Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Caleb Williams wanted to be a Vikings?!?!? ESPN's Kevin Seifert breaks it down.

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

ESPN's Seth Wickersham wrote in his new book that Bears QB Caleb Williams wanted to be a Viking, instead of being drafted by the Bears. Matthew Coller is joined by ESPN's Kevin Seifert to break it down and discuss the Vikings' schedule.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Coller here and joining the show now. ESPN's Kevin Seifert to talk schedule, to talk off season. We finally have the dust settled on the Minnesota Vikings roster. Got OTAs and mini camp coming up next. But I was coming off the golf course and I got a text here, Kevin Seifert. And all I see is the word juicy.

I'm like notorious BIG. Like, what are we talking about here? And Kevin, before we even get into it, I'm just going to read. I'm just going to read from ESPN.com and a little bit of a excerpt from Seth Wickersham's new book, American Kings. Here's what it says. Cause actually your juicy description really paid off here. Wickersham's new book, American Kings. Here's what it says. Cause it actually, your juicy description really paid off here.

It says, after an up and down final season at USC, Caleb Williams was unsure what he wanted to do as he prepared for the 2024 draft. At the NFL combine that year, he met with Minnesota Vikings head coach, Kevin O'Connell. The two hit it off and Caleb began to dream of what it would be like to play in Minnesota. I need to go to the Vikings, he told his father.

Let's do it, his father replied, but both Caleb and his father Carl knew that a trade to a division rival was extremely unlikely. Bears GM Ryan Pohl stood firm telling Williams, we're drafting you no matter what. Wow. What a day in the middle of May. Caleb Williams wanted to be a Viking. Seifert reaction. It reminds me of Patrick Royce. He always saying like whenever he did, couldn't can't figure out what column he's going to write. He said, eventually the Lord has provided us with podcast fodder You know some of this there had been rumblings of the Williams family being not so sold on the Bears Chicago as a landing point prior to the draft and if you remember even JJ McCarthy even said I think the day was

drafted maybe the next day that all the Quarterback prospects he had spoken to during the pre-draft process had said that the Vikings were their top choice. He didn't say if he talked to everybody or just that the ones that he did talk to said that, so we couldn't say for sure that that meant Caleb Williams. But I think, I mean, all the obvious reasons were on the table a year ago, in terms of just the structure a quarterback would be taken into from coaching to roster to where the team was in their building process. But it wasn't on the record. And it wasn't on the record in this level, these types of quotes. Like I think if you kept reading there a little further, Caleb Williams realized that the only option he had to do this was to essentially just go public and just attack the Bears as being a team he wouldn't go to, attack the city of Chicago as a team he wouldn't want to play in.

And then he says something like, I decided I couldn't go nuclear on the city or I couldn't nuke the city. I mean, whoa, this is incredible in terms of just like the wording that being used. And this was after the draft, I don't know exactly when the interviews were, but like this is knowing that he's gonna be on the Bears

in the 2025 season and playing in Chicago for his home games. And so that's wild as well. And so I think, you know, this will reinforce and elevate the near godlike status that Kevin O'Connell already has with the football intelligentsia, I guess you could say. And for good reason, there's a lot of, you know,

there's just so much evidence and data already out there for why quarterbacks would want to play for him. And it throws a little bit of a, you know, at least a short-term wrench into Caleb Williams moving forward with the new coaching staff. And, you know, I know that the people that, at least the coach that drafted him last year is no longer there, but the GM still is. And, and, uh, and the owners are still the same owners and the team president is still Kevin Warren, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, a, uh, overall a good day for the Vikings.

Let's put it that way. Well, and I spent the car ride home thinking about about seven different things that I wanted to pick apart with this. I think the first is the Vikings angle to it. Kevin O'Connell has a way of communicating with quarterbacks. That is his secret sauce to doing this. And sometimes we've talked about it so much. We have a mutual friend who really doesn't like when you say quarterback whisperer.

And it's kind of a cliche and all that. And that was Bruce Arians book name. And it's not usually a real thing because it depends on the talent of the quarterback. It depends on if you have Justin Jefferson and it's easier to whisper to quarterbacks, but why do we think it is that he has this connection with quarterbacks? I mean, even with like Anthony Richardson, when he's pumping him up after the game or Sam Darnold, we just can't say enough how bad Sam

Darnold had been in his career before coming to the Minnesota Vikings. Then he throws 35 touchdowns, leads them to 14 wins and is by far the best version of himself. And that was really the canary in the coal mine. Like if he can do that because Kirk had been a good quarterback before and just continued to be a good quarterback Who seemed to believe in himself a little bit more unlike me on the greens from about five feet away? But Kirk got a little more confidence at the end of games, but we could have said well He was good under Stefanski He got Stefanski a head coaching job in Cleveland and well with Josh Dobbs was like well

It didn't really work for Josh Dobbs But for Sam Darnold with a whole off season to work with him. Wow. Look at those results. And then you hear this from Caleb Williams. Like, this is a real thing. It is. And I think there's several elements to it.

