Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Deep diving into questions about Vikings' offensive and defensive lines

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Matthew Coller and Will Ragatz of Sports Illustrated dig into the offensive and defensive line struggles against the Cleveland Browns and what Pro Football Focus's grades say about both units. Is it time to play Christian Darrisaw? Do we have a big enough sample to judge Ezra Cleveland and Oli Udoh yet? On the defensive line, what happened to DJ Wonnum hype? And are the free agents they signed making a difference? What does it mean to the bigger picture and where does Kirk Cousins fit in to the repeated issues with pressure? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to remind you before we get started, the TickPick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. TickPick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and returning to the show from Sports Illustrated, Will Raggetts. How are you, Will? I'm not too bad. Another Monday. We watched a

pretty painful game of football yesterday, but ready to talk about it and break it down a little bit. We did indeed. And you know, you and I were just talking before we went on about how many times we've sort of had deja vu over this same football game. And it's remarkable that yesterday's game against Cleveland, you and I just went back and forth like rap battle style, coming up with all the times that we've seen that before. And I mean, you brought up 2018 against Chicago, where it just seemed like a total failure to launch for the offense. And when it feels like your team has such a clear kryptonite, like it does, uh, in a, in a way, people like ourselves who are always looking for solutions, we're not just reporting on here's what they said.

Like it's part of our job to say, well, what might be better or what might be different? And after this one, I am just sort of like out of breath. Like I don't really know and i want to go through some of the things about the roster and how different people have performed and some of the storylines we talked about leading in now that we're at the very unofficial quarter point of the season uh not mathematically necessarily uh but uh it is remarkable the number of games that we finished up and said well you know that wasn't really k Cousins fault it was more of like the left tackle got killed and you know they couldn't run the ball and then it wasn't really anything on defense but the other team kind of had some

success and they come out short and I don't know about you but I'm like struggling now looking through the roster looking through how they play on offense all these things to say ah I've got it here's all they need to do or here's all that things to say, ah, I've got it. Here's all they need to do. Or here's all that needs to go right. I'm just a little bit like, I'm out of answers here. Yeah, I kind of am too. And well, we throw out last year because the defense was a disaster and it was a weird season.

But you go back to 2019 and the Vikings were a good team in 2019. They made the playoffs. They won a playoff game. They had a lot of talent on offense. Stephon Diggs was still there. It was kind of the last, like, addition of the peak Zimmer defenses from 2015 to 19. It wasn't quite as good as, like, 16 or 17, but it was a good defense. You had all the big names were there.

But that team had a very kind of clearly defined ceiling that we saw throughout the year. The first example of it was the late September, I think week four against the Bears at Soldier Field where they lost 16 to 6. Kirk Cousins was sacked I think six times. Afterwards, Adam Thielen was frustrated in the locker room and that kind of sparked an interesting season of discourse around the offense. But we saw it then later again in the locker room, and that kind of sparked an interesting season of discourse around the offense. But we saw it then later again in the season, the Packers game, Week 16. It happened a couple times in not quite as extreme measures leading up to that. But Week 16 against the Packers, they need that game to stay alive in the division race, and it was kind of the same thing. They scored 10 points. Obviously, they didn't have Dalvin Cook in that game was there down to Mike Boone but the they were just dominated

in the trenches and that's just such a fundamental thing in football when you can't kind of get some push from your offensive line especially if you're the Vikings your team that needs to run the ball that wants to run the ball but but has to run the ball in order to set up everything else when that's not happening then it just limits everything else and then when Cousins is dropping back and he's constantly got pressure in his face, the passing game can't get going at all. And then it happened again in a big way in that divisional round playoff loss to the 49ers, where it just, this kind of sense of futility, this bleak feeling sets in like this team can't beat these really good teams with good defensive lines good front sevens like the the bears a couple years ago the niners

the the browns uh on sunday like and they've invested a lot of draft capital into the offensive line over the past few years clearly because they recognize that as a problem they they're not they see it just like us and so they've used all these high draft picks and it still just isn't there yet and you can i'm sure we'll talk about how like if christian derisaw or or wyatt davis or whatever could could help things but i mean i don't think that's going to make such a big difference that this problem is going to go away and it just seems like that cap on what they can do against really good defenses. Say you run into the Buccaneers in the playoffs or a team like that, you're going to have to beat a team with a really good defensive line.

