Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Courtney Cronin talks about how things would feel if the Vikings were 4-1 instead of 2-3

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Matthew Coller and ESPN's Courtney Cronin discuss a good fan question: Would we still have the same criticisms of the Vikings if they had won the first two games of the season? Courtney talks about their upcoming schedule and how it was always going to shape the season and they also discuss the numbers that point to what type of team the Vikings really are. Plus a more hardcore Vikings-Panthers breakdown of a battle of two defensive lines that will dictate the game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here along with ESPN's Courtney Cronin. We are digital today because you are on your way to Vaughn McClure Foundation event. Vaughn McClure, ESPN reporter, passed away last year. A tremendous guy, and really good that ESPN is doing this for him. So hopefully that works out well for you tonight, and you can still also have time to grind a little more tape of Vikings and Carolina Panthers.

So Courtney, how are you? I'm good. Yeah, this is actually the one year anniversary when Vaughn passed last year, which is just crazy to think about, like all the time that has, you know, passed in between then. And I mean, he was, you know, the most sourced and well-connected reporter I think I've ever been around. And honestly, one of the most well-respected. There's not a single coach, scout, agent, front office personnel person that I've come into contact with who hasn't either met Vaughn at one point

or has something great to say about him. So, I mean, it'll be a really good event. I'm really proud of ESPN for getting this thing together in season. We've got a Thursday night football kickoff tonight, so it's kind of centered around Eagles and Bucs. So it'll be fun. I'm really looking forward to it. But yeah, no, I can't believe I was thinking about this.

I was writing out my calendar of bye week to-do list yesterday, being like, geez, we're at week seven again, another week seven bye, and thinking about how weird this season has felt, even more so than last year up until this point, right? Because of the COVID stuff, we weren't sure how, if we were going on a week-to-week basis but just where the Vikings are right now and they could be riding high for effectively two weeks at three and three and going into that Dallas game with a lot of steam a Dallas team that has scored 170 points over its last four games so you could be the

Vikings like yeah it'd be Carolina. Christian Dersaw playing really well. He's going to start, you know, against Dallas. And then you have two weeks there where you're still relevant. You're still in the picture. And then, you know, the real part of your season where you have to truly prove it against the best competition right now in the NFL with the Cowboys, chargers, the Packers and the 49ers that comes up in Baltimore.

It comes up right after all of that. So it's kind of crazy like where we're at right now, but I'm thankful to, thankful to be going to celebrate Vaughn tonight and to be here talking with you about this incredible matchup. Yeah. I only had a chance to meet Vaughn one time at the Combine and had a nice chat with him, and he was just very friendly. I am less friendly to people that I don't know, so almost I was taken aback by his friendliness.

Like, oh, okay. But he, yeah, I mean, he was very widely respected from everyone that I follow on football Twitter, so it's a great thing that ESPN is doing. Now, sorry to bounce back and forth between honoring him and the football game here. But somebody on Twitter asked me a very interesting question. I want to run it by you. He asked Jay on Twitter, just asked me if the Vikings were four and one right now and they had had those good breaks early in the season, if Delvin Cook had not fumbled and if Greg Joseph had made the field goal,

how much different would we feel if everything else was the same? The only two things are different. Are they win those games as opposed to lose those games to start the season? They still rank 19th in points. They still rank ninth in defense. All the other things. The football indexes would still say the same things about them uh because those don't factor win loss record they just the

expected win loss record would still be the same which by the way is 2.6 to 2.4 which tells you that like you're right in the middle you're 500 type of team um how would we be talking about this game and this week? Like how much different would it be? Oh, it would be a little bit from a further out perspective because right now you're playing catch up. You just need to get to 500. You need to get to three and three going into the buy. If you're four and one,