One, I think it just starts with his personal, you know, character or just the way he carries himself and the way he talks. Like it's not like classic football alpha that kind of I think is phasing out. Like if you, if you're, and we've talked about this, when you're around youth sports and you see how coaches get the most out of these kids, it's a lot closer to the way Kevin O'Connell is from a personality standpoint and a positivity standpoint and

an encouragement standpoint and a building of confidence standpoint than a lot of the some of the greatest coaches in the history of the game. Like, you know, what would how would people react to Vince Lombardi, right? You know, in 2025, how would they react to George Hallis in 2025? Like, it's just different. And so I think there's that connection and he's obviously younger. He's still a lot older than these players, but he's on the younger side. I think a lot, I think that you can't say too much about just the streamline structure of the fact that he's a former quarterback that got to the NFL. You know, he can joke about his career, but he still was was one of 96 quarterbacks or so in the league

for set for multiple years. And he's the play caller. So there's nobody running interference between him and the head coach, the quarterback and the head coach. And he speaks the language and he teaches his scheme in a way that makes a lot of sense. It's not, you know, it's hard to describe in a short period of time, but basically it's the concepts apply to all the plays. It's not that you need to know what your first read is on this play and that second play

and third play, it's like a more of an all-encompassing approach. And so it's all very easily easy to pick up all that stuff in the 15 minutes that you spend in a in a combine interview let alone in film sessions over the course of an off season. And so I like I'm sure there's lots of other reasons but to me those are the things that jump out as far as the quick impression. And once that word of mouth starts, like you'd have to, he'd really have to do a, you know, a U-turn in terms of the way he, um, talks and acts for that reputation to be shattered. And I think that we focus mostly on the positivity because it's the most clear to

us, the Vikings put out a video that said, you know, with him at the end of a game saying, Sam Darnold, you're my favorite person of all time. I love you forever. Please complete this pass. But what they don't show you on the video is before the play where he is pointing out something with the defense or behind the scenes in a meeting where every week he was meeting with J.J. McCarthy and they're going over what happened the previous week. And I think that what Kevin O'Connell has a tool in his bag that not every football person has is the ability to communicate very clearly.

Sometimes we get word salad answers, but if you look at the answers that he'll give us on technical stuff. And you go back and look at it, you're like, I understand and I don't know football like Sam Darnold or any of these NFL players. And yet he has a way of distilling things that are very, very clear. And I think if you're a quarterback in a world where it's so muddy all the time, where you have so many different things that you have to understand and memorize

and everything else, someone who can show you here is why we do this and I'm communicating this to you in a way that you process it and understand it. I thought we saw throughout the season, a very confident Sam Darnold with where he was supposed to throw the football and just understanding all that sort of stuff. And then you add the energy, you add the fact that he is a younger coach than some of these other guys and also that he's the head coach so it's his show and it's run his way so it's not going to be like well the offensive coordinator and uh we've been through this with Zimmer and multiple coordinators well the offensive coordinator wants to do it one way but the head coach is

saying no we have to do it another way well that's never going to be a conflict in Minnesota folks. I'm trying a new thing to try to stop going to fast food restaurants all the time with my busy schedule. It is called tempo meals. Tempo is a weekly delivery service that delivers chef crafted meals from a dietitian approved menu, fresh to your door. They're perfectly portioned lunches and dinners. Take the guesswork out of eating. They're fully prepared. They can be heated up in the microwave in just three minutes.

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hold yourself back from whatever the max, the optimization of your offense. And when the head coach is that same guy and like, again, JJ McCarthy explicitly said like when he was talking about why he wanted to come to Minnesota that like defensive head coaches in Chicago at the time, Matt Eberfluss, Washington with Dan Quinn, New England with Gerard Mayo. And maybe he probably didn't know Atlanta wanted a quarterback, but there's a defensive head coach there as well. And so like that's appealing no matter who the guy is,

like that's an appealing structure as well. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And then you add in the history of Vikings quarterbacks overachieving and the history of Bears quarterbacks underachieving. But let's go to the Caleb Williams part of this. Yeah. The Chicago market and fan base

is not always the most forgiving, I think. And what came to mind for me last year is I saw a guy who didn't seem very comfortable in his skin in Caleb Williams. Now, there were times where it was magical and incredible, and we saw that at Soldier Field right up close. There were also times where it looked like he would rather be anywhere else than playing for the Chicago Bears, including the game at US Bank Stadium, where he's showing on the sideline and he's kind of falling apart and that sort of thing. But there were many different moments like that throughout the season.

He didn't have the confidence to call a timeout on Thanksgiving. We all blamed Eber Fluss. He deserved the blame, but still the QB could throw up the T anytime he wants to. And it just didn't feel like he was really embracing that leadership franchise number one overall pick type of role. And then you saw it with even the way some of his receivers responded to him and his

teammates. And you have to wonder now whether this seeped into that, right? Like if you are in a place where you had your first impression, this is not going to be great for me. And then it wasn't going swimmingly. It's not going to make it better that you thought it was the worst place for you. No, it's not. And then you, and I have mixed feelings about the Caleb part of this because like to take a step back, like as great of a job as O'Connell did last year with Sam Darnold, I S I will always say that like Sam Darnold was in a spot in his life and his career where he was ready to be better and

Like it can't it's not just the organization. It's not just the coach It's the player to it always has to be the player like it It's not like he's in the TV show severance and stepping into an elevator and as soon as you get into the Vikings floor you've You know, you're suddenly able to become a great quarterback. It has to be in you. You have to, it has to be part of what you're able and ready to do. And so I don't know how Caleb Williams would have been at any of the other stops. The other place we know where success was attainable was in Washington. Would he have been as good as Jaden Daniels was last year in Washington?

