Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Brian Murphy wants to see the Vikings lean into a defense-first mantra

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Matthew Coller and Brian Murphy talk about the Vikings win in Las Vegas that was an offensive slog and a terrific defensive showing. Did we set the bar too high for a backup? Are they going to make the playoffs? How can Kevin O'Connell adjust his mindset to grind out wins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Cider. Sider, Matthew Collar here took the red eye out of Las Vegas to be back in the studio here and joining me still in Las Vegas and alive, Brian Murphy. Brian, tell me about your day. What did you do while you were there in Las Vegas? Because you were there to do the podcast with me, but we didn't necessarily talk about what was going to go on for the game. I was going to cover it like usual, reporter style, press box, post-game podcast, all that. But I was like, maybe it's better if I don't ask Brian where he's going to end up on Sunday. So how was your day? Well, there was about 10 of us and half had already bought tickets. Two or three of us were on the fence about whether we were going to go in at all. We're going to see where the prices were falling on the secondary market.

It wasn't looking good up until about kickoff. It was still north of $200. And I just made a calculated moral decision that I'm not going to give the NFL 200 of my dollars. And it was probably at least it was one of the great decisions I've made in my lifetime to not invest in attending that football game, which we ended up watching in a variety of bars sort of on our way back from the stadium. I ended up going to a tailgate party, but I just I just couldn't bring myself to get it wasn't that important to get in that stadium. I didn't feel like the game was going to be all that entertaining anyway. I didn't feel like it was going to be the assault on the senses that we had yesterday. But you mentioned, you know, offline here, it's an odd town because I don't sense there was a lot of Raiders fans

as folks that know what it's like to be a Raiders fan, came here to basically participate. And then I'd say 60% of the parking lot that I was in was purple and gold. So it felt like a Vikings home game. Didn't seem like that gave them much of an advantage. It was probably the most devastating victory I've ever witnessed. Well, I was curious about your takeaway because I did have it in my mind. I was like, maybe,

maybe Murph will come on here and be a little contrarian and Murph is going to say, you know what? I don't care how they won. They won and you take that victory and you don't complain about it because it's a backup quarterback winning a football game. Well, you do, but you can complain all you want. And I will say that this is one of the craziest things that I've ever run into with numbers. They score three points, and yet somehow their playoff odds

went up by 19% because of the victory. And, of course, the Rams losing yesterday. So it was like a great day for them in the playoff race and yet a bad day for America to have that football game exist. You know, we'll get into the defense. They deserve all the credit that they are getting coming out of that game and everything else. But what, what are we supposed to think about what happened there i mean there was sort of a weird post uh post game feeling of do we blame someone but it's a win but they had to bench their quarterback is it the coach not scheming or game planning well enough

is it the reality of backup quarterbacks i have a crazy stat on the backup quarterback type of situation i don't know what what were we supposed to think coming out of that i like the latter of what you just said i mean it's the story of backup quarterbacks i mean you're dealing with journeymen you're dealing with with those that were evaluated with a with a low ceiling and are banging their heads on that low ceiling. And I think we've gotten lost here in a little bit in projecting what might be, what might be with Josh Dobbs. Just look at those legs. Look at that skill set.

Look at that improvisation. The reality is we've had defensive now that have had several weeks to scheme up against him. There's been a blueprint put out there by the Chicago Bears, and now even the Las Vegas Raiders, about what you're going to be, what you are going to be able to do to limit Dobbs, to send the house, send pressure, make him make fast decisions that he's just not, you know, he may be able to process information, but he's not he's not good enough to make improvised decisions that escaped trouble, that ultimately in the long game of NFL game planning and scheming, he's just not able to, you know, he just doesn't have it. And there's a reason that he's been with six different clubs before the Vikings. I mean, there's a reason these guys don't end up top

draft picks. There's a reason these guys don't end up declared starters. They wind up in starting positions. So I don't know where I, frankly, I would be fascinated to hear some of your philosophy on where do you even point the fingers? Because while we're going to look at how chaotic and crazy it is that the Vikings have now started four quarterbacks this season and are tightening their grip on an unlikely playoff berth. We also have a defense that has emerged not just from the ashes of, you know, what they have to do to compensate for their dysfunctional offense, but what this unit was even just a year ago has now emerged as a playmaking dangerous defense that may just ultimately get swept into the dustpan of history because it's such a one-dimensional team

that I don't know how far they're going to be able to carry them. But I don't want to say it's fun to watch. It's been fascinating to watch. But you're not going to be able to win 3-0. That's unsustainable. We know that. I was thinking 16-13 along the way might be their standard score, but I'm going to have to recalibrate those expectations as well.