I think the pressure would be on to, Hey, be five and one. So you can give yourself a little bit of leeway here, knowing what you have coming up after the bye like the vikings remaining strength of schedule i feel like has got to be top five considering those five games that we had mentioned dallas at home on sunday night football at baltimore against a team where you have a quarterback who had just accounted for 500

yards of offense in a game um at the chargers and they are absolutely red hot and. And then it's Green Bay at home, and it's San Francisco, still a really good team, even though they lost to Arizona last week, which is obviously a very good team. But, like, those five games right there could decide your season. Like, you could be, you know, if you were 5-1 going into the bye, if you would have accumulated wins beforehand, I think we're looking at this as leverage, giving yourself a little bit more room to work with here because you've got a very lengthy

injury report and who knows how this thing is going to shake out. You have a tough schedule ahead. The travel is going to be ridiculous going from Baltimore to LA in one week. All the things that could break for you the wrong way, you'd at least have a cushion there that you would have worked yourself in. But now I feel like it's, do we really believe that this is a playoff contender? And the odds would tell you no.

I mean, everything that I've seen has them missing the playoffs this year just based on projections and numbers. But I think we'd be looking at it, even if they ranked in the same categories with scoring and yards and you know epa and everything else that we know the stretch like we know the stretch that's going to decide the season you could tell that the day the schedule came out in may and if you would have given yourself a little

bit more room to work with in the early part of the season you probably set yourself up better to just get through that stretch not even saying perform well in that stretch or come out with like three or four wins. Just get through it. Yeah, I think that we would be saying almost all of the same things. The only thing we would not be saying is that people could get fired. Because at four and one, they would be, as Mike Zimmer says, feel in their oats. And they would say, who cares about an ugly win? And I would more tend to agree with them if you're four and one and you have one ugly win,

like with the Ravens, they've got a couple of ugly wins. But I think we still think that they're a good team, especially the way that Lamar Jackson played the other night. But like, OK, it took a 66 yard field goal for them to beat the Detroit Lions. And I don't think that we look at Baltimore and say, oh, you guys are frauds because you got that one ugly win. And it sort of reminds me of 2019,

this scenario, because the Vikings were, I believe six and two at one point in 2019. And they ended up what? 10 and six. So the second half of the season, they faced a lot more challenges. They had to go to Kansas city. They lost more challenges. They had to go to Kansas City.

They lost that game. They had to go to Seattle. They lost that one. Green Bay came here. Green Bay beat them easily at US Bank Stadium. And so it was one of those, the good teams you lose to, the bad teams you beat. And I think the Arizona win, if they had gotten it, would have been one you could sort of hang on your mantle and say oh we can compete with this team that's also really good but other than other than the job stuff which i think is totally fair and is years built up it's not just oh the team started slow and so

now uh crazy people are calling for job like they'll act that way but that's not the case no talking about it all because yeah and like i mean it, it's back to back years of a really slow start. Like had they started out, had they been one in four this week going into Carolina? I don't know if we see the same staff and I don't think that's a stretch to say. I know that the wolves do not make mid season moves. They don't, but like, how can you not justify something like that? Like a change. If, if you miss a field goal against Detroit,

because you put yourself in that situation to keep the team in the game until the bitter end. Like, I think we're looking at a completely different situation where, no, it's not out of the realm of possibility at all, just because you said it was going to be different this year. Is it? Should we be super impressed that they held Detroit to like you know they still had gave up 100 yards rushing to Detroit and I know that Detroit's obviously got a couple quality backs it's Detroit like that's my thing like I know

that they think that they're showing signs of improvement and statistically yes but like don't we need to factor in quality of opponent and kind of where detroit is right now a winless oh and five team like that's that's one thing it's kind of like i don't i can't i can't fully buy into like things are starting to get better because i think that sometimes it just has to deal with the opponent and fortunately for them or maybe not fortunately who knows how it's going to shake out they face the detroit team twice because they're in their division and this is a a year where Detroit doesn't have expectations to win. You do. So of course you should beat this team,

but like it wasn't as certainly was not in convincing fashion at all. Yeah. I think of course you factor in that. It's not a good passing game that Detroit has and their offensive line was beat up. They were without Frank Ragnow. Penny Sewell was playing injured, clearly, since Everson Griffin threw him a couple of times.

