Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Do the Vikings suddenly have a dangerous offense?

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

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the Chevy Silverado is in a league of its own. Strong, advanced, and dependable. Download TE1 today, wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here. And as we always do after these games, it is time for five questions with intern Paul. So he obviously watched the game, take very detailed notes, and comes up with five different angles to address through this postgame of breaking down the Vikings' 31-23 win

over the Houston Texans. So, Paul, what's up? You know, Matt, I'm excited to talk about a win finally. It's not all doom and gloom now on this podcast. And just it's been so nice these last two weeks to actually have some fun, competitive games that could kind of go either way for most of the game much better than the first few weeks. And, yeah, it's given me new life because if we had just done 28-3 Colts or whatever that final score was all season, I think by week nine,

we wouldn't have had much else to talk about. They're bad again. So it's at least nice to have some parity in that. I agree that the analysis of this was bad this was bad this was bad this didn't go well and this was bad and everyone should be fired and sent to the sun and a rocket ship that is okay for one podcast after the Green Bay game that was kind of fun to break down everything that had gone wrong but if we have that every week and there are no close games, it is going to be

pretty redundant, and what's interesting about these two, the Titans and the Texans games, is I think that these will be what we see going forward, where it's a lot of close games, it's not the greatest defense, it is exciting plays on offense, and it will come down to the ends, and it sort of speaks to what I said last week to open the podcast. It's okay, everyone. Just sort of throw your hands up and enjoy the roller coaster ride. You're not really a Super Bowl contender, so let's have a fun season because most of the outside world isn't super fun, and the other thing about this, too, is, you know, baseball's going to be going to its playoffs. that's cool but the twins aren't really involved so by aren't really i mean not at all involved and the wolves aren't going

to play again till what i don't know in january or something and the link season is over and you don't have hockey at this moment and won't for a very long time. Like this is your team that you're going to be focusing on for the rest of a very while. So let's have fun with it. All right. So why don't you just jump right into it with your first question. And I'm excited to talk a little bit this week or all of this week about actual players that are on the Vikings and not hypothetical Vikings at this

point. We're talking about some guys that are actually on the roster and it might some hypothetical ones. One in particular might be out of reach now because there might be one team that played on Thursday night that who knows if they'll even win a game. So I think the Vikings could have put themselves out of that player right away. But I guess, first off, let's start off with something really good. There's kind of a Vikings big three developing in this offense now of Dalvin Cook, Adam Thielen, and Justin Jefferson. They kind of had it last year with Diggs.

They weren't sure if they would have it again. Jefferson seems to be in that role. Dalvin Cook, 130 yards, two touchdowns. Thielen, 114 yards, a touchdown. Jefferson, 103 yards, which accounted for legitimately like all of the offense, like 90, 95% of the offense. So I want you to put it in perspective for us in the rest of the league in terms of a big three. Where is this Vikings trio amongst the ranks of the best in the league?

Because I would say going through it, it's probably top five, and maybe you could make a case higher than that. So it depends on how much you believe that Justin Jefferson's last two games are what Justin Jefferson is going to bring you for the rest of the season. I tend to think that it's something like this. I mean, when it comes to somebody being as explosive as he is, as open as he is, and able to make contested catches, a back shoulder catch down the sideline, where he, there's

another one where he goes up over somebody and makes a play that you can either get him the ball on shorter passes or shorter routes like he showed against Tennessee and he can make big plays, or you could go down the field to him, or you could get him yards after catch. There are so many different things that Justin Jefferson is showing that he can do that I'm going to assume he's going to keep doing it. And if teams game plan for him, which I'm sure the Texans did, that means Adam Thielen's going to be open. We dealt with that for a long time with Diggs and Thielen, and opposing teams never really figured out a way to stop it.

And if you've got the same thing here again, where every time Jefferson touches the ball, he's going to create a big play, well, yeah, I mean, I think that they are developing this into being one of the best groups of weapons, which we sort of projected before the season, but I think we saw Irv Smith being that guy, and again, a day where Irv Smith is basically no part of this offense, but when you only throw 22 passes, and a bunch go to Thielen, and a bunch go to Justin Jefferson, again, it doesn't mean that Irv Smith is a bust. It just means he didn't get involved at any point. But if Jefferson blows by Irv Smith for who you thought was going to be a big weapon in this offense, I think that you're

happy with that. That's a first round draft pick. They've had a bunch of first round draft picks go bust recently. And the way you drew it up on the board was you can get a great receiver in a great receiver draft and have Stefan Diggs be replaced and not have to worry that much about it. And I think the thing you're going to look back at here maybe with this offense is, was there not a better way to get Justin Jefferson involved in those first two weeks? That's where we might end up looking back, especially, and I'm not saying this happens, but especially if they turn this thing around.

