Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Kevin Seifert doesn't think JJ McCarthy has a good chance to start Week 1

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

ESPN's Kevin Seifert reacts to a tough practice for JJ McCarthy and a strong showing from Sam Darnold. What it means for both and the scenarios that could play out with Darnold if he starts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here along with ESPN's Kevin Seifert inside TCO Performance Center where we have just roasted our bodies out on the practice field here, watching J.J. McCarthy have what I believe is his most difficult practice of the year so far, and Sam Darnold arguably his best. So why don't we react to those, Kevin? That seems like a good place to start, does it not? There's no other place to begin than just how you feel this quarterback battle is going,

especially after seeing a practice like today where J.J. McCarthy got his very, very first, he'll never have another first one, team rep with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, the whole first team offensive line, but then proceeded to really struggle, not only on the second rep in which he almost threw an interception but also in the two-minute drill where he failed to progress the football took a bad sack and all that uh but where where do you want to begin with the quarterback battle so i've been saying people because occasionally people will ask me what do i think about the quarterback occasionally on tv yeah or any tv on the street the street, anywhere in the neighborhood.

And what I've been saying is that they've had their ups and downs, but there never really seemed to be a huge gap between the two of them. And so I would say that today was the first day when there was a noticeable gap between their performance, at least in the way that we perceive performance as amateurs. Sam had – not only did he get them down the field in the two-minute drill with a nice pass to Justin Jefferson and then the pair of touchdowns in the red zone, but as you said, J.J., you know, had a hard time throughout, at least the team drills. And so that's going to happen. It just so happens that on Sam's probably best day was J.J.'s,

you know, probably not best day, if not his worst day. And so that to me was what was significant. It was the first day I saw a gap. And it kind of makes sense when you just kind of think about it. I mean, Sam's a veteran. He's been in a lot of offenses. It takes some time. Eventually it's going to click.

And today at least it clicked. JJ is a rookie and probably at some point is going to just be overwhelmed by being a rookie in NFL training camp. And we're now basically finishing the second ish week of camp. And it's not would not be surprising if that is the time when that happens. And so I don't want to say like it was all expected, but it makes sense that that was sort of the impression that we were left with today well and also Kevin O'Connell's putting in more Brian Flores is very clearly putting in more and you can hear him cackling from the sideline about what he's doing to these quarterbacks but it does stand to reason that J.J. McCarthy could be pretty well prepared coming in because he spent so much time

in the offseason didn't go on vacation, that whole thing. He comes in and they put in the base stuff, but then it's sort of like in college, the one Oh one, then the one Oh two and then the 300, 400 level. And I think we're starting to get to that. It's a sophomore year now. It wouldn't be a surprise. It wouldn't be a surprise if that were the case. It's also like, there's all kinds of reasons why in your first NFL camp, there would be a dip around now it's just from physical i feel

pretty tired just standing out there watching practice in the sun we've had a very warm two weeks here in minnesota and very humid and it would and not to say that he's not in great shape but it like it takes a toll it's different than college football it's different than what he's done throughout his life and so there's all those reasons and and those are all the reasons why you would never want if you could avoid to start off and even with the Bears situation you know we're totally random but like just the Bears situation or anybody who's saying rookie quarterback starting from day one like that's part of what you'd have to live through if that's what you're going to decide is that there's going to be some days where it's going to look like they shouldn't be playing. Oh, absolutely. And I've

seen from Patriots camp, well, you know, Drake Mays had some tough days and so forth. I don't know any rookie who hasn't when they've gone through their first training camp, which is why we have tried not to overreact to individual practices as we're reacting to this particular practice. But it's really the last two Darnold has separated himself, I think, and played much better. But this is why, from my perspective, I've been very willing to say, let's see how this plays out over a very large sample and not change our minds entirely based on everything that we just saw.

Well, there's two different things. You can tell people exactly what happened in practice and just the facts of whether that's good or bad, but what you need to avoid is what does that mean? Does that mean that Darnold's won the starting job or JJ's a bust or something in between? You don't have to draw any conclusions, make any big picture judgments or even small picture judgments. I tend to do it the way you're talking about is just say what happened today and then listen and talk listen to what the people in charge are saying and talk to them and follow up and find out what they think because that's much more important and we mentioned this was the first uh two snaps of jj mccarthy's first team and and but up until now like the fact that there

hadn't been spoke all that you need to know like there's not it's not it's not even a discussion point about whether he's with the first team or not and today um you know they just gave him two development snaps this was not an indication to me that he's anywhere closer to being the viking starter than he was on today's friday on wednesday before the off day and so that's what we can and should avoid is, is the making judgments on what the day's facts mean. Oh yeah. Overreaction in football would be terrible if that were to happen. Fortunately, it never does.