And he's also a 21-year-old rookie. I think he's the youngest player or youngest starter in the NFL this year. They are a completely rebuilding team that you expect to make some mistakes like they did. When you play Jared Goff with no receivers. And by the way, Cephas got hurt early in the game, he lost his top receiver and St. Brown got hurt too so he was with guys that were practice squad wide receivers in that yeah I didn't know who the receiver was that caught the two-point conversion I don't know who that is that's uh exactly what they were dealing with at

that point so they had really no good receivers before their top two receivers got hurt in that game. So I can't take a whole lot out of that. And with the Cleveland game, I thought Baker Mayfield just missed wide open passes that he's two or three throws away from Cleveland putting up 28 points. And I, and I know that, you know, you can play the ifs and buts, but like the guys were open, the plays were there. It was just their quarterback missed the throws. And I expect the same thing from Sam Darnold this week. Like I don't expect him to come out and throw for 400 yards against the Vikings. And I expect them to come out of this game saying,

look how good our passing defense is. But it's really when you go up against those great teams later. And this is where it circles back to the conversation where if they were four and one with a chance to go five and one we would be saying all right caroline is a halfway decent opponent someone you should definitely beat the vegas line would probably be a little different this is someone that you should whip and shut down sam darnold move on with your life and then

the real season starts after i think that's how we'd be looking at it if the statistics were the same, because we would not be impressed by a two-point win over Detroit. We wouldn't be impressed by winning on a last-second field goal when you gave up 400 yards passing to Arizona or the way that they played against Cincinnati. I think that's the thing is that when we've watched every single play, the accumulation of the whatever 300 offensive and defensive plays they've had so far or so is you have not put together a full game. You haven't been consistently good on either side. It's like you started out good on the offensive side and then you faltered on the defensive side early. And now the offensive side has really faded.

And Mike Zimmer was giving all of his coaching staff a bunch of different projects to look at different areas for why they might be failing. Hopefully they spot second and 10 runs. I don't know. We'll see if they do. Yeah. Anything, anything over second and seven, because they had seven instances of that last week and none of them converted for first down. I actually, I look back at the numbers of anything second and long or longer than I know. second and 10 is not, that's, that's, you should not be running in that situation. I get second and seven. Sometimes you want to get to like third and short. Okay. But they had 29 instances of it over the first five games.

You know, how many of those converted for a first down? Four. Four. That's not a, that's not a good percentage. I don't know the math on that four divided by 29 but I'm it's probably not very good it's ironic that a team that says they need to stay out of third down almost intentionally puts themselves in third town good god I I didn't look at this last week but going into last week's game I believe they have the second most third downs and long so the thing that they talk about their whole philosophy surrounds around avoiding third and long, but they set themselves up for third and

long. And they really don't seem to have a dominant run blocking offensive line either, because for the majority of the game, Alexander Madison was stuffed pretty much at the line of scrimmage. He broke one tackle and got 46 yards or whatever it was but they did not run block particularly well and so that will be a factor here as they play Carolina but I think we would be still saying we set our standard at the beginning of the season at you have to be better than mediocre and if they were four and one right now we would still be looking at this more of the season as a whole as opposed to this game could determine people's futures but we would be saying okay well if you beat carolina that's a decent win that's the type of win you should get five and one now don't collapse because

we've seen you collapse before under mike zimmer from five and oh to eight yeah right i don't think we would be saying whoa super bowl uh not when you rank 19th in offense, that every team who goes to the Super Bowl as a great offense, not just an OK offense. And the fact that they do not have that right now would still have us being, I think, very skeptical about how they're going to play. So I think that that would have been the focus would have been much more on what it's going to look like after the bye week and whether they can prove it we would say yeah you're pretty unproven but right now i think it's much more you have to win this football game or else or you miss the playoffs like you just don't make the playoffs if you go to two and four two and four is the hole that they had to climb out of after the buy last year. Remember? And it was such,

it made their lives so much more difficult because they were half in half out on it. We're going to make the playoffs. So we're not trading Riley reef when he had high value. You know, Tennessee needed a left tackle last year because Taylor LeJuan got suspended or something like anyways. Yeah, like they didn't trade Harrison Smith when they could have gotten like pretty good value for him at that point. Like you it's like we're going all in. Well, you put the weight is so much higher on you or so much heavier on you because you have to win the games that you're supposed to win. Like the Chicago game. Put them out. And we're in a situation where it's like we're pushing all our chips to the middle of the table at 2-4, expecting that we're going to be 9-7.

