, when it comes down to it, the other teams in the league

who have scary offenses like Detroit's, I mean, Washington's is good. They've been slowed down a little bit more lately. Philadelphia's is good. You will probably, if you're going to go deep in the playoffs, you have to get a great performance from the defense. They are not going to hold anybody who's a great team to 86 yards passing.

You're going to have to do better offensively. You're going to have to finish those drives. You can't give away the ball three times. There's no question about that. There is no question about that. That if someone asked earlier, if Trevor Lawrence played, what's the outcome? They lose. That's the outcome.

They lucked out in the fact that their defense played so well and also had to barely be on the field. It is a key factor to me, how much they're on the field the rest of the year though, because the game against the Rams that was so tough, they were on four days rest and they had just been on the field a ton. If they can keep them fresh and keep them healthy, then they've got a better chance. But when you play a Washington, a Philly and Atlanta and the playoffs, they're probably going to move the ball and you have to outscore them. That's why you have all these weapons. No one's ever going to be perfect defensively. How about the 49ers had a top three defense last

year and almost lost to the lions in the playoffs because you know, the, the lions had a good offense that that's, what's going to happen. Um, so they're going to have to improve some of these things in order to win. Uh, they're not just going to easily shut down everybody. Uh, Mike says, uh, isn't an effective short pass game what we needed and what's been missing? Now just bring it all together. Yes, yes. And that's why I had so much trouble breaking down the game. Because when they were able to give Sam Darnold easy button throws, he was good on the statistics

on the underneath stuff. When he was targeting throws between zero and nine yards they had a ton of success with them yesterday anything beyond that was a disaster and some of that was how jacksonville was playing their defense eight completions on nine passes to tj hockinson at nine passes a clip do it over and over keep throwing to hockinson underneath absolutely keep doing that uh long drives or something that I was calling for. I probably said the word steady churn like 50 times because that's what I wanted to see. And that's why these last two weeks I'm watching them steady, steady churn.

First down, first down, run the ball underneath, get to the red zone. This is good. Look at this. Look at how much they're moving the football. Again, I mentioned it earlier, but 42 minutes, no one's even done that this year. This was the first team that had 42 minutes of time of possession all year in the NFL this year. Since 2020, it's happened four other times and three of them were in overtime. So one other, since 2020, there's been one other game that was in regulation where a team controlled the ball for 42 minutes. How can I, they've got that.

Yes, put it all together. Get the ball in the freaking end zone. If they get it in the end zone twice yesterday, out of how many times, instead of kicking field goals or throwing picks, it's a complete blowout but they need to have it all together that's for sure uh has alex says has free three been freed no he has not and that's a discussion in itself i got a good email from somebody on that uh gavin sent me an email about wondering why jordan addison has not had the chemistry with sam

darnold and he was kind of wondering when he's not the main target is he running the routes the same is the timing off even if he's creating separation i don't know that there's a clear answer when justin jefferson is the sun and everybody else are planets which is how it should be and there were a few people that sent me notes about Jefferson. Well, are they forcing it to Jefferson too much? Yes. That yesterday that was a problem. And that's why I got picked off a couple of times at the same time, forcing it to Jefferson also gets you a lot of success most of the time as well. But when Jefferson is the sun and everybody else is a planet, the distribution of targets is going to be some weeks big for a player like that. And some weeks

not in 2022, KJ Osborne through half the season, we went, where is this guy? What is going on? And then in the second half, you had a couple of really huge games. That might be the case for Jordan Addison. I would understand if Jordan Addison was frustrated though. Imagine if you were Van Jefferson or Robert Woods, when Cooper cup was out in LA, so much of this type of offense runs through that number one wide receiver. And when that is happening, the other guys have to keep running the routes and have to keep doing their jobs. And sometimes it's going to come to him. Sometimes it's not. And that is the, how it goes with Addison. I think that trying to dial up more plays to go to Addison is a good approach. It was a good approach against Indianapolis,