And it just seems like they cannot give Cousins enough time and Cousins isn't without, without his, his share of blame. But when you get dominated in the trenches like that, there's just nothing you can really do. And like you said, I don't know what the fix is. And so I've pulled up the offensive line that we talked a lot in training camp about and the questions and how really there were big question marks at almost

every position except for right tackle where Brian O'Neill, you know, he allowed a couple of pressures yesterday. I mean, so that's going to happen when you play great players, but his first four pressures of the season were all allowed yesterday. But again, he's only got four pressures in four games. So he's been good and that's Brian O'Neill and he's going to continue to be good. Aside from that, I'm going to go through the list and how it's going uh at left guard ezra cleveland has a 57 grade uh at center is that overall or past overall i'm sorry but i mean pass blocking yeah it's about the same i'm just going to go overall what their grades are but maybe i should go pass blocking so ezra cleveland has not been successful pass blocking so he's at

a 55 uh then you go to garrett bradbury 43 That's not a change at all from what we've seen from him. That might be a little better than the last two years, but it's still bad. It's right at the bottom of the league, though, as he has been in pass blocking for the last few years. That's a first-round draft pick. At right guard, Ole Udo has been a good run blocker per PFF, but not a good pass blocker. He's at 56. 60 is about average, and you really want to be in more of the 65 70 range to be like decent and effective that has just not been the case for a guard only udo to have given

up 12 pressures already is a ton um just to put that in context like alex boone i think was a failure here and gave up like 20 in a season yeah and so already only udos at 12 well udo had four through the first three games and then eight yesterday. That was kind of a welcome to the NFL game. And that's how it goes, right? Like Detroit is not going to put 20 pressures on the Vikings, but it's the good teams completely dominating, as you said. And then we get to left tackle Rashad Hill, who has a heart of gold

and everyone likes him, but he is a swing tackle. He is the Dakota Dozier of this year. He is a backup player for his career and a good backup, but he has 18 pressures allowed and four penalties this year and a 36 pass blocking grade. So far, if you're going across the line for people not naming Brian O'Neill, the question marks that Mike Zimmer mentioned before even week one, it's like C minus D minus F. Like you are not getting anything above maybe a C for any of these guys and their performances so far after what we saw yesterday after the Seattle game, it looked okay.

But again, it was sort of the same story of, yeah, I mean, Seattle, like they're not good as far as a defensive line and you were, and you were okay. But the minute you face some beasts, this is where your grades end up. And now the bigger sample says, once again, you're really not even an average offensive line. Yeah, and they had the two games against the NFC West teams, the Cardinals, who everyone was worried about Chandler Jones. But outside of him, who I think they managed to do a good job scheming against, the Cardinals don't have a ton of talent on the defensive line. J.J. Watt seems to be a little washed this year. The Seahawks have a couple guys but the Bengals and the Browns are the two best defensive lines they've faced this year and it's been kind of a disaster in those two games the

first one was weird with penalties but this game yesterday was just it was what happens when they face a really good defensive line and yeah I mean Brian O'Neal gave up some pressure. Just the entire line. And they would even keep, like, six, seven, eight guys max protection, and they would still get through. I mean, Miles Garrett is just unbelievable. I thought it was just kind of cool to witness him do some of that stuff in person yesterday.

He had nine pressures. That's like Lawrence Taylor. And just some of the clips where he like just takes rashad hill and makes him look like he's weighs 180 pounds and throws him over and then breaks through it like a double and triple team like that guy's unreal but anyway i mean there are players like that in the nfl and you have to be able to kind of at least hold your own and not give up nine pressures and not let him get to kurt cousins all day uh there were some times, which Zimmer mentioned after the game, where they ended up with tight ends blocking.