Instead, they finish 7-9. It's too much of a gamble. So if you don't win this one, I don't think it's unfair say that you you can kiss your playoff chances goodbye it is wait like it's just unrealistic to think with that stretch coming up you're going to come out of that breaking even at 500 you know in or even being like six and four like or seven there's no way like and even think about it now like if you have four losses what's what's the seventh playoff seed? 10 and seven.

Think about the NFC this year. Cause we like, all right, we already know green Bay is going to win the division. So you're, you have to get a wild card spot, but like thinking about like the top, other top teams in the NFC, Dallas, green Bay, Tampa Bay, and then kind of like those secondary second tier teams that that's a lot of ground to make up. And you don't give your like which games are you going to pick like okay we can allot ourselves three losses if we're two and four and then you need to get to ten and seven like there's more than three losses on the schedule i hate to say it like that you know if anybody looking at it being like oh this could be no

no there's three losses minimum on the schedule like so you have to put yourself in a situation where you're you know playing from ahead effectively even if even if you're right breaking even at the buy folks minnesota football is back and there's no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the internet for minnesota football tickets anymore because tick pick that's t-i-C-K, P-I-C-K, is the original no-fee ticket site and the only one you'll ever need to go for NFL tickets. TickPick got rid of all those awful service fees like the other ticket sites charge, which lets them guarantee the best prices of all of their NFL tickets. Don't believe it?

If you can find better prices for the same seats on another ticket site, TickPick will give you 110% of the difference on your purchase price. We've got quite a slate of home games in downtown Minneapolis, including Revenge Game for Cleveland when they return to Minnesota and plenty more. Visit TickPick.com slash Insider today and use the promo code INSID insider to save $10 on your first order for Minnesota football tickets. Folks, football season is in full swing, but we've got basketball and hockey getting rolling as well. And SodaStick has got you covered. You have to see the moose t-shirt designs for Marcus Foligno.

You can also get your hands on the very popular Dollar Bill Kirill shirts as well. On the basketball side, the design with three wolves howling at the moon, perfect for the spooky fall season. And the design with the wolf carved into the state of Minnesota is just awesome. It's very cool stuff. And hey, for you college football fans, check out the Tanner Morgan t-shirts as well. SodaStick has tons of hats and hoodies with all their great designs on them. You will love it. Go to SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.

Check that out today. Use the promo code PurpleInsider for free shipping. And also follow myself and SodaStick on Twitter for our giveaways. Justice Mosqueda, who does some Packers coverage, and he's been around good football follow, he tweeted out a chart of what your projected chances to make the playoffs are based on different records. If it's 8-9, you're not making the playoffs.

Almost guaranteed. I don't think anybody with a losing record will make the playoffs this year, just based on, like, even in the NFC East, I don't think that with a losing record will make the playoffs this year just based on like even in the NFC East. I don't think that'll happen. Obviously it won't be Dallas is going to run away with that division. But even I think with the expanded schedule, I don't think we're going to start. I don't think we'll see teams eight and nine making the playoffs probably ever. At nine and eight, you're basically a coin flip and at 10 and seven,

you've got a pretty good chance to make it. So even if you think about winning this game, you only have four losses left that you can really give up to have a good chance to make the playoffs. And even that seems like a bit of a stretch. That's the hole that you've dug yourself already. Uh, but if you go to two and four, you just, like you said, you can't tell me that a two and 14 with this remaining schedule is only going to lose three games or four games the rest of the way. So at that point you can sort of call it and decide, are we going to go a different direction or are we going to just play this out and see what happens? Which you mentioned, I mean, the Wilfs don't make a lot of changes just overall. They did in the middle of the season in 2010 with Brad Childress, although that was a very,