Everyone is always very calm. Yeah. Yeah. I know that a couple of really good throws by JJ McCarthy make their way from the stands to the internet. And then the internet decides that because they've seen one good throw that J.J. McCarthy should be starting or because Sam Darnold had a legitimately poor practice the first time in pads but has looked so much farther ahead of J.J. McCarthy

these last few practices I think you could see where Darnold is starting to get it also his best throws of the day today to Jordan Addison and to Justin Jefferson and seemed really on point with both of those guys where there was an early practice. Jefferson was a little frustrated. They didn't get the timing right on something. But today looked like a similar idea on point, which is what you do expect from Darnold. And I also, in analyzing this entire thing, have wanted to give Darnold time because Kirk Cousins didn't exactly,

when he first got his hands on this offense, just ignite us in training camp. We didn't go, whoa, Kirk is a new guy. In fact, toward the end of that training camp, we were kind of going, I don't know how this is going to look because it's so much different and there's been frustrating days and so forth. But it feels like it's starting to click a little bit there for Darnold. A little bit. But we should also remember, it wasn't just at the end of training camp of that year with

Kirk Cousins. That would have been 2022. It was right through the season. If you remember listening to Kirk Cousins after games, he was talking about how he didn't know how they had won because he felt he had played so poorly and that he was still absorbing things and still getting uh you know this and this was like the thanksgiving game against the patriots maybe where i remember him talking about that and we're like this is like two-thirds of the way through the season and so it's it may it's made me wonder

like is that just typical or was he just very forthcoming or is this a tougher offense than some to absorb or maybe a little bit of all that? And so to me, these past few times have been good for Sam. But I fully expect there to be some other days that aren't. And I'm not going to take back what we're saying today. It's just this is what happened today. Well, I think you can treat this like it's a roller coaster, which we do on a daily basis without you know going too far over the top and saying that the roller coaster is the conclusion to what's going to happen now if

they put together a bunch of days where McCarthy really struggles then it would be clear okay he's probably not going to win this job or if Darnold falls off from where he's been the last few days okay maybe mccarthy has a serious chance but kevin o'connell has been almost i don't know what's the definition of how he's acted maybe defensive a little bit or protective how about protective would be the right word of this entire process so when we ask questions about how they're handling it, it's often very carefully worded and with many, many words that are coming out. So as not to give too many indications one way or another, it's almost like he's trying to make sure that there's not a headline that says McCarthy's doing great. Darnold's doing amazing. He's trying to stay away from that.

What have you thought overall of just his handling of this situation in general? I mean, it's played out the way for the most part, the way I thought it would and the way he sort of described it. You know, he's – and everybody, I think, has gotten the message that he's been very clear that he's not going to play J.J. McCarthy for any reason other than that he feels he's ready. And I know a lot of people said, well, what else is he going to say? Like, you know, of course he's not going to say we're going to rush him and put him out there before he's ready and that's whatever

team does and like it's not really what every team does and it's why they have Sam Darnold here and I'll keep repeating it Sam Darnold is here to prevent them from having to play JJ until he's ready and actually I think Nick Mullins is here for the same reason on a second level like if for some reason Darnold just crashes and and we can't put him in the game you know and jj mccarthy's not ready well you have nick mullins here um and so i you know or whatever the case ends up being and so i i think that that they're sticking to that like i don't see any evidence of them pushing him further than what he should be pushed to um i don't i don't see any evidence that suggests mccarthy is like overwhelmed like even today when we're saying he didn't make some good throws he didn't like wasn't like running

in the wrong direction or throwing it directly to somebody on like you you see when you see quarterbacks really rattled they're like throwing a ball to a db because they forgot that they're the white instead of purple or whatever, like that kind of rattle. We haven't seen any of that. Like we've seen some times when it's, he's taken sacks because he couldn't find anybody open and it didn't occur to him to throw it away. But nothing that think makes me think like, Ooh, this is actually going to take a lot longer than we thought.

But I've also seen nothing. And here I am making a judgment. And when I said we weren't going to make a judgment. I haven't seen anything to tell me that like he's so far along that we should be having a serious conversation about him starting in week one. Well, if he was, then these practices would probably look like it was on time, total command fire.

And it left, it would have to be a lot, right. And that bar is extremely high because there have been times through the training camp so far especially before the pads came on where i thought it did look that way and his first time before the pads with the two-minute drill but then even when they did have the pads his first two-minute drill looked pretty good and he looked like he was getting people lined up i don't doubt that he is pushing in the right direction, even with bad days.

It just all kind of comes back to the same question of, is it going to be there by week one? And we've still got preseason games to come. How do you think that he will handle the preseason element of this or even weigh the preseason element of this? I don't think they'll view the preseason as much as evaluation as development and i think that whatever they see in the classrooms here and in the walkthroughs and in the practices would probably trump whatever happens unless it's something extreme like he goes in a preseason game and goes 10 for 10 for 200 yards right and all the passes are like downfield bullets to people and so i guess you could affect it that way, or you're 0 for 10 with three interceptions.

