Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Emergency podcast: Christian Darrisaw out for the season

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Matthew Coller breaks down Christian Darrisaw's injury and then talks with fans about the 5-2 start and recent losses Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. And yes, this is an emergency podcast to talk about Christian Derrissaw being out for the rest of the season with an injury that Kevin O'Connell described as involving both the ACL and the MCL, which sounds like that's going to mean a long recovery for Christian Derrissa. O'Connell did say that he was hoping that they would put that thing in an x-ray machine and they would get some good news today, but ultimately not the case. And the Vikings are now without their left tackle for the rest of the season. And it's not just a good player. It's not just a starter. It is one of the best players in the entire NFL that the Vikings are going to be missing. And when you think about all the players on the Minnesota Vikings, if we did an all-Viking ranking,

you start with Justin Jefferson, but I don't think there's a whole lot of debate that Christian Derrissaw is the second best player on the Minnesota Vikings. And now they will be without him for the remainder of the season. And of course, I mean, I'm not surprised that the first comment to come in from CD, and hopefully it's not Christian Derrissaw, saying season over. It's not, but we'll get into that. It's not the season over to lose Christian Derrissaw, but it is incredibly significant. So we have to get into now, how will the Minnesota Vikings make up for this? What is it going to mean? What do they have to change? Because when you have an

injury like this, it's not just, Hey, well, you know, throw in somebody else and okay. You have to shift the protection a little bit. That way. Christian Derrissaw is at the level where he is able to put on an island any defensive end or pass rusher in the entire NFL. We've seen him face off with the best edge rushers in the league and do really, really well against them. Brian Burns, he played a bunch of snaps against Nick Bosa. Will Anderson went up against him. And he's got a quarterback that has been holding onto the ball longer than anyone else in the NFL that is not a scrambling quarterback. So Brock Purdy is ever so slightly ahead of him, and so is Bo Nix.

But those guys scramble around a lot. So among pocket quarterbacks, nobody has held the ball longer this year than Sam Darnold, and yet he's been able to get away with that in a lot of instances, in part because his left tackle has been Christian Derrissaw. And I think that Derrissaw is one of the most universally accepted that he's great players that I've ever come across. There are no debates whatsoever about how good he is, but just to put the numbers on it, Derrissaw has been a top 10 tackle in the entire NFL this year. He has been one of the best in run blocking. He is elite,

elite when it comes to pass blocking in terms of his statistics and his PFF grades, all those things. And he has been consistent at the top of the league year after year. It is so rare that a team would give a contract extension to an offensive lineman after, what was it, his third year? Yeah, that's right, his third year in the NFL and yet that's what the Vikings did this offseason they were so confident that Christian Derrissaw would be this guy that they decided to give him that four-year 113 million dollar extension which I'm sure at this point he feels good about signing knowing that he's got an injury here and we won't know about the long-term prognosis probably for a while,

but when the ACL and MCL comes up, it makes me think of TJ Hawkinson and how long it's taken Hawkinson to come back because he needed to allow the MCL to heal and then do the surgery on the ACL. I don't know if that's going to be the case, but when both of those things get brought up, that's what comes to mind for me that that's often maybe a nine month type of injury to get Christian Derrissaw back. So this is an injury that is nothing short of devastating for the Vikings offense. And I think it's hard sometimes to figure out how much value an individual offensive lineman has. But with Derrissaw, what he allows you to do is shift protection any other direction. It allows the Vikings, and they've often done this, to provide help from their running backs to inside rushes because they just don't have to worry almost ever about the outside rush and now there will have to be

schematic attention to the left side as opposed to where they were just able to leave that alone anytime Christian Derrissaw has been over there so you cannot overstate the value of Derrissaw or how difficult it is going to be to replace him. So I'll go over a couple of the options. Kevin O'Connell said they were considering a couple of different options, but I'll tell you the one that it sounds like is the most clear of the three different options. The first one is in my mind to put Dalton Reisner at left guard and then move over Blake Brandel to left tackle. That's the one that makes the most sense to me because Brandel came up as a left tackle in the league. He's a starting caliber player and he has played over 270 snaps at left tackle in 2022. And

if you remember the Buffalo game, Darisaw went out of that game and brandel came in kind of saved the day slowed down the buffalo pass rush he is a capable starting offensive lineman who has a lot of experience at left tackle through his college career and enough in the nfl to slide over from left guard to left tackle. I'm sure that the technique is different for him, but at least you know you had a starting caliber player. And then with Dalton Reisner, he's always played left guard in his entire career. We've had a lot of discussion about Reisner and taking over potentially for Ed Ingram, but he would have to learn a new position to play right guard. And now he could just slide back into that spot that he's been doing for so long. And then they wouldn't have

to change anything else. That is the most ideal for me. Someone who has been in the system and rise, they're playing that position last year. He's got a lot of experience doing it. And you really feel like you just have to move one guy and he's still not a bench player. He's in starting caliber shape, which I think is a big part of it. Guys playing 70 snaps week in, week out. If the Vikings ever get to 70 snaps, they only had 50 last night. But week in and week out playing as a starter is totally different than coming off the bench when you've never been playing.

And what O'Connell said was trying to get the best five on the field. I think that that is the best five on the field. Another way to go about it might be having David Questenberry start at left tackle. He came in as the emergency guy. But to me, that's like asking a relief pitcher to suddenly become a starter in the middle of the season. Questenberry has pretty much always during his career been a backup player. And that's really valuable. As you saw, a guy goes in and is able to hold down that position. You can survive that for a game or two, but asking him to play 10 games, and then we'll talk about this, potentially into the playoffs, would be a huge ask for a 34-year-old offensive lineman in Questenberry that has not played very many snaps really in his career at left tackle.

He had one season where he played over 400 snaps and has not done that since. So that would be a big ask. And I guess I would be a little surprised if they just said, all right, Questa Barry, you're the starter and left Dalton Reisner on the bench or replaced Ingram. That would be a lot of shuffling for me. So I don't think that's the best option. The other one is Walter Rouse. And he was a sixth round draft pick who had a very good training camp. He had a very good preseason, but we're still talking about someone who's never played before and was picked in the sixth round. And preseason is just not remotely similar to playing in the NFL.

He has never played against the Miles Garrett types, those Brian Burns is the Nick Bosa's. And while they don't have the scariest schedule going forward, there are players along the way who are edge rushers that they're going to face against Indianapolis, against Jacksonville, Tennessee, who have good resumes. I just think saying to a sixth round rookie in a situation where there are other options, hey, kid, go save the season at left tackle and take over for Derrissaw, that would be a lot to ask. So I think that the ideal replacement

is to just move Blake Brandl over and have Reisner pop in. The worry there though is that when Brandl was at left tackle, he didn't have a great run there. It wasn't horrendous. there were too many sacks allowed but his pressure rate was mediocre his pff grades were mediocre that's what they're probably going to deal with though and the only other option would be to try to trade for someone but i just

couldn't think i was trying to rack my brain around, who might have a left tackle that could be on the trade market that they wouldn't have to give up the first-round pick because now it might shift your opinion on whether they should be looking for the big trade or not when you lose a player of this level. Because we are talking about a top-three player on the entire team not being able to take a snap for the rest of the year. That might adjust the viewpoint, and I think it probably does adjust mine,

unless we're talking about a player that can be on this team over multiple seasons. Then, of course, you would do it. But if you look around, who's giving up left tackles? Usually teams don't. This is why the Vikings gave Derrissaw so much money is when you get one, you try to hold onto that guy forever. I mean, look at the league's left tackles, how many of them ever end up, you know, changing teams because there's so much value there. So normally teams hang on to them. If you're, they're going to trade them, it's going to take

a lot. So I just have a really tough time seeing the Vikings being able to make a trade for someone of significance. Uh, I mean, when we've reached the point of, uh, the chat asking about David Bakhtiari, I mean, David Bakhtiari has been injured for what, like four straight seasons. And, uh, he was kind of in and out with a green Bay. But I don't think you want to go down that Jake Long route again. We haven't reached that level of a spot where you're talking about a super injured player coming either out of retirement or having not played to be thrown in as your starting tackle. That just doesn't make a lot of sense. You'd rather battle through it with some guys who are on the team, who know the offense, than try to do something like that.

As you saw, that desperation did not work back when they did that with Jake Long. It brings up also the 2016 season that a lot of you are now talking about, having gone from 5-0 to missing the playoffs that year. So we can discuss that as we go forward and take your questions and comments as well as we break this down. But really crushing for Christian Derrissaw, just from the perspective of the player, nobody works harder at it. Nobody is a better guy in the locker room. He has become even more of a leader on this team after being such a quiet guy when he came into the league. And it is really crushing for him now to have to go through this very, very similar feeling

to what happened last year with TJ Hawkinson, because you know what type of road this is going to be for Derrissaw to come back. And I will very briefly address the thing that is out there of second guessing Kevin O'Connell for handing the ball off. I'm just not going to have that conversation. I know that people are really upset. And I think that that's what it is. When something goes wrong, we look around and want to blame somebody, but I don't believe that there is anyone to blame other than just that's how football works. Sometimes a guy falls on your leg and you injure your leg, uh, that we, we could second guess every single play in the NFL where things go wrong or when someone gets hurt. But in that situation, there was no issue with running the football there because you have six defensive backs for

the Rams on the field. It's something that we see every single week in the league in that spot. And I'm just not going to argue about it. I understand everybody's upset and that you want to point to somebody. It's like if you're in a car accident and someone says, well, why didn't you just drive the other way? Or why didn't you slam on your brakes faster? Well, if I knew that someone was going to pull out in front of me, then I definitely would have. So I look at it like that.