very different situation. But I do feel like like I mean with Childress the tension built up and especially surrounding Randy Moss and they more or less sort of you know he cut Moss and they sort of sided with Randy Moss and fired Brad Childress but in this situation, Mike Zimmer has built up so much equity from maybe going to a Super Bowl, for example, or has just has so many people that have his back inside of the organization. I don't think that that's the case here. No, I don't either. And it's it's all compounding itself, right? Like if you don't win, then all the ancillary stuff might end up hurting you even more. Like, you can't save yourself. Because you're right,

there's not a lot of good equity that's been built up. And same thing with the front office. Thinking about like, the 11 person draft class in 2021, and you have the fewest snaps from any from any rookie class that's that's bizarre and on both on both ends of the spectrum their front office and coaching staff like you don't have a lot of like your ground to stand on is very tiny it's a tiny plot of land and more losses continues to shrink that because it's not like you have all this good faith of hey well this worked out um we can hang our hat on that. If you're the front office, what is that? Justin Jefferson? That's the only thing you can probably hang? Honest to God, that's probably the only thing that you can truly say has very much worked out in your favor.

Is that enough to make up for everything else before ownership would be like, all right, if it is indeed a lost season, that's enough to continue on with this group. I don't believe so. I don't think anybody thinks that. The only thing that you would be able to say if you're the front office, if they go to two and four and it looks like the season is lost, is to start pointing fingers at the coach. That's the only thing you could do is like, hey, we have this offense and they won't use it.

Look at them. It's their fault. But I don't think in this situation that that really works. I think there are some spots where that has worked in the past. Arizona is a good example where Steve Kime, their general manager, stuck around through drafting Josh Rosen and through hiring and firing a coach in a single year. And it's finally paid off for him, but he had that button to push. I don't think that button is pushable here because Zimmer and Spielman are on the same contract, that they've gotten the same extensions, and they've, I believe, been very much tied together throughout this entire thing.

So they are both captains of this ship, and if it goes down, they go down together. Now, let us talk about, though the vikings can beat the carolina panthers because um we've sort of had this discussion uh about how big it is um sort of all week leading up to like this is your this is your moment like prove us prove us wrong or prove that what you've been saying is right that you're good um you should beat the tar out of the panthers then but we said that about the lions i look at the panthers defensive line and yeah i think about the games that i have seen in the past of the vikings against good defensive lines brian burns has 17 pressures so far this year hassan reddick has eight sacks my gosh um they have one of the best defenses overall in

the nfl and on the interior they have three different guys who get after the passer derrick brown who was their topic a couple years ago uh he did pretty well against the vikings last year daquan jones and morgan fox on the interior now the interior for the vikings has been better this year but it has not been perfect and when cleveland started throwing Jadavion Clowney at them, rushing up the middle, it caused a lot of problems. And I feel like this offensive line is good enough to look good against Detroit. It's good enough to look good against Seattle. Those are two of the worst defenses in the NFL. I don't think it's good enough to look good against

Carolina, which I think it makes this matchup just very appropriate. Like this is, this is appropriate. It's a team you should be with a really great defensive line and that's your kryptonite for years now. So there you go. Prove that you can dial up something offensively to deal with a pass rush that you know is going to have some success against your guys. And maybe part of dialing that up is just playing Christian Derrissaw a lot I don't know um but uh I I really feel like it's a it's a great matchup because you get a chance to prove on offense that you can be something against the good defense you know you bring up Derrissaw I went back and I you know think he actually I went upon watching it I know that it's a small sample size, but it's, you know,