Those extremes could maybe affect it. But I think they'll just view those preseason games. And O'Connell has not wanted to talk about preseason yet. I can only assume he has plans for McCarthy to play significantly in those. The question really to me is, would you play Sam Darnold? Right. They did not play kirk uh in 2022 last year was it i'm saying 2022 2022 the first the first year maybe that yeah but in the 2020 to 2022 the first year uh of the o'connell offense here uh he did not play and he

got covid yeah i think that was what happened maybe they were gonna play him i don't it was it was not clear but he didn't get any time and you think that was what happened. Maybe they were going to play him. I don't know. It was not clear, but he didn't get any time. And, you know, that was the first game. If they really wanted to play him, they could have done the second. But when you're playing the starting quarterback, then you're saying, well, do we play the starting offensive line? Do we, you know, that's another five decisions you have to make. Right.

And, like, some of those guys, you know, Garrett Bradbury probably doesn't need any preseason work. Christian Derrissaw, you don't want to play. Brian O'Neal, you don't want to play. And so you get into that. Are you sending your starting quarterback out? So that is a question that, to me, needs to be answered. But I can only assume, and I think I'm pretty confident,

that McCarthy's going to get a good run in the preseason. I feel like he should be playing the first three quarters of every game and then have Jaron Hall figured out at the end there's no reason for nick mullins to play at all and mccarthy needs every single rep that he can possibly get yeah and but i do think that how many reps he plays will be an indication of where he stands in this quarterback competition because if sam darnold comes out and plays two series and then he's out of the game and McCarthy plays all the way through the third quarter, well, then that tells us where Sam Darnold is on this team, because with Kevin O'Connell, it's always been whoever plays less

is in better standing in the preseason games. And right. As you should, I I've never criticized that. You don't want players getting hurt in preseason games. But if you're a starter, and sometimes even if you're a backup, most of the time at any other position, you don't play a whole lot. So if it's just all developmental type of reps in these games for McCarthy, well, then that tells us this isn't really as close as we were maybe trying to make it for a second there. But if we see a whole quarter of Sam Darnold and then a whole quarter of JJ

McCarthy, and then the rest goes to Jaron Hall and Nick Mullins, then maybe we're having a little bit more like an F like a, like an intentional effort was made to equalize it. Right. So they can be compared apples to apples. Right. Because it seems to have even bothered O'Connell when we've asked him about

rep counts and including today, when I wrote a story about how McCarthy, it was with the twos going against the ones, and he kind of took a little jab at that, and then today it was twos versus twos a lot more. I got you. You got got. I got got. It happens all the time that we write articles

that are blown up almost immediately, but he was taking reps against the first team offense for a very long time and wes phillips explained that that was to try to speed him up a little bit and uh that's very clear what needs to happen is that he's got to connect what he's supposed to do with what's happening or get rid of it and it's just taking an extra beat which is looks like an inexperienced quarterback i always always compare it to in baseball when they put the ring around the bat, the weight, and so you swing it in the on-deck circle, and then when you take it off and go to swing in the batter's box,

it feels like you're swinging a feather. And so if you are on the second-team offense playing against the first-team defense, when it gets reversed or it's ones v ones and you get to play you have Justin Jefferson on your side and Jordan Addison on your side and Darisov protecting you as opposed to whoever what happened to be the second team left tackle that day then maybe it's a little easier right you McCarthy get to learn how to play faster you Darnold get to be more confident because Justin Jefferson is roasting a backup corner which backup corners on this team yeah are like third string corners

on everybody else's team. Where do you stand right now? All guests must declare a percentage chance that J.J. McCarthy starts during week one. So where do you stand right now? Percentage chance. 5%. That's it.

5%. Yeah. Okay. And that's today because I'm now back to not judging anything. I took a break there for a second. Two days ago. Was it still 5%? Well, I have more data.

The more data you have, the better your answer is. Here's what I wondered. Is it a sliding scale for you that is moving all over the place? Because for me, it hasn't been. No. For me, it has stayed at i would have said 25 i would have said five percent on the first day of camp i would have said five percent on the first day of pads i would have said the five five percent wednesday or

whatever day you referenced and i'll say it again today only five percent yeah i mean that's that's extremely low don't you want hot take that's a hot that is a hot take i'm bringing you the hottest we're gonna clip that up send it out to the internet, and they're going to aggregate the bleep out of it. It's going to be amazing. Thank you, everyone, for stealing my work. But I've always had it at 25% because my thought was that I could always see a world where it clicks and where they just say, you know what?

Why bother playing a bridge quarterback when our guy is ready? That he goes out in preseason and looks great, where he's in total control. They trust him with the whole offense. But I've never had it super high. It's always been 75% with Sam Darnold. We're basically on the right side of the 50% mark, I think. We're in the right ballpark.