It was a very easy decision to run the ball there. If you get a big run, which Aaron Jones is capable of, then you might have a chance at a field goal, but you don't really want Sam Darnold dropping back deep into the end zone at that point. And we know that Kevin O'Connell is going to try to put points on the board always in those situations. So, and I'm not going to fight over the play call. It was just a regular type of handoff play that they do a thousand times. This, this play has been done many, many times. It was just a very, very bad break for Christian Derrissaw and the Vikings. I don't think at that point, if you're just thinking we can never run plays to try to score points because someone get,

got hurt you might as well just fold it up because every play someone could potentially get hurt so that's all i'm going to say about that i'm not going to debate it anymore i think people are very reasonably very very reasonably upset and crushed that this has happened and you know how much it can hurt the team. So that's what I think it is, the lashing out and frustration of what has happened here. Because when you get to 5-0, and we can transition the conversation a little bit here, because you get to 5-0 and everyone is talking about the 5-0 Minnesota Vikings, how good they've been. They go into the bye week

very similarly to what happened in 2016, where they went into the bye week at 5-0, and then they end up falling apart coming out of the bye week with back-to-back losses, including one on national television, including to a quarterback who had been struggling, but is usually pretty good. It was Jay Cutler. Then it was Matthew Stafford last night. There are some similarities here. An offensive tackle getting hurt was really the definition of what happened in the 2016 season. I mean, it's just a little bit eerie. Almost. I did check. Kevin O'Connell had both of his eyes working this morning, so at least it veered from what happened with Mike Zimmer's eyeball. And the offensive coordinator still works for the Vikings, Wes Phillips, so that's a little bit different.

And I think the biggest difference is the ability to work your way through some adversity here for this team, because I think you can be of two minds when it comes to where they stand. In one way, you could say, let's really look at these two losses. One of them is against the best team in the entire NFL, the Detroit Lions. If they're not first, they're second. Maybe the Ravens are first and the Lions are second. And that's by two points where all you need is four yards and you can win that football game and they let it slip through their fingers. And then it's Thursday night football. And we've always said this about Thursday night football. Hey, it's Thursday night.

It's weird. You don't really get the same sort of prep. They couldn't go through an entire week of analysis of what happened with Detroit because they had to get on a plane and fly here on Wednesday. And it's not shocking that the Rams were able to use a lot of the same things that Detroit did because the Vikings didn't have any real time to fix it on defense. You can't in a day start installing all new answers, all new checks, changes, adjustments, and things like that. And they were without Blake Cashman. And when we talk about injuries, if we were to name the three players that you wouldn't want to get hurt, one of them

just got hurt in Derrissaw. The other one is Jefferson, obviously the quarterback. And clearly Blake Cashman is that guy because they don't have another player who can do what he's able to do. So I think that there is a feeling of everything's falling apart. It's 2016 again, 2003 for maybe the, the OGs where they get off to this crazy hot start. Everyone's in love with them. And then it comes apart at the seams. That does feel like an overreaction to a Thursday night football game, even as frustrating as it was. And when you throw in some of the other things, penalties, that's a Thursday night thing. Wasn't it one of those games or was it Monday night? What was, what was the night game where they threw 30 flags?

That feels like it might have been a Thursday night game. But there's a lot of elements here, though, where the Vikings have to be better if they're going to even be a playoff team. If they want to avoid allowing this to start slip through their fingers, there needs to be a lot of things that are fixed and adjusted. And some of them I think you can, and some of them you probably can't. You can't change the fact that teams now feel like they have some answers on offense against this defense, but you can start to address the middle of the field being problematic for them. I think when they get Cashman back,

that's the area, that's where they've been going after is where the Vikings are missing one of their best players. They also have thrown a lot of screens and quick passes, and that's always in forever. Since the first time anyone ever sent a blitz, an offensive person said, you know, what we should do is get that ball out really quick. And even though Stafford had some plays where he held onto the ball for a really long time, his average snap to release for the game was only two and a half seconds on average. It was quick pass, quick pass, quick pass. And then, Hey, now we're going to drop back deeper. And at that point, the defense was worn down and being worn down is a huge deal. I was looking this up today among teams that have played seven games so far this season.

The Vikings are 22nd out of 23 in terms of total plays run on offense. That's why Jordan Addison doesn't have enough touches. That's why Jalen Naylor lately doesn't have enough touches. That's why Jalen Naylor lately doesn't have enough touches. At times we've said, where's Justin Jefferson's big statistics. He had some last night, but he also, uh, you know, could have had maybe five, six, seven more if they were on the field a little bit more teams have found a really good way to slow down the Vikings on defense and stay on the field and have longer drives, which keeps the Vikings offense and Justin Jefferson off the field. 50 plays. You're just never going to put up huge numbers if you're only running 50 plays. That means every drive

has to be a success. And these two things play off of each other. So I think it starts there with getting back to playing Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Tennessee. These teams is not letting them use the same answers that the Lions and Rams were able to do, but they also get actual weeks of preparation. I mean, this was no real time to prepare against the Rams. That's not an excuse because the Rams didn't have time to prepare for the Vikings. It's only looking for what things that are going wrong could continue to go wrong and what things that are going wrong could be resolved. And part of the, hey, we've got answers for you. We're going to block with extra people. We're going to throw to the same places.

We're going to get rid of the ball quick. There are answers to that that they should be able to install in the future. But I also feel that we were too far on the Vikings defense. Now, the numbers backed it up. I mean, the numbers had them as the top pressure team. The numbers had them as the top expected points added team. But I think that they've come back to reality a little bit because, number one, they were getting touchdowns all the time. That's just a really hard thing to sustain.

They did get a pick last night, but it's hard to score a touchdown in half of your games the rest of the way. That just wasn't reasonable to expect, to get as many turnovers as they did, as many pressures as they did. It was a little bit on the unsustainable side. I just think that the defense is more of a very, very good defense that has some flaws that will not be ever completely resolved the interior pressure unless they make a big trade they're just not a team that's going to get much rush there Harrison Phillips had three pressures and nobody else had any when rushing up the middle not going

to do very well there they unless they trade for a corner the The corners are going to be older. They're not as quick. They can't just lock people down one-on-one. That will continue to be an issue. But if they are putting pressure on quarterbacks, if they can cause a little more chaos up front than they have the last two weeks, that does make it a little easier

when it comes to playing against, or easier for Stephon Gilmore for Shaq Griffin. I thought Byron Murphy Jr. actually had a very good game last night with a great pass breakup and an interception, but he's been targeted a lot so far throughout the season. So there's some things that can be cleaned up schematically, but you also just can't always ask the scheme to make everybody better each week all the time. One thing that I am really curious to see, and Kevin O'Connell was asked about this again, but Patrick Jones played 46 snaps against the Rams and registered a grand total of zero

pressures. Dallas Turner, I believe, played three snaps and also had zero pressures. I don't really understand that gap between the two. Coaches sometimes really like players, kind of fall in love with players because they know the system and things like that. But last night when they were struggling so much to get after Matthew Stafford, I did feel like Dallas Turner coming off the edge would have made a lot of sense there. And it is something when it comes to the viewpoint on a player, how in four days that viewpoint could change because I was really buying into the idea that hey he just needs some time he just needs development it's not an easy defense to drop into

and you're not taking Grenard off the field for him but I would take Patrick Jones off the field for him if they felt like Dallas Turner was ready so it it is a little bit of a concern now. I think the meter doesn't have to move up to the red, but you do have to ask that was a game where you could have used them. Uh, why didn't you use them? And Kevin O'Connell did say that he expects him to be used more as they go along. Grenard got a little banged up. He still had a pretty good game despite that, but as they go forward, if they are still going out of their way, because last night I almost felt like they went out of their way not to use Dallas Turner. If that is still the case, then we will have to discuss

it. Was this not the draft pick that we thought? Because it's too early for that still. But I moved into the category of, okay, maybe I'm willing to start discussing that if we don't see Dallas Turner on the field quite a bit more as we go forward here. So the everything at the moment, of course, after two straight losses, and this is always the case in the NFL feels like the walls are completely crumbling around the Minnesota Vikings. And I am not here doing the emergency podcast for talking about Christian Derrissaw's injury. I'm going to try to tell you that everything is going fine because it's not. The schedule opens up the door for this team to get right back on top, stay at the top of the NFC North. And I think that is part of the conversation that we can have is, so how much do you react to this? Because what I've seen as far as the

comment sections, a normally pretty reasonable group of people that shows up here for the YouTube lives, for the social media has not felt very reasonable at the moment. It feels like there is an overreaction to this, to the point where the season is over, the general manager is a loser, the coach doesn't know what he's doing, all this stuff. And guys, just two weeks ago, we were discussing whether the Vikings have the best coach combination in the league. And we were talking about how the front office had built brilliantly with this timeline. All of that didn't change in two losses by a grand total of 12 points.

Okay. That's just not, that's not what happened. And even then two of those points should not have counted because of a face mask. And the more looks that i got at that face mask after i left the stadium last night the more i thought how in the world is the nfl not allowing something like that to be reviewed there were a lot of questions about that last night but no it cannot be reviewed and there will be discussion about it in the off season. While great, that doesn't go back and help last night. So even if we don't count a fake safety that they took last night and just assume that

they lost on that play, we are talking about a total of 10 points in two weeks that the Vikings lost by to two quarterbacks who have represented their franchises in the Super Bowl or NFC Championship recently. That's pretty hard for me to start saying that everyone deserves to be fired. It's everyone's fault. They're going to burn down to the ground. I think the Derrissaw injury compounds how frustrated everybody is because it is crushing and he is such a tremendous player but I also don't think we need to start making statements that are way over the top and this it sort of reminds me of when the Vikings didn't get their contract deal done with Jefferson by OTAs and everyone wanted him traded like okay sometimes we really do need to take a deep breath.

And like, let's talk this over now of what's realistic for this season. Now, before the year, I had them as a nine win team. Vegas had them as a six and a half win team, and they have overachieved so far. If they continue on even a path of being a 500 team the rest of the way, they have 10 games left. That would mean that they end up as a 10 win team. That's a disappointment from 5-0, but it's not a disappointment as far as the season goes.