I mean, maybe next week they get two field goals. We'll have to see where it goes from there. But yeah, no, I mean, that's the thing about as good as the defense has been, and they are actually really fun to watch, to have an offense that struggles this much or is capable of struggling the way that they did the last two weeks doesn't give you any belief that they can take this anywhere. But we have to recalibrate expectations because of what you said, when you play four quarterbacks in a season and you're not getting your starting quarterback back, making the playoffs becomes a victory for your franchise. If that's what you set out to do. Of course, if you set out to go 2-15 in draft number one,

then that's a different kind of victory for you than this. But to overcome losing Jefferson and then losing Jefferson again, and I say overcome very liberally here because as a team, they were able to overcome losing Jefferson early in the game and getting a win and benching their quarterback, but they weren't able to as an offense. The other thing is that we talk about things that are sustainable with backup quarterbacks, clearly the non-Jefferson receiving crew around this backup quarterback, not sustainable over a long period of time without the world's best wide receiver,

because I believe there were six drops yesterday, which is a kind of a crazy amount for an NFL game. You might see that in Maction, but you usually don't see six drops in an NFL game. So there was a lot that went into how poor it was. I mean, the pressure from the Raiders, as you mentioned, they were clearly on point when it came to keeping Josh Dobbs in the pocket. He only ran for 21 yards, so he was not an impact player there. They were able to disrupt the timing. And then I think that Kevin O'Connell had planned to do some things with Josh Dobbs that were more Dobbsian, at least by the way he spoke. But then it got blown up by,

you don't have a lot of plays when you're going three and out. When Max Crosby is annihilating your offensive line and then you lose Brian O'Neill, those things kind of go out the window too. And then he started to think later in the game, I'm just going to need a quarterback to make like three throws and get us into field goal position. And that's what Nick Mullins was able to do. That doesn't let O'Connell off the hook game plan wise.

But I as I thought about the game more afterward and talked about it with our colleagues in the press box and everything else, I kind of came to the conclusion that I don't know what other buttons there were to pick. And I also looked back at Christian Ponder and Christian Ponder is of the level of a Josh Dobbs, right? Of a guy who the NFL just, it was a little too much for him to be a full-time starter. And there were, I believe 13 games where Christian Ponder had a quarterback rating under 60, which is horrendous. Like a quarterback rating of 60 wouldn't be good in 1968, right? And yet he had over a dozen games that didn't even start for that long that were like that. He also had a couple games where he threw for 300 plus yards, had over 100 quarterback rating.

Like if you're in the league, you're probably talented enough to do that from time to time. But if you are a fringe NFL quarterback, like Josh Dobbs is, then what you have to expect is sometimes there is really no answer. And what's hard about that is you're in the playoff race. And yet we're saying like, there's really no answer at the quarterback position to make this much better than it is yeah and it's been fascinating to watch too uh i haven't it doesn't appear that dobbs's confidence is wrecked as well it should be at this point he seems to be sort of in a circumspect place where he knows this isn't sustainable for him either. And I know that O'Connell didn't get out ahead of things yesterday by declaring a starting

quarterback for next Saturday, but it seems pretty obvious it's going to have to be Nick Mullins. I mean, as you mentioned about 10 days ago, he was practically drawing a picture of Nick Mullins after that Bears game saying, look, this is probably the direction we're heading, but I just want to be able to see if there might be some ways that we can staple together or stitch together a game plan that exploits Dobbs' unique skill set that we can maybe put him in better positions to make plays and succeed. That hasn't happened. And I think what you've seen is defensives really at this point are saying, look, until he can even find his way out of trouble,

because trouble is going to find him and it's found him in the last two and a half starts here. The defenses are just not going to, you know, allow. They're not going to give him any opportunity to breathe and find any rhythm or any confidence or any footing. So Mullins comes in and does what he needs to do. As you said, he completes a couple of passes, picks up a third down, puts them in a position to just get the three points and move on. This is probably where they're heading next. It's going to be a very traditional, managed game plan that is not going to be anything more than A, what the defense can give you, B, what the running game might be able to allow, so maybe some play action.