but it seems like Darnold just has so much more trust in Jefferson than he does in Addison that he's always looking for 18 and not so much looking to free three. I couldn't discern whether that's quarterback or whether that's wide receiver. If the plays are supposed to go to Addison or not. I know O'Connell loves Jordan Addison. He was at the center of drafting him and didn't punish him after some issues off the field. Maybe he did financially, but he certainly didn't as far as playing time. So they've given him a ton of leeway. They clearly believe he's a good player. He is. I mean, the one catch he made

was phenomenal. It was a high throw. He jumped up and made a great catch when he didn't even see the ball coming out of his break and then rose up and got it. He can make catches. He can make plays, but there's only so much to go around. And now that he's, uh, Darnold's finding trust in Hawkinson, it's just probably going to be a little bit limited for Jordan Addison. Uh, Ty says we gave the lions a tough game. We had a chance to win it. Uh, we have aside from the lions and chief, as good a chance as anyone. And that's the truth as of right now is with a 7-2 record, you're not decidedly better than Philly. You're not decidedly better than Washington. Those are the next two teams down from Detroit, but you're also not worse than them either. You're right equal than Washington. Those are the next two teams down from Detroit, but you're also not worse than them either. You're right equal than them. Washington lost a tough game to Pittsburgh yesterday.

Philly had issues early in the season. They were talking about potentially firing their coach early in the year. This is how a season goes. This is how a season goes up and down um throughout a year and this feels like a dip even though they won the last two games but every week is going to be like that sometimes we didn't expect blowouts in certain games and we didn't expect tighter games in certain games and the aggregate of all of it is a pretty good team. That's right in the mix with the second tier from Kansas city, Buffalo and Detroit. There's maybe how, how big is that tier? Seven teams, six teams, Washington, Philly. I might still throw San Fran in there just on reputation. Um, and maybe with them getting their guys back

and Ricky Pearsall is now on the field for them, uh, on the AFC side, you would throw Pittsburgh in there, uh, Baltimore, maybe they can make an argument for a first tier team, but also, uh, their defense is a little bit struggly. They got some issues too. So they're probably a second tier team. It's like six, there's a group of six or seven teams beyond the top three clear contenders. And that's where the Vikings sit. And they've got eight more weeks to put themselves in that range. But if they end up like Manny expects at 12 and five, you go into the playoffs, you're going to need a good matchup. You're going to need some breaks. You can't turn the ball over, but you're not going to go into a game against anyone

and be saying there's no chance. If they keep playing the way they're playing, if they play worse than we will, you're going to probably see the Vikings, and this would be a Vegas thing to look at, if they play at Atlanta or something, they might be favored. If they play at Arizona, which I they might be favored if they play at Arizona which

I think might be the situation right now they would be favored going to Arizona I believe and that just tells you about like you're saying what kind of chance you might have oh gosh says would you rather have prime AP on this team or prime Pat and Kevin Williams. If I get both of them, I would take, uh, Kevin and Pat Williams. If I get two of them, cause that means I'm getting sacks from Kevin Williams and complete shutdown of the run from Pat Williams. Um, Adrian Peterson is prime is pretty darn good though. That's 2000 yards. That's a, that's a tough decision. I would probably take the interior defensive line, knowing that for an entire season, I can shut down the other team's defense. But if it was only one of those two, if it was only Kevin Williams, a six time

all pro that I would probably lean toward Adrian Peterson. Um, the fact that Adrian Peterson could just score a touchdown at any given time in that 2012 season. If you're talking about that 2012 season, I'd probably take the 2,000 yards. Wade said, should Hawkinson's strong, healthy return bode well for the physical therapy plan for McCarthy, Blackman, and Derrissaw? This team does seem to have a good track record so far of the way that they've handled just the players and injuries in general. There's some trust there, and players have really emphasized that when they've talked about their recovery, how much trust they have in Tyler Williams and his staff.

I don't know that that's always been the case, but it certainly is the case here and now with the belief that they have in the Vikings' plans for their health. Also, those players you mentioned. They're all young. They're all injuries that are usually not career altering in any way. So I would have all the confidence that those players come back. Alex says, do you think that they re-sign Bynum?