I think he played fairly well. And the run game though, is where I'm concerned with him because his athleticism for sure, it shows up a lot of places, but I think with just some of like the different things that they do in the run game, I don't know if he's physically completely like able to do that just yet coming off of like the groin injury the pass blocking i think he's okay honestly i know there were a couple times in here like a couple pressures two pressures last week something like

that didn't give up a sack but like i'm not as concerned about that as i am if alexander madison cannot go because he's got let me pull up my list here, shoulder injury. You've got Dalvin Cook who's limited on the ankle. If you can't go with Madison and you're going, maybe Cook has to play in that circumstance, Cook and Abdullah and you're splitting carries, that doesn't seem like a recipe for success here. But offensively, this is your chance to prove that you actually can figure it out,

that you can score points in the second half, that it's not this completely foreign thing for you because that's been their kryptonite. You can script a great opening drive. You can get off to a hot start, but you shoot yourself in the foot with some of the decisions that you make. And, you know, that ends up snowballing into a, you know, frantic feel of the game in the final quarter where it's like, shoot, like, you know, if XYZ doesn't happen, it's over. Don't put yourself in that situation. And I think you

can bolster yourself offensively with the defense. Like I was just looking up a stat on my other computer real quick. So he's Sam Darnold is he's hold onto the ball a lot. Like I think last week in that win against the Eagles, cause I remember being looking at like NFL GSIS during the game. I was like, Oh, whatever, like 18, 13, like they'll pull out the win. The Eagles suck, whatever. And I look back after you get back from Zimmer's press conference, I'm like, man, the Eagles pull out the win. The Eagles suck, whatever. And I look back after we get back from Zimmer's press conference, I'm like, man, the Eagles pulled out a win.

And, you know, I look back at that game, and I saw shades of Jets Sam Darnold in that game. Like, the pressure got to him. And he's, you know, he has six career games now with three interceptions. This is your week to feast on that and when he doesn't have time to throw like he's 11 of 11 for 79 yards when he has under two under two and a half seconds to throw like so you know you have to rely on your pass rush and i think that that could help the vikings in that scenario where if if there's if some team

is teetering on the late game collapse, it could very well, and it should be the Panthers because of how the Vikings can orchestrate that, even if they don't have a perfect day on offense. But like you said, this is your chance to kind of prove that you can figure it out because it's going to get a lot more difficult. And it's a good Cal, it's a very good caliber defense that even, even after the three and a star, like they have not been the problem in my opinion, um, for Carolina. Yeah. And your point about Sam Darnold is exactly why you sort of have this prove it situation because he's just not all that good. I mean, their move to trade for him was baffling, uh,

for somebody who turns the ball over as much as he does and had never really shown signs of being a good quarterback. I think that Ryan Tannehill probably earned second chances for a lot of quarterbacks around the league after going to Tennessee and then being good that everyone said, oh, this could be our Ryan Tannehill. And then they trade a fairly high pick for a quarterback who had just been brutal in New York. And he starts out against an extremely easy schedule looking okay. But I thought sort of showed himself last week. And this is like Mike Zimmer tends to feast on bad quarterbacks, but you could also foresee like the 2019 game against Chicago where Chicago's defense or just lots of games against Chicago with Mitch Trubisky, where their defense was so dominant against the Vikings that they end up losing close games. And that's what

you would be concerned about here. And I think that that sort of tells you something about who the Vikings are is every time you go against a team that doesn't have a great offense or a great quarterback, but they have a good defense, you go, I don't know, like this isn't something that we totally expect them to overcome uh and uh now the injury report here is also kind of a big deal because as you mentioned madison was out of practice on wednesday and i don't know you know we don't know right now how this is going to look on friday which really matters but jefferson and theelin both did not practice so far as i could tell from the game I didn't see serious injuries for either one yeah I mean like the ankle injury for Jefferson that one was kind of surprising he's somebody I

don't I can't recall another time he's been on the injury report can you like I mean I know he's only doing this two years but um that was kind of surprising when I saw that. Like with Thielen, you know, he's had – I mean, he plays through a lot. So I think it's going to take – I mean, the guy had back fractures in 2018 and was still playing in the game. So I think it's going to take a lot if that foot injury of his is not – you know, if he can't get past that. But, you know, your top two receivers didn't practice on Wednesday you better hope it's a precautionary thing because you know even if it is the Dalvin