I've just been trying to leave the door open. Okay, so let's talk. That means if it happened a hundred times five times he'd be the starter so that the door is cracked only five that's not although if it was a five percent chance you were gonna get hit by lightning outside you would not go outside like that's way too high of odds so no i don't want there to be any chance of me being there was the other day yeah i got in my car very scary uh let's talk about darnold for just a second um a lot of arm talent which we have talked about he has taken i think a very mature approach to this if someone is being a little petulant you can even if they're laying it in layering it in you can okay we get you none at all from him he's been very professional the

way he's gone about this and in practice every day I think he's looked like he knows how to lead an NFL offense and has done it before but how good can they be with Sam Darnold because the bad moments are still the bad moments that we see from him and I think that's going to continue to be like we've seen more than a few plays where it looks like he doesn't have an answer and that's a phrase that you hear o'connell talk about you know we always want to give you answers and so my guess is the answer is in there somewhere and he hasn't seen it yet uh totally understandable that it's because he just hasn't had enough reps in the offense but um we've seen a lot of plays that probably would have ended in sacks had they yeah um you know been live and so that's something that i think

you know if you talk to people who coached him or played with him before said that you know, been live. And so that's something that I think, you know, if you talk to people who coached him or played with him before said that, you know, that, that could be an issue. Like just the, not so much processing time, but just like getting the brain to pull the trigger and not, you know, being worried about making a mistake or throwing interception, which, you know, he had done a lot earlier in his career. So we've seen some of that. And so how good can they be? I think the ceiling for – to me, the ceiling for the Vikings with Sam Darnold has always been good enough to not make anybody think that, well, we might as well just put J.J. in.

Right, yeah, to hold off J.J. McCarthy. Whatever that means in terms of a really tough schedule early on. Competitive enough enough good enough credible enough to reasonably keep you know the future of the franchise on the bench until he's ready folks us cellular noticed that the way we use our phones has gotten ironic we try to put our phones down for dinner but the menu is on a QR code. That's ironic. We hit like on social media posts that we don't actually like. Ironic. Which is why US Cellular created UsMode to help us reconnect with each other and use our phones less ironically.

A phone company wanting people to use their phones less? Ironic. Let's find us again with Us Mode from U.S. Cellular. Visit uscellular.com slash built for us to get started. I think in the best case scenario with him, it makes it so J.J. McCarthy, the second he's ready, can come in and you feel okay with that. But it's only that second where you would actually consider doing it, which is kind of what you're saying. Yeah. But there's a few like mini scenarios in there that are fun to talk about. Like, what if he played pretty well and they're two and five at the trade deadline? And then maybe

you're talking about, can you trade him for somebody? Or maybe they're five and two and you're talking about, well, McCarthy is ready, but Darnold's playing so well that they could keep going and try to fight for the playoffs. Even if they think McCarthy is already ready for this. My first, what are we at? Seven practices, eight practices. I haven't really decided where on the spectrum I think it would go if he was asked to start for the vast majority of the season or even the beginning I've kind of had the bye week as a potential

and every day it can be shifted a little bit because after you see today and McCarthy looks far away there's a well you know we might see Sam Darnold all year but historically first round picks have just not stayed on the bench the reason we go back to the same examples over and over is because this almost never happens right right so i can't figure out where i want to kind of peg darnold if he ends up starting week one yeah i and i and of those scenarios like if they're if they're two and five but he's but he's not the reason per se then i don't they could credibly say like look you know if we thought we'd be better with jj mccarthy in there we do it and and and everyone with eyes who had seen darnold play well enough maybe it's because the defense had too many injuries or or the running game couldn't get going

or some other reason that they're or they're just playing really good teams and they're losing by you know one score uh and that's very possible as well and so i could i could see that um being the case you know it um you know if they're if they're doing well and like i guess i haven't thought too much through that scenario if they're doing well if they're five and two or whatever uh and mccarthy behind the scenes is very ready do they you know what do they do then like it's hard for me to think that they would would play them um but then they would they would be ready to pull the trigger at the next at the at the first bad scenario right i think they would just keep riding it out and then if you hit a rough patch okay now we're going to the other quarterback and that's a pretty ideal

scenario almost i mean if you're winning and the team is playing pretty well you feel like you're riding some momentum as a team then you can go okay we hit this rough patch jj you're in but he takes over a team that believes in itself feels fairly confident there's also another situation where if it was getting to be really bad then you would think all right well they should just put in the rookie right but what if it's not the best environment to put in the rookie right that seems to fly in the face of everything that they've said. And I've heard a lot of people say that. Well, if they're having a terrible year, you might as well just have the rookie in there.

No. Like, if you're having a terrible year and the rookie isn't deemed to be ready, that even makes it worse. It's better for him not to play than to get snaps that are potentially going to diminish his long-term development. And so that's – I mean, there's a million scenarios. There's going to be a lot of fans who want to see him. There's going to be a lot of national media who are like, what are you doing losing games with Sam Darnold as your starter when J.J. is on the bench?