Like Tyler Conklin was trying to block Miles Garrett once and got a holding penalty, which, as Justin Jefferson said, was understandable. So there were some weird things going on with the protection schemes, but in general it was just kind of a breakdown in their performance of the offensive line uh and so as we dedicate time to the trenches the other side uh mike zimmer can say he was fine with the run defense it was not fine uh the browns commanded the football game through the run and had baker mayfield been accurate we're talking about you know a couple

more touchdowns probably for the browns when I look at you know their PFF scores and things like that and just what we've seen the defense was supposed to be better starting with stopping the run that has not at all been the case now Delvin Tomlinson has a good PFF grade problem is he's only played 160 snaps that's not what you expected when you signed him I don't think was to only play him about 30 40 snaps a game i mean this is someone that you paid top dollar for to bring in and change your defensive line michael pierce was hurt yesterday so he's not at 100 his performance so far by the grades has just been okay and he's got 120 snaps so the rest of the snaps are being made up by guys like Sheldon Richardson, who has been

an F so far. Just not at all what he looked like when he was here in 2018. Steven Weatherly has only played 67 snaps. Armond Watts has struggled, especially against the run. DJ Wanham. I mean, let's talk about DJ Wanham, a guy who's been sold to us two years in a row as someone who's like a rising star. He has four pressures so far this year in 114 pass rush snaps. That's really producing absolutely nothing. On the defensive side, I don't look at it and say, oh my gosh, what a calamity. Like they should just, you know, push the defense into the Mississippi River. It's just a defense. It's just a bunch of guys who can have

a good week or a bad week at any given time. And that's not going to be what drives winning for you at any point this season. I don't think on this defensive side, because of all the things I just named, there's too many holes in the defense for that to happen, which makes me think you have to have those great offensive performances, or this just isn't going to happen, which makes me think you have to have those great offensive performances or this just isn't going to happen because if you can be beaten when the other quarterback averages four yards an attempt, I think you're just vulnerable in a lot of areas. Yeah. And that it should not have been a 14 to seven game yesterday. Like the Browns should have won by at least a couple of scores. It wasn't, I mean, the Viking secondary wasn't terrible um the pass rush was okay like

daniel hunter and everton griffin looked good um i thought patrick peterson played all right uh cameron dantzler came in uh and we could talk more about him he i thought he played well but there were a lot of just wide open receivers deep that baker mayfield just couldn't hit for whatever reason whether it was just him being inaccurate or them not being on the same page. I don't know. And they had a decent number of just kind of wide open guys over the middle of the field, which was interesting when you have Harrison Smith and Xavier Woods back there. But yeah, I think you're right. The defense has been disappointing relative to kind of what it was talked up to be. You know, we can sit here and say Michael Pierce got hurt.

We still haven't seen Anthony Barr yet, which I do think will help the run defense if he's even like 80% of Anthony Barr because Nick Vigil is a fine player. He can cover in space, but he's not as good of a run defender as Anthony Barr by any means. And, yeah, the young depth just hasn't stepped up i mean dj want him i think is probably the most disappointing individual player just based on it's his second year okay we we like they were talking him up in training camp uh and he's gotten badly outperformed by a like 34 year old everson griffin who was signed off the street like a week before the season

um so it'll be interesting to see where that goes if they kind of, if some desperation starts setting in, they realize, all right, we can't be playing DJ Wanham 10 more snaps than Everson Griffin like they did against the Browns because they just, Griffin just looks so much better. So yeah, and the Armond Watts and Steven Weatherly's of the world have had a rough time when they've been in there. Yeah, it doesn't seem like you're right. It doesn't seem like a defense that you're going to be able to kind of rely on like those peak Zimmer defenses to win you games. And they need to be solid like they were yesterday, and then the offense needs to step up.

But, yeah, it'll be interesting to see where the defense goes from here. Well, and that's what I was going to ask you is, with these two units, offensive and defensive line, what can be done? Let's just call it run defense has specifically been the problem. But, you know, against Arizona, they gave up 400 yards passing. So it's not like the pass defense has been incredible or anything. It just, I think, was helped yesterday a lot by Baker Mayfield. And Cam Dantzler, give him credit, did play well out there when he had to step in for

Bashad Breeland. And maybe he will get what he wishes, which is more opportunity. The fact that Breeland is dead last by PFF grade after 100 coverage snaps says to me it's fine if you play Cam Dantzler instead of bashad breland at least dantzler could potentially have a future with your team bashad breland clearly doesn't so it makes no difference to me if you're you know benching breland to play uh cam dantzler but in terms of where these could go or let's even say like where they need to go to win the next two games because i look at these next two games as sort of one game like you have to go 100 or this thing is off the rails you have to go 2-0 in these next two games or i don't see any way you come out of the bye at two and four and somehow work yourself into a playoff spot

especially when you look at the i was just looking at the post-buy schedule and they start with like four straight teams that are three and one right now. Right. Like the Cowboys look great. The Ravens are – their offense is great. The Packers, I think the Rams. Yeah, like you have to be – San Francisco. Rams are a little later, but you have the Chargers. Okay, the Chargers. The Chargers who might be 3-1 pending their game on Monday Night Football.