J.J. McCarthy was on the sideline last night. His recovery is going well. He's still the future. They still have all the cap space that they have. Darasol five weeks that this is why they play 17 games and not five because it is a long season and you have to have more depth than they have. And you have to have probably some younger players at certain positions, especially cornerback, and you have to have some interior pressure and you probably do need a quarterback with a little bit more of a past history uh who isn't getting sacked as much and and as the weeks have gone on we have seen some of the issues uh with sam darnold holding on to the ball and uh that's where that popped up in

some of the worst spots for last night yes he gets masks, but also he's standing in his own end zone, kind of double clutching. And he's been sacked on 10% of his dropbacks. That's way too many. I mean, that's at the very top of the league. So it's really the question here of how much can they fix to be better than a 10 win team going forward are we totally done calling them a serious contender are we done having any discussions about uh whether they can you know go on forward here and make noise in the playoffs or is that too much i personally think that that is way way too far to start saying that there's way too much football to

still be played. And they have too much talent and ability on their coaching staff to start saying, Hey, it's over. See you in 2025. But I guess I wasn't shocked to see that as a reaction when twice in a row you have opposing teams take advantage of the same stuff and then every small thing becomes glaring uh where the penalties that they have that kevin o'connell cited the mental mistakes as kmac says in the comment section here that's another part of it where they are now after last night the fifth most penalized team in the entire NFL, which is that some of the quarterback, I don't recall them having so many issues with Kirk cousins of just getting lined up and getting the snap and getting the play call in and everything. Sometimes they

did, but not to the level that they've had so far this year. Um where are you in terms of the reaction? Because I haven't seen almost anybody saying, hey, guys, it's just two games in the middle of the season and they barely lost both games. Now it's time to move on and still be great. Every comment I've seen is this thing is over and everyone is to blame. And I just feel like maybe just pull back a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit, with a team that still remains at 5-2. And think about the other 5-2 teams. This is a fun exercise.

If you put yourself in the shoes of some other teams that are 5-2, the Baltimore Ravens lost a couple games to start the season, and, of course, they went, oh oh man, is this falling apart already? Did we overpay Lamar Jackson? He's not going to win the MVP again. All those things. And then they got rolling. How about the Buffalo Bills?

A couple of bad games by Josh Allen. He had the 9-for-30 game that they lost to Houston. Oh no, he doesn't have receivers. They're not going to win all those things. My point just being every team has had a game this year, except for the Kansas city chiefs that their fans like you guys are talking about, Hey, like it's, this is a big problem. Things are falling apart. How about the Lions? Didn't they lose to, what was it, the Bucs? And they weren't looking that great on offense to start the season. It is a very long season that still has a lot to play out. But it does feel like, here's where I would give it to you, it does feel like that we may have set the bar too high after 5-0, and they needed to prove it to us.

And that's why we continually kind of moved the goalposts on this team where it was, hey, prove it here in Lambeau. Prove it against the Lions. Prove it. I actually didn't think this was supposed to be a prove-it game. This was supposed to be a steamroll type of game. But instead, you know, they end up coming up short. So I understand. I'm not saying you're any sort of psycho to be reacting to what happened. That's not what I'm saying. I think that there is a middle ground on this where it's not the GM is a fool, the coach can't do anything, the defensive coordinator's a gimmick. I just have seen so much of that too far to me.

That statement's too far. We could play it with the comments section. Is your statement too far, or is it on the nose? Maybe we should do that. We should go through and look and say what statements have been too far when it comes to all of this. Because I think that they still are on track to compete for the NFC North. That discussion does not have to be over just because they had two close losses

and a bad injury at tackle. Lots of teams have injuries. So, yeah, I mean, I go back and forth a little bit because there are panic buttons to be pushed and alarm bells to be sounded after a loss like that. At the same time, I can't help, but also wonder too, if Sam Darnold doesn't get face masked because here's why I just, I thought of this this morning that in 2021, Darnold doesn't get face masked because here's why I just, I thought of this this morning that in 2021, Darnold actually led that same drive and tied the game against the Vikings. And the score was the same.

It was 28 to 20. And he went from the Carolina four in the final two minutes to score a touchdown, get the two point conversion. I don't know. Like football changes so much over a season to be saying after a Thursday night loss. And we all do this by the way, I am guilty of this too. I said, Hey guys, weird things happened in London and it could be a very ugly hideous game. So let's not go crazy after London. It was an ugly hideous game. And we not go crazy after london it was an ugly hideous game and we came

back and went oh well the offense is a mess and they you know darn old looked really bad and then i thought last week we did a good job of not going crazy but this was a loss to a team that came in at two and four that was not the two and four version though this is something we also have to keep in mind that was not the two and four version, though. This is something we also have to keep in mind. That was not the 2-4 version. If you watch the opening game that the Rams played against the Lions, they should have won with Cooper Cup and Puka Nakua healthy. They haven't had them healthy since then. That is a Rams team that with those receivers healthy,

if they even cover anybody the rest of the year, they could be at the top of their division. And this loss might be looked at a lot differently. I just don't think we can look at there. And I underrated this because I did not think Nakua was going to play. I thought that that was totally bogus. Oh, let's have him practice one day and then just to get in Kevin O'Connell's head. And then Nakua looks like he's as good as Justin Jefferson, which he has been so far in his career, that's something I didn't expect. And you end up losing the game by realistically eight points

because the face mask should not have counted. So where do you fall on the scale is really the question. Hold on. Let me silence my phone real quick so I can tell you that us days are back at U.S. Cellular again. Exclusive offers just for customers just to say thanks. Right now, you'll get $1,200 off any phone plus $400 off any tablet. Amazing, right?

Yeah, but my family is so excited about their new devices that they keep texting me during the show. They're all about us days deals like $1,200 off any phone and plus $400 off any tablet. Terms apply. Visit uscellular.com for details. Comment sections are always going to be a little aggressive i tend to trust you guys to be less crazy less reactionary because we have these conversations all the time and i think you guys do a good job of being thoughtful uh while also critiquing the team and having uh having good thoughts overall so maybe we'll we'll play a game. I'll try on the fly to talk about, like, is something an overreaction or is it kind of on the nose when it comes to this Vikings team?

So Adam says here, rely on their defense. Their defense is getting smoked for three and a half games. Yeah, that's – I don't remember what context I said that on. But it is true that if you go back to the end of the Packers game, they were struggling against the Jets. The defense was overall very, very good. And then the last two weeks, the Detroit Lions, I was really willing to say you're playing the Lions without your most valuable defensive player Blake Cashman so that's what happens they're the Lions they're really good but it was the ease in which Matthew Stafford was able to run that offense against the Vikings

defense and it was the way the corners looked it It was the lack of blitz success. All those things coming together where all the elements of the defense that had worked, none of them worked against the Rams. They didn't stop the run that well. I think Kyron Williams ended up with, what, 4.2 yards to carry, almost 100 yards. That didn't work very well and allowing the middle of the field to be open allowing another team to scheme your corners into having to come downhill and tackle and also kind of daring Harrison Smith to make some plays and he hasn't this year made

too many of those plays outside of what the giants game where he gets the interception, but there just haven't been a lot of splash plays there from Harrison Smith, either on this defense. And so I think when you say rely on their defense, uh, they, they can't rely on their defense to just win games for them. They should be able to rely on their defense to, to adjust and be better than they were the last two weeks. Cause it really hasn't been three and a half games that they've been bad. I mean, they made Aaron Rogers look bad to the point where Rogers was doing interviews, talking about how frustrating Flores' defense was. That was him coming back from London and having people ask him,

Hey, Aaron, what did Flores do so well? And Flores should be getting head coaching jobs. It is a week-to-week league, folks, as you can tell. So, no, they can't rely on their defense to just win games for them. But if we look at the opposing quarterbacks of the last two weeks, and then we look at the opposing quarterbacks going forward, tell me if you notice a difference. Jared Goff and Matthew Stafford are pro bowl caliber due to have led offenses to the Super Bowl versus this week. They will play Anthony Richardson looks largely lost out there trying

to throw the football the following week Trevor Lawrence who has struggled all season long except when he's playing who was it last week they beat the Patriots so mostly has struggled and after that Mason Rudolph maybe Will Levis probably Mason Rudolph at that point and then you go forward from there you've got Caleb Williams we'll see what he looks like there will be opportunities for this defense to look a lot better than they did against the Rams. But when there are solutions, it'll be interesting to see because that's where they will get tested. I think that the truth was probably always in the middle with the defense it's good but it's not untouchable and last year this kind of was the case where last year they have these great games

against a no connell and a handful of other quarterbacks that weren't that great that brian flores really embarrassed and ran out of the building. And then when it was Justin Herbert, when they were bagged up against the Red or the Lions late in the season, and that was really the key too, is when they were banged up, they just didn't have enough dudes and they don't really have backup linebackers. That is also an indictment on drafting Brian Asamoah that Brian Flores has not wanted to have much to do with. There could also be an issue with Flores and younger players in general, because how many young players has he bought into at all on this defense since he arrived? And the answer I think

is zero. Ivan Pace, I guess Ivan Pace, I'm sorry. It's not zero. Ivan Pace is the only young player that he's really bought into since he's got here. And that's a chicken and egg where you could say, Oh, is it bad drafting or is it because under Ed Donatello's defense, we thought Asamoah looked like he was going to be a guy to play in the future. And then under Flores, he can't even get on the field. So I'm not, I'm not sure of what's to blame there and the same goes with the Dallas Turner question of I just is it that they have stars at those edge rushing positions and you can't really ask him to do all the different

things that you can ask of Patrick Jones but shouldn't there be an adjustment there to move Van Ginkle a little bit to get Turner where he's going to be at his best at that? That's all of that is a little bit tricky to work our way through. But I think as far as your reaction, can they rely on the defense? Uh, they should be able to sometimes, but if you think that you're going to beat really good quarterbacks by just hoping your defense stops the other team all the time, this defense is not there. It's not 2017. It's not the 2000 Ravens. It's probably just a defense in the league, which means that they should give you a chance to win a lot of the time, but you can't run 50 plays. You can't be having three and outs. You can't be not finishing drives against good teams.

And I also think we can't downplay that it was Thursday night and there was no opportunity to fix the things that were problematic. And that belongs in the discussion too. Jay Garrett says, These pre-snap penalties are ridiculous. I looked it up. The Vikings lead the league in delay of game penalties in 2022 and 2023 and are tied for third this year.