I mean, I don't see the Vikings doing anything that's going to put themselves into a position to score more than one to two touchdowns a game if they're lucky. You mentioned the Ponder thing. You know, all those horrible numbers that Ponder had, the one thing the Vikings always had was he could turn around and hand the ball off to Adrian Peterson, you know, for 2,000 yards or for 1,500 yards, or he can get you a tough first down. He can break open a game with one run. Vikings don't have that in their backfield.

They don't have that hammer. And then, you know, it hasn't been talked about a lot, and it was a big point of discussion with the guys that I was watching the game with yesterday because I kind of pointed this out as like, you know, Dobbs, you know, basically got Jefferson murdered practically coming across the field I mean that that throw is in a better position if it was an NFL professional throw in his breadbasket as opposed to leading him up the ladder to get exposed to that hit I mean you know Dobbs not only couldn't complete passes but he also because of his inaccuracy and his lack

of rhythm or consistency or even chemistry with Jefferson exposed him to a wicked hit that took him out of the game, took him out of the game plan. I know it sounded a little bit optimistic coming out of things yesterday, but, you know, if anything, that might have been his greatest sin yesterday was leading Jefferson into a wicked hit that just blew up the game plan already. And it was really difficult to watch. It was fascinating, though, to watch them at least defensively not give in. And I think that we can get into the defense a little bit more, too. But I've mentioned this in the past several weeks.

This is a unit led by a defensive coordinator who's got a ton, if not to prove, he feels like he has something to answer for. He had a head coaching opportunity stolen from him. You've got veterans. You've got undrafted players. I mean, we can get into, you know, Ivan Pace Jr. had the game of his life yesterday. How is Flores able to put these guys into positions, playing multiple positions, and just able to come up with play after play after play?

Should we be now just accepting where they're at on offense as just a middling at best unit and really just focus our attention, optimism, pessimism, or even just entertainment value on what their defense can do? Is that a model? It's certainly not a model that anybody wants to build in 2023, but it could be a fascinating experiment to watch if the Vikings are going to be a team that is only one-dimensional. How far can that take them,

and what is that worth watching over the last four games? Yeah, the hard part about that is when you watch these last two weeks and you could even go back to the second half of Denver. I mean, we are talking about now 10 quarters of football and 23 points now going back to the second half of Denver. I mean, that's just not going to get you anywhere. And then as of today, I believe they would be going to Dallas, who has won 15 straight games at home and is an absolute juggernaut. And I guess some people are unfortunately going to have to give Mike McCarthy some credit for where that team is at.

Their quarterback's playing like an MVP. They have the best player on defense in football. Like that's where you'd have to go. Anybody happy about that matchup? If that's going to happen right now, then yet at the same time, if the defense continues to do what it's doing and you get to the end of the year and you're in a playoff spot and you're at least have a chance in the dance because of your defense then you can look at this as one of the great turnarounds from season to season that i have ever seen because normally defensively it's incremental it's like okay you rank 27th you get a few players in the draft develop a few guys guys. All right, now you're like, yeah, 15th, 18th.

I mean, with Zimmer, it went that way even, where it was like 2013, they're the worst in the league. 2014, they make some progress. 2015, they're pretty good. And then by 17, they're the best defense in the league. That's what I expected. I thought this year they'd be 18th, and we'd be like, hey, good for you. But instead, this is a dominant unit. And with a lot of great

stories, I mean, an undrafted free agent, a sixth round pick a fourth round pick DJ one, and was pretty much left for dead. Even by this team, when they went and got Marcus Davenport, he's making plays on a weekly basis. That has been a really fun development. And there's the cynical side that says they're going to waste this defense because of a quarterback injury. And would this have been like a 12 win team? If Kirk didn't get hurt, like would they have just gotten on a run, uh, let, you know, 11 or 12 win team, uh, by the end of the year, if they had played defense like this, because if the amount of points you have to score is 12 to beat the other team, then, you know, Kirk usually was able to do that.

So there's that cynical side, but there's also the side that goes, you know, you don't have to give a lot of this back, like in the offseason. I mean, if Harrison Smith comes back and continues to play this way, we'll see on a Daniel Hunter decision, everybody else you get to keep. These players are going to be here. And then there's only the florist discussion. So in that way, they have moved much closer to being a legitimate championship contending team on the defensive side, because a lot of these pieces can stay here for years to come. And that development can't be ignored just because we may have watched the worst football game since the 40s.

