Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Kevin Seifert on whether the Vikings trust JJ McCarthy

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

ESPN's Kevin Seifert joined the show to breakdown the Vikings' QB situation and whether the team trusts J.J. McCarthy going forward. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, presented by Fandul. Matthew Collar here along with ESPN's Kevin Seifert to break down everything Minnesota Vikings quarterback situation. Brian Flores gets his first head coaching interview and the outlook here going forward for the Vikings into the off season. Why don't we begin, Kevin, just with the quarterback spot? I was thinking of something today. I was thinking of a specific word. It's something that I have for you, but I don't know that the Vikings have for J.J. McCarthy.

And that word would be trust that teams often operate and coaching staffs often operate on trust more than they do focus on talent. We see this all the time. Why is this guy playing over this other guy? trust is a big part of it. And as I've tried to think of what they're going to do in the future, how they view J.J. McCarthy, the one thing I keep going back to is how do you trust that he is going to take the step that they need him to take for next year?

Reaction to that. I think they have faith in him that he can become that person. But I don't think that they would be in their right minds to fully trust that that's to happen. It would be a dereliction of duty probably on the, on the part of the decision makers in the building. And just, you know, to the naked eye, I mean, when a guy plays in 10 games over two seasons, like, how can you trust that he's going to be a 17 game guy the following year? And that's independent of performance, independent of anything else. I think that the trust in the skills and the development is a more nuanced conversation than trust in availability. And

And you basically can't trust that. And I don't think that they do. And I think that that would, will, in fact, inform their offseason decisions as they start looking at things here and already have for the next couple weeks and months. Let's stay on the theme and work through the trust in him personality-wise, in him, you know, just in terms of his actual skill and where that needs to go. But the availability part is always tricky for me because if you look at each one of these injuries, I mean, a meniscus tear that happens. to football players sometimes. He gets tackled funny against the Atlanta Falcons. He did run himself into the injury against the Green Bay Packers. And then with the hand injury, it doesn't seem so much that it happened, but the handling of it created a lot more attention than you

ever would have expected. Clearly, they were not happy with him not telling the training staff that it was initially problematic. And then the way that he took him out, himself out of the game, heavily criticized by Ben Lieber with a former player's perspective of putting the towel over it and kind of making a big show out of taking himself out, which is just not the way we normally see professionals handle an injury like that. So what about the trust in personality? I think throughout the year, there were different times where certain comments made you raise an eyebrow.

And I don't know how to interpret all of them, but the dancing into the end zone saying that, you know, he was told not. to and that made him want to do it more and things like that. What did you make of the trust between Kevin O'Connell, J.J. McCarthy, and just his overall personality fit for this position. Yeah, I think for the most part, the Vikings internally view that as a maturity issue as much as just like a character flaw or, you know, some personality type that is not compatible with being a leader of men or whatever, however you want to describe being an NFL

quarterback. And, you know, it probably sounded like an excuse as often as they said. This kid's, you know, referred to him as a kid and said he's 22 years old. And he's mentioned that many times and had been on a very direct straight, you know, ascension throughout his football life going back to the beginning of his time in high school. I mean, there were not many we always talk about ebbs and flows there were not many ebbs it was just kind of a straight up thing and he created sort of a persona the way he thought of himself based on that and it obviously was a humbling you know i'm sure it was a humbling situation for him to get to the NFL and not be able to continue on that unmitigated ascension but i think they they view that as you know whether it was

celebrating five yards before he got into the end zone or, you know, what you were talking about in terms of the way he kind of handled his injury after the, or coming out of the game in Green Bay is, and maybe that's being optimistic in saying that that's just a maturity level issue and not a character flaw. But, you know, if there were players in the locker room who were really turned off, and remember, this was a very veteran locker room. And if there were players in this particular locker room who felt the way Ben Lieber did, about the theatrics of it as he interpreted it.

They kept it to themselves, I guess is the best way to put it. I can't say that all 53 guys on the active roster and all 16 guys on the practice squad had no opinions whatsoever on it, but they certainly kept it out of the public view and out of the rumor mill as well for the most part. And so we'll see if they end up being right on that. It might just be a hopeful feeling that he will

mature and that there will still there's always going to be an edge to his personality because it's just who he is like you don't want him all the other things that he's probably thinking about uh in terms of development and within a game and within a season you don't want him having to worry too much about you know subordinating his his true personality and and like that seems like that's an unnecessarily an unnecessary level of stress to put on somebody in top of everything else. And so maybe it'll be as simple as his performance will rise to the level where that kind of theatrics or whatever the word is will be more palatable because it coincides with much better play. That's another possibility as well. Yeah, I think that inside the locker

room, whether it was Justin Jefferson or we spoke with Will Fries the other day and Brian O'Neill and those offensive linemen, they're pretty tough and they have their certain way of going about things, but they were very strong in backing J.J. McCarthy and Justin Jefferson has talked at length about how they're going to get together. They're going to work through this. They're going to find their chemistry. And maybe everybody looking back in hindsight is saying, you know, missing all that training camp time that we kind of went, ah, it's Justin Jefferson. It will be fine. Well, not with a quarterback that was completely inexperienced in throwing to Justin Jefferson. So I don't think that there's any quote from any player that I could point to.