I don't know. Would he, if he had had, if he got drafted to Minnesota and end up playing, would he have, would any of those things shown up, you know, despite O'Connell's work? You know, maybe, I don't know. And so part of this, like, I just think it just needs to be pointed out. Like some of this is, some of what we saw last year is on Caleb, no matter what the structure is. But there, like there's, there are reasons. It's not just, like,

the spin of the dial that a quarterback, you have to go back so long, you know, to before any of us were born to find a really top-end quarterback in a Bears uniform, you know, playing like a top, you know, quarterback. Like, there are, there have been a lot of organizational reasons, whether it was what the ownership was willing to spend or what the, what the head coaches, you know, priorities were. There's been a lot of defensive head coaches in the history of the Bears and Caleb Williams got drafted by one. You know, there's, there's not always been a great effort to accumulate skill players On the Bears and whether that was due to the idea that it's bad weather bad field surface

I don't know if there was like a reason behind that or if they just always identify themselves as a run a running and defensive oriented team, but there are some reasons why Lots of guys who might have had more success elsewhere did not in Chicago. And so, you know, this to me, like, it just, I don't think it's going to materially change the arc of his career, but it's certainly the, all the insight we have so far into Caleb Williams leading up to the draft, getting drafted in the year after the draft is not conducive to him being really successful in Chicago. And you think about this is the third time in a row they've drafted a quarterback

then immediately fired a coach and then paired somebody else with the quarterback that they drafted that is horrendous horrendous process. I can't imagine there's a lot of success stories where that happens, where the coach gets fired immediately, and then you have to pair somebody else to try to solve that problem. I was thinking along the lines for Caleb Williams of just what your general disposition is coming in to be that franchise quarterback because Joe Burrow joined a worse organization or at least just as bad in the

Cincinnati Bengals. And I'm sure behind the scenes, Joe burrow was thinking, what am I going to do here until until he maybe saw Jamar chase play against the Vikings in 2021, then probably thought I'll be okay. But you never got any sense from him that he wasn't like the dude right away. This is my franchise. I'm taking this even when his first year where it was going pretty tough for him and they weren't winning games. It's still you had that kind of vibe. And I'll even say that for Trevor Lawrence, even though it's gone badly for him that you've

never thought that it wasn't like his team who's worse than the Jaguars as a franchise. That's what happens if you pick number one. Yeah. But with Caleb Williams here, if you go into a place, think about if you get invited to a party and you're saying to your wife before you go, do we have to go to this party? I'm not going to have fun. I don't know anybody. I don't even have food. Like when you get there, you're going to be the life of the party or is every single thing that goes wrong going to be like, Oh, this organization, this coaching staff. And I just felt like that was his disposition for all of last year.

It wasn't a, I'm not going to lose by any means possible. It was like, Oh, Eber flus that, and even if he wasn't going up there and saying it offensive line, the body language, the way he acted, I thought you could tell. So now the question is, can Caleb Williams turn this attitude around with Ben Johnson and the things that they've done around him? Well, it's interesting because I think that the one, the other thing that popped up about his approach or the way he plays is that I think he does have a level of like

positional arrogance that he can will the team to win through like an off schedule play where he's scrambling around a million different times and finally find somebody opens a lot of that in college. We all kind of thought you know like that's you can't do that in the NFL and he did have more than a few of those type of plays. He also got lit up on a lot of them as well and took a lot of sacks as well. So I don't know Like what the future for that part is but he did show like like you want someone as the Vikings say who loves football And if you love football You go into whatever organization that drafts you and you say like I am gonna going to flip this thing around, like, we're going to flip it around together. Everywhere I've been, I've been able to do that. There's no doubt in my mind that I can do it along with my teammates and coaches or

what have you. And like, whatever, whatever issues exist, we're going to plow through them, or we're going to jump over them. And to plow through them or we're going to jump over them. And that mentality, we certainly didn't get the sense is something that he carries himself with. It doesn't mean you can't be good. And again, he did show an interest, at least, in trying to will teams to win through his own creativity or off-schedule play. But that would concern me a little bit.

And maybe he's just being smart. Kevin O'Connell says all the time or has said last year that organizations fail quarterbacks before quarterbacks fail organizations. Maybe we should be giving credit to Caleb Williams for recognizing that and recognizing that no matter how good he is or no matter how much he wants to win or no matter how much his will to never give in is that you can't do it alone and you need more structure than what the Bears historically have provided. And so I guess there's that too but like there was enough, as you said, body language and comments and you know, big size and like all those kinds of things, including during the hard

knocks over the summer that you wonder whether he's going to end up being a guy that needs to have everything around him straight before he can be really good. Well, and when you're talking about somebody who was discussed as being a Andrew Luck level prospect, I didn't think that I thought that was unfair. I think it's a hype world that we love to put all those type of things on people unfairly sometimes. And there was a lot of ignoring of the fact that he was one of the worst quarterbacks under pressure in college and that he had a huge fumbling problem and all that sort of stuff

that he was going to need development. And there was no way that franchise was not starting him as QB won right from the very beginning. The Patriots, even though they ended up firing their coach handled it, I thought a lot better with a younger quarterback in Drake May where Jayden Daniels was 24. Even Michael Panics though,

got his time to develop throughout the season, but Bo Nicks 24 years old. So he had been around a lot more and it wasn't just, Hey, Caleb Williams come in and play football for the Chicago Bears. It was a race history. Caleb Williams, right? There's a lot more to it than just they're drafting a guy.