Well, and that's and then so how do you unpack that? Like, how do you, how do you appreciate that? Is there something to be gained by, you know, hammer and tonguing your way to nine, nine and eight and a home date against Dallas? If anything, you know, that would be the ultimate stage for this, this defense to really show what it can do. I mean, you're taking on an MVP candidate in Prescott. You're taking on the most prolific offense,

one of the most prolific offenses in the NFL against a team that can't seem to lose at home. That would be, you know, peak opportunity prove-it mode. I don't know if that's worth investing your time and treasure into. I think it's fun to watch. I think it's interesting to watch. I don't know how he's going to build up. And then, of course, now with Cincinnati, as we've said,

there's been many iterations of what Cincinnati has been in the last several weeks, losing Burrow, discovering Jake Browning, and suddenly they're back in gear. That game is suddenly foreboding, and you also have it moved up a day by the TV wonks, so now you're on a short week. You mentioned Brian O'Neill's out with an ankle injury. What's Madison's status going to be? What's Jefferson's status going to be? I'd have a little bit of trepidation next time going up.

Catching passes from Nick Mullins and Josh Dobbs is hazardous for your health, as he just realized, and I don't know where the Vikings are going to be at. We still don't know what the next iteration of Jefferson is after the hamstring injury. We never really got to see him open it up and go downfield. We haven't seen him take that deep ball, take that deep shot yet. What is he going to be able to do? What are the defenses going to do to account for him?

He was lost so quickly in the midst of the, you know, run, run, incomplete slash sack punt status that the Vikings offense was, we had no idea what his real impact and return could be yet. So there's that aspect to follow as well. But I, I just wonder, you know, the defense has got so much riding on it. It feels like it, it doesn't feel like it's, there doesn't seem to be any sniping. There doesn't seem to be any, you know, what else can we do kind of attitude. It seems to be a, this is who we are now. And I think even O'Connell in his post-game comments seem to appreciate that. I mean, that's all he can grasp on right now. It's the most positive thing you have going is you've got, you know, a turnaround defense for buying gifts and spending time with family,

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help. H E L P.com slash insider. It's going to have to be. And if it's Nick Mullins or Josh Dobbs, I'm with you. It's probably gotta be Nick Mullins, but you never know. This could be a Tommy Kramer, Wade Wilson type of situation where if it doesn't work out in the first or second quarter, just like, all right, try the other guys. See if the other guys got something because, you know, it's not like Nick Mullins has some long successful career. He has bounced around quite a bit in his career for the same reasons that Josh Dobbs has. And Mullins threw about three or four passes

that could have been intercepted and weren't. And if you're the Raiders, you probably look at a lot of situations where you're like, one inch away, just get your hands on that football and maybe it's a different outcome for them because of how many balls were in harm's way i do think that mullins gives a better chance to not kill justin jefferson uh because at least accuracy isn't necessarily mullins problem i think it's really arm strength and the fact that he's barely played since 2020. So Hey, timing and accuracy, but you did see the guy throws a 12 yard out or whatever, and throws it on time, throws it fairly accurate. I think if you're just a Jefferson, you probably would prefer to play with Nick Mullins. He's been on the team.

He knows the offense inside and out. You could call pretty much whatever you want, and you would be calling the offense that you built for Kirk Cousins and not trying to infuse whatever it is that you think you're going to put Josh Jobs in that situation. But without Alexander Madison, and this is something three weeks ago, I would have been like, I don't know, whatever. Let's just see more Ty Chandler. Madison's been great. The last couple of weeks, he has been legitimately very, very good. And in the first half, I remember they bring those stat sheets by the PR and they set them at your place in the press box.

And I looked down at it and he had run like nine times for 60 yards. And I thought Mike Zimmer couldn't stop running. Kevin O'Connell can't start running. He can't stick with it. I remember a game where Kevin Stefanski ran 10 straight times on a touchdown drive. And I think it was against the Dallas Cowboys and it was with Madison and Delvin cook.

And it was like, Kevin O'Connell might want to familiarize himself with that particular drive because that might be what you have to do is play a field position game and try to run the football more and then hope that Brian Flores' defense grinds it out. And this is just antithetical to who Kevin O'Connell is. He's a former quarterback who was brought here to work with a veteran quarterback to give him a bunch of complicated stuff and ask him to make incredibly precise and accurate throws down the football field because that's what he thought he had to then all worldwide receiver. And then when all that's taken away, that's why if we were putting together a pie chart of blame,

it's like the most interesting thing to talk about is how they game plan and what the strategy was, because that's what makes football great. But it's like 4% of the reason that they scored three points uh and the rest goes to drops backups the offensive line injuries where you're playing david questenberry and then at one point dalton reiser limps off and he was probably playing at 50 the rest of the game i mean all of those things played into it and so there's like a discussion about the game and what happened. And then how do you even deal with this going forward to try to make it into a season? That's a success, which was going to be my question for you. Like, that's the thing that I want to keep going back to with you each week.