And we're talking about looking at an 8-8 type of season, and they get a couple of wins, and they surprise somebody like Seattle. They come in there, maybe Seattle underestimates them, and they beat them, and Jefferson's great. And then we're going to go, wow, you're 2-3, but maybe if you play Jefferson, you're not 2-3. Maybe you're 3-2. I don't think they win that Packers game no matter what.

But, I mean, I think you're going to look at that and say, why didn't that happen? Because maybe things could have been a little different. And then with Delvin Cook, I mean, you know how good Delvin Cook is. You know how good Thielen is when he gets single coverage, or in this case with the Texans, no coverage whatsoever, and he's wide open. And there was another one that went right off the fingertips where he was wide open in the end zone, and that was just inches away.

So I do think that what we talked about earlier in the offseason was they're going to have a lot of weapons for Gary Kubiak to use, and it was so shocking to see in those first few weeks earlier in the offseason was they're going to have a lot of weapons for Gary Kubiak to use, and it was so shocking to see in those first few weeks that they couldn't take advantage of him. Now it seems like they're able to do that, and that sort of leads to a question about, well, if the offense continues to produce like this, then what do they end up being as a team? The answer probably is not, as you alluded to, a tank for Trevor Thiem. Yeah, and trying to put them in the scope of other teams in the NFL, I mean, they're not going to come close to the Chiefs, Kelsey, Tyreek Hill, and then Clyde Edwards-Alaire.

You're looking at the Cowboys with Zeke, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, or CeeDee Lamb, whoever you want to throw in there. And there's a couple others, but after those two, there's not a clear ranking. And if Justin Jefferson continues to show he's the real deal, then you've got three legitimate pieces. Like the Saints have two legitimate pieces that are probably better than both of the Vikings. Kamara and Cook could be debated, but they don't have that third option quite yet. So if they have those three, I'm wondering,

and this can kind of transition into our next question, when you have those three, and we kind of saw it today, they made up for a lot of the other deficiencies, mainly the offensive line deficiency for the Vikings. Like Cousins got sacked on a three-man pressure early in the first quarter, and I was like, oof. And a couple other times the offensive line got beat. But for the most part, it seemed like Cook was able to navigate his way through and do

a lot better than he probably should have with the blocking that he got. And if Thielen and Jefferson are getting open and Kirk can hit them downfield, I'm just wondering how much they can maybe make up for those deficiencies that we've seen on the offense, on that offensive line. And just in general, if this can translate to against some better teams. Because Houston obviously has had a rough schedule, but as we saw today, they aren't perfect. They have lots of blemishes. So they're going to face better teams than Houston, and is there any reason to believe this is going to continue against some of those

better teams? I definitely think this continues. It depends on your definition of better teams because there are better overall teams that they're facing coming up, but not great defensive teams outside of the Packers and the Bears. Think about their upcoming schedule here. The Seahawks do not have a very good defense. The Falcons absolutely do not. The Packers do. The Lions do not. the Bears do, and the Cowboys do not. So that is one, two, three, four out of their next six games where they're facing defenses that aren't all that good. And I think that we're all going to pick the Seattle Seahawks at home to beat the Vikings because Russell Wilson's better than Kirk Cousins

and they have great weapons themselves. I don't know if they're in the same sort of big three list, but they have a lot of players to throw to now. DK Metcalf is an emerging star. Tyler Lockett is extremely good. So we're seeing Russell Wilson get a lot out of that offense. But at the same time, this one has kind of shootout written over it, just like this one today did with Deshaun Watson.

I did not know Bill O'Brien was going to hand off up the middle on every second and 10 like a complete joker, but I guess I should have, because Rivers McCown told us that earlier in the week, that they were the worst play calling team in the NFL, and I don't think there's any question about that after watching that game. That is not the case for the Seattle Seahawks, and it's not the case for Dallas either. But you look at what happened to Dallas against the Cleveland Browns, they could not stop them. Absolutely could not stop Baker Mayfield and a Browns offense that is very similar to what the Vikings have. And the Browns are in that conversation too.