And that from a big picture from the outside, like it's not an unreasonable thing to ask. And the answer would be if we thought it would be any different, we would do that. Right. And I think that it's important that they have communicated this to everyone. It seems when we talk to Mark Wilf down at the owner's meetings,

it felt like everybody was on the same page, but it's so much easier to be on the same page when you are in South Florida at the owner's meetings and everything is cool as opposed to the middle of the season where everybody on espn every day on nfl live is saying why is it jj mccarthy playing does this mean he's a bust if he can't play under these circumstances it gets so much trickier as the season goes along yeah and then thing and i'm glad you mentioned that because i i think that mark wilf interview that we all did hasn't like people aren't remembering all the details of that and talking about it enough but basically we asked him are you you know historically a quarterback transition can

can cause a team to take a temporary step step back right in order to then you know get before things get rolling with the way you want it to be are you prepared to accept that and he basically said no right yeah he basically said we expect to win and he even mentioned that last year uh a lot of quarterback injuries but it's the responsibility of the gm and the coach to adjust when you have injuries because injuries are a part of the game and so i thought that was very as direct as i've heard him talk about expectations and excuses and lack thereof and the big picture was no matter what all the things we're talking about here if they're two and five and sam donald five and two,

like none of that is going to fly with them. I mean, it doesn't mean they're going to start firing people or anything like that during the season if it's not going well and say, well, you're responsible for this mess no matter what. But it does mean that they don't have an indefinite runway to complete this transition. And that they'll probably, and it doesn't mean there's pressure on them,

but they also can't just say, start off the year and say, JJ, you know, you're redshirted. This is not a redshirt year for him. And so to me, and that might be the ideal thing, like we always talk about Mahomes and the Chiefs, you know, basically unless Alex Smith got hurt, they weren't going to play Patrick Mahomes that whole year. They were also really good that year. They were good that year.

Yeah, and that helped, but he was killing it in practice. Like everybody was saying like this kid, like oh my God, you know, and so and then he hit the ground running the following year. But so I think that that's something that will hang over uh at least a little bit is the understanding that this is not a freebie year this is not a you know red shirt year for anybody they're expected to compete amidst all of this uh talk about developing not only that they also spend a lot of their money and there's a lot of signing bonuses that they had to write the checks today and hand those over to Christian Derrissaw, to Justin Jefferson, to Jonathan Grenard, Andrew Van Ginkle.

They spent money kind of big time in free agency, day one free agents that they brought in here. And Aaron Jones, you do not sign those guys with plans to be sitting home and watching during the playoffs and drafting high. That has never been their approach as long as I've been covering the team. And I didn't really expect that to change, but I did expect a softer answer than the one he actually gave us. I had expected him to say, no, we're going to be patient. Do you think it helps or hurts Kevin O'Connell that he's doing this in year three, as opposed to if he had come right in.

And I'm not saying they should have drafted Kenny Pickett or Lake Willis, because those are not good quarterbacks. But does it make it easier for him because he's established some credibility with a really good first season? Or does it put more pressure on him because once you're there, the clock is ticking, even if there is reasons to have a step back season? I mean, i think it puts pressure on both him and quesia doful men so i mean you know if you ask most gms and coaches

how would you prefer when would you prefer to start with a new quarterback it would always be if you take the details out of it it would always be the first year oh 100 and they it just wasn't in the cards and and from where they were in the draft, the particular draft they were hired into, and then the following year being way too low in the first round to be able to get up to take any of the guys that were first-round material. And so there's definitely an explanation for why they weren't able to, and I don't think many people would argue that they should have done it any quicker. And they did it when they finally had a chance. They jumped on it, and they took care of it.

But it still doesn't – I mean, it still means that you're going into the third year or four-year contracts for both of them in a situation, as we talked about, historically can cause a team to take a step back. And so what does that mean? Are you talking about following up a 13-4 season with two losing seasons? And where does that put you, both of them them entering the fourth year of four-year contracts and so a lot of and that's another thing i think will hang over this this uh year as well but a lot of things kind of floating around there um you know that and i don't think that like either one of them are playing or coaching or

general managing for their jobs but i mean that's, that's just the math. The math is they're entering the second half of their contracts and they're just starting the transition at this position. I mean, if you talk about a five-win season or something, then going into the following year, the pressure is going to feel like it's very much on. I think in a super rational world that is not this universe, you would say, well, you you got to give him three years and the nflpa survey and look how he acts as the front of your organization i think even in situations

like with kairi jackson you couldn't have asked for a better coach to be handling that entire thing within the locker room and empathetically toward kair Jackson's family and front facing to the community and all these things for Kevin O'Connell that are going in his favor. And even the way that he's connected with players and the leadership and, you know, Brian Flores as his defensive coordinator, like there's a lot of things here that you would say, I want to see this play out over numerous years with JJ McCarthy, as opposed to reacting too much. If it was a coach like Mike Zimmer, who was volatile and could be toxic at times,

then it would be more, well, if they don't win, it's going to turn into a tire fire. So, but not winning totally changes everybody. Even when last year, Josh Dobbs throws four picks and there's all the questions after, can he really adapt his offense? And the answer is no, he can't, but also it's Josh Dobbs. He's played for like 19 teams. Like what did you guys expect? And yet still in the heat of the moment, we acted totally differently than we would if we could pull it back, take, take a objective viewpoint on the entire thing. So I'm just saying that it's hard to be that patient.