Like what's the success now? Like after we've seen that this isn't going to be the Dobbs magic carpet ride to the end and it's sort of officially over the carpet is parked and it will probably not come out of the garage again so here's nick mullins where you have to do extreme game managing like is it just a success to make the playoffs is it a success to lose every game from here because this has to come up with every discussion that we have like what what what is good for you well what is good for me is that just putting it on the backs of the defense and see where they can take you because that's really

what what you got that's the one card you can play right now it's the it's the only hand you have and i'd like to see how that can work in the modern nfl in 2023 can you hitch every hope to your defense and see where this can take you and you're going to have to watch through fan fingers over the last four weeks. You know, I think nine and eight, which I think I was kind of whistling about the last couple of weeks, seemed to be likely. Now that seems like the best case scenario. Nine and eight, crawling in, winning 16 to 13 if you can.

I want to see, you know, it's almost like this is now the fourth iteration of what this team was. We talked about the early, the 0-3 and 1-4, and then leading into Cousins' season injury and Jefferson's eight-week injury. That seemed to be one case. And then you pivot over to Dobbs, and you have the miracle worker in Dobbs and the possibilities that Dobbs can present, that comes into another iteration. And now we're almost into the point where it's

now a defensive team. This is now the fourth version of this team that you've seen since training camp and opening day. This is who you are. You are going to have a very, very pedestrian quarterback in Nick Mullins, very likely leading a very banged up unit that's patched together on the offensive line that is going to have to manage a game. You're going to have to hope for and maybe even count on maybe even points from the defense, but you're going to have to basically say, look, guys, you guys have, this is your team. This is your destiny, whatever the defense is going to be able to do. And I don't know what that looks like in 2023. And I don't know what that looks like against kind of a resurgent Cincinnati team that suddenly seems just as potent with Jake Browning as it might have with Burrow. You've also got now

your two games against Detroit who seem to be regressing back somehow. Somehow the North is still in play. It seems unlikely, but the NFC North is not secure in Detroit's hands. You've got two opportunities against them. And now a New Year's Eve game against Green Bay, that seems more significant too. You've still got a rivalry game out of that. I still think there's a lot of entertainment value in what if that can really carry you through. It's not going to be pleasant to watch. But if you're really interested in seeing what, you know, a throwback defense can do in the modern NFL and how far it can take a

team, this may be a working experiment that we're not going to see very often either looking back in the near-term past or certainly in the near-term future. And one thing I always like to leave the door open for is once we think we know something, we are told by the NFL, you know, absolutely nothing. And Jake Browning, these last two games has been incredible, but also Josh Dobbs was incredible for two games. And there's no guarantee whatsoever that Jake Browning will just continue to do this. Although I think they have great coaching and unbelievable weapons. Whoever made those three deep graphics for the Vikings

might want to take down those Twitter posts because there is no Chris Carter and Jake Reed here to go with your Randy Moss. I mean, this is KJ Osborne. I mean, is going to hope to latch on somewhere after this season, as opposed to thinking he was getting a big contract. He had a horrendous game. And so the weapons are not the same as they are in Cincinnati. But I also think that Jake Browning, knowing that offense for several years is really helpful and has developed and has learned to play like Joe Burrow to try to emulate everything

Burrow does. And they just don't ask him to be much of a playmaker. And I saw one of the people from Cincinnati tweeting about only 30% of their dropbacks are just like a, uh, from the other day are just like a regular straight seven step drop hitch throw. Uh, everything else is play action. Everything else is screen. So they have done a great job there. And if there is a critique for O'Connell, it's, I don't think that he really knows how to manage a quarterback that's bad or, or is less talented than his starter. Right? Like, I think, I, I think that Zach Taylor sort of went back to the McVay days of early Jared Goff, where it was like, run the play action,

run the play action, run the play action. And let's sort of squeeze this thing and get the ball to the playmakers. But of course, again, when you lose your best playmaker early in the game, that throws out so much. And then you're saying, all right, Brandon Powell, get in there and play the role of somebody, you know, and KJ Osborne step up and be somebody that kind of thing. So there was a lot of things that went into it, but I do want to leave the door open for some sort of Trent Dilfery stuff where they game manage and they play action and they run the ball and they just squeak out like several wins here and get into the playoffs. And I do think that if they are able to make the playoffs and then when you start to add up all the things that they've gone through this season,

that's where it's always on a spectrum of expectation. Like if the Dallas Cowboys don't reach the NFC championship or Superbowl, they're a disappointment because they have their quarterback. They're this mega team. Like they've got everything going for them. If they had lost their starting quarterback and the CD lamb went down and everything else, I would look at them and say, wow, they made the playoffs. That's good for them because we do have to grade on that type of spectrum.