to where I would say, oh, you could see it. They don't, they don't buy into him. They don't believe him. But I think when you have all guys that are 27, 28, they've been through all this in the NFL or beyond that, they viewed J.J. McCarthy as a kid and as somebody who just is not there yet, almost in the same way with Dallas Turner last year, where he was one of the youngest players in the NFL, came into the league. And most of the veterans were like, yeah, it takes time.

takes development. And I think there's an implied other part of that, which is, hey, he didn't make himself the starter this year. That was the front office. That was the coaching staff. But the O'Connell McCarthy connection from a personality perspective, this is not a head coach that says, all right, you know, just go out there and play and I'll stand over here and deal with the defense like Mike Zimmer or something. This is a coach who wants to have the tightest connection possible with his quarterback, he wants to feel like he's playing the video game out there, calling the plays, being in the headset. Remember the video where he said, you know, I love you, Sam, right before he threw a pass to was a Cam Acres that caught it against the

Packers. That's the type of relationship that O'Connell is looking for with his quarterback. Do we think that that relationship can get there after what we saw this year? yeah i i mean i i i viewed o'connell as being in in sort of quarterback development mode and so and and it's kind of right in the middle so it's almost hard to judge if it's been his particular approach has been successful or not but i think he's tried to give j jay the space to be himself but while also kind of rounding off some of the edges and both on the field and off and remembering you're not going to get a guy to do a, you know, 180 degree change, you know, the best you can do. And the phrase that he always uses and I think is instructive is to be the best version of yourself.

And so, and what he, another thing that he has said repeatedly is how much he thinks, you know, of the intelligence, J.J. McCarthy's intelligence and his ability to understand, you know, the concepts and understand what they're trying to do. And so that's a first step because we know that this offense, is not the simplest offense in the NFL, and there's a certain amount of just, whether it's football intelligence or, you know, SAT intelligence or whatever, just IQ intelligence to be able to absorb that. So that, I think there's a genuine respect level from Kevin on that. And that gets JJ to a certain point, you know, independent of anything else. And so, you know, and then the next step becomes can they get him to process it, you know, and get him to execute it better than he

did this year. And so, you know, I think that, I don't think that there's nothing came up this year that tells me this is an incompatible pair of people. It was, if anything, maybe O'Connell experienced a level, you know, I wrote in the story last week that the Vikings had sort of underestimated J.J. McCarthy's four. And so I don't want to say O'Connell was surprised at some the things he encountered, but he encountered a level of sort of remedial quarterback play that needed to be built up, probably that he might not have anticipated. And so that I'm sure created a level of frustration that here we are. We have this great offense and we can fool and and beat the best schemes in the NFL, but I can't get the quarterback to do the basic things

that needs to be done in order to do it. So I'm sure there were frustrations. And he referenced a few of them publicly, usually on his, with his time with Paul Allen on the teams, on KFAN, but also, you know, on the Vikings network as well, you know, things like when he, when they would ask him, like, what were you thinking here? And JJ would tell them something, you know, like, well, I played against that guy in college or I played with this guy in college and he always does this. And that was not necessarily one of the coaching points going into the game. And so there was a kind of a realization that you wouldn't know until you start going through that process that he had his own way of thinking about things and it isn't necessarily the same

way that they would want him to be thinking. So I don't view that as incompatible, but I view it as needing more work. And I think they both agree with that. As you know, Purple Insider is always growing and changing and I'm looking to take steps forward in 2026, just like your business. Now, I'm lucky to have a great crew, but as a business owner, I am well aware of the challenges of trying to find quality people to add to the roster. So if you're hiring for your company in 2026, let me give you a little advice. Check out ZipRecruiter with new goals in 2026. You may be looking to add to your squad. And thankfully, there's a place that you can go to help conquer these challenges and achieve your

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studies of topical and oral monoxidil and finesteride. Feature products include compound drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety effectiveness or quality. Prescription is required. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety. information. And from a personality perspective, there is not a magic wand that you can wave over someone's head and make them 25 years old or give them the experiences that they would need. And there are some people, some quarterbacks who come into the NFL environment and just seem to really get it immediately. But there were some moments this year of J.J. McCarthy not really getting the NFL environment. I think maybe the best example is just what we saw with the taunting

penalty where, yeah, it's great that you've got this energy and that you stiff-armed a guy and you were pretty pumped. But it's second and one and you need to get back to the huddle and you need to call the play and you need to go score a touchdown here. You cannot do that. And you know, there are quarterbacks in the league who you could say, well, if Mahomes didn't, it's like, right. But, you know, he's also got a lot of cachet that's been built up to make a mistake. And I think you had the stat that very few times is this actually even ever happened, where a quarterback gets that penalty. It was the first time a quarterback had done it this year.