Feels like they'll let him walk. And I assume you mean they'll turn it over to Theo Jackson. That's going to be a hard decision because, oh, why has he not gotten much? I've been surprised by that. They just haven't rotated the secondary. There's also been no injuries knock on whatever my desk is made of. Cause I, I hate seeing players get hurt, but there's been no injuries. So Theo Jackson is next man up and you know, he just hasn't had much of a chance there. They also haven't really seemed to play packages that have all defensive backs on the field because on third down, you want Blake Cashman on the field.

That's kind of how Mike Zimmer didn't run dime package because he wanted Kendrick's and bar on the field. No matter what that may be part of it. They like Theo Jackson a lot. I think that they'll, it'll all depend on the price for buying him. He's a good player. He's a good tackler. He catches the ball. As you could see from the interception yesterday, it's not the easiest interception to make going back and making that play on the ball. And then I still don't understand football rules, I guess, because I thought that was the continuation rule into the end zone and it should have been a touchback. I guess he thought that too, and it wasn't weird stuff.

He's a really good piece of this. And if Harrison Smith retires and then, you know, you've got Metellus could slide back there, but I kind of like him in the role where he's at. Maybe he'd be good in the Harrison Smith role that's playing back as more of a regular safety. I don't know. And then Theo Jackson, it's a tough call

because safeties are a position that we've seen be fairly replaceable, but Bynum is good, and you don't want to let too many players go. If Smith is going to retire, Stefan Gilmore is probably not going to play for this team next year. It's possible, but maybe not. And Byron Murphy, you're not really sure. They seem to really like Murphy. He intercepts the ball as well. I think he gets a little too much from fans sometimes, but that one's going to cost some money to be able

to resign him. They have Blackman coming. There's other players that they're developing like Dwight McClothern, but how much do you want to lose out of your secondary when they've had a good defense this year? So you might want to keep them around. I think they should extend him. Honestly, he's a good player. James says, not concerned with Darnold. He is who he is. My biggest concern is with KOC when the game is in their hands, their offense on the field, too many examples of not being able to finish.

Yeah, no, I, right. I, I, I feel you on that. I mean, even in 2022, there were a lot of times we talk about that season that they could have put the dagger in somebody and they just didn't. They would have a three and out. They would have a bad decision, a third and one or fourth and one where they try to throw the ball down the fields and complete. It's kind of some of the same stuff that has happened. But also we watch every play of every game. I mean, if you watch every play of every game from,

from any other team, you're going to question play calls. You're going to question if you can finish off teams, you're going to question what they do in the red zone. I don't know that any team you're watching and saying other than, I mean, even Detroit or even Kansas city or even Buffalo, they had the Buffalo lost that one game where Sean McDermott completely botched the end of the game and everybody criticized him after, but we would all take Sean McDermott as the coach of the team, right? I mean, he's been a great coach for them.

So there's a little bit of, we know too much in comparison to other teams, but there's also something true about what you're saying. Can they run away from teams? They didn't really do that against green Bay. They let them hang around in the game. They let the jets hang around in the game. Yeah. It's a legitimate concern. And I don't know if there's a clear answer to that. Uh, I really don't. If, if, if there's a clear answer to how do you finish off these drives? How much is it the quarterback that

Kirk was a flawed quarterback? Darnold's a flawed quarterback. Uh, Randall says you must not have watched the game. He was bad. The defense carried him. I don't know if that was responding to me or someone else. Uh, there's no question that Sam Darnold was bad, but it wasn't, it's not a binary thing. It's not good or bad. Like that's, I don't think you say for a performance like that, he was either good or bad because there's a lot of drives where he's making good throws. He's making good decisions. The football is staying in the hands of the Vikings. He's checking it to Hawkinson. He's completing passes. And then there's other times in the game three specifically but more than that where he made very very bad decisions uh overall i mean yes by the statistics and everything else