So I feel like that's the type of thing that I have sort of struggled with. But at least with Nick Mullins, I will say that the guy does know where the ball's supposed to go. It's not like he got here a month ago. He had a training camp. He had a preseason. And now that we know the volatility of, of Dobbs and the lows can be as low as they are. This does give them probably if, if they do decide to go with Mullins, I'm assuming they will, the best chance to have that 9-8 outcome. Yeah, and is that good enough? I mean, if you're looking at this season as a fan and you're trying to take all of it in in its totality,

I don't think that was too far off from where preseason predictions were. It was sort of a 9-8, slash, maybe 10-win season, which of course, you know, went turned to ash as soon as they were 0-3 and 1-4. So the fact that they would, you know, they are in contention here for the wildcard position, and they're in a position where they've retooled and redefined their team, maybe not their expectations, but at least redefined who they are as a team, that is not easy to do on the fly several times during a season. So this is who they are. This is who you have. You have to accept that.

I don't necessarily think there's a lot of anger out there. I feel like there's a lot of shrugging of shoulders and indifference. This is as good as it's going to get. This is what it's going to be, and are you willing to watch and are you willing to invest? Are you willing to say, this is something I can at least get behind and see? I'm intrigued by it. If anything else, they are nothing if not intriguing. We've been saying that for several years.

But the way in which they find themselves into either positions that they've backed themselves into by their own poor play or mishaps or unintended consequences. I like to see how they respond. I like to see how O'Connell is going to kind of pivot now. He had the bye. He had an extra week. He said all the right things. He gave Dobbs another chance. It just didn't happen.

It didn't work out, and he may go into more after reviewing what he saw, the reasons why he didn't think that worked out here in the next couple hours. But I just don't think there's really going to be much different. You're going to have Mullins, who's the safe bet. You're going to have a banged-up team on offense. I don't know where the protection is going to be. Where are there going to be the receiving options? What's Jefferson's level of practice going to be again this week?

There's going to be so much uncertainty swirling around this team offensively that you've just got to turn your attention to defense and find some satisfaction in sort of the turnabout story that Flores has authored, but also maybe this can be a team that can be dangerous because of defensive dominance. I don't think that's sustainable in 2023. It certainly wouldn't be sustainable in Arlington against Prescott and the Cowboys in a first-round matchup, but it could be worth watching to see what the possibilities are

because that's the only thing right now that feels like there's any possibility and there's any, I don't want to say hope, but I just think there's something to latch on to. And as you mentioned, it's a young developing unit that's not just going to vanish when the season ends. This is a unit that's also building up some scar tissue and experience and might be able to, you know, as you settle your quarterback position during the offseason, you're going to do it knowing that you've got more of a, it's not just a, you know, not just a defense that does just enough and maybe earned its way back to the middle of the pack,

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I think a lot about how, if one or two things plays out differently with, with all football and all of sports, but football is especially the, if one thing plays out slightly differently, how it changes the entire emotions of everything around the game. And I was thinking if Greg Joseph makes his 49-yard field goal and they just get in the end zone with one decent drive and it's a 13-0 win, we're probably like,

all right, okay, that'll work. Go ahead. That's fine. All right, on to the next team, survive in advance. It really is that it was historically bad to have a 3-0 game and that everyone hated themselves for spending the time to watch it that made, I think that feeling much more intense. And then when you sort of look up and go, well, you are seven and six, you are in the driver's seat. And after you started, Oh, and three, let's do the math. I mean, you have now won seven games and lost three since you started. Oh, and three.