If you don't win this year, then it's going to feel like the pressure is on. And how they negotiate the contracts there for an extension is going to be a subject that all of a sudden is something we're talking about. So are you saying they should have offered him an extension this year? Yeah, I think in the most rational circumstances, you should extend him and Kweisi right now by two years and say, this is your window with J.J. McCarthy, sink or swim. And I think a three-year sample truly tells you about a quarterback that you draft. Even if you sit him year one, you struggle.

Year two, you look for progress and you look for what McCarthy's going to be and then year three you really know and I would look at the Buffalo Bills as a team with Josh Allen where the first year wasn't that great the second year was progress they made the playoffs lost in the playoffs and by year three they're looking for a championship but the process from both of them the word that is just drilling a hole in my brain all the time, because they say it so much, the way they've handled the roster, the way O'Connell has led the team, the plan for McCarthy, it feels very intentional. I'm just going to use all their buzzwords. There feels like there's collaboration. As silly as some of the words are in corporate,

it does look from our viewpoint like it's happening. That the plan is being fulfilled. And if that's the case and they have a better year this year than expected, then they'll be in pretty good. Both of them will be in pretty good leverage points over the owners if they want to then get into contract extensions. If I were Kevin O'Connell or Kweisi at this point, whatever the market would be for their extensions right now would probably not be that high. Coming off of the 7-1 playoff game, had one winning season, one losing season, I wouldn't necessarily be jumping to sign depending on what the offer is.

But I think I agree that's probably fantasy land. I don't think there's an NFL owner that would probably extend a coach and a GM after two years without at least a playoff win. And so I can see why it didn't happen. I can see how you could explain it if you did do it, but I'm not surprised that it hasn't happened and that it's probably not going to happen. And if they both are confident in their abilities

and they believe in the process and they believe, then by the end of the season at least, and that's the scenario we didn't really talk about, but one thing that I think should be thought about is, can you get to a point where you go into the off season knowing that hey jj's gonna make it right right or are you gonna go into it off season saying hey now it's jj's turn like that's a big difference that adds a level of unknown if they can somehow get it to you know if they can if they can have a better season than what everybody's predicting, which I think the over-under is like six and a half wins or something,

and they get to the end of the year with J.J. having played well enough or shown enough that you say, okay, we're going to be fine with this guy. Then you go into the offseason and you talk about contract extensions and that sort of thing. In the best-case scenario, I think that Sam Darnold starts right away so McCarthy doesn't have to be pressed. They come out of the bye week with J.J. McCarthy. Maybe they're around.500 at that point, 3-2, 2-3. And then despite some ups and downs that all rookies have,

you get to the end of that journey saying, I think he's got it, guys. I think he's getting it. And then the vibes would be extremely good for this team. Even if you still won six and a half games, seven games or six games, you would still feel like, okay, we got our guy. Think about Philadelphia when they barely made the playoffs with Jalen Hurts, but he played extremely well down the stretch of that season.

And they thought, well, at least we know we've got something to build around. And there's probably 20 examples of quarterbacks like that, where you have a really good sense by the end of that season. Just, I mean, like sticking with the bills example, when Alan gets them to the playoffs, nearly wins a playoff game. This is our guy. This is we're building entirely around this. That's where you want to get to,

but that place isn't that easy to get to if you have to play Darnold the whole way because he's not ready. And then how patient can you be if everyone wants to see him and the owner is calling up and saying Stephen A. Smith says we should play him. All of this is a lot to juggle, I think, for Kevin O'Connell. And that's, I'm sure, why he's being extremely cautious when it comes to his words to us. how about the rest of the football team is there other players no it doesn't matter there's definitely not corners we know that uh is there what do we what do we think of the the roster as a whole which has been fairly healthy outside of mckay blackman yeah but uh we've seen a few veteran days robert tunyon had back spasms supposedly he's going to be okay. TJ Hawkinson ahead of schedule like every other rehabbing player that has ever existed. No one's ever been behind schedule. I mean, that's, again, great for the PFTs of the world to post on their websites. But I just, oh, man, it's going terribly over there.