Yeah, I mean you have to be 3-3. And I don't think they should lose to the Lions who are 0-4, but the Lions have been feisty. And then that Panthers game, I think, is just kind of where you determine, all right, is this team going to have any shot? Because that's a game you just have to win. I think that in terms of the left tackle position, we have to say just play Christian Dersaw.

I mean, I know that he hasn't had a whole lot of ramp-up time, that he missed training camp, and that's very hard to come off of an injury and just start to work your way into practice. He was active yesterday, played one snap on special teams. But when your left tackle is one of the lowest graded in the NFL, when he's giving up an average of four, five, six pressures a game, it can't be worse.

It's that time to throw in Christian Derrissaw just the same way that they did with Brian O'Neal a few years ago, and they didn't feel that Brian O'Neal was ready, if you recall. And he had some struggles. He certainly got slammed back into the quarterback a number of times in 2018, but it was better than this. And I think that they like to slow play with rookies and be hesitant and sort of tiptoe with them until they really feel like they're ready but in this

case i think you just have to play him as soon as he's healthy yeah i agree and i think the lions present a good kind of opponent for that like oh yeah especially i mean you hate to see injuries but i believe romeo aquara their best pass rusher, is out for the season. It's an interesting discussion because, yeah, Rashad Hill has these type of games tell you that a change is needed. But as you said, it can't get worse. And I always try to caution against that. And I've been dumb for saying that in the past before when it has gotten worse uh you look at like the pet elf line to drew samia thing last last year but um if if they believe derisaw is at least close to being ready like physically mentally all of that

then yeah i think he needs to be out there it's just an interesting thing because he he's coming off the injury like he didn't really do anything all offseason because he had this surgery and then something it wasn't recovering and he had to get another procedure done uh and i don't think you want to put him out there before he's if he's not going to be ready and he's going to be like messing up the snap count and like sure taking the wrong pass sets and just kind of rushing him out there when it could be harmful to his overall confidence or development. But if you think he can even be competent, I think you have to do it, and this is a good week to do it.

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Everything is screen printed here in Minnesota. And I can tell you that the shirts are comfortable and they last because half of my closet is now SodaStick at this point. Again, that's sodastick.com, Minnesota sports inspired goods and keep your eye out for our SodaStick giveaways. So I'm looking at the true pass set grade for Rashad Hill,

and that's when you take out the screens, take out the play actions, things like that. And do you remember Storm Norton? Do you remember him at all? Yeah. Storm McCommons, Storm Norton. XFL or AAF, I think. Yeah, I think he played it.

Yeah, he may have played them both, but he was a vikings uh camp and now he like actually plays for the chargers correct this is where i'm going okay so when brian bulaga got hurt storm norton was their backup and he was a practice squad body for the vikings and then as you said an xfl player so he is second worst with a 13 pass blocking grade that's out of 100 hundred on true pass sets rashad hill is below him no no this is a person who the vikings had as a camp body who they released who sort of kicked around and ended up just as a fill-in person in case of emergency in los angeles

and he's doing slightly better than what rashad Hill is doing right now. And by the way, there are a lot of linemen in the league who have pass blocking grades that are good in terms of true pass set. So that's not like everyone's bad. That to me says, in fact, Brian O'Neill is eighth. So there you go. But that to me says, no, it really honestly can't get worse. If it's worse right now than what they would have gotten from storm norton yeah then it can't be worse and it's time should they just elevate blake brandle from the practice squad like that that probably couldn't even be i mean i know that this is coming off facing miles gary and