Nick Chubb, he got hurt today I saw, but Nick Chubb, Odell Beckham, Landry, like Austin Hooper, it's the same sort of deal. And I think the Vikings will put up big numbers against a lot of these teams offensively. And all of a sudden, I'm not saying I'm writing in wins for all of them, but I'm saying, is there a lot more shootouts to come? Are there a lot more offensive performances like this to come? And I think that there are. Yeah, I want to go in a direction you kind of, you mentioned, and that Houston really, really struggled, and Twitter was just, like, making fun of Houston all game long, it seemed, as I was going through my timeline, and so how much was this Houston's, like, ineptitude

and play calling and situational, like, they were running down two scores on first and second down still, and they were still doing it on on first and second down still, and they were still doing it on that last drive, and I mean, to be fair, Deshaun Watson was missing some guys in the first half, but once he got that up-tempo thing going in the first drive of the second half, you could, you just kind of looked at him, and you're like, okay, this is a different player, and then they just kind of let him do his thing, and like, yeah, so I want to know, how much is it Houston's ineptitude? How much is it Houston's ineptitude how much is it the Vikings playing well I'm sure it's a mix of those two things but where what where do you lie on that

so I think when you go through the teams in the league that are the worst run and you let's say you started drafting the worst run teams Houston is a top three draft pick they're not beating the New York Giants they're not beating the New York Giants. They're not beating the New York Jets. But right after that, Jacksonville is in that same conversation. The Washington football squad does not even have a team name. So I guess they go to automatic number one pick of the team ineptitude draft. They also passed on a quarterback prospect to believe in Dwayne Haskins, which why? Maybe they thought that this next quarterback draft was better, so they didn't want to take Tua. But still, why did you buy into Dwayne Haskins?

I don't know the answer to that question. But Houston is right up there. Not only has Bill O'Brien taken a coup, I guess, to their front office and just taken over everybody's job, but he also seems to have no idea how to help Deshaun Watson be better at football. I mean, how many times did we see Deshaun Watson with an easy throw to someone who was open? Only when the Vikings had tremendously bad mental errors later in the game without Harrison Smith, but early in the game when Harrison Smith is in, even the throw that Smith gets thrown out of the game, Deshaun Watson has to fire a bullet into coverage to get an explosive play. And on the other side,

we see Kirk Cousins finding a lot of open receivers and a lot of big games that way throughout the game. And so between the play calling, the scheme that they have Deshaun Watson running, the fact that they don't really use Deshaun Watson's legs, except for at the worst time when they're a terrible player who they traded for. Think about the guys they traded for. David Johnson, Brandon Cooks. Brandon Cooks had three targets for zero reception, zero yards. What are they doing as a franchise?

So I do think that it's a big picture, small picture, that throughout this game, Bill O'Brien seemed clueless with his game planning. They wanted to load the box, but yet they still couldn't stop Delvin Cook and loading the box allowed Kirk Cousins to find receivers all over the field. I mean, it was a messy performance. If you're in Houston right now, you are absolutely slaughtering them for being as bad as they are. So yes, if we're asking what percentage was the Vikings played really well, what percentage was Houston played really poorly, I think that we're probably in the middle because the Vikings earned those big

plays. I mean, some of them at least. Some, Adam Thielen is wide open, but Justin Jefferson, back shoulder catch down the sideline on third and long is well earned. It's a great throw. It's an incredible catch by Justin Jefferson, 100 yards for him. Delvin Cook, a lot of his runs well earned. He's getting contacted behind the line of scrimmage. He's creating something. He's scoring in the red zone. I mean, he had just a tremendously good game, and I look at it like they earned it with those great offensive players, but Houston is definitely not an opponent you say, wow, you beat Houston?