the metrics and all that uh it's it is a bet it's a bad game for donald's very bad game my quarterback rating especially catastrophically bad game by that, but also they put up 400 yards and he was, they ran well, but he was at the center of getting the ball to Hockinson a lot in that game and taking what the defense was giving them in that game. So I don't think it was all entirely. He was just so putrid. Uh, but the interceptions are the biggest thing that matter in those decisions i think we all know that the people who say you won't win anything if he keeps doing that i mean that's of course that's true you're you're not gonna win if you play like that you're not gonna win that many games if you have that many interceptions and you fail that much in the

red zone we all know that um so i i don't know if it was me or a commenter that said that he was good. I don't think he had a good game. I think he was good specifically at one thing. And the numbers will back that up, which is underneath. He was very good at taking what was there underneath to move the ball down the field repeatedly in that game. So there were some things that did work for them that if the

other thing hadn't gone bad with the interceptions, they run away in this game. I think that's kind of the point. Uh, K-Mac says Hockinson, uh, had a drive with four first down conversions, took 10 plus minutes and an interception. Yeah. That's what I'm saying is that there were so many times where they were controlling the ball to the point that I thought, what, how much time has gone by here? How long have they had the ball? And as you mentioned, one of them was 10 minutes. If they finished that with even a field goal, I think we're, you know, cheering that and saying great job, like 10 minute drive to score. Jacksonville's over there getting bored on the sideline. Well done, sir. And, uh, instead, you know, he throws the interception and it wipes that all away. It was still good to have

the football for that long and jacksonville can't score but that's a little bit of the point you know so if you hunt big plays then you'll get turnovers from hunting big plays uh if you hunt long drives sometimes you'll get to the end and if you don't finish them off it feels like you wasted so much of your life with those long drives but it's always better to have the football than the other team. Let's see. Alex says, appreciate the chats. Did you golf in Jacksonville? Unfortunately, no, I did not have a chance to golf in Jacksonville in part. Oh, I'm sorry. Randall was talking about something different. For some reason, Peyton Manning in the Superbowl came up in 2015. Yeah. But that was the last, my point on that was that was the last time a defense

really won. That was the last time a defense took a team and was so dominant that it just guided that team all the way to the super bowl. We haven't really seen it since we've seen good defenses, uh, play in the super bowl, but we haven't seen a team just entirely through defense. And the point was that the Vikings offense is going to have to score back and forth with somebody good if they really want to win anything. But as far as Jacksonville goes, the minute I got off the plane, it started pouring. And so that kind of went out the window. I also had some work to do and it's going to be cool. I'm going to promote this piece quite a bit when it comes out, but I had a sit down with Kevin O'Connell one-on-one on Friday for an article that I'm writing. So did a, you know,

interview with him and that will come out later in the week, but I needed to start working on it Saturday. So I couldn't do what I wanted to do there. The weather wasn't nice. The weather wasn't nice at all. It was really cloudy. Just, you know, that's how it goes sometimes. Uh, Sue says if the Vikings and Alliance went out and then Vikings win week 18, how would the tiebreaker be settled? Oof. That's like asking me about comp picks. Is it strength of what's the next thing? The next thing is something you don't expect, right? It's not point differential. Like it should be. Isn't it strength of victory or something? Strength of victories. Someone tell me, I don't remember what that is. I never look at the tiebreakers until I have to. So I don't remember, but tell me what it is. Cause I feel like it's something classic NFL. It wouldn't be the thing that's obvious. Uh, Mike says I couldn't call any

team this season, an absolute juggernaut wins and losses for almost every team. Well, that that's, that is a big part of my point for talking about this Vikings team. If there were three NFC teams that I thought were far and away from the Vikings, then I would be saying, guys, they have a long way to go. I don't know how this is going to work out. If they had had an easy schedule so far, then I would say, guys, they've had an easy schedule. I don't think they're as strong as they are, but to your point, absolute juggernauts, there's just not that many. There really just isn't that many this year. It sort of opens the door for this Vikings team and opens the door for the playoffs to be a little bit random. Randall says if Harrison Smith retires, it increases the

likelihood they re-sign Bynum. Probably true. They should decide to sign or resign by him because he's good. And he's a good player for, and it matters. He's a good teammate and you can predict what he's going to be and who he's going to be for them. He is one of the most, I think liked guys in the locker room, not just for the celebrations, but because I mean, he's a guy that came in as a fourth rounder from kale as a corner and has developed himself into a ball hawking safety who can really tackle.