those numbers weren't as bad last week of course those numbers went way down but it was sort of like it was sort of like when tom compton faced aaron donald in 2018 where he said yeah i mean most people get beat but you got beat every single play and you're really not competent at your job. And so this was always a possibility and they needed to sort of drag their feet and get through it until Christian Derrissaw could play. I think the time is now. I totally agree with you. Like, don't wait until you face Brian Burns because he's going to do the same thing yeah yeah and I think that putting Derrisa out there just it gives you it gives you a chance to just kind of see something different and you've seen it with Rashad Hill I mean he it just hasn't been good enough um I guess the other question would be, are you concerned about Ole Udo after this game, or are we just going to chalk it up and say,

okay, it was one kind of ugly game. I think he had a 0.0 pass blocking grade from PFF for this game. I was like, he had a 0 pass blocking grade. Rashad Hill was 3.5. We've seen it a few times here. Those are out of 100. We have seen it a few times here. Garrett Bradbury

Dakota Dozier I believe yeah uh and I think Compton against uh Donald it was like a six yeah um because I was encouraged by Ole Udo the first three weeks I think he he held his own in pass protection I think he was like PFF's like number eight guard or something uh he was doing well in in run blocking um so i blocking is still good i yeah i don't think there there should be any like rumblings about oh why davis like it's one game let's see how he does the next couple games but it definitely was a reminder that okay this is a former six roundround pick tackle converted to guard. He probably isn't going to be playing at a top-ten guard level all year. But isn't there just lessons here? I mean, they draft Wyatt Davis, and everyone's like, oh, they're good.

They're set. Got Wyatt Davis. You're good. And then they immediately realize they are not good. That is not going to work out, or at least for now. He's not ready. And so then they panicked and moved Ole Udo over to guard. Okay, we've got to scramble, find somebody else.

All right, well, that's fine because he has this really great athleticism and so forth. But they did the same thing with Ezra Cleveland last year, who is a more raw, talented player to be a second-round pick than Ole Udo. And he had his moments where he was good and his games where he was good. And then he had his moments where he got absolutely demolished. And that, by the way, continues to be the case with Ezra Cleveland as a guard who was, again, never tried to tackle when you were left tackle is the worst in the NFL. Just mentioning that because it remains an incredible mystery of why Ezra Cleveland was never tried at left tackle just saying that has to be brought up but

I think that the the thing with Udo is you just where your standard has to be is he going to face one of the best defensive lines in the league and be fine as a guy who's never done this before probably not no yeah that I would guess no and so I guess I think that with you know the line in general is we always talk ourselves into, well, if this guy does well and this guy does well and this guy does well, and that's right, but on a week-to-week-to-week-to-week basis over 17 games, if there's a weakness there or two, it's just going to get exposed, and that's what we saw yesterday that we did not see against, like you said, Arizona and Seattle.

Yeah, and one big picture thing that I want to bring up is we talk about the offensive line, and that's just a big conversation around the Vikings always, especially after a game like this. But it seems to me like there's kind of two ways that they can improve, that they can avoid games like this happening. And number one, the easiest one one is get a really good offensive line and they've been trying to do that for a long time and I think the optimists would say we're still kind of in the early stages of seeing like Brian O'Neill 2018 Bradbury 2019 Cleveland

2020 the two early draft picks this year like in theory the timeline there if they're gonna pan out sets up for maybe next year or 2023 being really good when but then you start talking about second contracts and stuff either way it's if you get a really good offensive line even against a team like the Browns games like that where you just have no hope on offensive moving the ball other than the first drive which I still don't really understand how that happened. Those aren't going to happen. The other thing that you can do, and this is the big conversation always, is get a quarterback that is better equipped to deal with that pressure. And Kirk Cousins had been really, really, really good through three games. There's no denying that yesterday's game was not entirely

on him, but there were moments where it seems like when he gets in these games where he knows pressure is coming, he just gets a little skittish and it gets in his head. And there was a play where KJ Osborne was running wide open up the seam and he looked over to him and he had a moment where he could have let it rip, but he didn't because maybe he was feeling the pressure and he thought maybe somebody's going to strip sack me if I reach back and throw this. And he pulled it down and got sacked. So that is kind of one of the arguments for eventually looking past Kirk Cousins, who, again, has been really good this year. If you get a quarterback who can do more under pressure, and we always see the splits in pff or whatever of kirk cousins when kept