And that's with losing your quarterback. That's with losing your backup. So there's this global view of like how this has come along throughout the season that if you just didn't look directly at it and someone just told you, like, imagine someone just told you like, Oh, they won yesterday and you asked no follow-ups. You'd be like, man, that's kind of crazy how this has happened. You would have assumed Dobbs went for like 250 and ran for a touchdown. But again, don't look directly at the football

when it comes to that. But even another drive, even a touchdown drive, even Jefferson staying healthy throughout the game would have not made it feel so down. But as you're going through this game and they can't move the ball and the report is Jefferson's headed to the hospital, it's like, who can feel good about this? But you're always that one week away from a completely different feeling. So you go to

Cincinnati with half your roster, maybe the way that things are going and, you know, another starting quarterback. And if you beat Cincinnati, who's been playing extremely well recently, and you do it on the road by any means, even if it's a 12 to 10 and you get the victory, then we will go into these final three games being like, I don't know, like this could be a really fun expectation list run to the end where you, you know, you maybe beat Detroit and get in the playoffs and then see what happens.

And then if it's not Dallas that you play and it's Detroit, then it's well, okay, but you can't actually beat Detroit because they're a lot more vulnerable when you have a good defense, when Detroit plays good defenses, they seem to have problems. So it can swing so much,

but I wanted to finish on this. What do we think that this year, now that we know the range of outcomes is quite simple. It's either they don't have any offense the rest of the way and they lose these games and they had a season that went how you would have thought when you started 0-3, a competitive rebuild season where there were a lot of developments from players but not enough to really compete, versus maybe 9-8, which I could also say all those same sort of things. How should we feel now that we have a very good idea of the range of outcomes

about Kweisi Daffomensa and Kevin O'Connell as a leadership? Well, I think they've, you know, look, they've been spoon-fed a lot of adversity here. And I've been, you know, Kweisi answered the bell when Cousins went down. I mean, the timing was fortunate. It was right before the trade deadline. He didn't necessarily panic. He moved to sixth round pick and picked up Dobbs. And he jolted. I think he sent a message to the locker room. I'm not giving up on you. He brought somebody in that, you know, gave them a jolt. It was obviously that they were playing with house money for so long.

It was not going to be sustainable what he was doing in the manner in which he was doing it. When you give NFL defenses time, they're going to figure out a reason why you're drifting along several different teams and not able to secure that number one job. So that's, I give them, you know, what I'm curious about is if this team does pivot and it seems to be pivoting to a defense-led team, it is going to be kind of a Brian Flores show. You know, O'Connell's going to have to manage a game plan that's not going to be sexy. It's not, it's going to be, you know, contained and basically risk averse. And that's not exactly going to earn him a lot of accolades, but he may have to swallow his pride and know this is the

team he's dealing with. I think he knows that, but it's going to be interesting to see, you know, how Flores responds. And I think he's probably going to take it upon himself to look at this as his four to five game audition for the, why I was looked over, why I was screwed over in Miami. This is what I'm capable of doing. And I, you know, like, I don't see any ego clash between the two of them, but it's almost like a little, slightly like a Buddy Ryan or a Mike Ditka. You know, when you think of the 1985 Bears, the defense will tell you this was Buddy Ryan's team. The offense barely got out of the way, and we won every game, you know, 17 to nothing and sacked every quarterback a half dozen times every week.

I'm not comparing the Vikings to the 85 Bears by any means, but it looks like this is going to be a one-dimensional team going forward, and it's going to take on the personality of its defensive coordinator its defensive leaders who are building up a lot of experience and also confidence and again the way he's been able to use that maximize the the potential of a lot of these afterthought players and putting them in different positions I mean not only is Pace Jr. stepping up and making plays but he's now the play caller in the defensive huddle because Jordan Hicks was lost. I mean, that, you know, we talk about all the significant injuries the Vikings have suffered on offense.

I mean, losing Jordan Hicks to a serious leg injury. I mean, you know, he's the leader of that unit and they haven't regressed at all. If anything, they've gotten better. Cincinnati is going to be a different challenge, though. We know that because the Raiders are a bad team, clearly a bad team, overmatched. They also lost its coach. The Bears are who they are, even though they beat the Lions yesterday. That was a winnable game at home. And even Denver, I don't know what kind of team that is and how you measure how poorly the Vikings played for that second half in Denver. This is going to be their most formidable challenge. All these games coming up now are against playoff contenders. It's one thing to win three to nothing against the Raiders. You cannot

expect to go into Cincinnati and win barely by a field goal. I'll be interested to see how they respond to what is coming up now are some really formidable challenges. I've got an idea. I want to end the podcast with this. There was something out there. I don't remember where it came from, so I'm hoping that it was real. I think it was real that the Vikings reached out to Tom Brady when Kirk Cousins got hurt. Now tom brady to play eight games and then into the playoffs that would be a lot for a guy who hasn't been playing what if you only asked him to play four games or three

games into the playoffs i know he's like 50 but he has to be working out, right? It's got to be tossing the pigskin around. Should they call Brady back? Maybe. Just check. Just check. There's only a few games left, man. The 49ers called Big Ben last year, and there was the idea that they might,

like if they had won the game that Brock Purdy got hurt, that Big Ben might have been starting in the Super Bowl for them. Or no, that was after Jimmy Garoppolo got hurt. I think they called Big Ben because they were like unsure what they had in Brock Purdy. So they had like checked in with Big Ben. Three games for Brady at the end of the season in the playoffs? Check again.