He's one of the elite tacklers by PFF grade comes downhill, makes plays. He had one yesterday that was really good. So I think there's a lot of things to like of Cam Bynum. He's not a game changer like Harrison Smith used to be in his prime, but he's a very good player and you should want to keep as much of the defense together. Just like with Harrison Phillips, it's a good player. Guys don't have to be either unbelievable or get rid of them. A lot of good players is how you build a defense. We've seen that. Uh, John says how much access, uh, to, uh, do you media guys have

during the week? Can you go to practice at all or just interviews after practice on certain days? Yeah. So, uh, in training camp, we can watch all the practices, but once training camp ends, they close practice outside of the warmups. We go out, we see who's warming up. Uh, they do their stretching. They do their throwing a little route, running, catching the ball from Josh McCown or whoever warming up, things like that. And then once they get out there and start doing the actual implementation of practice, then everybody goes back inside and we go to the locker room as they come off the field from practice. So they're coming in, taking off their pads and stuff. That's when we can go up to them at their lockers and say, Hey, you got a second to chat or something like that. And that's when we do our interviews with

them. And then there's the indoor practice facility where they have the press conferences for Justin Jefferson, TJ Hawkinson, Aaron Jones. These are players that everyone wants to talk to. So they just do it like that rather than have them at their locker, which is very, very helpful and useful, um, to kind of have it be a little more organized. And sometimes you see those videos where there's 20 people just stuffed around somebody's locker. Luckily we have a great situation. We really do. The players on this team are incredibly accommodating, great to work with um very very open to answering questions it's probably the easiest group of guys that i've ever worked with to be able to just go up to an approach and talk with at their lockers and things like that so uh it's good yeah but that's that's kind of how it works out a couple

days a week that we can go and chat with them uh ty says uh i'll uh, I'll do it. Matthew should the Vikings drafted guard in the first round. That's funny. Yeah. Well, I think we've the, the problem with, uh, talking about next off season is there's so few draft picks to work with that. We're just going to debate defensive tackles and corners back and forth forever. Uh, the offensive line did its job yesterday. They did their job and I don't know if Ed Ingram's getting replaced or not. He had a passable game against the Jags by his grades, and he had a better than passable game last week by his grades. So I think that'll continue.

But I am concerned about the interior of Tennessee's line and how that's going to work out. Mike says, was the draw play in yesterday's game the first you remember of this season too? It seems like another missing piece of the puzzle. That's a good point. There hasn't been too many of those where it's a delay type of handoff.

And maybe that's just something that Kevin O'Connell doesn't like. Their run scheme has been fine when it comes to just getting, you know, yards per carry for Aaron Jones. It hasn't been unbelievable, but it's been good. I mean, they're averaging what? Jones must be close to five yards of carry for the season,

four and a half to five yards of carry, over five yards of carry yesterday. That is as good as they could have expected for this season. And to win a game where they ran the way they did yesterday, that's what we were looking for the last couple of years when it felt like they just couldn't even use it on a weekly basis. But now they can lean on it a lot more. But you're right.

There's some other things that could be mixed in that just haven't been. Let's see. I shot you 99 says Sam Darnold's interceptions all look the same. Did KOC say anything about what he needs to do to limit those turnovers? He did talk about that today. It was a lot of, he likes to say,

trust your feet and eyes. And I was sort of wondering about what, like what that means as applied to the turnovers. And I think maybe the biggest thing is that your eyes should be taking you to aaron jones on that play running wide open underneath and maybe not trusting that and just trying to make a crazy throw to justin jefferson the other thing is the footwork the footwork has caused him to under throw some of these uh interceptions oh it's conference record that decides okay thank you jason it's conference record that decides that the first tiebreaker at

some point it gets down to strongest win i think uh but anyway the the interceptions in the end zone that have been under thrown i think there's a feet thing where he's just snapping with his arm and he's not putting his body into the throw. Because the Jefferson interception, if you go up over top and you get that to the back corner of the end zone, he might catch it. He's got a little bit of room there and he's just a Jefferson. You under throw him, there's no chance. It's the same with that Hawkinson play last week where he's rolling to his left and he doesn't put enough on it. He just throws a duck.