clean is phenomenal but under pressure yesterday he was like two for 13 for 15 yards or something i don't remember the exact stats but it just it just wasn't happening and so you look at the guy like the kyler murray's and justin herber and these young quarterbacks that can get out of the pocket and make plays when there's pressure in their face and just even maybe sometimes just have the confidence or whether it's misguided or not to just let it rip and not worry about the pressure. You're going to take sacks, but you can't have that get in your head and let that limit what you do on offense. And yet, it's fundamental yeah it's not a thing that you can tweak or change or adjust or adapt and many offensive coordinators have tried but statistically let me just back you up here kirk cousins 4.2 yards per attempt that is the fifth worst in the nfl so far the worst is andy dalton went under pressure uh went under pressure yes i'm sorry

overall of course he's not averaging four yards at a time uh but went under pressure now here's the other thing that's notable is that he's only been under pressure 33 of the time which is 15th in the league which is not that bad uh so the point that you're making is look you're going to get pressured in the nfl it will happen and i think what we're seeing is sort of, like you said, like an emergence of this making a big difference. It was often in the past thought of as sort of a random thing. Some years you're good under pressure. Some years you're not sort of small sample. But now that we see more mobility in the quarterbacks, it's Patrick Mahomes, it's Kyler Murray, it's Drew Stafford, not Drew Stafford. He's a hockey player, Matthew Stafford. Um, it's Derek Carr who can move a little Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen. Like these are the guys

who are succeeding Russell Wilson, Justin Herbert, as you mentioned, those are guys are performing better under pressure. And that, uh, I think, I think if the league is even changing, like from year to year, the league just sorts of takes these shifts and we're seeing it make more of a difference every single week for something like that. And it's just an unsolvable issue. And that's why it sort of circles back to where we started was the frustration from fans and us as looking for solutions is, well, I don't really have one for that. I just don't. The only solution for that is to give him cleveland's offensive line and well even i was just gonna say that even with cleveland's offensive line like baker mayfield was under pressure yep and he did not play well like you can have worst by the way he's seventh worst

you can have the best offensive line in the world at some point it still comes down to the quarterback's ability to make plays and i wonder if Kevin Stefanski is getting quite frustrated with Baker Mayfield after that game yesterday but that's a that's another topic entirely right and and isn't that sort of the the thing that when we discuss Kirk Cousins and it is so often on social media not nuanced at all um but isn't that isn't this the nuance like the nuance is that there's there's an answer there and when it comes to those final drives and things like that he doesn't have an answer he doesn't have a crazy arm he couldn't get the ball to the end zone yesterday when he threw it

like they called it a Hail Mary from the 30 yard line was it a Hail Mary for Brett Favre like no it was not against San Francisco in 2009 that was a regular throw for Brett Favre is it a Hail Mary for Patrick Mahomes like the arm strength is not that good and the mobility the athleticism like these things those will get you out of situations remember Kyler Murray's Hail Mary from last year where he's rolling to his left and just throws it up because he escapes the pocket like that's one of the reasons I think that you don't win some of these close games at the end where you need final drives is there's no trump card that he has physically. And so that's why you look at him under a microscope as opposed to in the

broad view of just his quarterback rating or his PFF grade. So, uh, you know, you're totally right about that. And that's what makes it hard to talk about, Hey, does the right guard, like you think he's good or like, I don't know, does it matter? Um, and so let's just talk real quick about the run defense. And do you think that, do you think there is a solution because they're playing a team that should be able to run a little and has a good offensive line, uh, does not have a great quarterback, does not have good weapons at all. Oh my gosh. Um, but like like Detroit they can do some stuff like they're not completely incompetent and I feel like if you don't fix that that even a bad team can beat you and I don't know exactly what the fix is because they were supposed to have fixed it yeah I guess the fix is hope Anthony Barr gets healthy and Michael Pierce's health like but even then I don't know you should be getting more out of this group that you had yesterday, even though the Browns are a really, really good running offense

with their two backs and their offensive line. I thought Dalvin Tomlinson played well, but you've got Daniel Hunter and Everson Griffin on the edges, and it seemed like they were losing contain in the run game a decent number of times. Eric Kendricks, PFF did not like his game. I mean, he made a lot of tackles as usual, but without having watched like the all 22 tape,

I don't know if he was missing run fits or whatever. Nick Vigil, he's better than Eric Wilson for sure, which is a low bar, but it doesn't seem like he's doing really well in the run defense. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if there's an easy fix other than just hoping you get some guys back, not playing the Browns, thinking it'll get a little better.