And that, and that's something I had forgotten. I was looking through stats for something. He led the league in attempts last year, I think, like, like through more Pat, like you're talking about a guy who needs development guy who's not, you know, didn't get all the years that Jayden Daniels got and all the, all the attempts that Bo Nix got at all the different colleges he played at. And like, not only are you just throwing them out to the wolves and on day one of OTAs, but like you're having them throw more than any other quarterback in the entire league. It was like 660 passes or something like that. And so like

that, that's always struck me too is like, why are they, you know, why can't a team in Chicago who signed, I think, you know, they spent some money at the running back position last year. why can't a team in Chicago who signed? I think, you know, they spent some money at the running back position last year. Why can't they, you know, run at the run it more and do and not keep putting him in these positions where he's having to make huge plays like that's just textbook ruin quarterback approach. Right, exactly. And so to your point, I mean, he, approach. Right. Exactly. And so to your point, I mean, he was certainly right that it would have been better for him to end up with the Minnesota Vikings.

But I also think that when we look at burrow, go back, where were the Colts before Peyton Manning? A disaster. Like where, where were the Colts with Andrew Luck? They were tanking on purpose. I mean, there's a most of the time. How about poor cam war? We feeling good about the Titans right now.

They need a new stadium. They need a new everything across their roster, but that's the guy who's supposed to be the one who turns it back that other way, not the one who can point at the surroundings and say, well, you know, it wasn't really my fault. That's supposed to be your talent transcending all of that. But it seems like the attitude was really, well, I'm, you know, facing an uphill battle rather than I'm going to be the dude that turns this around.

So let me ask you one more question about this. Such a captivating little news nugget. It is. And plus it's it's this is our week one preview of Vikings. And because now this will be a story. I guarantee that this will still be a story and being talked about by the time the Vikings play there just because we have to. What if it had happened like what I would never would have

happened in a million. You're not doing trading him to Minnesota. You're not trading him to play him twice a year, but if he was here, what would that be like? So if he had somehow gotten to Minnesota as a rookie last year with Sam Darnold here, um, I think it would have started the same way. Um, I think Sam Darnold takes all the first team reps and OTAs. He takes all the first team reps, um, and at least the start of training camp. And then maybe a little bit earlier, Caleb Williams starts mixing in, um, and then maybe a little bit earlier Caleb Williams starts mixing in, you know, before JJ had. And maybe he has a little bit of a better chance to win in week one, or win the job for week one.

But if I would have had a bet, I would have bet Sam Darnold would have been the starter week one, if all things had been equal and Sam had kept his head, you know, knowing that the, you know, Caleb Williams is the one that's behind him. But it's, you know, and the season had gone the same. He wouldn't have played much at all, I don't think. And that's okay. And I think that you would be going into this year thinking like, oh, I can't wait to see what Kevin O'Connell did with Caleb Williams in a year of practice. And so, but if he'd had to get on the field, the thing that I, like, is an unanswerable question there and maybe you have thoughts on it, I don't know, is I know Kevin likes mobility in a quarterback

when necessary. I don't know that he would have been like encouraging him to scramble kind of mindlessly as much as he did last year. I think he really, Kevin likes his scheme, he likes the routes that are being run and he usually feels like there's a place to throw the ball and getting back to why people want to play for him because there usually is a place to throw it for a nice gain. And so I think like that's something they would have had to try, I think at least in some ways to coach out of him is like,

throw the ball, run the play, you know, see it and throw it. And like if they run a defense that wasn't expected or they play something or, you know, a guy falls down, like what, then you, you know, use your running abilities and your improvisational skills. But like, I don't, that would have been where the rubber meets the road, is to what extent would they alter what their expectations for the position

are to accommodate those particular skills that Kirk Cousins nor Sam Darnold really had or were interested in utilizing even if they did have it. And how much would they try to coach that out of them? Well, that's a hard thing to figure out, too, because that offense that Shane Waldron put in did not seem very conducive to him getting the ball out of his hands. It was a disaster.

And then they seemed to rein it into the point where he was throwing 60% screens because they were afraid of him doing that too much. And here's a question that I have, though, after watching the game at US Bank Stadium, and this is this is where I'll just turn up the heat on a take and we'll leave it there and see where it goes in the future. I think JJ McCarthy is a much better fit for Kevin O'Connell. I think JJ McCarthy could be a lot better than Caleb Williams at the end of the day, if Williams continues to play like this and be like this.

And one of the reasons is because I think JJ McCarthy sees the field better. I saw on the tape of the US Bank Stadium game against the Bears, open receivers who are not getting the football. And well, Thomas Brown, I don't think is a total fool. And they were calling plays and guys were getting open. You saw Keenan Allen, who we know is a get open machine.