That is not an overreaction. That is a serious issue. And I can't seem to figure out what the problem is. We've asked about it. We've gotten different answers. We've got to clean it up. It seems to mostly be put on the players but that is a good point i i guess uh maybe i didn't remember that there was that many delay of game

penalties with kirk cousins uh because he seemed comfortable in the offense but no that's a great statistic that's that's bizarre is that not getting the calls in is that the calls being too long and the quarterback not understanding them? That is something that they need to look very closely at because not getting guys lined up, having problems with delays of game, having to call a timeout, which is absurd for what happened. I mean, things like that, that's not overreaction. That is a serious, serious issue that I want to understand what's happening there. Do you need to simplify it more for Darnold?

Do you need to get the call in faster as the head coach? Do you need to have the offensive coordinator send the calls in? There have been instances in the NFL, because I remember, I think it was Gus Farratt told me this, where the offensive coordinator would give the call to Gus and he would actually send it into the headset. He would call it in. So does the call need to be sent in by someone else who can get it in on time or is it too long and not understand there needs to be a solution. So that's not an overreaction really at all. Let's see here. Alex from Alex Byron Murphy stinks.

I think it's the wrong game to say Byron Murphy stinks, by the way. He had some huge plays in this game, including interception. And there's a list of major contributors that will be gone after this season. They have three draft picks. This team is cursed. Okay, so that would be an overreaction. Yes, I'm going to put that one be an overreaction yes i'm going to put that one in the overreaction category because i think byron murphy is fine fine as in he's a

corner who can play in the league and play on a team that's got a good defense sometimes they'll attack him he's not the biggest guy they will make make plays over him. But last night he played the football extremely well. The thing about Murphy, though, is he's not the greatest tackler. Stinks is way too much, but can be taken advantage of. And this is where we talk about, are there weaknesses on the defense? Yes, there are. From a personnel perspective, you can talk about what Brian Flores didn't adjust all day long, but a lot of it is personnel.

And what opponents have done is said the last two weeks, we're going to throw these, these screens and these swing passes. We're going to get the ball on the outside and say, Byron Murphy, undersized guy who does have a tendency to miss some tackles go go tackle our guy go defeat a one-on-one block and go tackle our great playmaker with the football and he hasn't always been able to do it and that's something that they have to find a way to solve because it's going to keep happening stinks is way too much he's a starting caliber player who some weeks will frustrate you and some weeks will be really good as he was against the Rams.

As far as list of major contributors that'll be gone after the season, it's not that long of a list. We'll see about Harrison Smith in retiring. Cam Bynum doesn't have an extension, but I wouldn't be shocked if they do sign Cam Bynum. Outside of that, Van Ginkle, Cashman, Grenard, Pace, all these guys are under contract. Gilmore is probably not here. Murphy is maybe not here next year, depending on his deal. There are some, like with any team, that's why you have the cap space to be able to fill in the rest of that group and I think improve it, but you couldn't improve it all in one offseason. There aren't really that.

Here's where I would say that's not a total overreaction. There aren't really next men up that we're discussing. There isn't a next corner that we're looking at and saying, hey, Andrew Booth Jr. is the next guy up or Louis Seen's the next guy up because those guys aren't here anymore. And the same goes for Caleb Evans, who showed some flash last year and then that hasn't materialized. Shaq Griffin is on a one year contract. So I will say that it's not like a whole team's worth, but it's enough to say that that's that's true, that not having a lot of draft picks or recent draft

capital is problematic when it comes to replacing all of those guys. And it's going to have to be another situation where they're going out and looking for people, uh, where I, I don't want to totally go too far on that is the season's not over yet. It's five and two. Let's not worry about who would much contribute. I'm still in that mode because a lot of you did flip to, oh, let's talk about the off season. No, I'm not there yet. I don't want to do that. I don't want to talk about draft picks. I don't want to talk about which guys are free agents coming up. They're five and two. And if it had happened in a slightly different order and they had won this game, but they lost the Texans game,

I think you'd be looking at it going, they're five and two. This is a good team. It's that the thing we just saw is negating a lot of the bigger sample size of this team being very good because we assume what, that they're not going to change anything or fix anything. I think that there's a list of problems that can be fixed. The other thing I wanted to address is that the team is cursed. Yeah. I mean, I can't argue against that based on the overall history of the Minnesota Vikings. But I also think that every time something goes wrong for a football team, there's so much meltdown with Vikings fans based on the past history of this team. There's so much throw up your hands. It's over. We're cursed. They're never going to do anything. And it's okay. Do we have to do that every time players get hurt? Sometimes teams lose games.

Sometimes we don't have to do it after every game. Even like earlier this year with the kicker, when it was the, the kicker freak out like, Oh, he's good. That means he's going to miss a kick in the NFC championship. Like, come on,

we don't have to do that. We don't have to do that every time. Adam says, we just ignoring that KOC has no ability to adjust in game Chandler and acres, zero carries. Well, Jones is averaging three yards per carry.

I have the same criticism. I don't think that that is a terrible overreaction, Adam, because I have also wondered myself about the in-game adjustment. It sounds a little cliche to me to be able to go, you know, demand answers on that, that it's a little cliche that if they don't have four quarters of great play we just yell he can't adjust at the same time there is enough

evidence of can you have four quarter games of success offensively can you pass that first opening script continue to play at the same level they really have not this season continued to play at the same level and some of it has been score adjusted and because of the score that they were winning by a lot so whatever it might have been but even then I didn't feel like there was the greatest feel for the game another part of it is maybe the quarterback and asking for four quarters of great quarterback play week in and week out from a guy who is good, clearly good enough to be starting and winning, but maybe not on the same level as a Stafford or as a golf. So chicken and egg a little bit there. Kirk Cousins, when KOC was his coach, Kirk Cousins always had that issue. He always had

that issue of getting behind and putting up huge statistics at the end. And we would say the same thing. Kevin Stefanski can't adjust. Gary Kubiak isn't adjusting. Clint Kubiak isn't adjusting. And then now we're at the same thing. Still, your running back issue is a hundred percent reasonable and i asked about that with cam makers today i asked kevin o'connell and he more or less said that yeah after this mini buy that cam makers should have a chance to get in but this coaching staff has a tendency and it does with harrison smith and it's done it with it with Aaron Jones to just lean so hard on those same guys and they don't rotate in for some of those key players they just keep running Aaron Jones out there that is an adjustment that I wish that they had made and we have reached the point

when we're talking about coaching if you have the false starts all the time we now have a big enough sample size to say what is going on there like that still hasn't been resolved and if you do have these third quarters or second quarters where you're out of the script and then you just come to a complete halt as an offense to say it's going on what why can't you sustain drives why do you have the second fewest plays of any game that's played or any team that's played seven games so far this year? I don't know how much they can do to change that. That would be my thing. What do you do to change that? Just be better, be better at play calling. How much is execution after the defense

gets a look at what they're doing? How much is getting away from things that are working? This is one thing that I think about a lot with sports, where if we just go through some sports success stories, Steph Curry's the biggest sports success story of what, the last 20 years or something. Think about Golden state and what they did with Steph Curry. They just kept going back to the same thing that worked over and over again. And I also think about pitchers who throw 102 miles an hour and they keep going back to that main pitch. And sometimes the Vikings seem to get away from their main pitch. They got away from Aaron Jones after he was succeeding early on. And then when he tried to get back on it, the Rams had kind of fixed it.

They had some success with play actions, got a little away from that, and also just could not get that one play. That's another thing about breaking down a single football game is if Naylor catches it, what are we saying about the offense? He runs into the end zone, scores a touchdown there. It's a totally different feeling. They have been good enough offensively to be a five and two team that's competing overall. And I can't put so much weight on the third quarter statistics or how they play outside of the first 15 plays because they've been up so much uh i do though feel like it's not an overreaction to be frustrated with the lulls that have existed since o'connell took over uh let's see horse feathers says uh i'm not going

to count them out yet every game is going to have questionable play calls, but the ref standing right there and not seeing the face mask grab when he nearly took off Sam's head. Yeah, how much do you blame the face mask for them losing the game is another part of it too, because a lot of the internet was pointing out that they had a 98% chance to lose the game when Darnold got face masked. My counter to that is that I actually saw with Sam Darnold do this and come back and tie a game back in 2021. And we also see too, a lot in today's game of these, Hey, this team's win

probability was super low and they found a way to win it. Maybe that's, I don't know what that is. Quarterbacks scrambling better. Darnold's got a great arm. I mean, I don't know. They stole away a chance to find out. At the same time, we all feel like the face mask wasn't the reason that they lost the game. It is an opportunity for me to quickly rant, though, and just say, why is it that there is not a person in a booth

that they can call up to and just say, hey, what happened on that play? We're reviewing for whatever. The Vikings say they got face masks. We're taking a look at it. And the person in the booth says, yep, he got face masked. It's first down in 10 at the 18 yard line why is that not a thing why can the viewers at home have a better look at the

football game than the referees on the field it should be at the referee's discretion to well it's a it's a scoring play so that should always be reviewed but it i think it should be the referee's discretion to get together and say all right this one's close let's have our guy look at it they did it in the ufl it worked out really well and there's no reason they can't do it here uh let's see uh jake says with all respect matthew it's a straw man argument who's saying that we can't run plays to score points because we're afraid of players getting hurt. What, what people is there saying there's no, uh, you're talking about the, uh, the

thing, which I'm just, uh, done discussing. Um, but if you can't run the ball in a situation like that, you guys are saying if not just you you know a lot of people are saying that KOC made a mistake by doing something that every coach in that spot does which is try to find out on a little handoff or screen pass if they can maybe potentially get something going on on the drive if you can't do that because you're afraid of someone getting hurt, why are we even playing? I mean, it's just such a common play. It's such a common handoff that Derisaw is blocked for 500 times.