And I think that what O'Connell is saying is just, just trust what you're supposed to do out there and don't try to do anything wild. There's no taking that away from Sam Darnold is that he's going to do some wild stuff and sometimes it's going to be great. They have to end up on the right side of that variance. And that's a scary thing to talk about because there's no control. There's no fix when you call play and someone's running wide open and Sam Darnold's like, no, I can fit it into this crazy window and throws a pick. What are you supposed to do? Uh, Ben says, I think the way to think about Darnold is like a highly touted rookie quarterback. There's talent there that can be good strings of games, but you're going to have

to expect some clunkers. Yeah. I mean, that's just, it's not just a rookie quarterback. It's kind of anything. Uh, it's like any quarterback that isn't the top of the top is going to have clunkers. I mean, Kirk had a lot of clunkers and he's a much more accomplished quarterback than Sam Darnold over his career, but he falls in that same sort of bucket is any given week. The guy could be great. And that was my point about Flacco and Stafford. And I'm not trying to pick outliers and say, look, those guys won the Super Bowl. But there's a lot of quarterbacks who have clunkers or who are highly talented but flawed who have success and winning seasons and get to the playoffs and give themselves a chance. It happens. So Darnold's interceptions yesterday were very bad.

But next week, he might throw for 304 touchdowns. That's just who he is. And you got to land on the right side of that. And it feels like you're a little bit just at the mercy of him that, and that's a hard place to be. Randall says, it's great that the Vikings are a top 18 when they were predicted to be a bottom 18. This has been a fun year. Thank you for being a rational person randall and not a crazy person but so this is another thing that i like to have one foot on both sides of the fence on where i do think we have to look back and go this team is overachieved from where

we expected darnold's having the best year of his career by 50 miles. And at the same time, once you raise the bar and go five and O and now seven and two, well, don't finish, don't finish nine and eight, right? Even though it would be above expectations, nine and eight is now way below expectations.

We should still analyze the team through the same mindset that they should be a contending team. And that they should finish in the top eight in the NFL. And they should give themselves a chance to go deep in the playoffs. We should hold them to that standard. If they fall apart the next two weeks and lose these games, then this is a very different tone. They won the game. So the tone is, hey, by the numbers, they're still good. And it's one weird game that they played mostly well

and then made some mistakes. But if they have these things bite them and they start falling apart, I'm not going to say, oh, hey guys, it's cool because we didn't think they were going to win nine games. No, they've got to get double digits. They've got to get to 11 or it's a failure. And if you, after this start, and if you get to 12, it's a big success.

10 is a hard place to be because it's still good, but it's not as good as it should be based on what they have and what's laid out in front of them, the schedule. Mike says, if Harrison Smith retires, how long until he joins the coaching staff? I don't know. Harrison's an interesting dude. Harrison has said before that it's a big world out there. I don't know that he's going to do that. We'll see. I think he would make you guys have no idea how good Harrison Smith would be as a TV analyst. It's funny to say because he's so quiet.