Just being like, okay, well, I am having a lot of fun out here. Just wandering around wide open and the blitzes and all that sort of stuff. He drops his eyes and he scrambles. And I don't know if there's an easy fix to that of someone who doesn't see the field very well. And I think that Darnold had that issue in his career,

but I think Darnold's biggest issue was just him believing he could make every throw and then getting picked off or sacked all the time. Whereas Williams, I wonder about his size and just his ability to see things progress because that was what was ignored when they were calling him the next Mahomes because Mahomes plays in structure about 70% of the time. Yeah. The other 30% is absolutely magical and all time. Great.

But most of the time he's running the offense that he's asked to run. And I did not see much of that for Williams. So I think that JJ McCarthy ultimately ultimately, though he is less physically gifted than Williams is a much better fit for how O'Connell wants to play. Assuming that how he wants to play is what they've done the first three years. He's not like, I said, never had a quarterback that had the improvisation skills that that Caleb did. So we may never find out like if, if, you know, that it's just, if he's playing this, if he's played this way, because that's who he's had like if if you know that it's just if he's playing this if he's played

this way because that's who he's had or if he if it's he's playing this way because that's how he wants to play. But I do think that like yeah like there's almost zero doubt that J.J. McCarthy's a better fit for the Vikings scheme than Kayla Williams was for the scheme that they started off the year trying which is just too bad for anybody who has genuine interest in the Bears doing well. How about the level of awkwardness? Now, week one, you go to Soldier Field, Kevin O'Connell's standing over there and like,

oh, look, the girl who you really wanted to date is at the prom now across the room, not the one you're here with. That is uncomfortable, I think, for the the entire organization and a part of me thinks, why did they tell anyone that they thought this? That would be something that I would not have revealed and credit to Seth Wickersham for getting this, but like why would you tell anyone if there was another team you wanted to be

with that's another awareness thing of Caleb Williams because now of all the teams to start the season, if it's week seven, well, so much has happened by that point. You start the season with, I know who's got Monday night football. It's you guys. And what do you think they're going to talk about leading up to that game is, Hey, remember when Caleb Williams said he wanted to be a Viking and not a bear? Yeah. I can only assume that that was part of a larger

conversation about like how it was pre-draft, how it was the first year, but now Ben Johnson, who is an offensive-minded head coach, is going to call the plays, is there, you know, his number one job is to get Caleb Williams to play at a high level so the Bears can win games over the course of the next 10 years. And so I can only assume that was part of a larger conversation that led into like, yeah, but now they finally got it the way I want it. But that part was not in the excerpt, at least. So we'll see. Right. Right. And I do think that they do have it how he wants it.

And let's let's then talk about the schedule and what it means for the Vikings. And if you're the person online who's like, who cares about a schedule release? Look at all the fun we're having talking about the schedule. Come on now, folks. Yeah, if nothing else, it makes it easier to like conceive of what these this list of opponents looks like and what it's going to feel like on a week to week basis.

Well, and in this case, the order of operations actually matters a lot. My first run through picking the schedule was very good at the beginning, very good at the end and not so good in the middle. But I do I do love the juice to starting out at Soldier Field nighttime. That place has real spooky drama to it and two teams that drafted quarterbacks starting out the first three games of all 2024 draft pick quarterbacks just interesting on its own and then you go into all hell breaking loose in the middle of the season what was your kind of big takeaway from the way

that this schedule is structured that is it's it's a doozy man. It's like, like, you know, JJ McCarthy will get the most intense, incredibly intense indoctrination imaginable. I mean, I guess maybe they could have been worse or hard slash harder, but you know, you'd have to work to find something that will test a first year starter, not a rookie, but a first year starter more than what starts in the beginning. And it's not like, I mean, there's a few spots there where they've got, there's some soft spots, like getting a bye before they have to play the Eagles, and there's a mini bye before one of their Lions games, and a few other things. But like, even once they catch their breath at the bye after the

Even once they catch their breath at the bye after the trip to Europe, there's a stretch near the end of the year where I think four of their five games are on the road. Three of them, Green Bay, Seattle, and New York are potentially like bad weather games. And then they come back and finish the year with, is it Lions-Packers? Yeah, Lions-Packers. I don't have it in front of me. And so like I could conceive, and I put this in my analysis, like them going through that really rough stretch

of four out of five games on the road and having to come back home for the last two, needing to win both of them to make the playoffs. And I think we all agree that like that this is a playoff caliber roster. It's a very good roster. And if they get playoff caliber play from the quarterback over the course of the year, they'll make it. But anything short, they're not gonna get any breaks,

at least that are foreseeable right now to get them into the playoffs. If they make it, they'll have earned it. And it's, and it's as, I think, Ben Gessling said this, and I agree. It's probably the toughest schedule that he's seen in the 14, 15 years he's covered the team, and I can't remember many others that were harder either. Sorry. I think I may have said three straight, but just back to back 2024 quarterbacks and then they play later on. Jaden Daniels as well.

Uh, lot. I mean, the thing is about this schedule that stands out to me is if you just checked every box of pressure cooker stuff for a franchise. So you have endless national TV games, including playing on Christmas. Merry Christmas to everybody. Hopefully you can compartmentalize between your holidays and the stress of Minnesota Vikings football in the midst of potentially a playoff race.