Someone just fell on him. I mean, it's not evidence of KOC's over-aggression. A delay handoff on a first down there that's just a handoff up the middle is not some over-aggressive crazy play. And two of his over-aggressive plays resulted in a 97-yard touchdown and a 51-yard pass to Addison the last couple of weeks. So I don't know. To me, it is just classic football. Something went wrong, second-gu's all it's that's all it really is because there's no logical reason that they shouldn't run the ball there when the rams have all their defensive backs out on the field and it makes total sense because if you get a 10 yard run

then you start throwing the ball and try to get a field goal with that much time left i i we always want them to go for fourth down. We always want them to play to win the game, except for when it goes wrong. Then they were silly. I don't know that one. I just cannot, I cannot get behind at all.

I really can. Let's see. Todd says the non-call and two very questionable holding interference calls on the defense is a leading credence to the games being fixed. That would be an overreaction, Todd. That would be an overreaction. The games are not fixed. I mean, unless you think that that referee needed to cover,

but that didn't cover anything. The Rams would have, I mean, well, I guess. I mean, that might be part of it if you needed the Rams and you wanted to eliminate the Vikings' last pick. But, I mean, that is just, that's getting into total tinfoil hat land. I think that incompetence is not malice. I feel the same way if you guys were watching the links in the finals about Brianna Stewart's travel.

It's just, incompetence is not malice. It's that doesn't mean because they can't see something and the Roger Goodell does not give them the opportunity to have someone look at it. Then I, but, but fixed, uh, yeah, that, that is too far for me. Yep. But fixed, that is too far for me. Yep, that would be fully under the overreaction bit, especially because the Vikings had such a small chance to go down and win the game. I mean, they would have needed to have fixed it in other spots. But yeah, to your point, though, some of those flags, I do feel like this year that the referees in the NFL have gotten very flag happy that they have been

throwing it at just about anything that they can spot. And I'm not a huge fan of that. Well, this guy was an inch off of the line of scrimmage. Here's a flag is what it's illegal, you know, lining up or whatever. Here's a little bit of a grab. Now, if you hold the guy's hand down the sideline, which the Vikings did at one point, that is a major issue. But whatever Byron Murphy did to get his flag, there was nothing there at all that I could see on the broadcast. And you can't review everything. But that was one that made a difference because it was a third down and it gave them a first down. So the penalties did make a difference. The Vikings are also getting penalized a lot.

They are getting penalized a lot. And that might go into their reputation. That, hey, they're grabbing for the corners or they're not lining up right. Because the coaches will talk to the referees before the game. And they're going to point out, hey, this is a team that struggles to line up correctly, or hey, keep an eye on that play clock, because this team runs it down all the way to the end, or hey, this wide receiver is getting grabbed by this corner. But I thought ticky-tacky was a way to look at some of the calls and then the,

the miss face mask. Why even have any referees at all? If you're not going to see that, I mean the, the, the picture from the broadcast of the guy standing right behind looking at it and then saying he couldn't see it. What?

Uh, but I think you can watch any game, any sport and watch the balls and strikes and say it was fixed. Look how they're calling the balls, the fouls. It was fixed. They wanted the Liberty to win and not the links. It was fixed.

They cut. I just, if you do that, you just can't watch sports. It's the same thing with the dare saw injury. If you can't run the ball in that spot, then you can't, then you're afraid of every play. And if you think that it's fixed, then you should just go watch Netflix because then we have to question every single play. And I feel like that would drive you to madness. Every flag, every game. How can you enjoy football at all? If we're going to think of it that way, bad game for the refs, costly game for the refs that I would agree with. So, so fixed as an overreaction, costly, frustrating, infuriating at times, not an overreaction.

Uh, Jonathan says, uh, do you think there is a move that will be made for the old line or will they shuffle the pieces that they have? Uh, I just don't really see a move out there. Maybe there's like a depth guy or some, I mean, I was looking, if somebody's got a name, let me know. I was looking for names. I could not find too many that the Vikings could trade for that would be anything better than Brandel or Questenberry or even Walter Rouse at left guard. Um, my guess, and I know this was an hour ago, I started the show. So thank you guys, uh, you know, so much for, for watching and having a good time here. Um, but, um, just when it, when it comes to, uh, how they'll move around the offensive line, my best guess is Brandel goes to left tackle and Dalton Reisner is in starting at left guard.

That's the best guess that I can come up with. It would be a big ask for Questenberry to play 10 games. It would be a big ask for Walter Rouse as a rookie who's never played before to come in and play the whole rest of the season. Though I really did like a lot that I saw from Rouse. And if you were projecting it today, you'd probably say that he's the left tackle to start next season. If Christian Derrissaw's recovery, and this could happen, takes him into next year. So maybe at some point, maybe you try Brandel there and eventually with a plan to get Rouse in and prepare him to start over a couple of weeks.

But I think Reisner going into left guard brandel who was a lifetime tackle who just moved over to guard going to tackle now i think that's the best possible fit uh kmac 850 rams plus 2.5 was easy money with both receivers returning short week long travel physical loss the game before there was a lot going against the v the Vikings into this one uh this is not an overreaction uh either and this is why I think K-Mac that you know the gotta hear both sides thing uh of hey in sports you debate this side you debate that side but you could really debate with yourself on this one it's kind of what I've been doing for this last, you know, 45 minutes or so, because everything you said was right. The Rams offense with cup and Nakua is legit. It's good. Their quarterback is capable of

absolute greatness in his career. We've seen it. We've seen it against the Vikings. We've seen it in the playoffs. The guy won the Superbowl on no-look pass. He's good. He's really good. And your point about the travel, that is a time change. It was a physical game the week before. There was a lot of snaps played in that game. All that is absolutely true. At the same time, you cannot ignore what happened. You can't say, well, none of that matters. Just throw it out. It was a difficult game for the Vikings though. And I overlooked that stuff. I really did. I overlooked that stuff going into it. And I'm not going to say that's on me because I try to pick who I think is going to win. But if anybody is good at that, let me know. Cause usually I've, it's hard to predict what's going to happen in

these games, but I didn't think that was going to happen. I was completely wrong about how this was going to play out. And as the Vikings were moving the ball early in the game, I thought, ah, look at me. I'm very smart because what my feeling was is as the game went along, okay, well, Nakua came out hot, but they'll fade. The Vikings defense will start messing with them, and then the Vikings will run away in this game. Stafford just kept getting answers, and the physical part of it for the D-line,

who was the worst unit out there, probably the D-line, followed by the corners, those guys got run all over the field against the detroit lions and somebody said last night that every team that's played the lions has lost the next week makes sense because they make you run a lot of miles and they also beat you up with that offensive line and that's why as we react we can adjust the expectations and bring them down a notch definitely because two weeks ago we're talking about trade the first round pick go all in go try to win the

super bowl now you don't have christian derisaw now that becomes much more difficult but we can also not say everyone stinks they're going to miss the playoffs. It's 2016 again. So an evening out comment there from K Mac. And I appreciate that. Let's see. Joseph says, Brian Flores is overrated overreaction or no. I am going to say that that is an overreaction only in the way that. So it like,

yes and no on the overreaction. If we think that he has magic powers, no, he doesn't. Nobody does. In fact, let's take a little check on the Fangio defenses that everybody loved. The Agero Evero for Carolina. Oh, he plays that Fangio defense. You got to get him. Those Fangio defenses, Brandon Staley, they fell apart.

Ed Donatel, they fell apart. Why? Because teams tried to run them without the same personnel as Vic Fangio had when he was with the Chicago Bears, where everybody started trying to copy that defense. It will always come back to the players that you have. If Jeffrey Simmons is the defensive tackle or Dexter Lawrence, the Rams probably don't win last night.

And on the, the quarterback position, if they have Patrick Sertan, they probably win the game last night, as opposed to the way that Stefan Gilmore ended up getting beat. And Gilmore has been great, but Gilmore is also a guy that they signed at the last minute and then asked to play every play. I think that Brian Flores has often squeaked out as much as he can, but even

a couple of years ago when they hired him, I looked back at all of his games with Miami and I looked back at his blitzes and what they did to different quarterbacks. And the reality was, it was great game, bad game, great game, great game, bad game. Because when you send the heat, a lot of times it's boom or bust. And I think that that's how it is, especially if you don't have tremendous personnel. They have good personnel.

It's a much better defense than it was a few years ago. Is it mind-blowing personnel? Is it the best in the league? No, no, it's not. It's a lot of guys who have actually overachieved so far this year. So is he overrated? I don't think so, but I think we always want someone to be a magician. Oh, man, if you play for this guy, like, let's take a look.

Let's see what Kyle Shanahan's doing right now with all of his players injured is kyle shanahan the best office of mine in the league i think so but when everybody gets hurt he's not as good and that's where it goes for when brian flores doesn't have blake cashman out there it's different and when his corners just had to chase around amon ross st brown for four quarters then get in a plane and then go chase around Puka Nakua and Cooper cup. You're bound to get beat. How many other teams in the league have receivers like that, that they're going to face not too many. So it is an overreaction to say he's overrated, but it's also that we shouldn't have rated him in a way that was

like, this guy's a God and can't be touched. Well, that's not true for any coach in the NFL. Let's see. G or done. Maybe. So it's pronounced run, run past in the red zone has hurt.

The Vikings let Darnold throw the ball down there. Maybe we don't settle for field goals. I don't remember the exact play calling sequences i do feel like the red zone scoring has been a problem at times you know they needed a touchdown to finish off the packers they needed a touchdown they weren't in the red zone but they needed one against the jets it's really drive stalling out that's what i think is it's drive stalling out is one of the major issues is, and look, here's why this is, they rely a lot on play action off of the run and hitting big plays. And if you lean heavy on hitting big plays, you get one, just a good example. You get 25 yards for Josh Oliver, and then you try, you get a handoff and then you try to drop back

and look for another big play and you take a sack. It's a big win and then a big loss. There's been a lot of that from this offense. And that's why I feel like some of the drives Peter out is because they need explosive plays all the time to keep running. And you'd like to see Darnold start to get the ball out quicker. He did check down and throw underneath on, on a few plays. That was pretty good, but especially with your left tackle out, it's, it's time to focus on when you get in that red zone, get six on a pass, get seven on a pass. Don't always be looking for the big play. I, I, I think that that is a factor. Let's see.