Throw the celebration after this one. It's more like, you know what, in hindsight, I think a lot of us should have said, no, let's not give them the excuse of the schedule. Because they also got their doors blown off by those teams that were good, and then they played well for a half against Pittsburgh, and that's it. I think that Houston is a very, very bad team in a really tough spot. They don't have their first-round pick going forward,

so you should feel good about beating them because of the way that you did with your offense, but at the same time, they beat themselves. They fumbled and committed a penalty on the same play. Like, hard to do, some of the things that the Texans did. So, I'll go 50-50. Yeah, and good teams capitalize on bad teams' ineptitudes and their deficiencies. So, like, Gary Kubiak had a really nicely called game, I thought. He had some creative play calls that worked in spots that we would have criticized if they didn't work. I'm looking at that Kirk Cousins sneak. That's what I'm thinking of. If that hadn't worked, we would have been like, what the hell are you doing? But it

worked. So it gets praised as it should. And they were using a little bit more motion, not tons and tons of it, like maybe Jeremiah Searles was asking for in the last week's pod, but they were using some of it. Kirk was able to see some of the coverages maybe before they were happening, and it was a nicely called game. And so yeah, good teams capitalize on what bad teams struggle with. And so the Vikings did well on third downs, which a lot of them came because they were running David Johnson in between the tackles in first and second down, but they were still stopping it on third down in those obvious pass situations. Deshaun Watson looked out of sorts in that first half.

He got it together in the second half. But, yeah, like they capitalized when they needed to. Like the receivers did really well. They found open holes for Kirk to find him. And I thought Kirk had a pretty good game overall. There's a couple times he throws it behind the sticks. Those are always going to stick out. But he has the most of everyone that's like started a game. He's started all of the team's games. He's leading the NFL in average attempted air yards, so he's

throwing it downfield. He's throwing it downfield. I think it's 1.5 yards like past the sticks, which is again top five in the NFL. so we're going to pick those outliers but he's been really aggressive Dalvin Cook was still successful even though 33 percent of the time there were eight men in the box today so he was like Dalvin Cook was really impressive that touchdown run is the one that sticks out in my head where he's going to the ground breaks three tackles really did it all by himself so there's a lot of good things you can take away from this team and I think you just have to say, yeah, Houston was bad, but you need to capitalize when they're bad, and they did that.

You don't see good teams letting those teams come back and win, and it was close, but it didn't happen. So, yeah, overall, I'd say the Vikings played well. You have to feel good about that, but there's also in the back of your mind, it's like if they had a competent head coach, Houston, would this have gone different? I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. If you have not seen it yet, you've got to check it out.

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Code PURPLEINSIDER for free shipping. How many times have we played this game with Kirk Cousins, by the way? Where it's, well, you know, he had a great game and it was against a bad team. Think about last year where they were in dire straits. They lose to Chicago. Stephon Diggs skips practice. He's so apoplectic about their offense. And then they go to New York.

And they just blow the freaking pants off of the New York Giants easily they run all over them they they throw the ball over them there's receivers open all the time because the Giants are joke so they do that and then they have a decent win against the Eagles but it turns out the Eagles weren't really all that good last year and then you have you know a comeback against the Broncos but it was their third string quarterback you have a big win against detroit but david blau is starting like there was a lot of this last year and there really has been throughout the kirk cousins era that if you bring in a worse team and a bad defense against kirk cousins he's going to beat you and it just all kind of circles back everything in this conversation circles back to this is why you weren't getting Trevor Lawrence.

It's because Kirk Cousins is just too good. He's going to beat the teams he's supposed to beat. Now the question is, when you look forward on that Vikings schedule, how many of these teams is he supposed to beat? And that's where I think it does get kind of interesting going forward. This is not a team that often upsets anyone in terms of winning teams, Super Bowl contenders, and so forth. But you've got the Falcons. You've got Detroit. You've got Chicago. You've got the Cowboys.

I mean, Chicago, who's scared of them right now playing their backup quarterback? And three kind of unimpressive wins. You know, I'd say a little bit of luck on a couple of them. They have to come back and one against Atlanta. They get lucky there. They have to have the Detroit running back drop a pass in the end zone. They get lucky there. So, I mean, it's kind of interesting that, you know,

you look at the upcoming schedule and all of a sudden a win against a bad team that you could throw out. But I think it does tell you something. It tells you you're going to beat the bad teams, and that means you're probably not going 2-14. Yeah, and minus the one play that Jeff Gladney got beat on, the plays that we've seen, the big plays that they're letting up over and over and over again, there were a couple of them.