And I think that our database had 17 times since the start of the 2000 seasons. So less than one time a year. And people thought I was coming up with some obscure stat to find a way to rip them. But all I was really trying to say, and you said the same thing here, is that it's really, that that's just backs up our, you know, the obvious take that it's really unusual for quarterback to do that because they've got all the things to worry about that you just mentioned. Right. I mean, he should be just play after play after play.

And there were, I think, too many times this year where the excitability went too far, something that you really love about his game, which is the energy and the competitiveness and all those things that you would check off boxes. But there were times in games where it felt like he was so amped up. That's where throws start sailing on him. That's where he starts trying to make plays. And even trying to run over the safety there. where they don't do that.

That's what got you hurt before. And I think the question is, is it time or is this how he's going to play? Because I'll even use Jackson Dart as another young quarterback example here with the same problem where Jackson Dart, they've told them time and time again, dude, you have to slide. You have to get out of bounds, whatever. And then he just does it again because I think once you get out there, you kind of are who you are a little bit. and can they trust him to not run straight into linebackers, not do crazy somersaults, not jump up into defenders that could get you hurt?

And that's where trusting that he could stay healthy is almost impossible going forward. I think the personality stuff, it can go one way or the other. You can either grow up really fast because you learned a lot or you could say, no, no, I am the one who's right here and I'm going to keep doing all that sort of stuff,

which was why that comment about dancing, into the end zone raised an eyebrow for me. Like, does he realize that Kevin O'Connell is right about all these things? Yeah. Now, if these things were happening and he was pinpoint accurate and the technique was phenomenal and he mastered the entire offense, we'd be like, isn't this fun to watch this young kid? Yeah.

But those things have not been the case. How much trust do you get the sense that they have for going into this offseason and fixing the technical things? Because I think what we're talking to. about too, about them overestimating how much they could coach him into a box. I think they thought that they could coach these technical things very quickly. And it turned out that they could not. And eventually O'Connell sort of threw up his hands and said, I'm not even going to

talk about technique anymore. Just go do whatever you're going to do. And we'll worry about it in the off season. How big of a step do you think they believe he can take from a footwork, throwing, timing, understanding of the offense, all those things. in one off season. Yeah, the people that I talk to, everybody talks about Josh Allen. And you can see in his stats, you know, I think it was the first two years. He was in the 50% completion percentage. And then he jumped to almost 70 in his third year. And it's been pretty well documented that he

worked with a lot of physiologists and people who were experts. I don't even know if they were affiliated with the bills necessarily to get himself where he wanted to be. But that's very much the exception to the rule. And so most of the people that I talk to, to say that, like, if you are expecting more than incremental improvement, you know, sort of around the edges in terms of the fundamentals and the footwork and the improvement and accuracy that's related to that part of his issues, then you're probably just hoping for something that is very unlikely to happen. And I talked to Kurt Warner a lot about it at the end of the season.

And it's just he said it's not like there's not a path to doing it. And it's not like it can't be done, but it has to be done alongside a million other things that you're also trying to improve on. You know, we've seen, we see a lot of improvement from players of all levels for all positions in their from their first year of playing to their second year of playing. But that's because they've already established these kind of basic fundamental things. And then now they're taking their offseason work to another level. So if you're talking about devoting this offseason,

into trying to lock, you know, lock down, have the concrete dry, whatever, you know, phrase you want to call it of the basic fundamentals, then you're robbing yourself of the emphasis on, you know, football 201 and football 301 and football 401 until you start getting into that level where you really are a master of the position. And it's hopefully not too late that your physical, you know, level hasn't deteriorated yet when you get to that point. And so that's the whole approach to getting to the sweet spot of playing quarterback. And so it would be, it would be very, I think, disappointing on all levels if there isn't some level of improvement in whether it's because of fundamentals or for some other reason that

his accuracy improves. But to think that he's going to suddenly be the guy that is delivering it right into the hands perfectly of receivers every time is not supported by the a long history of players who ran into these issues. Right. That's the thing that when someone says, well, Josh Allen was able to do it. And then if you say, who else? Yeah.

There's not a whole lot of other who else's that come along with that. But when we, even if we stick with the Josh Allen example, by year two, his accuracy had improved enough for him to be a playmaker and get them to the playoffs and he made a big mistake in a playoff game against the Texans in 2019 that they should have won. So even in a position to win in the playoffs. So I don't think you need to go from being J.J. McCarthy to being Kurt Warner in order for him to succeed. And he was able to win some games

because of playmaking, because of mobility. And when we see him get out of the pocket and rip a pass like he did to Ben Sims the other day or even, you know, the throw to Jalen Naylor where he's outside the pocket and he drops a dime into the end zone for a touchdown, the run that he had against the Detroit Lions. These are exciting things that some, you know, podcasters may have mentioned his frustrations with Kirk Cousins in the past of not being able to have a playmaking element that can win you games even if you're not perfect. So I think that there is a world where if you just improve to, let's say instead of 57%