Jay Jizza says when you have substandard drafts for the last three years, this is what happens. It's not just so there's a lot of focus on this with every loss. The last two seasons, and it's exhausting to tell you the truth. Every single time they lose a game, they didn't draft well enough. They didn't draft well enough. They didn't draft well enough. I get it. They also didn't have a lot of draft picks. And that is another part of this. And if you want to criticize the Dallas Turner thing today, well, today's your day. We'll see where his career goes in the many years he might play in the league, but today's your day. If you want to look at that, we'll find out.

I don't know right now, but they have used a lot of the draft picks to make trades. And TJ Hawkinson is a big example of this. When we look at the Rick Spielman era in Minnesota, how many drafts did he have? It was a lot. even just going to the Zimmer era. It was a lot. And there was a distribution over that entire time that Mike Zimmer was here of really good draft picks and really bad draft picks. But there were a lot of them. If you look at Detroit and how has Detroit built this while they've hit on draft picks, they've also drafted a million guys. They haven't hit on every draft pick, but they've drafted a million guys. I think Jordan Addison is

a hit. I think as an undrafted free agent, Ivan Pace has been very good over the last two years over his head being asked to be Blake Cashman. They have drafted a running back that they unfortunately won't use that I think is pretty talented. Jalen Naylor is a good wide receiver, but the majority of this team has had to have been built through the free agency because they haven't used a lot of draft picks. And I think in 2022, what Casey was trying to do was say, we just haven't had a lot of draft picks hit. And also you can't just blame the most recent guy who's had three drafts, the previous regime, who are some of the key players while they were drafted by the previous regime, the Jefferson and Derrissaw, but also all the defense, a lot of the misses all happened on that side of the field. Josh Metellus is the biggest hit, and I guess Cam

Bynum, that Rick Spielman had. Those guys of the Spielman era were guys that should be making up the team as veteran players right now, and they're just not because they didn't draft very many good ones. So the answer was to go out and use it for getting players by a trade. It was also to move up to try to get some more elite talent in Dallas Turner. And it has been to go through free agency to build the roster. But all the free agent decisions this year have turned out to be very good so far. I think there's a lot of different ways to build a team. And with the capital that they have in the future, that's where they're probably going to have to build a lot of the team. I don't think this is exactly a result of that. It's not well,

cause you said three years, there's why it's an overreaction. It's to say three years, because on defense, it's more like eight years that they were missing draft picks. It's not just the current regime. how many defensive players have they even drafted for this regime though uh they tried seen booth jr they really could have needed to hit on awesome what's been fine if cashman plays uh but you are right you are right to say it's an overreaction to say three years it's not an overreaction to say that you have to go out and get older players to fill out the key positions and sometimes those guys on a thursday night are going to be more worn down or they are going to have some injury histories but it's not like this team has a salary cap issue because they've spent so

much filling out the roster and i also don't think that there is an issue in the future with this because their cap situation is great and there's one particular quesadilla fomenta slash kevin o'connell draft pick that's going to matter the most also we can't forget mckay blackman the guy got hurt that looks like a really good draft pick i don't know sometimes the answer is right there uh let's see joseph says uh koc hasn't been aggressive on fourth down what's up with that i don't know what's up with that but you know i i actually thought that jeremiah searles did such a good job of laying this out last week if you uh saw that episode jeremiah said that he feels

like there is a half in half out aggressiveness to Kevin O'Connell. And maybe if you're going to criticize the run play for O'Connell that got Darisaw hurt, which again, I don't, but if you're going to, you could say, Hey, it's the problem is it's half in, it's half out. It's a delay handoff. It's not a super aggressive throw and it's not a super conservative kneel down. It's we'll kind of go halfway there and see what happens. There were two opportunities now against the Lions. You could have gone crazy aggressive and gone for it on fourth and four to try to put the game away.

That would have been something dan campbell would use but also there were two or three opportunities in the red zone to go for it after the nailer drop i think you could go for it there if you want to they decided not to and i i also feel like with o'connell there's been aggressiveness that have has gone too far and maybe not in the form of fourth downs or they went for the one fourth down and two in london and threw a bomb down the sideline there's been it not really putting it right on the notes when it comes to aggressiveness is the best way to describe it missing the mark a little bit because there were chances to go for it and maybe it's because hey we're the favorite we should be the better team but the way the rams were moving the ball

maybe you needed touchdowns instead of field goals there i think it's a reasonable critique it's a reasonable critique that it's never felt like it's right on the nose uh let's see uh geordone says uh eight and three looks very possible the pollock says it's all fixable we can walk out three and one over the next four weeks those are not overreactions all fixable is an overreaction but can walk out three and one over the next four weeks if they don't then we'll know this this will tell us the answers if you don't walk out three and one after the next four weeks then it's going to be one of those bad seasons where they go from five and oh to stumbling and tumbling down uh and maybe backdooring into the playoffs or something like that

it's just if you win three out of the next four then you're right back in it and you're fixing the problems that you have. And, and we have seen this before, you know, the, the parallels are always fun to make. Remember in 2018, the Vikings went out to LA and they lost the game badly to the Rams. Perfect quarterback rating. I've referenced it a number of times because Jared Goff was so good in that game. It was like a number of times because Jared Goff was so good in that game. It was like Stafford last night with Jared Goff in that game. And they came back and they fixed some of the stuff defensively and they stopped giving up. I can't remember what it was, maybe receivers coming across the formation in motion or something. And they made adjustments

and the defense played much better. They didn't have a great season in 2018, but they fixed an obvious issue that had cost them in one particular Thursday night game. And they have a chance to do that here. They, the truth is probably not what we saw last night about the Vikings defense. It's also probably not 34 to 7 against the Texans either. It's more likely what we saw against the Packers where they're capable of giving up some big plays, capable of making some big plays, and they're going to have to live on that. That just seems to be the whole story of the team, is that they're going to have to live on big plays on offense and defense. Phil says, hey guys, this was supposed to be a rebuilding season for a reason.

Also consider the dead cap they are eating. Yeah, so I'm having a tough time here myself, figuring out now where to set the bar film at the beginning of the season my feeling was if this goes to nine and eight if they make the playoffs just considering where they are and then they turn it over to McCarthy then maybe it'll be a fun season I really feel like everybody lost their fun last night for sure in terms of the I thought nine and eight ups and downs, crazy games. Maybe we could all have a good time. No expectations. Let's see where it goes. That was, that was my overall sense going into the season of what it was going to be like. And when you jump out to five and oh, it's very easy to forget any of that. But I also thought it was right based on the numbers they put up and the

teams that they beat to adjust the expectations and move the bar up to, Hey, compete for a championship. Now trade that first round pick for a star. Now go, go make those moves. And I thought they were going to win this game. If they were six in one, I would be saying, Kwesi, get on that phone, make those calls, all those things. One game really does shift sometimes our viewpoint. So I don't think that we can go back to, hey, guys, don't worry about it. It was supposed to be not that fun of a season anyway. No, no, no, no.

I really don't think that we can erase what we just saw and not criticize it because, well, our expectations weren't that high. Well, the bar was raised and I Brian Murphy wrote a really good column over a purple insider dot com, which has now been also made purple insider dot football. You should try that because that's fun to write dot football. That works. That takes you to the newsletter. The point just being that he wrote an article called Raised Expectations Mean More Frustrations. That when we say, look, you're 5-0, you should be right there. You're the best team in the NFC. Now, anything that goes wrong, any bad game on a Thursday night raises the frustration. That's what I felt here today for sure in talking to you guys is extremely raised

frustrations and reasonably so. I actually think you guys haven't been nuts. Last night was a little nuts, but you guys haven't been nuts at all today. So good job. And I appreciate you for that. Cause I was worried when I hit the live button, I was like, okay, everybody let's see how this goes. But I appreciate really do appreciate the reasonable discussion. Um, so I think we can live in a world where at five and two,

you're saying still be that team. Maybe we don't say that Super Bowl words anymore for now as we let it play out after we've seen this, but still be that team. We shouldn't just say, oh, well, you know, it was good while it lasted. No, I don't think so. Not when your team's five and two.

Now, if they lose the next three and go to five and five, it was good while it lasted. I had fun with you guys. We'll see you next year. And I'll start planning my free agency day show that, that okay. But as for, um, as for right now, no, I don't think we should, we should be down that road just yet. Um, Marley with the super chat. Thank you so much for the super chat. Really appreciate that Marley. You're always the best. Uh, let's see. I just know a rule change, allowing a penalty to be called after review means the Vikings get

hosed in the playoffs. You're yeah. Now this is where you're exactly right. You're exactly right. Is let's say the NFL changes the rule today because they saw what happened with this face mask and everybody said, Hey, you need to change the rule. The Vikings will be in the playoffs. They'll score a game winning touchdown to win a playoff game. And then it will be taken off the board because of a face mask that was committed away from the play. It is a delicate type of thing, because if you look at a play and you go, let me check out that left guard, it looks like he was holding, let me check out that a corner. looks like he was holding let me check out that uh corner oh he might have been a little grabby on that play you can find penalties kind of all over the field if you try and i think that's the reason why this is not a reviewable thing but what if we just made it for personal fouls is that crazy what if we made it for 15 and longer if it's a 40 yard

pass interference then somebody quickly takes a look at it in a booth, 30 seconds or less, send it up to the guy up there. Hey, did we get that right? Looks like you did. Back down to you. And if you can't figure it out in 30 seconds, then okay, then the play stands. Jerry says, Ezra Cleveland. You know, that's a weird one. Offensive line evaluation has been a struggle at times. Now, they have two best tackles in football, so there's that. Hard to say it's too much, but moving Ezra Cleveland

and keeping some of the guys that they did. Not an overreaction because Cleveland's been pretty good in Jacksonville and he seemed to be developing, but they didn't like him here. I don't know when it comes to O-line and evaluation, we can definitely ask some questions. Anthony says, if we start winning between the whistles between the whistle and the next snap on offense we should get back on track isn't that that is probably when we talk about expectations and frustrations those penalties are something that i just cannot explain. I don't see any other team in the league that has as many problems