Never heard that before. I tried to get Kevin O'Connell to say today that he's in play for week one, but he wouldn't go there. He wouldn't bite. And I don't know if TJ is in play for week one, but if he truly is ahead of schedule, that would be what that means. The fantasy nuts were going crazy on Twitter I saw today just saying he's ahead of schedule.

It would take an unbelievably fast rehab from an ACLl to be ready for week one but maybe reasonable in the first few weeks of the season yeah i've always found that coming back from those things with no training camp is way harder than if you have a surgery and at least get some training and they've always been seem to me on the cautious side like if there's a you know if you just go back to justin jefferson last year with missing the the seven games with the the torn hamstring and so uh i'm not saying they're you know they're gonna just leave him there and when he's ready to play and then give it two more weeks just to give it two more weeks but you know the original nine month or so timetable for an acl put him to the end of september you know if not you know and they probably wouldn't start him in London

and then have a bye week. So then you look at the bye week and regardless. I still don't think it's going to be that early. If he's ahead of schedule, it would put him in the talk for the first couple of weeks. And it doesn't sound like they're ready to have that conversation. I think the bye week times out really well.

Come back from the bye week, you play Detroit, he comes back, all that seems to to me yeah as opposed to pushing him and let him get fully back into football shape by practicing week after week rather than oh he came back he looks great the first week and then wears down quickly yeah because he's coming back from an injury but as far as the rest of the roster goes we have chronicled here pretty well on the show the cornerback situation give me something else give me some other position position group matter of intrigue that has caught your eye that is not quarterback it is not cornerback um i think i mean i came into this into training camp wondering how they were gonna sort of deploy you know they added the three edge

rushers in dallas turner and van ginkle and and jonathan granard how they were going to deploy those guys um whether it means that they would still basically not play defensive linemen or they would play more of those um and how many people would seem to be in that first team rotation uh and so it's been interesting they've at least practiced more three-man lines oh yeah than what they did during the season last year i think they they were like historically low on rates of using more than one or two defensive linemen on any given play last season and so it seemed like they're at least trying to see if they can get more uh from those guys um and some of that will just depend on what

sort of formations the other the offense comes out in and so and vikings offense has been in a lot of like too tight end which brings your base defense out so maybe that's the reason only reason we're seeing that i'm not sure but i've noticed that there's been a lot more efforts to get you know see what jerry tillery can do as a free agent you know harrison phillips jonathan board um levi drake uh rodriguez first team reps and Harrison Phillips, Jonathan Bullard, Levi Drake Rodriguez. First team reps, baby. Was out there because Bullard was taking a veteran day, and so he was getting a lot of work today with that group. And it's interesting.

We forget about Patrick Jones. They're rolling him through there. And so there's a lot of different options that Brian Flores has, and I don't know that I've detected a pattern other than they're all rolling in and out right if you ask who's taking first team reps gestures at the roster it's like 14 I'd say yeah like legitimately there's probably like 14 to 15 players you could say and not even the injury people but just the ones that are have been here since the start that are rotating frequently through that group. Right.

I noticed Jonah Williams in there today. Jerry Tillery, I think, has looked pretty good at times to get Levi Drake Rodriguez in there. And I was watching him one-on-ones. And, of course, only trained I so much. But you could certainly tell when you drive a guard back and you get leverage, because that's not supposed to happen yeah uh for the guard he has looked very energetic to me yeah so far and and i've seen i've been interested in watching him too and i've seen it plenty of times when he hasn't gotten one foot past the line of scrimmage here i'm uh causing trouble with your mechanics here yeah but we haven't knocked that over yeah

we haven't we haven't seen too many where he's um or i have seen a lot where he's not really gotten one or two yards past the the line of scrimmage whoa it's coming right for you okay hold on what we do here all right there we go there you go okay you were getting so excited by football that you broke the microphone uh or at least send me a bill oh that's what happens when we start talking about dt's rotating and we start breaking things okay final thing for you for the first time after i break something you want me to be out of first time ever yes it's time time to wrap we're getting all the lighting people they're all saying just get them off get them off yeah um for the very first time we stood on a sideline and watched the Vikings sort of kind of a little bit practice the kickoff. They did so very slowly.

It was entirely a walkthrough, but we saw it. And we saw Kenny Wong move back there. Two returners, as I expect most teams to have. Saw a little bit of their blocking and looked like they had some different ideas. We also saw Will Reichardt as the kicker, of which Matt Daniels left the door open for maybe it not being Will Reichardt and maybe being a position player because that would be better for tackling. We saw the Hall of Fame game had the kickoff. And personally, I was frustrated by people on social media saying, oh, this is boring. It's not there. Excuse me, folks. Those seven would have went out of the back of the end zone. Yeah, the touchbacks are boring. frustrated by people on social media saying oh this is boring it's not there excuse me folks