Cook game if he's the only one who's like truly you know at nobody's at 100 right now but like if he's going to be able to carry the load I don't know how you you still need that production because you're not getting it from your tight end group like i think we can go ahead and like let that ship sail off into the ocean because that's that's it's over there like there's just no production there whatsoever so i don't know what they do if and i'm not saying neither like i don't project either of them being like out right now it just doesn't feel like that's realistic but yeah that's a heavier load on your run game which the offensive line the state that it is right now i think that their run blocking has been kind of suspect at moments no it has and the other thing about this too uh with the uh top two receivers have very least dinged up so we'll see what the

injury report says but uh where'd KJ Osborne go? I mean, those first couple of games, right? Those first couple of games. He's playing the snap numbers of a number three receiver, but like since Arizona, he hasn't really done anything. This feels so much just like their offense for years, which is, oh, they have great players and oh, this week they forgot one of their great players. And then this guy sort of emerged and we go, oh, week they forgot one of their great players and then

this guy sort of emerged we go oh look this guy's playing well but then that sort of fades off pretty quickly it's like they could never seem to get everybody at full force and that is felt like maybe arizona that they were but even in the second half of the arizona game it really petered out and they needed to pick six to keep them in that game, which by the way, once again, you haven't been that unlucky because pick sixes are hard to come by against top quarterbacks and you got one in that game and, you know, still needed a field goal to win. But anyway, so let's just talk about our prediction for this game. I am thinking, I mean, 1917 and I'm just, that's how it feels to me. I think the Vikings pull this out,

but I think it's going to be ugly. Yeah. I haven't made my official pick yet, but I think I'm going to keep a lower scoring game. Like I, I don't know if this offense can put up 28 points against a defense like Carolina. I think it will end up being in the low twenties for the Vikings.

And just given the way that Carolina has played since they lost McCaffrey, who when we're talking injury reports, Matt rules, it's going to be a game-time decision. So that's a pregame workout figuring out the hamstring where it needs to be. I felt like they rushed him back on this. That's a three- to four-week minimum injury. Yet, you know, right after their 3-0, that number comes out, and it's like what are

you guys doing like and i'm not really sure like what they were doing anyways like signing you know the getting the cornerback from from jacksonville henderson right um and then getting stefan gilmore who has not played yet um like are you guys can do you think you're contending like what what's the deal here like i'm not really sure what Caroline is doing. That could just be some crappy Matt Rule management, considering he's been given carte blanche to do whatever he wants. I don't really understand the logic there. But yeah, no, I mean, I don't.

Caroline has looked bad since they lost McCaffrey, as expected. And their offense can't put up a lot of points. So if he can't go go I think it will end you know 1917 we laugh about that just given kind of like what that was with Detroit but I don't think it's a bad pick at all but I'll pick the Vikings to win this game I think that they I think that you can you can come off of that Detroit win realizing like you're never going to want to put yourself in that situation again because you don't expect the game to be called that conservatively like that nearly cost you your second win of the season so all those factors lead me to believe that and plus I think Carolina's

fraudulent I felt that way even when they were off to a hot start considering they played the Jets the Texans they got the win over the Saints but the saints have been like bizarre as hell too this year. So that's kind of, that's just kind of where I'm at with it. Yep. I think that they are a poor team sort of dressed up in a halfway decent team's pajamas at the moment, but that's not who they are for a long time. Yeah. I think long-term they end up something like six and 11 because they are a

circus. I just, I agree with you like uh the the gilmore move it i totally agree it's kind of bizarre because he's like wait you should be injured in the south too like why why is he not correct me if i'm wrong he's not like pop or something like why is he not playing yeah i think um there's a combination of maybe an injury and also not trying to come back from that injury because of his contract situation. Yeah, because he got traded. It was bizarre. It seems odd, though, for a team to trade for such an old and expensive player when they're not an actual contender. But that doesn't seem to be what they think. So, you know, I don't know. I guess,

I guess things could be worse. If you're the Vikings, you could be kind of a clueless Carolina team, but they have a better record than you at the moment. So we'll see how this plays out. And if it's a win, then we have a lot to discuss about the second half of the season. If it's a loss, we have a lot to discuss about the future. And we will do that of course, every Thursday. So thank you, Courtney, for your time. And we'll do that of course, every Thursday. So thank you Courtney for your time and we'll do this again soon. Looking forward to it.