He's not in the media. But if he did it, he would be so good at breaking down the game. Maybe like a studio guy or something like that. He would be so good at breaking down the game. But I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure if, uh, if he will do that or if he'll go parasailing or something in Paraguay. Uh, he's an interesting dude like that. Matt says, yes, the lions are good, but they could be beat as, uh, Dennis green

said, if you want to crown them, crown them. Oh, we don't crown people that's a rule that's a rule on the show matt we don't crown anybody we're not crowning people here but as you look at the lions team it's a it's a beast they could anybody could be beat there's no 88 49ers here there's no perfect team in the nfl this year but uh yes they they are flawed but they're pretty good uh wins wins the next time i'll have aaron nagler on alex uh probably before the packers game i would guess late in the season what's this says donald gets worse the more his weapons get healthy make it make sense sometimes football doesn't make sense uh especially since hodgkinson has played great make it make sense to have 400 yards at 42 uh time of possession every other game i looked at so i pulled up all the games where teams had 42 minutes of possession since 2000 and there were

i believe two other games where that it wasn't a blow. One of them was a 6-3 Seattle win over Cleveland in 2011. That was a one for the record books in weird ways. Not great ways, but weird ways. Bleeding Purple says, what do you think our special team's mainly going for a field goal with our new long snapper and kicker? The long snapper's been around for a long time. The kicker has played pro before so i guess it's

fair to trust him to kick those field goals they were the right calls to kick them they did have one where they went for it on fourth down and got it and then didn't still didn't finish the drive but i i mean i think overall the special teams i would put them in the category of outside of one game. They have not driven you insane. So it's fine. They're not game changing. They don't return kicks. I'm disappointed. You're disappointed. We all want kick returners to return. We want Cordero Patterson or Percy Harvin back there running back kicks so that's disappointing the punt returning is just a non factor that's fine i i think unless you have some sort of freak back there as a punt returner call fair catch you get flags and this is probably what the the edict is from o'connell you get flags

you get fumbles you get mistakes you get blocks in the back, just call fair catch. I have been on the side of don't return punts for a while. Just don't bother with it. It's okay. When you had Marcus Sherrill's return every punt, because he's amazing. But aside from that, no. Luis says every time he got away from the three or five step drops is when the picks happen you're absolutely right you're absolutely right uh one one of the issues is that when darnold gets out of the structure of the play that's when he starts thinking i gotta make something crazy happen i gotta fire it to somebody i I'm seeing a flash. I'm seeing a window and I got to let it go. And I just, if you could reprogram that to, I've got

to check down, he would just be so much better at not making those mistakes, but you're right. Yep. Once he gets out of that kind of footwork and then it's like just bouncing, that's where he doesn't put the same juice on the ball sometimes or he makes a bad decision uh purple kool-aid do you think quacey missed on the dallas turner pick i do not think that uh i think that we're a long way away from deciding whether that happened because he's got to develop and you're on a top five defense with great players everywhere you're just not going to get on the field as much. And he's one of the youngest players in the NFL. Just give it time. And then we'll see what ends up happening. He only played 11 plays. The defense only played 44 yesterday. Jonathan Grenard only rushed the passer. I think like 15 times they just were never on the field

yesterday. Turner, I thought had a really good game against the Colts and was unmemorable yesterday in a really good defensive performance. John says Jared Goff had five interceptions and not a word is said. Is that what you mean by me or what are you, what are you looking for there? Yeah, he had five interceptions and they're still one of the best teams in the league. So that's, I think the only point to be made about the five interceptions is that things happen where you are going to have dips in last year as the lions. And when you're as good career wise than golf, you're going to go, that's weird. You know, right. That's you're just going to say that's, that's weird. What a strange, goofy game. He'll never do that again. The last guy to do it was also an awesome quarterback. The last guy to win a game where he threw five picks was Matt Ryan. So I, and he fought his way through it and won the game. That's why not much is said about it. But it's just a football doesn't make sense type of situation. When Darnold throws multiple picks in the red zone,

well, that's been his reputation for his entire career. So that's why it's viewed differently. Preston says, does Darnold have arm fatigue? Been a while since he's thrown this many passes. I'd be surprised by that. I would be surprised by that. I would, I would be surprised by that if he was, because I don't see less velocity on the ball he had against the Colts.