They are in the toughest division in the NFL. There's another box checked. They have to travel overseas. I think it helps them overall because they get to stay there toughest division in the NFL. There's another box checked. They have to travel overseas. I think it helps them overall because they get to stay there because they don't have to go to Pittsburgh, but still that is a massive disruption to an entire organization.

And then, okay, there's a box checked. You have to play the Superbowl champion. There's a box checked. You have to play kind of on the marquee with your quarterback and the other drafted quarterbacks, which always becomes a big deal Every single one of those things is on this schedule Yet still when I picked it at the end of the day, I ended up with 11 wins So that like and I wanted your feedback on that. Is it too many?

Is it overly optimistic because here's how pick, there's two different philosophies. You could pick by what you think, or you could pick by expectation. I tend to lean more toward like a 70 30. I kind of pick more toward expectation. I think with what they've done here and the decision they made a quarterback, the confidence that they had to have to move on from Darnold, you should be able to still win 11 games against even though there's a lot of tough teams on the schedule. Yep, and I and I and I think I you know that matches what I said in terms of needing to come back and win those last two

games to to make the playoffs because in this division, you know 11 wins might be necessary to make the playoffs. That's what the Packers had last year and weren't they the Were they they were the a wild card? I don't I guess they were the second wild card So yeah, like that's that's what was needed last year. And so um, and I think that they can do that for sure It's going to require like a you know More than replacement play level play from the quarterback

Like he can't just be, to me with this schedule, even though they have a really good team around them, he can't just be okay and get to 11 wins. So I don't know how much you took that into account, but like 11 wins means quarterback playing above replacement level, which means above average basically. And so like that, and that's not undoable. Like there's no reason to doubt that he can be a top,

which that basically means you're a top 16 quarterback. I think that's doable, but like it still has to be done. Like all that, like JJ McCarthy is at the peak of expectation and that we haven't seen him do a single thing wrong yet, you know, because he was great in the, in the preseason. He did what you find during training camp. We haven't seen him do anything wrong yet.

So there's no, there's nothing other than the unknown to doubt him. You know, we'll see some things he does wrong because that's just human, uh, in training camp and in the preseason and maybe early in the year, but to get to those 11 wins, to get through the schedule, um, to make the playoffs, he's going to have to be an above average quarterback at least. So I'm kind of working my way backwards into how good I think McCarthy can be based on the decision to let Darnold go because they could have franchise tagged Arnold and said we were a 14 win team.

How about we run it back and get a guard in the first round and a guard and maybe a couple other role players and Isaiah Rogers and that's all we can afford and that's fine. Yeah. And they haven't really dipped into the giant restructures that they could have done. So they could have done maybe 60% of the stuff that they did around JJ McCarthy. But the fact that they did not do that to me says that the people who have been closest to him, especially Kevin O'Connell throughout the last year, even though there was a flirtation with Aaron Rodgers, still ultimately landed on it is better to move on from a quarterback who was top 10, uh, then to stick with him.

And that to me must mean that they think that JJ McCarthy can be this guy. They would know better than us watching from the sideline on training camp, what they really have there or one preseason game. So that's where we should set the bar for JJ McCarthy. And I think when you look at the recent history of young quarterbacks, we're always saying like, ah, well, he's got no experience or he's nice, pretty young still. And yet you see Brock Purdy year two in the Superbowl,

you see Jaden Daniels in year one in the NFC championship. It has been quite common in the NFL. Even Joe Burrow, who we brought up, was in the Superbowl in the second year of his career. It is quite common that young quarterbacks come in. They're more prepared than ever. And he is the most prepared first year quarterback starting because he had the whole season to observe and learn and everything else and go through that whole

post-draft process, he should be ready to take this team to 11 wins. And there isn't any part of the roster that I would say, man, well, well well he's going to be in trouble because of this or that or the other thing like they have solidified pretty much every position here to be in a spot where he can win that many games. Yeah I think that they like it would have I mean I don't know why their opinion on him would have changed since the draft since they drafted him and I think they felt then that he was somebody that could take them where they want to go. Um, and really the decision that to me, like they had to come to for this year was

what's his floor? Like, do we do we think that in a worst case scenario, if we go to him, that he'll be serviceable enough for us to have good chances to win most of our games. Um, and so that's what, that's the only new information they had to judge, I think, because the team building, uh, you know, just intelligence of it, like lean strongly towards letting Sam go and going with the guy you drafted and at least two or three more years of a rookie contract and then being able to do all the things that they did at the offensive line, defensive line, et cetera, et cetera, running back to help him out.

And that just required them not to necessarily think that he's ready to take them to be Brock Purdy this year, but that his floor is high enough that this entire, you know, season won't be crashed by his poor play. Right. And one thing we can expect, and this happened with someone like CJ Stroud is that there are ups and downs, roller coasters with young players, and they're going to have to work through that themselves because we know this in the NFL. If you have bad back to back games, it feels like the season is over.

The sky is falling everything. And what I have observed already, Kevin and I wrote about this the other day is that the national media has already latched on to the Vikings and J.J. McCarthy as a nice, well-packaged debate topic because they moved on from a really good quarterback and he's a first rounder and this team is good. So welcome to relevancy everyone. Congratulations.