But besides Gladney getting beat on that one, I think it was Will Fuller or Kenny Stills, one of them caught that ball. They kept a lot of the things in front of them, minus George Iloka, which we'll probably get to in a little bit. But, yeah, so in general, I like the way they played. I think it's all you can really ask for this team at this point with who they were starting on defense. Still a lot of guys out,

George Iloka coming in mid game, that defense was going to regress a little bit from what we saw in the first half. So overall, I like, I like where the Vikings are. And I want, I want to talk about George Iloka, but in the context of Harrison Smith and how important he is in this defense and is Harrison Smith the most indispensable part of this, of this unit, because they were playing well before he got out there, and then once Iloka came in, I don't know if it's Deshaun Watson

who deserves credit. I don't really want to give it to Bill O'Brien, but they targeted Iloka in spots. They got him on that touchdown where he was inexplicably going towards the middle even though the other safety was kind of crashing towards that route and that guy was covered. I'm not sure what he was doing, just leaving the guy in the corner open, and on the Will Fuller touchdown, he just ran right past George Iloka, him and Anthony Harris were talking pre-snap, and suddenly Iloka's up by the line of scrimmage, and Fuller's just past him,

and Harris is like, what the heck just happened? So we saw what happened when a guy that isn't so good comes in for Harrison Smith. So this is going to be less of a George Iloka conversation and more of a Harrison Smith conversation. How important is he to that defense? Is he the most important cog more than Daniil Hunter or maybe anyone else, but Daniil Hunter would be the other one that comes to mind. So I never had this dream, but I know other people who did, where you show up for a test and you didn't know there was a test and you didn't study.

That's George Iloka, but it's not his fault. He was told to study the nickel corner position because they didn't have a backup nickel corner. So if someone got hurt, he was going to play that position. And you actually saw that early in the game when Dantzler got beat up a little, that he went in and played in the nickel spot. So he was ready for all of those assignments. He hadn't studied where he was supposed to be in this game plan with these coverages, and was basically just trying to guess on where he was supposed to be, it seems, from the way that Mike Zimmer explained it. So that's a really tough break for George Iloka, because of course he gets made fun of for having a bad game. But at the same time, I mean, it's really hard to play safety

in the NFL. There's so many reads. There's so many assignments that you have to know. You don't just drop by and all of a sudden you are in great shape if you weren't studying that position all week long. So that was a tough situation for him. And it definitely evened the playing field a little bit from what it would have been otherwise. If Harrison Smith's in, there's probably two touchdowns that don't get scored, as you mentioned. So, you know, I think that he's always been that, Harrison Smith, in terms of indispensable players on this defense, that he was out for a game against Indianapolis a couple years ago, and Andrew Luck went absolutely crazy against the Vikings without Harrison Smith. He was banged up in a game against Green Bay, and Aaron Rodgers went nuts. And that's just how it's always been because he's one of the best players in the entire NFL.

I think the question is, even as great as he is, is there anything he can do to keep this defense from being bad? And the answer is probably no, because he's played tremendously good football over the first couple of weeks and looks like a guy that they will extend next year and he's going to be here like a Viking for life kind of thing. But it shows you that even as well as he's played, their defense is just not all that good because their corners can still get toasted by good wide receivers who can go deep and the quarterbacks often have time to throw. This in particular was a pretty poor looking game plan from the Houston Texans. But we just went through the schedule.

Well, let's go through it again of what they have coming up here. I mean, they've got Russell Wilson, who is coming up next. And then, you know, after that, you've got good, good who is coming up next. And then after that, you've got good quarterbacks pretty much everywhere, although I have not been super impressed by what I've seen from Matt Stafford. But you've got Matt Ryan, who's put up great numbers despite them being 0-3. Aaron Rodgers, Matt Stafford. Of course, Bears are not in a great situation. But Dak Prescott is putting up huge numbers as well

and is doing his job for the Dallas Cowboys. So it doesn't get any easier for the secondary. And if they lose Harrison for a suspension, if it's one game against Seattle, then wow, you're in really bad shape. Or if he's injured at all, it kind of speaks to this team really ignored the depth and just kind of hoped, I don't know, that someone would wander by TCO Performance Center and be like, hey, I can play guard. I can play, you know, I can be an edge rusher.

Just throw me in. Like, right? Like, did they think that they were just going to find some of these people when they refused to sign free agents except for George Iloka? I don't know. But, you know, I think that more effort needed to be made in the offseason for something that was foreseeable than drafting Brian Cole, who got cut, and Josh Metellus, who's a special teamer, to be the backup safeties.