just getting lined up and getting the play call in and snapping the football on time. That right there, because with Kevin O'Connell, he's been really good as a head coach here. He's won a lot of football games. His players really care about him. The culture is great when it was toxic when he arrived. There's so many good things to say about the way Kevin O'Connell has coached the team. But this one in particular, it kind of reminds me of how Andy Reid couldn't manage a game for a long time. And then either got it or, or just my homes was so good. It didn't matter. But a lot of these guys will have one blind spot. And that is the blind spot that it was a great stat from someone in the chat

earlier that they have been up there in delay of game penalties every year. That is something that he's got to look in the mirror. He says all the time, we got to look in the mirror he says all the time we got to look in the mirror got to look at the coaches got to figure that one out because if you do get to the playoffs and you're taking five yard penalties because or bad timeouts it will cost you at some point and you're going to lose a playoff game or something because of it or a key game to get into the playoffs because of it it's inexcusable it's just get the play in and line the guys up and if there's too much going on then you have

to reduce how much is going on that just has to happen uh so that that criticism right there is reasonable uh daryl it's the history of the v Vikings. We've seen this before. Yeah, you know, I always have trouble with this one. It is the history of the Vikings. There's no debate about that. The history of the Vikings is falling apart somewhere along the line. It's also the history of every team that hasn't won a Super Bowl. Their fans say the same stuff. And when you have these things happen, they leave a lot of

scar tissue on fans because you've bought into it so many times. Yes, we're great. We're going to go to the Superbowl with farm. Oh no. An interception, right? Hasn't missed in two years. Oh, it's wide left. I mean, there's so many of these things that have clunked you over the head, even in smaller, less notable ways like 2016, where it's injuries to tackles and Bradford's actually playing great, but nobody could block for him. And then 17, the Bradford injury and stuff like that, even ones that are not as egregious. Every Viking fan can name a hundred more than just Gary Anderson or Blair Walsh.

That adds up. It weighs on you. I feel that. I feel that weight on you guys every time a Christian Derrissaw gets hurt because there have been so many key knee injuries, especially to these guys over the years. And then you get a player that's this good and you end up with him getting hurt in the middle of your best season in a while.

That's tough. It is very tough. I feel for you guys. And I felt the same thing. I'm out here visiting my in-laws in Los Angeles and we were getting hot dogs and the dare saw news comes out and I'm like, all right, I got to do the thing again. Wasn't really planning a podcast today, but got to do the thing again, where we go do the emergency pod. Cause some terrible injury happened.

And it was a lot more fun the other day when they were making a trade for somebody, because the team has been so good to talk about and to see your energy and excitement to have the team start off five and oh but i have to agree with this for kt saying it's not like we're three and four we're five and two and it's not like the history of the vikings has to mean that this thing falls apart just because it's happened before. They also started 09 really well. And what was it? It was was 2017, five and two. I think they were five and two in 2017.

And then they get on a run. And remember, when they were five and two in 2017, we were doing shows every day going, is this team for real? I don't think so. I don't know. They got this weakness and that weakness and they were able to pull it together. I don't know where this is going to go. I know that their schedule opens the door for us to find out if they get to, and I can't wait for Monday when we do the live show where we pick the schedule, but just a real quick snapshot of it. If they get to, if they win the next three games, which are all against bad teams, they win the next three games and they get to eight and two, even if they have flaws, the rest of the way, they would have to completely come apart, not to be one of the better teams in

the NFC. So we're trying to keep some perspective on that, that the path is there and then just survive the end of the season, survive that Falcons, Seattle, Green Bay, Detroit, at least you get to play Green Bay in Minnesota, going to Detroit. Depends on if it matters to Detroit, that could get the Vikings potentially a win. Although Campbell usually plays as starters, but the point just being these next few games, whether it's actually time to be like throwing stuff on the field with anger about the Vikings or not will be determined then. And I want to see how that plays out because they get a whole week to prepare. And then we're back on a normal schedule for the rest of the year. We don't have travel to London. We don't have Thursday night. Then it's, you know, smooth sailing for actual regular preparation for football games. This one had some elements of it that were going against the Vikings. I thought,

let's see. David says something is not right with the office of consistency over the last three years within the game, initial first and second half scripts, and then play calling on third down in certain situations. This one, I agree with you in that it has felt like there is a jogginess to the offense. And I think what it is, the jogginess is just when you search for big plays, when you big play hunt, and I'll give you an example of this. When you go look at Matthew Stafford's 2021 season for the Rams with O'Connell as the OC

and Sean McVay, they were hunting big plays and they ended up with some inconsistency, even within games for that team. It wasn't because they won the Superbowl. We think, oh, they just, they must've just steamrolled everyone. They think about this. They almost blew a lead to Tampa Bay and lost the playoff game. Remember they got way ahead, fell apart. And then Stafford has that great throw on a blitz and they end up winning the game. They almost blew the San Francisco game in

the playoffs. They almost lost the Superbowl. I mean that the margins are razor thin, especially when you hunt big plays and deep throws all the time. And on defense, when you hunt sacks all the time from blitzes, that sometimes it comes back to bite you. And I think we, I think we kind of have to live and die with that, that they don't have a, a slow turn type of offense that gets five yards on the ground, completion, short completion, short, maybe every once in a while, a big bomb. They just don't have that. This is not how Kevin O'Connell plays. Uh, Jerry says, uh, we will be okay. Take a deep breath back away from the panic button. People need to, uh, probably hear that from you today, Jerry, uh, because there have been

quite a few, uh, panic buttons smashed. I think on some things, I think, I think it's a, it's an issue. It's an issue by issue panic button. Hey, the defensive line can't get pressure on their own the blitzes aren't getting home and teams have answers i'm mashing that i'm mashing that panic button teams have figured out some answers that's concerning uh the offensive inconsistency i'm more of hovering over it because overall this is about as good as an offense that Sam Darnold has ever run in his career, actually, by far. It's not even close.

So when we look at the coach, it's like the coach has his quarterback playing better football than this man has ever played ever in his entire life. But you're also not wrong to, you know, David making this additional point of the great coaches make consistent halftime in-game adjustments. Something is missing. But some of the missing might just be that the quarterback is on a $10 million deal for a reason, that the running back probably shouldn't be having to carry this much load. I mean, that's part of it. You're waiting on your franchise quarterback to get here for next year. Then again, I've thought that they've had other issues with that in the past.

So that's one where I would hover the hand and I wouldn't smash it when it comes to the panic button, because overall they've been good offensively. They've been good enough to be a 5- two team offensively. And in the future going forward here, if they play this way, if Sam Darnold and the offense plays this way into the future for the rest of the season, this team probably ends up with 11 or 12 wins. Uh, I shot you 99. I see you says, uh, what's up with Sam holding the ball so long. It's felt like that way with cousins as well. I like the scheme and it works, but when it doesn't, it doesn't look good what gives yeah sam darnold has been responsible for a surprising number of plays that have been sacks that have been on him uh that wasn't always the case in the future and i think with both kirk and sam because kirk took a lot of sacks his first year in KOC's system.

It was really the second year that he got better at that. I think when you have longer developing routes that you're waiting to see, is something going to flash open and then you have to pull the trigger really quick. And that was what happened really on the interception from Darnold against the Lions. But it's a good example where he sees it flash and you just got to fire it. That's a play where, yeah, obviously he should have checked down. But there's also been a lot of those plays where, I mean, think about the quintessential catches from Justin Jefferson over his career with KOC. How do you envision it? When I just say, hey, Justin Jefferson just caught a

football. What did it look like? Of course, you know, there's the freakish catches, but what does it usually look like? It's usually a 17 yard in breaking route where he snapped the guy off or read the defense and jumped in front of a dude and then made a sliding catch. That's what a lot of this is based on is the receivers being able to create man to man separation. There's no really cheesy element to it where you just, Hey, we're going to throw a quick screen. We're going to throw a bubble, but there's also some value in that. And we saw it last night from Stafford and we saw it from golf that Jared golf and Matthew Stafford have been around long enough as Stafford had learned this over his career but Goff has been around long enough to the point where

he will just throw a check down all the time uh and I also agree with Marley here who says that Sam not seeing the field Sam Darnold does not have the type of vision of a Drew Brees or a Jared Goff, who I think those guys see the field as good as anybody. He's not Steve Young. He's going to need to see things break open first before he can let it rip. And that's just an extra. Think about the difference between a quarterback like Stafford getting it out in two and a half last night to three, half a second. One misses it. That's it. That's the difference between him getting the ball out as quick or Stafford.

And I think it's also what the offense asked for. That's why they have the running backs block a lot extra is because that's what they're looking for. There's ways to hunt big plays, and that's kind of how you have to do it. And there are sacrifices with everything. If you run a short offense, then, then it's all philosophy. If you run a short offense, then you're saying, well, we need 12 plays to score. What Kevin O'Connell wants is to score on six plays. We're going to hit one big one, get a good run or two, then hit another big one. And it's worked overall. They have had a good offense since Kevin O'Connell has been here. We've also, we do, we do know this when Josh jobs was here, he was asked

to play like her cousins. And I don't think that they've really done that fully with Sam Darnold. There's been more adjusting to the play action and stuff that Darnold does well. But the offense is not fully crazy different than it was with Kirk Cousins. And there needs to be now with Daris Isle. They could live in that three-second drop back type of thing with the left tackle who was chiseled out of heavenly material and dropped down in the Vikings organization. I don't think it's as heavenly with the guys they have now that they've got a week and a half to make that adjustment. And I see that DeForest Buckner might be getting healthy for the Colts.

That's a concern. Leonard says if they go one and two, the next three games, then Leonard, we got a problem. If they go one and two, the next three games, you can hold me to it. We could talk about the off season. It won't mean that the season is completely over,

but they need, they need at least two out of three, probably three out of three of these next three games in order to think this team is serious. They can compete into the playoffs. The NFC is flawed. They can go deep. They need to go three for three to have that discussion still happening. But if they go two for three, we're going to live in the middle. And if they go one for three, maybe they get back into the playoffs, but it's probably a nine-win or eight-win season.