Oh, why not? I have no objection to making the call, but put yourself in Tom Brady's shoes. Really? Am I going to get off the couch for this? I'm going to get behind that offensive line. I'm going to be not sure if I'm going to be able to throw to Jefferson. I have no running game, and I'm going to basically come in

and let this defense carry me. I mean, A, what are the sweeteners in the pot? But also, you know, what's the end game for him? I mean, it sounds convenient to just roll in for three games, but I'd make the call. Of course you'd make the call. Where's this even coming from? Where's this white smoke coming from? I actually don't remember where it was reported

that the Vikings reached out to Brady, that they at least like sent him a check at least sent him a text to check in. But I believe that was real because I think we talked about it on the show, that that was a thing that was reported that actually happened. But, you know, I don't think he wants to come out. Fifth version of this team, like a fifth. Right, yeah. I don't think that he wants to come out.

This is reminding me, and this goes like a fifth right yeah i i don't think that he wants to come out this is reminding me and this goes like way back but that browns team that ended up with don strock like don strock coming out grinding them to the playoffs there should be they got kozar hurt but they also had like three other backups get hurt and don strock had to show up at age like 38 and get him into the playoffs and i think they had to win in a comeback fashion the last day. Okay. There is one more. Should we criticize them for not calling Joe Flacco? Because Joe Flacco is actually playing really well for the, for the Browns. Like maybe, maybe if there's one guy that you said, Hey, like he was free, you didn't have to give up anything. And he had a better, much better history that that would have been the guy to go to. I have trouble doing that considering what he looked like

when he was playing for the Jets, but he is playing pretty well under Kevin Stefanski. Yeah, but he's more of an iteration of what Cousins was too, right? I mean, just sort of your traditional immobile dropback guy. I think with Dobbs, there was the exciting dynamic of a new dimension and what he could do maybe and yeah it's it's interesting to say Flacco was there I mean he was obviously there and put but you know and Cleveland's obviously a team that's built on its defense as well it'll be interesting to see what he can do taking them down this down

the stretch as well yeah they probably could have cooked kicked the tires more on him as well but I you know they did what they did with Dobbs. They got a couple of weeks out of it. I just think that reality has stepped in and kind of shaken us all back down to our boots to realize this is not how – this is not – there's a reason Josh Dobbs was where he was and where he's probably going to be, which is on the sidelines we may never see him throw another pass again, but we'll talk. We'll talk about those two weeks in November when he was the toast of the town and had everybody thinking of random possibilities that just the NFL always seems to crush it

when you're playing the long game. A lot of times, unless it's Brock Purdy, who might win MVP now after being a seventh round pick and a magic carpet ride that some people still don't even believe is real. But anyway, if Flacco goes to the Super Bowl, then for sure the Vikings should have gotten him. But otherwise, all the options were bad. They did what made sense at the time and have gotten several wins out of it. But three wins, two losses. If when they acquired Dobbs, you said, well, that's where they're going to be three wins, two losses after five weeks with Dobbs, you'd be like, Oh wow. That's pretty good. Uh, just again,

don't ask how we got there. Uh, speaking of don't ask, you're still in Vegas. You're headed out. I hope you had a great time. I had a great time hanging out with you when we were there. And hopefully they'll put Vegas on the schedule again because I really enjoy going out there. So thanks for all your podcasting while we were there. Hope you had a great time. I did. We'll talk to you later.

Today's the debriefing day. I don't leave until 6 p.m., so I still got to hang out with my buddies one more time and try to figure out who's in and out of the wreckage and what exactly, what, what, what we, what went down yesterday, both in and outside the game. Cause I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Story storytelling day. That's, that's what it is for today for you. Before you fly back. Well, yeah, it was fascinating to fly back with a group of Vikings fans. There was no skull chanting after a three-0 win on a red-eye flight,

but we made it. So thanks, Murph, and thanks, everybody, for watching slash listening.