Yeah, and I think his absence was almost like a tipping point of just all the absences they have on that defensive line because they've already lost Michael Pierce. They've already lost Neil Hunter. They've already lost Anthony Barr. And Hunter and Barr have both been in the system for a really long time. So you're taking two of your biggest veterans out. And so then that puts even more pressure on the veterans that are there.

So that's Smith. That's Kendricks. That's Harris. So then you take another one of them out. It's like the third guy that you weren't expecting to not be out there is also not out there. So that's just going to kind of – it's just going to keep, like, rolling down a hill.

Like, it's just picking up steam. Like, when you don't have Hunter, like, if you had Hunter, you still had Pierce, or you still had Griffin, and you lose Smith, you're still going to be able to count on some pressure to maybe, like, counteract some of that. You lose Barr, or you lose Smith, but you still have Barr. He's going to be able to do a little bit of stuff to maybe put some pressure, create some different looks that can kind of help take some pressure off that. But then when you don't have

Daniil, you don't have Anthony Barr, you're, you're like putting so much responsibility in Harrison Smith and then Harris and Smith, and I guess Harrison Smith, but, and then you take Harrison Smith out and you don't have a backup that's ready to play. That's just when it gets even worse. So I think his, his absence was just kind of it was blown up because we were also missing these other guys too yep and I would say this for their defense in terms of having a safety who was not prepared or even asked to prepare to play in that circumstance and they didn't really get a whole ton of pressure on Deshaun Watson, except for the pressure that was created by him not having open wide receivers. They played pretty well in spots in this game.

And I think that the other part of the tank for Trevor that was never going to happen is, is Mike Zimmer going to coach a team so poorly like Adam Gase or like Matt Patricia or like Bill O'Brien? Like, is he going to coach a team so poorly that they Gase or like Matt Patricia or like Bill O'Brien like is he going to coach a team so poorly that they end up in that conversation I had just always had a really tough time seeing it no matter how bad the personnel is and we may have seen some progress from the corners it will be very interesting to go back and look at the film and see how the corners specifically played but you mentioned uh you know, Gladney gets

beat once, but it was the only time I remember him really getting smoked. And Holton Hill made a couple of plays. He had a bad penalty. I still don't really see it with him. I thought he could have been penalized on a play early in the game as well. And he kind of got away with it. He's there at the end, but it's more of a drop than it is, or maybe a throw is slightly off than it is a great defensive play. If he catches the ball, we're's more of a drop than it is, or maybe a throw is slightly off than it is a great defensive play. If he catches the ball, we're talking about how Holton Hill got beat on that play as opposed to, hey, he was in coverage when the guy didn't score.

So I don't have like huge confidence that it will be way different, but progress is what you're looking for. And I think when two of the touchdowns are scored on just miscommunications with a guy who was not expected to ever be in the game, that may be some progress here today. That's going to be really tested over the next couple of weeks because Seattle and Atlanta can put up huge points. Yeah. And I mean, it was expected that George Iloka came in because obviously he had like experience in Zimmer's system before so maybe Zimmer has a little bit of like he just feels like Iloka can go out and play that maybe a little bit better he's a veteran maybe he can handle the change of position but I would have liked if you're going

to throw someone out there and just kind of see what they're going to have like if they would have elevated one of the guys that they drafted in the kind of the depth of the cornerbacks or Josh Metellus's safety Brian Cole maybe we would have gotten a chance to see one of those younger guys get put in because at this point, Iloka is just not a great player, and he's a veteran. He's not a guy we're going to be able to see much past this. In an ideal scenario, he's not playing for any sort of good team. We don't know that about any of the young guys. So I can't fault Zimmer because he's trying to win the game.

He's putting in the veteran who he thinks maybe can handle it the best. But just from a perspective of maybe if we're looking in the 2021 tunnel, it would have been nice to see one of those younger guys go in. But again, I can't fault him for that. I wanted to end with a COVID question, just in the fact that we were kind of waiting all week for maybe just a case to pop up. Like we're seeing Tennessee have new cases every day, and you're just looking at how physical a sport football is, and you're saying, well, they had guys along the defensive line that have tested for it. Like, they were right there with a bunch of Minnesota players.