Let's see. Just the Super Bowl. Vike says it's on Darnold not finding open receivers for running back or tight ends. A lot of it is on Justin Jefferson wanting the ball more. KOC is on the sidelines conversing with Jefferson. No, I don't put anything on Justin Jefferson. He's been awesome this year and you should design your offense 100% on the best player to get it to him all the time. Justin Jefferson is an unstoppable force that nobody has figured out over the years, and everything should belong to him and begin with him. That doesn't mean force it to him every single time,

but even the last two weeks, the throw down the sideline for a touchdown against Detroit, the throw down the sideline, hey, Jefferson's one-on-one, get him the football. Oh, yeah, I'm good with that. And they've done a good job with Jefferson underneath the last couple weeks. I don't have any issue with how they're using Jefferson. The real issue is that they had 50 plays. You just can't have that. You can't have 50 plays because then you're not distributing the ball almost at all. There have been, what, one time that Darnold has thrown over 30 passes? That's

what it can't be. Now, to your point, running back, tight end, yes. When Hockinson comes back, he needs to get eight to 10 targets a game. Aaron Jones should be getting the football more out of the backfield in the passing game. It started out really really good early and it has petered out the last couple of uh weeks it has faded completely that needs to be a major factor over and over again to aaron jones in the passing game or they're not going to have these consistent drives but especially getting hockinson back there's there is not a lot of trust there with Darnold and his tight ends. With Derisaw out, ball needs to go to Hawkinson a lot. Let's see.

Did we get to the bottom? Look at this. Look at us. We made it to the last comment here. Go get him. I'm still wondering why Addison isn't having more of an impact. I thought it would be a one-two punch with Jets based why Addison isn't having more of an impact. I thought it would be one, two punch with jets based on Addison's performance with Kirk.

Kirk really liked Jordan Addison. He pushed him the football in the same way that he did with Jefferson with a lot of trust. And Kirk also threw 40 passes a game. I looked this up. Kirk started trying to think 25 games for the Vikings 17, eight. Well, there's a playoff game and he only threw fewer than 30 passes. Three times. Sam Darnold has only thrown more than 30 passes. Once it's a different philosophy it's much more hunting big plays Kirk was the guy who had to have a 12 play drive most of the time under KOC and when there was this same issue it's not a unique thing to KOC this was this was a problem when we were talking about Kevin Stefanski and 2019 with Kirk Cousins and it was always just looking for those big shot plays and the offense would go quiet for stretches. And the same thing happened with Gary Kubiak at 2020.

There's always a give and take. If you're looking for more yards per pass attempt, fewer volume passes, which you have to do with sometimes with quarterbacks like Darnold, then you're looking at nine yards a pass, but only throwing 24 passes or 28 passes a game. If you're looking for seven yards a pass, which is what Kirk had with KOC, then you're going to throw 40 times. Which one is better? You can win with both. You can't win when your defense gives up that many points and they don't call face masking, but you can, you can win with with both but you have to be good at doing it and uh that's what that wasn't really your question your question was about addison it goes back to they're often looking for deep shots with addison which means sometimes receivers have to run a lot of routes to get one i want to see them use Addison underneath quick outs where he could just use his ability to kind of shake guys.

I want to see a lot more of that because at this point you're sort of losing him. It feels like you need him dialed in each week and they need to establish it early with him. I don't think that's Jefferson's fault. I really think that it's the fact that Darnold is not looking for those underneath plays to Addison and that it hasn't really been his thing. The middle of the field also is not always where Darnold is looking in that underneath intermediate area. There's a lot of little things that go into it. Also, when we look at the offense overall, it's been good. I mean, it's been enough

to win these last two weeks and Darnold's played good enough to win the last two weeks and they just haven't been able to put it together. So I don't think that it's a point where with even Addison or the play calling or Darnold that any of us have to say, oh, wow, this offense just can't get them there, but it's not going to be perfect. And they can't expect them to just ring out scoring drives over and over and over again. It's going to be that drive looked amazing. Oh my gosh. And that happened on that drive. That's probably who they are. They need the defense to make the stops when they have the, what the heck happened on that drive. So, all right. One more question. One more question. It's hot in California folks. Uh, Roger says, uh, I think it's especially, uh, unlikely, especially after the Darasaw injury

that we win the next three games, most likely it's going to look like the off season again. I think Roger that you are probably in a large bucket of fans with the way you're feeling today. The Vikings are still much better in my opinion than the Colts and it's a U S bank stadium. They are much better than the Jaguars and they are way better than the Tennessee Titans. It is the NFL though. And you can always lose games. You don't expect. I confidently picked the Vikings to win by a lot last night against the Rams. And I was extremely wrong. I'll pick them in these next three games, but if they lose, then it does start to crumble apart. And we will start asking what, what was this thing? You know, what, what was, what was this thing? What was this season?

What was it for? What did they gain? That's definitely going to be something we'll start to ask if they come apart. But I don't think that it changes overall the bigger picture with J.J. McCarthy and where this team can go in building around J.J. McCarthy over the next couple years. But I just don't want to get there yet. I don't want to get there until we have to. where this team can go in building around JJ McCarthy over the next couple of years. But I just don't want to, I just don't want to get there yet. I don't want to get there until we have to, when it comes to talking about the season falling apart. And one of the things that I talked about going into the year was how I just didn't know how to predict this. What's going to happen? I don't really know. Cause I could see it going a lot of different directions. I think it could go a lot of different directions here. 3-0 or 1-2, they're both on the

table. 3-0 is still more likely because the team has a chance to get fresh and they have a chance to reassess what went wrong on defense these last few weeks. They won't go anywhere without a good defense though. They won't. That has to be, it has to be corrected. Cashman being back is going to be a big thing. And Hawkinson too. I mean, playing without those two guys recently has started to hurt them. Leonard says, uh, Darnold threw to a cover Jefferson right before Addison came open. His chemistry with Addison just hasn't been right. And maybe getting injured right off the bat was hard for him. It seems like there's a little more trust for even Naylor than there is for Addison.

It also might be similar to, and this offense just opens the door for this. Remember how a couple of years ago, KJ Osborne couldn't buy a target. And we were all saying, what the heck? Osborne's pretty good. Why don't they throw him the ball? And then it was the floodgates flew open because defenses started to throw him the ball? And then it was the floodgates flew open because defenses started to play a little differently. And then he was the guy that was open. It might just work that way in this offense. Uh, Don says, uh, why didn't they play TJ last night? Fresh legs. I don't know if there's a great explanation other than just that they want to give him the extra rest that I'm a hundred percent.

There's 10 games left, have TJ Hawkinson as close to a hundred percent for 10 games. And you'd rather not have him come back on this game. That's the best I could come up with. They also use a lot of data and stuff like that to determine if someone's ready to come back. I'm not really sure. Maybe it's hard to prepare practice wise to put in a game plan when the guy hasn't played all year. I don't know. I'm not sure we didn't really get a big explanation on that with so much else that was going on. I thought

this would have been the game you would have played, but if you want to make sure that it's the full nine months or whatever it's supposed to be since the ACL tear and get there with a little extra break, you know, that's, that's okay. That's okay. I don't think we have to worry too much about that. Like more healthy Hockinson is, is a good thing, I think. So, i think so um yes uh so i shot you 99 don't they need to activate hockinson to the 53 yes they did today when they put deris on ir they activated hockinson so yep he's back good to go um anyway okay well great chat everybody really truly uh i felt that there were a lot of cooler heads in this chat than there were last night after the post game. Not that I blame you.

And I had a good time with the discussion and the venting session from, uh, some of you and playing the game of overreaction or not. So I, I really, really do appreciate it. My final thought is number one, Christian Derrissaw, it's a football injury. He'll be back, but it really, it really is tough because he has put so much into this. When he came into the league, he wasn't a top draft pick because there were people that thought this guy is just not going to be a vicious enough, committed enough player. And he is shown to be just that. He has put a ton of work into becoming an elite player. We all thought he's a physical freak and everything else.

But I've done stories on this. I've talked to Christian a number of times. He puts so much work into it. He has elevated his game each season. And I thought that this was his best season so far. And to see it end like this is really, really difficult to see even beyond just the team. It's just for him because he's so respected and appreciated in that locker room as a, as a part of the leadership group and for his effort and his talent stuff. So that's number that's thought. Number's thought number one. I hate injuries.

They're my least favorite part, talking about them, of anything. It's not going to be easy to replace. It could be a major issue going forward, especially since Sam Darnold does not get rid of the football fast enough. That will have to be addressed schematically. It'll be a test for Kevin O'Connell and the scheme. Can you find a way to get that football out of his hands? And then the other part is too, that the season is not over. There is a very long way to go.

Think about it this way, guys. Think about how long this season has felt so far, how much you've aged. There is more than half of the season left to go. So we've got a lot to see what happens. And the opportunity remains for the Vikings to be right in this division. The Packers had their problems at times. They lost a couple games. The Lions lost a bad game once. The Bills had their problems. The Texans have had their problems. I mean, every single team that's 5-2 has hit bumps in the road.

And how you're going to respond to that in the coming weeks will tell us a lot about this team, about this coaching staff, and I'm interested to learn what this team has in it. Because if they come out 8-2, we'll say, hey, they took that sample of two games that went wrong, and they turned it into fixing problems, and what an impressive job. If they go one and two, what are they picking a defensive tackle in the first round?

We also have a trade deadline, by the way, next week. Is it next week? The week after that, there's a trade deadline coming up week after that and how the Vikings approach. It still remains a fascinating thing that we will discuss going forward. So thanks

again, everybody, seriously, for a really good conversation, really rational discussion. And except for the rigged stuff, that's not as rational, but everything else it was. So I really appreciate you guys for taking the time to tune in and react to this breaking news of Christian Derrissaw being out for the season. And we will see if better things are on the way. Lots of different ways to break it down Sunday after all the early games and the three o'clock games, I will be sitting here in my in-laws den here and doing another live show for you guys then. So I look forward to breaking down Sunday's games with you Monday night. We're going to pick

that schedule again. Can't wait to see what Manny comes up with this time. Cause I think his confidence is probably shaken like many of yours. So again, thanks so much to everybody for watching and listening, and we will catch you all next time. Appreciate it. Football.