and negative 5% in terms of completion percentage over expect. let's say you get that up five to seven percent and you're in the low 60s and your average a completion percentage over expected and maybe your receivers squeeze it a little bit tighter this year than they did last year and are maybe used to the velocity of which you're throwing at like you could see a quarterback who can win games with all the weapons and everything else that they have around it maybe they start the season with a healthy offensive line instead of not getting that until late in the season. But I think that as we've talked about this,

it all leads you down one windy path to he can't be the only quarterback here. So the question that I keep asking is the degree to which they will look for another quarterback. There are levels to this. There is the Kyler Murray, and I think Kirk is in this level two, or Malik Willis,

if you sign him to a multi-year deal, like, sorry, JJ, that guy's the quarterback now. But then there's this other level down, where you're saying, hey, JJ, we still love you, but you better be out Mac Jones for this job because we just traded a third round pick for him or something. And then there's the level that says, no, they fully believe in this and they bring back Carson Wentz or something. Which one of those levels do you think they will end up at?

I don't think it can possibly be, we fully believe in this. And I question whether even sort of the Mac Jones route is enough. You know, because in the worst case, you have to plan for the, the whole reason of having that person is to plan for the worst case scenario that JJ hasn't made enough progress yet. And then you're, then you have Mack Jones as your starter. Like, are you, is he saving your, your season? I don't know. Like, I know he played better for the 49ers, but, you know, you're going into year five, needing to at least make the playoffs probably, if not win a playoff game is, is a Mac Jones level guy. the person that you're doing. So I think that they, I think that the floor of what they probably

know that they need, um, is the, uh, Kurt Cousins. I put Kurt Cousins and Daniel Jones and kind of the same category, um, in terms of just their, their playing level. They're, uh, what they're coming from, what, you know, what you would have to tell them in terms of getting them to, to sign. last year they really thought that they were going to have Daniel Jones paired with J.J. McCarthy and there was some execution issues in getting that locked in and locked down, and that didn't happen. And so I think even they recognized they needed somebody of that level who, you know, and I put them both Daniel Jones and Kirk Cousins above a Mac Jones, and I think most people probably would.

I don't think that's that controversial. But I think that's the level they thought that they needed going into last year. And they were proved right. They just weren't able to execute it. And I think that's the level, that's the floor of the level that they probably know internally that they need. Can they execute better this year round and finesse the final negotiations in order to get a Kirk Cousins here? I think that that's going to be the key question for their offseason. I don't think that there's any, I don't think there's going to be a huge debate internally about the level that they need.

And then, you know, the next level beyond Kirk, I would say is the Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, and I put Kyler Murray in that spot too because he's, he's young enough that you say, you know, JJ isn't, you know, going to be the guy. If you have a Kirk Cousins this year or Daniel Jones last year, that's a reasonable bridge, a more than reasonable bridge. And so I think that that's the, I don't think that they'll ignore if the, the possibility that of acquiring one of those biggest, those big names, if they get when that they really are available, you know, the borough stuff, I don't know, like that's, that would have to be driven by him. The Bengals certainly don't want to do it. The Lamar Jackson thing is much more interesting now that they fired John Harbaugh, and because a lot of the discussion about Omar Jackson was maybe he had run his course with John Harbaugh, and I don't know if that's accurate or not, and we'll see what the next Ravens coach thinks. But if you're coming into Baltimore, you might want to, you might not advocate for getting rid of this two-time MVP.

quarterback the same way on a lower level that Kevin O'Connell walked into Minnesota saying I can win with Kirk Cousins. I would think that the Ravens next coach is, you know, likely to advocate for trying to win with Lamar Jackson. And so we'll see if he actually becomes available. But I, and I think that if Kyler Murray is truly available, I doubt they would sit that out entirely. But I think that they might try to, you know, thread the needle again, but with a a larger hole in the, for the thread to go through, if that makes sense. No, it does. And my thing with Kirk or Daniel Jones is that Indianapolis is probably going to want

Daniel Jones back because they don't have another answer there. And they didn't even get to find out at the end of the year what Anthony Richardson looked like because he had a strange injury, but they ended up bringing in Philip Rivers. So they didn't even get another look. So it seems like they're just completely toast with Anthony Richardson. and his success there, they're bringing back most of their team. It seems like a perfect fit that the only way he would come back to Minnesota, which he's spoken very highly of working with Kevin O'Connell,

is if he was told, we will give you the most money. And oh, by the way, we are done with J.J. McCarthy, you are our guy. And with Kirk Cousins, he was on an interview with Kay Adams the other day, and she asked him straight up, like, what's your thought about the future? And do you need to be the starter to go somewhere else? and, you know, in his very Kirkian way, said, uh, well, you know, I do want to play. And I think the same thing goes for Kirk unless there's absolutely no other options. If no other team is offering him to be the starting quarterback, then maybe he would come