Like, I didn't know if I was expecting it, but I wasn't going to be surprised if they said someone tested positive, but they didn't really mention it much in the telecast other than at the beginning, and then it was just kind of like, football. And I think yesterday there was probably a moment when Cam Newton tested positive and some other stuff happened, and then there's, oh, are they going to shorten the regular season? And it kind of was all panicking there for a second, and then games started today, and it was like, did any of that even really happen? So I guess, I don't know. I don't know if we're in the clear. Neither of us are doctors. I don't know if anyone really knows.

But like, it's only been seven days since the Vikings have played. We know how this virus is. It can be longer than that to incubate, but they're getting tested so often. I'm sure they're getting monitored if they have symptoms or anything like that. But are you like surprised we didn't have anything pop up? Is this kind of how you expected it to go? I don't know. Just go wherever you want with that because I think there's so many unknowns and we're not, we're still not sure if we're out of the woods, if we're still in it. Like I really don't know. So I'm sure you don't know either, but kind of take it away there. You've counted on restaurants. Now they're counting on you.

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So if you wear the mask, then it does not do that or lowers significantly the chances of doing it. Also, being able to play today, having everyone test negative is a great thing for the Vikings, a very lucky thing for the Vikings, considering the close contact they had with so many Titans, not only during plays, but also after the game and things like that. I know they try to limit it, but players still do it. The number of people that you see in the stands now for this game against Houston that had no mask at all or took their mask down. The fact that you see players after games talking and things like that, that you see coaches, even Mike Zimmer lifted up his shield to talk to the referee at one point. Like that's not what the shield is for. It's for when you talk to the referee and honestly he should probably have a mask too just to be completely safe about this thing and I also wonder about the Titans how closely they were following a lot of the protocols if they had this big of an outbreak because the protocols are

designed to not have this big of an outbreak so that's another thing to question and I also feel sad for my profession uh honestly, for journalism and broadcasting when you get so much of, it's fine. It's fine. I don't know what you guys are all worried about. This is totally fine. The NFL, great job, NFL. Love you, NFL. Yay, yay, yay. Like, oh, look, okay, I don't want anybody sick. I want football to be played more than anything on this God's green freaking earth. But I also want it to be done safely, as absolute safely as possible. And when you have your quarterback test positive, and then you just say, oh, well, we'll just test a bunch of people and bump the game back. Like, okay, my research here and understanding and reading on this virus is that's probably not safe. And they really, probably,

the Patriots should have pushed this game back a week. And the NFL should have known this stuff was coming. And I thought that Pro Football Talk put it really well. Through the first three weeks, it was like when you or I par the first three holes. We're bound to get a triple bogey soon because we're not good golfers and because COVID is very, very hard in a non-bubble to keep out. And so I thought the amount of people who were saying nothing to see here, nothing to see here, I thought that that's concerning a little bit in terms of the way the media, in some instances, was willing to carry the water for the NFL in a situation where we should really be analyzing this with the utmost scrutiny. And yeah, they're not out of the woods yet for the Vikings, the way this thing works. But I would say they got very lucky here. It does not mean that you can't have COVID spread during a game. It does not mean that. People who are taking it

that way, I think, have it completely wrong. It's more of a case of very good luck that it hasn't happened yet. It does not mean, oh, well, everyone in the world just can't get COVID. So it'll be fine. Like the president of the United States has COVID. It can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime. And if you take your foot off the gas, I'm not saying that shut down the NFL. I'm saying if you take your foot off the gas and if as journalists you just say, no, you guys got it all taken care of. Great job. Congratulations.

Then that's how we end up with problems. So the NFL should reevaluate everything they do after this with the Titans. They should investigate very thoroughly what happened with the Titans, and then we can go forward. I think it's great what they've done. The NFL, they've done as much as they possibly could so far, but this is still a very, very serious concern. And so there are still things when you see people on the sideline without masks, when you see people in the stands without masks, and those things. Are we taking every possible precaution?

Are all players and all coaches taking it seriously? And is the NFL doing enough? These are questions that should continue to be asked. And when you ask them, you'll have people who say, oh, you didn't want football. Man, I am the person you can't say that to. I want everyone to be safe. And I think most people look at it that way.