He had five or six throws that were unreal. I really think it's just that it's sloppiness from him. When the play doesn't work out the way he thinks, or when the receiver that he wanted to go to isn't open and then he goes into the mode of hopping in the pocket and not staying one thing tom brady would do that was great or peyton manning the great quarterbacks drew breeze drew breeze would kind of bounce a little bit so i but they just even amidst all the madness, they would stay kind of square to throw the football. They wouldn't get drifty. They wouldn't get like, you know, looking down or getting anxious or trying to just panic and fire it into a window. They were very good at going, you know, one, two, three, it's not there back to one, not there check. And Darnold's not on the same level. He's much more

like Baker and you can win and you can make noise with a quarterback like that. It's going to be, of course, as you guys have mentioned, it's going to be tough to go deep in the playoffs with a quarterback like that, unless he gets really hot, but he's certainly not the only one in the league. And, and the thing about golf is that he is flawed. And we can't say the lions are unbeatable when we, and the thing about golf is that he is flawed and we can't say the lions are unbeatable when we get to the playoffs. Cause nobody is, uh,

and someone can always make a mistake like golf. And he has a high turnover worthy play rate this year. That's always possible. Uh, Jason says, uh, did it give you a smile when you think of the dumpster fire? That is the bears.

Uh, I wouldn Bears? I mean, it should give you guys a smile because they have received so much praise from everyone and the preseason expectations were having the Bears higher than the Vikings, which didn't make a lot of sense to me. I mean, I don't root for anybody. But, you know, but I think when it comes to the bears, I think that they just keep making the same mistakes over and over again. And it doesn't make sense to me. It's kind of like the jets where you draft this quarterback and Caleb Williams. And yeah, you have to play him right away. Cause he's the number one guy and everything else,

but you leave the coach in place because what they won seven games last year. They won seven games the year before who everybody knew was problematic and that they were flawed, uh, as far as a roster and that Eberflues wasn't really the leader that they were looking for. And he brings in an offensive coordinator and it's not really working. So I mean, more than anything, it's just bears gonna bears. And it's not shocking that this is happening to them. And they're just repeating history of something that they've done time and time again, uh, how they work their way out of it. We'll see, but it's, it may also be just the simple case of people thought Caleb Williams is going to be so good that he was a fireproof to the rookie issues. That's, that's probably what it

is that he, Oh, well, this guy's generational. He's going to go. Cause people just say that about everything. He's going to come in and he's, he's going to be amazing for them, right? Oh, they got Roman Doones. He's going to be amazing. They missed that. Jane Daniels was actually that guy because Jane Daniels is a grown man. And maybe if Caleb Williams, I don't think that quarterbacks will think about this much in the future, but they should. Anthony Richardson, Caleb Williams, maybe they should look at Bo Nix, who's played pretty well. Maybe they should look at Jane Daniels, who's played pretty well and look at the millions they earn in college and go, maybe I should develop. Maybe I should play for five years and come out as a completely developed quarterback ready to

play and not just, you know, go into the league because I'm eligible to be drafted. There's risks to that, but if you're that good, you're still going to get drafted high. Yeah, I know. Randall, Trevor Lawrence to generational. It's just, we need to stop with that. There's only the only quarterbacks I think I've ever seen in my life that I thought, Holy cow, this guy looks like an NFL quarterback when he's playing in college is Manning and luck. Those are the only two guys that I can remember really, truly thinking this dude looks like an NFL quarterback today. And both of that, and even Manning had his problems coming into the league early on. So anyway, we'll see if they get that turned around. That is a problem for two weeks from now, the Titans this week, it'll be a fun week. Jeremiah Searles will record with him tomorrow. So you can look for that tomorrow night and, uh, lots, lots more to come this week. I'll

see if I can get ourselves a Titans guest to break down what the heck has been going on over there in Tennessee as well. So thanks for the, the, the very rational chat tonight. I think you guys took a deep breath after yesterday and we had a really good time having this conversation tonight so thanks so much for that everybody and we will catch you uh wednesday is the the fans only chat on wednesday evening so be there get all your questions comments in on wednesday and i'll report what i glean from tco performance center that day and we will go from there onto Tennessee. So thanks again, everybody. And we'll catch you very soon. Football.