compete. I also think Kirk wins the job because he is much more accurate. His chemistry with Justin Jefferson, uh, created one of the great starts to a career in history for Jefferson. And he knows the offense inside. and out over multiple seasons of working together with Kevin O'Connell. He's probably not going to lose that job, but I don't think he's coming here for a chance to not do it. So that's where, to me, the Gino Smith or Mack Jones, that's the one that threads

the needle, but it's also the one that most likely gets you not in the playoffs at the end of the year if you feel like you have to start that guy. So is there a theoretical case? Because we're not talking about theory here. We're talking about realistically. They have to get into this. And just to add to the Kyla Murray thing, I think at very least it would be a lot of fun and probably really frustrating at times and incredibly exciting at times, but at least it would be very, very entertaining for him to be the quarterback here. But is there a theoretical case to go with that third option of just bring in a regular backup quarterback, Gardner Minchu, whoever it might be. And it's JJ or nothing. And you guys who picked him and invested

at him and picked him over Bo Nix and picked him over Sam Darnold and picked him over Aaron Rogers. You made the bed now sleep in it. That feels punitive to me. I mean, I think, you know, there and there's, and that's not to say that that there hasn't been cases of that in the history of NFL team building from owners who, and sometimes it's because they don't want to spend more money. And sometimes it's because they don't want to be kind of lulled into extending a tenure, based on something that's not going to win them a Super Bowl, but we'll get them more competitive. I have a hard time thinking that anybody could do the,

anybody inside the Vikings or inside the ownership group would look at that scenario and think we've just done our best to make ourselves competitive for next season. It may be the theory, a theoretical thing would be, if I had a 15-year contract and I needed to find out once and for all if J.J. McCarthy can be our guy and I'm going to potentially sacrifice the 2026 season with little to no safety net there to find that out, then maybe you do that. But amongst all the NFL teams, the ownership here seems very unlikely to be willing to do anything that. clearly sends the message that they're willing to sacrifice the season if JJ got hurt

again or if he just didn't play well again. And then you're trying to make the playoffs with your Gardner Minshu or whoever. And so that seems to me, I don't want to say off the table because I don't know that they've like got to the point where they've reached all these conclusions yet. So it would be hard to know for sure. But that seems to be a very weak response to what we all saw in front of our eyes this season, if they were to do that. It's something we run into a lot here on the show is here's the absolute best thing from the perspective of the long term versus what the Minnesota Vikings will do. I feel like this is my entire analysis post 2018 of covering this football team, even right

down to the, hey, guys, if you lose all these games after Kirk tears his Achilles, you might draft one of the top three quarterbacks. No, no, we're not going to trade DeNeal Hunter away. We're going to go get Josh Dobbs. All right. And then you end up picking the fifth quarterback. And the same thing even goes for this year where you're a top 10 draft pick, but now you're the 18th draft pick. And you can certainly land adjusted Jefferson or Christian Darisal, but your odds are worse. And so often this team makes its odds of long term success worse. by the way they give away draft picks over the years when people criticize Quasi Adolfo Menza's drafting. It's like, I get where that comes from, but also how many picks have they had in

the last three years because they're trying to win now? And I feel like the same thing goes here of if you get Kyler Murray, maybe there's a world where it's just his Randall Cunningham. And like that could happen with him. Certainly Burrow or Lamar Jackson, you're a Super Bowl favorite. But everybody else, it's really tough to make a case for me that this is going to going to get you anywhere else than where you've been sitting for a very long time. Well, I think that that's why I view like a Kirk Cousins as threading a needle with a larger hole, you know, it because, you know, what happened this year, Carson Wentz came in and they won two or five games. And that's basically what you're going to get from most

backup. So if, and if Kurt comes in and he's, you know, he's not playing well or they're, they get, you know, for whatever reason, they get to a point in the season, then, then, you know, maybe you turn it over to JJ at that point. But I think that, you know, and it basically what it does, if nothing else, what it does is it covers for the possibility slash likelihood that when you get to OTAs and you get to training camp, JJ, he just hasn't shown you the progress that you would need to have seen to project that he's going to make this big jump. And so maybe he become, Kirk Cousins becomes a high end bridge to the next quarterback. And that based on how the off season and training camp goes, you can already render a, a more complete final judgment on JJ. And it, and it means that the entire season isn't lost. But, you know, we'll see eventually how that goes. I mean, the good, to me, like the attractive part of Kirk is that he's very much near the end of his career. And so it's not like,

you're if you're, you know, getting Kyler Murray, for example, you're basically saying you're done with JJ. And I don't think that they're ready to say they're done with JJ. And I don't think that they should be done with him after 10 starts. But they have to view him as somebody who needs to make a lot of improvement before they're ready to commit to him. Yeah. It's just that is always interesting to me of could you do the thing that makes the most sense? Not in the national football league, my friends. No. And even and even that like I like to me like I'm not. opposed to maybe not trying your hardest towards the end of a year when you're when you're you know the Vikings ended up at number 18 because they played a bunch of teams that were doing the thing

that we're saying that they the Vikings would never do and that was not necessarily put their best foot forward every week and so you know but even that like like to me to to to basically prescribe yourself a repeat of this season when they the single the single reason that they miss the playoffs was because of the quarterback and to and to just kind of put faith, blind faith, blind trust in a level of improvement that is certainly not guaranteed at any level would seem even beyond the usual, you know, beyond what I would think of as acceptable, even long-term planning, in my opinion. What you have to do is view of potential failure outcome as a success, because if you had, which is a counterintuitive.