You made it. It's been many years since you've been there, but that also means that we talk about that pressure cooker and that's another box to check too, is that everybody is watching this situation to say, was it the right call to move away from Sam Darnold? And that is a lot of pressure, I think, on the entire organization. How they navigate that will impact where this ends up as well. And it's interesting to me because it seems like a world ago, but there was, not everybody was in agreement on JJ McCarthy in the draft. And like, you know, he had taken Michigan

to the championship, but like, and we don't have to go through it all again, but like he had not thrown the ball very much. It was like historically low levels of passes for a top 10 quarterback in the history of the modern draft. And like, so there were people who were like, he's getting like the Michigan shine. Like if he was the quarterback,

if he had done exactly what he had done at Miami of Ohio or whatever, like nobody would think J.J. McCarthy is a first round quarterback let alone 10. And so like there was definitely this mode of thought that like, if you know, if he was so good, why were they running the ball so much? And kind of like looking past the fact that the coach, you know, at the time there was very much a run oriented guy

and even is in the NFL. But like, so, so that I think that's there's an undercurrent of that still in what a lot of the national media that I, cause I heard you talking about Colin Coward and various people and like, I think that's still whether it's being talked about or not, it's still an undercurrent of how people assess the Vikings decision and how the people assess JJ McCarthy's degree to which he can play well this year is that like there was a lot of debate about whether he was even like a first round quarterback

in the first place, but because he went to Michigan and because he was young and because he's got a really engaging personality and they won the national championship, that here he is, a guy swept up in a reputation that doesn't, that he didn't earn or whatever the argument would have been. And the Vikings, you know, that did a lot of work on it, you know, on him and they, they looked at, you know, O'Connell called them weighty downs, the plays that really mattered when he was asked to throw the ball

and what that looked like, and he felt very confident about it, and they spent tons of time working them out. And so like they felt like this was a case of a quarterback who just was in a system where you just, that's just not, you don't throw it 40 times a game, and it wasn't gonna change

whether he was capable of doing it or not. But I do think like that adds to what you're talking about is like, it's not as if everyone was in agreement that this was a top 10 type prospect at the time. Well, and I remember at the combine, it was the main conversation from everybody that you'd go up and talk to like, hey, so you you buying this McCarthy thing like, yeah, he's a real top prospect. He he was a debatable, probably the most debatable prospect that there was,

because even though Pennix went very high, a lot of the draft analysis community was not as high on him or Bo Nix. And there were people who thought McCarthy was a late first round, a Jackson, dark caliber type of prospect. And then there were people who were very high on him and said, well, I'd take them. I, the Vikings are going to have to trade up and then things like that. There was probably the widest spread on him than any other quarterback in that entire draft, which will crop up again as we go, because we know there's just

nothing in the world that makes football like football as debating quarterbacks. I mean, just flip on a regular day in May on ESPN. I guarantee you there's some quarterback debate going on on TV. It's the most captivating position in sports. And now the Vikings have a controversial decision to some extent of moving on, not to us, but to the outside world. That's a hot story. And then also the fact that you can go back and remember how debatable he was as a prospect. And that's why when Cowherd was reaching back

into what he was at Michigan, I was like, well, wait, I've seen an entire training camp of him. To me, he looked like a top 10 type of talent. As we saw with NFL players on an NFL field and a guy who at age 21, you grow fast, uh, was bigger and stronger and threw the ball harder than we had expected when he got there. But you're right that there was like 10 of us who watched every practice on the

sideline, not the national media who's going to debate him. I will be just curious where that exists as this season goes along because Kevin O'Connell has not had that. They have not been in the spotlight. They have not been a debatable team. They've been a cute story twice that gets a little pat on the head and maybe a Dan Orlovsky breakdown of a touchdown, but this is new territory for this team. And they haven't ever been just crushed. At least this group that, you know, since Quacey became a general man, Quacey Doflamanza became the general manager and Kevin O'Connell came the head coach. 2023 was obviously a tough year, but everybody's like, oh, Kurt, you know,

quarterback gets hurt. What are you going to do? But they've never really been in a position where people like the prevailing argument amongst whether it's the football intelligentsia or just the talking heads or whoever, is that they're doing something wrong and that they've failed and that they, like, that the choice they made has not worked out. And so, and that is, I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, but like they've never been in that position where even like in a, in a, in where even for a small period of time, if JJ McCarthy has a two interception game

followed by a three interception game and you lose both of them, just this small little part of a season that happens, every quarterback goes through it. And this is not to say that people would just be, would be blowing up the entire building, and it's also not to say that these guys live and die by what, you know, Stephen A. Smith or Colin Coward or me or you are saying,

but like they also haven't really had much of it either. And so like, you know, we don't know, are they sensitive? Do they, are they gonna build? Is that gonna help them rally the troops? Or is it just gonna be something they, it doesn going to build? Is that going to help them rally the troops? Or is it just going to be something they, it doesn't have an effect one way or the other, but, something to keep in mind as well. Well, I just think that it's a very,

very real thing in the year 2025 that anybody who could say, Oh, I tune out the media or something. Okay. Well in 1996, maybe they didn't even then, they all read the newspaper then but it was so much easier you just don't pick up a paper you just don't turn on the TV to a certain channel but now there is absolutely no way to ignore it and the ownership is going to know what's being said on TV and they're going to have quite right like it starts to build the pressure inside of a building when this happens and the last time it was in 2018 where the national media was at every training camp

practice and when they lost the game to Buffalo, they got destroyed as you mentioned. And they sort of pulled out of that at one point and then collapsed kind of under the weight of it as that season went along. Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm just saying it's been a while and it is a real thing. For sure. You can't just say, well, just tune it all out because that's not possible in our world today.