But it wasn't great against, like, the Bengals either. It wasn't – Chris Carson had, like, 80 yards on, like, 12 carries for the Seahawks. And, yeah, like you said you said I mean Detroit with Jamal Williams DeAndre Swift like they can run the ball that's kind of their path to probably hanging around in this game at US Bank Stadium and and we'll note that they hung around against the Ravens and they were leading the Packers at halftime like I don't the Vikings I think opened as well like seven or eight point favorites which um doesn't seem like they've done much to deserve that. It's a game they should win,

but I don't think anybody should come in expecting a blowout. So, yeah, we're going to see. And that's going to be... If the trenches don't look much improved, if not quite good against Detroit, I don't know how you can really have too much optimism for some of the the post by teams that they're gonna play so that's my last question for you is how do you think that this all plays out like what we've seen is the

weaknesses that in camp we thought might be weak have pretty much been weak uh after after four total week weeks um see the week and uh yeah okay yeah there you go uh but so i i don't know that a lot of this changes which is where you look at the schedule usually and say well you you kind of know who you are so how's that match up it doesn't match up great in my opinion. But how do you think this plays out? Like, do you think that they get to 500 and we sort of play this game the rest of the way where they win to lose to? And at the end of the year, it's nine and eight, eight, nine. Do you think they go 2017 and get crazy hot after a win against Detroit and then they're taking it to the NFC championship? Or do you think that we're talking about Andre Patterson leading this team out of the tunnel against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday Night Football on Halloween night?

If they go one and five, like I'm sure you'll talk about this in another podcast, but like Zimmer kind of has to be gone, right? You lose to the Lions at home and you go one and five, two straight years. Like there's only so much patience you can preach and you're one and five. And he's saying, oh, we're still good football. Like, no, you're not. If you're one and five, even if you're two and four. Like I think to answer your question, the safest bet is that this team is going to be stuck in the middle and is going to be eight and nine or nine and eight. I could see any range of the spectrum still with 13 games to play.

I think it's not – things weren't as good as they looked after that Seahawks win when everyone was back to Rosie and, oh, this team's good. And I don't think they're as bad as they look right now because I do think the Browns are a really, really good team that posed a tough matchup for them in a lot of ways. I think this is desperation time if i'm it's i know it's not this simple but i think there's some some easy changes to make like cameron dansler at cornerback over bashad breland everson griffin needs to play more than dj want

him you need to hope anthony bar and michael pierce are healthy you probably need to put christian deris on a left tackle and I think all those things combined could have an effect. This is an offense that still is going to, I think, have some really good games, especially when Dalvin Cook's ankle gets back to close to 100%. The receiver, like Justin Jefferson was still awesome yesterday. Oh, yeah, for sure. He's really good. Adam Thielen was a little concerning.

I didn't think he was getting open very much. But that's a minor issue, if an issue at all. I think the defense, the secondary, has shown some things recently. Patrick Peterson has been playing solid. There's still talent here is what I'm saying, and I think there's too talented to bottom out, and if they lose to the Lions, we'll reevaluate. But I still see them winning eight or nine games,

seven to nine games probably. But I don't know that all the pieces are going to be able to come together in order for them to really make a run and get to the playoffs and be a kind of contending team just because of the ceiling that we've talked about with the trenches right now. The last thing I'll say is just that whichever way it goes, then we'll know. If it goes to 1-5, then we'll know they'll probably make a coaching change

and something is going to be different. If they go 8-9, then we'll know that no matter what you do with the current structure, that's where you're going to be. And if they go 13 and four, then we'll know that they're capable of turning around just about anything and that they were right. But after two weeks, it was more of believable. After three times it it's um you know fool me twice fool me a third time whatever the saying goes so that's how it kind of feels uh will raggetts you do great work you are in a phenomenal follow on twitter which let me look up your twitter handle what is it it's just at will raggetts okay r-a-g-a-t-s a-t-z i'm sorry a-t-Z yeah okay so that again was Will R-A-G-A-T-Z

to follow you on Twitter you're a great follow so I appreciate your time glad we could get back together and this was fun thanks man yeah thanks for having me