But if you had J.J. McCarthy start next year with no real competition and he's just the guy. And you go eight and nine and he ends up with the same stat line again that you found out. Because right now, it feels like if you ask a hundred people, hey, what are you, a reasonably people? How do you think of J.J. McCarthy? Most of the answer is I just don't really know. I just don't really know what to make of this when the guy has three. thrown fewer than 250 NFL passes. So if you were to get him to throw 500 next year, 600, and then you really learn about him

and then you figure out, do I have something or not, the low end of that is finding out. But the problem is none of this matches up with the timeline for the front office and for the head coach who all designed this back to right now. Or the roster. Or the roster. Right. That's what I mean. Like when you build your roster like this, there are other teams in the playoffs.

right now. The Chicago Bears are the most glaring that timed up drafting their quarterback with their roster build. So as he's ascending, they're ascending. And that's probably going to keep going that way. That's not something the Vikings were able to do. Yeah, you almost have to view it as what their longest of the long term team building plan was failed. And that was to build up the roster or maintain the level of the roster and then drop a young quarterback. in it and believe that, you know, the quality of the roster and the quality of the coaching staff could support development in real time. We saw this year that that just they missed. They whiffed. You know, it didn't happen. And so now the answer is what's the best way to pick up those

pieces? And so it's not, to me, it's not to find out, you know, based on the, you know, the total context of the front office, the coaching staff, and the roster, it's not, it's, it's, it's how do we, how do we salvage this long-term team-building thing, not necessarily how do we, you know, our top priority may not any longer be finding out if he can be, you know, next year finding out if he can be that guy. Let's shift over to the one B story of the Vikings off season, which is Brian Flores.

And today he was reported that he is going to have an interview with the Baltimore Ravens. Now, until this, there has been no other interviews. I thought Las Vegas was very interesting for him or maybe a Cleveland would go rogue because they tend to do that with their owner. But Baltimore feels like a really, really good fit for Brian Flores. And then Mike McDaniel gets fired as well. Kevin Stefansky's out there.

Brian Daibles out there. There are better offensive coordinator opportunities than there are head coaching for a lot of these guys. I mean, can you imagine a Mike McDaniel offense with Brian Flores defense at the helm? That feels like a all-star team of guys who run their side of the football. Is it realistic to you that the Baltimore Ravens could hire Brian Flores? Because I think that them interviewing him is an absolute yes. I mean, because teams in previous off-season have not interviewed Flores,

and it's not like anything really changed there. They didn't have to do this. They are choosing to do this, which, to me says very real interest. Yeah, the Ravens haven't had a coaching search in almost two decades. So I think John Harbaugh was there for 18 years. So it's hard to know, you know, when you go that long without having to do it, you know, it's sort of like the Steelers.

You wanted the few times when their jobs come open, the tendency is to want to be as thorough as possible and to hear from as many different voices as possible because you have. haven't heard anything, you know, for, for 18 years. And so I haven't, I don't yet view the fact that they're going to interview him as anything more than they want to hear from arguably the best defensive coordinator over the past few years in the league and see where that goes. And so I, that to me is where it stands and will stand here for a while. Like they're not, you know, I think the schedule was for next week at some point. And so it's not like they're rushing him into the building or feeling any kind of pressure or competition to make that, to make

a higher, make that higher. And so, you know, he'll face a lot of the same things that he, you know, would have faced, we'll face with any team in terms of not just a lawsuit, but I still think that the quarterback, you know, handling in Miami while, you know, we now maybe have a little bit of a different perspective, given where Tua's career has gone, you know, Ryan, Fitzpatrick has also been pretty public about the way things go. And when you have Lamar Jackson, who is a great, great player, but also, you know, takes a lot of skill to manage just because, as all great players do, you know, that, that's going to be, you know, a very, I hope, you know, for both sides, if they, if they move forward, the intense conversation about how that would be

approached and how he would manage Lamar Jackson. You can say hire Mike McDaniel, hire Kevin to Fansky, but it's still the head coach. And if we've learned anything about Flores, while he was here, it's that he's got a very global kind of just outlook. And he's been the defense coordinator here, but he's been very, you know, interested in the quarterback play and dealing with, and not dealing with the quarterbacks, but interacting with them and the personnel side and everything. Like, he wants to be involved. He doesn't want to just kind of sit in his office and come up with crazy blitz schemes like he's that's just his mindset and so that's the way he thinks of things and so you you'd be we'd be wrong to think that he would be going to