those seven would have went out of the back of the end zone yeah the touchbacks before so a man had a football play and that will get better as better players go back there but how do you think after now seeing one little shred of practice and one game where they actually did it that the rollout of the kickoff is going to play out i think every time someone sees it for the first time they're going to be like oh it's stupid you know i i don't get it you know it's it looks weird but i've been watching it since it was in the xfl you've been watching it since it was in the x we did a podcast in 2020 talking about yeah that's awesome um and and like so to me like it looks perfectly normal now

and so i think once you get over that hump of uh of just that it looks different to have everybody starting down the field rather than running down the field um and you get to the to the point where they're not playing on a turf where everyone's slipping as they were last night that was awful and i don't even know i don't really blame the fact that it was backup players like anybody would have slipped i think based on the conditions there. There's going to be some of those that get popped. And at the very least, it's going to be, there's going to be action on kickoffs. And there's going to be a big variance, I think, between where drives start.

Almost all the drives last year started between like the and the 30, like 80-some percent. And because the kicks can be in all different areas and there's all different kinds of coverage, and especially early in the year, you're going to see some drives start at the 7, some drives start at the 37. And there's going to be a wide variance there, and that could affect whether you go for fourth down

when you get to fourth and one, how many punts. There's lots of consequences that are going to flow from this and i think matt daniels was right when he said the other day is like especially earlier in the early in the year there's gonna be games decided by oh yeah 100 because you either screwed it up or because you took advantage of a good plan and so that and that'll even out and we'll see where it ends up at the end of the year but especially early it's going to be fairly i don't want to say chaotic because that's what everyone wants it to be but it's going to be fairly unpredictable um and certainly i think very impactful it could feel much more like all three phases ish as opposed to it's really been

90 off as a defense and then a little bit of special teams in football because they took the kickoffs out. But I was watching an old game from 2008, and the kickoff, they showed the stats of the kickoff kicker. And it was something like 60 kickoffs and eight touchbacks. And it was just, oh, yeah, that's right. This used to be a play every single time where you didn't want to get up and go to the bathroom. And last night, I was locked in. I wanted to see every single one of those plays't want to get up and go to the bathroom. And last night I was locked in. I wanted to see every single one of those plays. Just to see what happened.

I mean, even, and there used to be pretty standard two returners back there. And that predates like a lot of people, but that's the way it used to be in the, in the eighties and early nineties, is they'd have two returners and one would be like a big fullback and one would be a quick guy. And so you would never want the fullback guy to be returning it, but you would want him plowing the way for you. Now now it's gonna be a little different but there still will be two yeah you want to see something really dangerous the wedge yeah just a human wall coming up the

field literally holding hands but i think that if you're very quick like kenny wongwu and you break one little gap it's over there's nobody back there except that kicker. And that's the biggest concern I have is the last thing I want to see is five kickers get hurt in the first two weeks because they are the last line of defense. And even with Will Reichard, no offense to Will Reichard, but he's not a big guy. No, and especially like we always talk about,

are there really 32 starting quarterbacks in the league? Are there 32 kickers that should be kicking in the league that that would be what is that that's the position you don't see injuries hardly at all um and the only reason they get replaced is because they're just not kicking well but like like what's the depth of kickers in this league and i don't know if it's very high and I don't know how many injuries there might be or not a kid in the ufl broke his neck as he was a kicker broke his neck uh making a tackle uh this year and so I mean it certainly can happen and if I'm you know the kicker and you know I'm I'm at least having a conversation with my coach about like if it ends up being one of those one-on-one situations am I doing the ole or am i really trying to tackle him so i did a story on this a few years ago now before the kickoff had happened but when kai forbath and ryan quigley were the kicker and punter yeah and i asked

them about what their approach was and essentially what uh matt mike prefer told me, because I asked him as well about them tackling, was that they really emphasized the push on the shoulder pad, but nothing more than that. Like, don't try to be a hero. Right. Don't be diving. Don't be putting your body at risk at all. We would rather give up a touchdown than lose our kicker for the rest of the season. So if you can, just get a hand on them, push them out of bounds.

But in this case, this might be you're filling a gap. And if somebody breaks through, there isn't, like you're not going to run them down because they are starting stagnant. You're not going to just catch Kenny Wongwu. So that guy's got to be there. And maybe that will be something that changes as we go along because I think the accuracy of the kick will matter at first they're all going to have a strategy but if it really doesn't matter

that much maybe it is a linebacker and they just have a wow how wild would that be like if the end result of this of getting the kickoff back in the game is that it gets the kicker out of the game right right well we'll see how that ends up playing out but I am very intrigued of what they can do with uh Kenny Wong Wu Ty Chandler was back there as well Jalen Naylor, we'll see how that ends up playing out. But I am very intrigued of what they can do with Kenny Wong Wu. Ty Chandler was back there as well. Jalen Naylor. So we will see. Kevin Seifert, ESPN.

Do you want to do Kevin Seifert, ESPN? Egan, Minnesota. Thanks, everybody. Football.