So there's your COVID rant. I'm very happy that the Vikings so far have dodged that bullet, though, and let's hope that that continues. Yeah, and I think it was probably just, like, complacency that had maybe set in. Like, they did a pretty good job throughout training camp, throughout all the offseason stuff they went through three weeks and they I think like just society in general after a while you haven't had it for a while maybe the people you know haven't gotten it you're like well it's like we've been okay and so then every once in a while you just don't put up your mask when you're doing something or you just forget to grab it and it

could have been as simple as that it didn't have to be like intentional like titans players were just ducking it because they didn't want to do it it could have just been as simple as they didn't put it on one time and that's when it happened and so i think if anything i think we saw like the schedule got affected things got affected like if the number of games gets affected that could potentially i don't know how the nflpa would bargain for it but that could hurt the players bottom lines or things like that. So I think hopefully everyone kind of looked at this and said, okay, this, it did happen, even though we all feel like we're doing a good job, which by and large, you are doing a good job, but we can see one slip up turns into a whole team having to skip a game. Like they just tested positive, more people on Sunday, which pro football talk said

that then puts them in jeopardy for next week. So if anything you're taking from this, it's, okay, maybe we got complacent. We got to get back on it. And so hopefully that's what happens. The Titans thing is, at this point, it's already started. So you can only hope to, like, contain it at this point. So hopefully they can kind of contain that and it doesn't have to spread to where this is happening to other teams, to where they're going to have to build in more weeks to the schedule, where they're going to have to just cancel games for specific teams

or for all teams. Let's just hope this is a sign that, okay, we were doing a really good job and maybe we patted ourselves on the back a little bit too much, and now let's take a step back, let's get back to what we were supposed to be doing, and let's attack this.'s that's what i'm hoping comes from this well and i think what they also have to do is just be prepared because i don't know that titans players did anything wrong i mean it just might be bad luck um but i think that should be investigated to see what happened if they can figure it out how it got in the building and how it spread so much

when all of these social distancing masks all those different things they're all designed so it doesn't spread the way that it did but I also would just advise the NFL be ready because if you have multiple problems like this going forward and you may then be ready for something else be ready to take a two-week break. Be ready to have some sort of bubble option. I mean, one thing I thought of was if you had to do the final couple of months of the season is like bubble for a month, take a couple weeks off, bubble again. Like that might have to happen. And so the NFL needs contingency plans on top of contingency plans. I think they've proven that it can work to be able to play this way, but it is

not a perfect system. And so that's kind of the point. And I would also just tack on before we wrap up is that, I mean, good job by the Vikings. Like they showed up and by the second drive, they're moving the ball and scoring. Their defense initially was playing pretty well. First three drives, 16 yards. They came out prepared despite a lot of different distractions missing a practice and I think it says a lot about I mean yeah okay the Texans are bad but I think it also says a lot about the character of a lot of players on this team that a lot of players that they have are winners and again reason that's hard to tank you have a lot of players that want to win every Sunday no matter what and not guys who are just going to get steamrolled or let small things, you know, throw them far off their game or a coach who's going to let that happen.

So good job to them on that and to them on shutting their facility down and taking extra measures and everything else and adhering to all the testing. Hopefully that all continues and we don't have to have this conversation again. So great questions,ul great stuff it was a unique feeling haven't felt it in quite a while the vikings have not won a football game since would it be week 15 last year would that be right regular season yeah regular season right yeah i mean postseason but regular season. Yeah. Regular season. Right. I mean, post-season, but regular season. I mean, they of course went against New Orleans, but last regular season win must've been week 15 against maybe the Chargers was the last time they won a regular season game. So it's been a while. Yeah. If they hadn't won today, I think we would have had a question of, well, how long is it going

to be since this next one? Cause they have, they have some tough opponents coming up. So yeah, I'm glad they got this one. It's a little weird looking at Twitter because I don't know how many people are actually glad they got this one. I think three weeks into the season, people got a little ahead of themselves, which I can't blame them. But it happened. So now I think everyone has to readjust and hopefully people are people are more excited than not about the Vikings finally winning a game well we know that it always changes from week to week if they upset the Seahawks then it will be let's go to the playoffs so that will be what we're focused on this week is what it all means to get this win and can they upset the

Seahawks somehow? And much, much more, as always, coming up this week on Purple Insider. So we will catch you then. The wait is finally over. Football is back. You might not be at a game this year, but you can still be in on the action at BetOnline. BetOnline is going the extra mile to make sure you can get in on every possible chance to win this season. From spreads and totals to team and player and coaching props, BetOnline gives you more options to wager than anywhere else.

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