Baltimore and just turning over the management of Lamar Jackson to whoever the offense coordinator is because that's not him and so I think that would be a very important and intense conversation I don't know where it would lead but I and I expect that the Ravens are going to have a very thorough you know as much as they probably have had a short list all along and recent years. This is going to be a very thorough process and that it wouldn't be thorough if you weren't including a guy like Brian. What would it say about this situation with Flores and the Vikings? I mean, you could almost say, what is it already say that he did not sign an extension at any point this year? What would it say if he took a lateral job with the Dallas

Cowboys or maybe even the Baltimore Ravens if they hire, I don't know, Kevin Stefansky is their head coach and he decided to go, you know, work for them as a DC? Like, what would it say if he took a lateral move. It'd be extremely alarming, extremely. And I know he mentioned the football side matches up. And it's just a matter of getting the business side. And so I think everybody took that as, well, you know, just that's making sure that the Vikings pay him what he deserves. And maybe that's part of it. But of all the things we can say and have said about the wills, I don't think that they're, when there's somebody they want to pay to buy, they, they can close the deal. Like, they're not going to tell Kevin O'Connell, you can't go above this amount of money to pay

Brian Flores if that's what Kevin O'Connell really wants. And I think he does. And so that would be, you know, the business side could, you know, assuming it's not about just his salary, that could be a whole lot of different possibilities. And, but I think it would, it would at least partially reflect Brian Forrest's view from the incentive. side of what the next few years might look like and whether it's a place that he thinks he could have, you know, optimize his own success. And so that, that would be, it would be very concerning. It doesn't happen very often. And it would be the result of at least a year-long desire on his part to, to make himself available, if nothing else. And, you know, I've always

thought that this was largely about just, you know, finding out, you know, what else might be out there for him. He's done a great job. He is in a very unique situation because normally if you do a great job as a coordinator over time, you get a head coaching job. And we know that there's a specific obstacle specific to him that are probably working against him there and might continue. But you don't often see somebody who performs at that level become available to the highest bidder or to the or to the place that convinces him that they're the best total package for him. And so, you know, it doesn't mean that the Vikings can't, it wouldn't, like, I wouldn't be worried that they couldn't come up with a good defensive coordinator for

next year, but it would worry me that arguably the best defensive coordinator in the league had every opportunity to stay and decided not to. Well, and normally, when we talk about things that raise an eyebrow, normally, if you're a Steve Spagnolo, and yeah, I know they were winning Super Bowls and they've got Mahomes, but there's a connection to this point. normally if you are a great defensive coordinator with a unit that you built and you're competing and you feel good about your spot, you sign a contract extension after a 14 win season. Normally, you wouldn't say, let me see what else is out there. Let me try to play this out. Let me bet on myself.

That's something we see all the time where coordinators, it's kind of like, all right, they got their head coaching try and it didn't work out. But they're a great coordinator, so they're going to be here or there. And with Flores, him not signing an extension right away sends up a little bit of a red flag. But I thought, okay, well, maybe throughout the season, negotiations happen. Agents aren't busy putting together game plans. But the fact that it never happened, we ran up to this point. There was no real commitment whatsoever when we talked to Brian Flores. As you said, it left the door open for maybe.

I don't know. I could go somewhere else. That to me in itself already makes you wonder what happened here in the discreet. connect to not want this person because the performance was outrageously good just over these last couple years. So that's not any type of question. But if he left, I guess one of the things I would probably connect it to right away is just the quarterback situation.

As you said, this is not a guy who just puts his head down and only focuses on, hey, I'm only going to worry about my defensive game plan. Like he is thinking also about probably, you know, the lawsuit as well. How much attention is that going to get in a nine and eight football team that's off the front page versus a Dallas where that could be there all the time. And if you have a Dak Prescott, you know that guy is going to throw 600 passes for 4,500 yards. And all you need to do is be good on defense and you're in the playoffs.

That is certainly not something we could say for any degree of certainty with the Minnesota Vikings. I'm curious, I got two more quick things. One is a blazing hot take that I'm getting emails about that I've had. And the other one I just wanted to ask before we get to that is. other stuff. It's crazy. There are 52 other players on the Vikings roster. There are also other people who are on the coaching staff. What potential change has your attention the most that has nothing to do with J.J. McCarthy or Brian Flores? Well, you know, I've been thinking through,

I don't have a specific name for you, but sometimes when you see coaching tenures extend beyond a few years, sometimes you see the staffs turn over for lots of different reasons. And so, you know, independent of Brian Flores, I wonder if there'll be any discussion about, you know, some of the offensive, you know, staff or, and not necessarily, whether it's, you know, firing or whatever, but shuffling people around or, or, you know, giving it a little bit of a fresh look. That's just one thing that's popped in my mind. I haven't gotten any, like, direct information that that's in the offing, but just something to consider. Kevin O'Connell's been fairly loyal to the original staff that he hired.