So let me ask you one more question. Seventeen games. We got some road trips. We got some quarterbacks who might make the Hall of Fame. We got quarterbacks who are winning Super Bowl. This is if you're talking about a schedule to just observe, if this wasn't through the lens of, wow, this is pretty tough on the Minnesota Vikings.

If it was instead, I love football and want to watch football. There's a lot of good stuff here. What is the best football contest on the Minnesota Vikings schedule? football contest on the Minnesota Vikings schedule? To me, it's the week after the bye when they host the Eagles. There's your Super Bowl champion, there's the team you went to in 2022,

and I think it was, was it 2022 or 23 when they went there? Yeah. 23. Yeah, and they've lost there twice. I can't remember what years were. They all run together. And both games were not by a small amount of points. But both of them were actually more winnable

than the final score indicated if they had made a few less mistakes. And I'm thinking a few Kirk Cret, Kirk Cousins interceptions. And then a Justin Jefferson fumble over the over the pylon. And so like, this is this is the team that has vexed them. And when I was looking at the playoffs last year, you know, people say, well, who's the team that that worries you the most? And maybe I should have said the Rams, but I said the Eagles like that's a team that like You know from especially the way they're built offensive line defensive line was just built to Tear them up. I think and the Vikings, you know

intuitively seemed to get that and and the dress their offensive line dress their defensive line this offseason ways we've talked about and so What that that's the test to find out like did they you know, know, did they actually, you know, come out, you know, Ned ahead on those moves and playing at home against the Super Bowl champions? Can they do it? And so like, that's the, you know, when you ask that question, that's the first game that comes to mind. So I'll go with that one. It's I have not had a chance to cover a Lamar Jackson game against the Vikings because they played him in 17. That was still Joe Flacco. And then in 21, they went to Baltimore, but that was 2021. There was no reason to be traveling to real games at that point. And not only that, that was the game where a team employee pushed someone on a third down in the sideline and they threw a flag, gave him a first down,

help Baltimore ultimately go on to win that game. And overtime, that was kind of a messy game. Jackson wasn't even good that day, but coming off of the season that he had last year, 41 touchdowns, it's almost a thousand yards rushing. Just one of the most exciting players in NFL history and we haven't seen them at all. Interesting. Yeah. yeah, getting him here. I think will be a really cool thing to see how that's the other thing too. The quarterbacks that Brian Flores is about to face. I mean, we

know that he's as good as it gets for his job, but there's going to be a lot of work that needs to be done with the Jaden Daniels, the Lamar Jackson, the Scramblers, the playmakers versus a defense that is, I think more talented than last year. So many freaking good matchups on this schedule. And, uh, you and I will be following the journey together throughout the year. I can't wait for that, but how about one more tiny thing? What's, uh, what, how, how will you deal with JJ McCarthy and OTA reports?

Because I've been trying to think about how, should I just go like fully over the top ludicrous in my reactions to his OTA practices or like, well, reasonable human beings about this? The first thing that came to mind is that I was standing at rookie camp a couple of weeks ago with our friend, Judd Zolgad, who was keeping track of completions and incompletions

and yards in seven on sevens. And I thought he was doing it as a joke. And then I watched his report and he actually referenced that. So part of it made like at least it so that to mandate that I pay attention, I might just keep completions and incompletions for JJ and maybe where he's dispersing the ball just for fun.

And I don't know whether I'll use it or not or how I'll put context around it. But I think I'm gonna do that because I think if nothing else, it keeps me from running my mouth for an hour and a half during practice and instead actually watching. So I'm definitely going to keep the stats and I'll decide how to use them at the appropriate time. To me, it's going to be all about all about feel. I'm a feel guy. You can use your data if you want. I'm going to feel guy like just how how does it feel with him out there running the team is QB one?

Does it look like it's a smooth operation does it look like it needs work, but I should warn everybody I'll probably give this PSA many times last year in OTA is it didn't look too good and in training camp It looks really good. So it's this is this used to be something we barely paid attention to at all Oh the Vikings have a practice in the middle of the summer I sure I'll wander out there and stand on the hill in the sun. And now it's like, as you said, like get those Zulgad goggles on

and start watching every single rep closely. But I'm excited for that. Yeah, no, it's gonna be good. And I will say like, just to throw the gauntlet down, like it should be good in OTAs. Like last year, totally understandable that it wasn't as a rookie coming off the draft process. But, you know, everybody says he's healthy.

Everybody says he looks great. Like it's okay to expect it to look pretty good in OTAs. And there might be some times when O'Connell devises something trying to make him look bad and just to see how he reacts to adversity and we'll make our assessments accordingly. But I'm okay with going into even OTAs with a relatively high expectation for what he should look like.

ESPN Seifert, pressure on McCarthy in OTA practices. I like it. Kevin, you're the best. I really appreciate this and I'm glad we had a juicy story as you said to discuss today. This made it a lot more fun, but I always have a great time when you're on the show. So thank you so much for your time, sir. No, no problem.