You know, the one offensive change he made has been the Josh McCown hired a couple years ago. And so we'll see about that. You know, and then there's, I don't think it's like they're not in salary cap crisis by any means, but they are like 40, 50 million under the cap for next year. And so there'll have to be some decisions made. both by the team and by players in terms of either just flat out cutting people to get underneath that or making a lot of contract structural changes, which in some cases might just be for cap purposes, like a Brian O'Neill might get an extension so that he can lower his cap number this year,

or there might be some players, whether it's a T.J. Hawkinson or an Aaron Jones who might need to take a pay cut to stay. I don't know that for a fact, but you just have to look at the numbers and look at the contracts and say there's only so many different ways that they can look at that. So those are some of the other things that in terms of changes that I think people should keep an eye on. I'm thinking about is there anything bold that can be done? And would you want to do anything bold? Would you want to trade Jordan Addison or something? Probably not after a down year. I don't think you'd be selling it at the highest price, even if you want to do it.

the general manager change potential to me is something that I will talk about if it happens. It feels like there's been innuendo and rumor about is the relationship this. What is Quasi's role? How powerful is he? Everything like these have been things that are just sort of trickled out there by certain people who are comfortable with trickling things out there that don't really have rock solid evidence of them. Yeah.

And I'm not one of those people. So if something happens there, we'll talk about. it and dive into everything that we can kind of ascertain. But until that happens, it to me has just been a lot of speculation. Let me give you the hot take and then we'll close with this. As of right now, on Fanduel, Kevin, the Super Bowl favorites are your Seattle Seahawks plus 390. What I've been saying is this. If the Seahawks win the Super Bowl, I think it's worse than Herschel Walker. In Vikings lower, I think it's worse because with Herschel Walker, you can kind of at least get it. Like he was an incredible player. They traded for him. He wasn't

the greatest fit. And the Cowboys had to get super lucky to get all those draft picks. I mean, that is the draft luck of all draft luck time, right? And it's horrible. It's, you know, it's not quite Gary Anderson bad, but it's bad. But you had the quarterback. He won all the games. you saw him do it. And then he went and did it for somebody else. And then they win with after paying him the thing that you said you couldn't do. Yeah. To me it's worse,

especially since it's a quarterback. And your whole franchise is defined by not being able to find the quarterback after Fran Targerton. Um, to me, like it's certainly very bad. Like I, I think one of the, one of the parts of the Hershey Walker trade that,

you know, not, I know this isn't your point. But one of the part, the things about the Hershey Walker trade that maybe hasn't, isn't known well enough is how the Viking, even the Vikings didn't really seem to know how many potential draft picks they had given up. There was, it was a very complicated trade, and it was based on whether the, the Cowboys kept players that were involved or not. And if my understanding is correct, that even the Vikings didn't realize, like, the bounty they had given up for him. how it would affect them for a decade or more. And so there was, there was not only a misjudgment there, but also a level of competence that wasn't necessarily something to be admired. And so

in this case, I think that, you know, I think you can probably objectively call it, you know, in retrospect, the wrong decision, but you can also have a lot more understanding of why they did it when they did it, then certainly in the case of Herschel Walker. So a long, long answer to say I would actually still plant my flag on the Herschel Walker trade. But I do think that, you know, there was a stat that there had only been one other time in NFL history when a quarterback didn't return to his team after throwing 30 plus touchdowns. And that was James Winston, who had also thrown 30 plus interceptions that year.

was completely understandable decision by Tampa Bay at that point. And I think our friend Mike Sando came up with some more nuanced examples through how just almost unprecedented it was for the Vikings to let Sam Donald go. But it was also kind of an unusual situation. So I think the way I view would view it if the Seahawks won the Super Bowl is that the absolute worst case scenario on a longer range of possible outcomes for the Vikings would be what actually happened. I think the position matters a lot for me in this.

And to me, I don't think this is a process versus results thing. It's only results. It's like you gave away. This is a bottom line thing. You made a really stupid trade for a running back and it hurt you. Okay, fair enough. But if Sam Darnold performed the way that he did in Seattle here with this team, we'd be talking about the Vikings with probably 11, 12 wins, a dangerous team to potentially go to the Super Bowl.

And that's even if you take out some of the money that they spent on Jonathan Allen or Will Fries. Like those were not needle moving players for all the money that you were concerned about spending on the rest of the roster. But I think it's purely results. You have desperately chased the Super Bowl. You are famously the team with the most wins that doesn't have a Super Bowl. And then you gave someone and you desperately, and it connects to the quarterback. And you've chased that forever. And he was here and you found him.

And then he went and won the Super Bowl. Someone else. To me, that is just beyond. comprehension. So anyway, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's the take. But I think it's, it's one that might come up again throughout the playoffs. Anyway, uh, Kevin Sefer ESPN, you did, uh, the definitive piece on how things went with J.J. McCarthy this year. I suggest people go check that out. Uh, I saw it shared quite a bit for good reason. So make sure you, if you want the full deep dive, look into that. And, uh, well, I will, uh, I'll see you around from time to time throughout the

off season, but we'll definitely get together and do this again. For sure. Thanks, Matthew.