Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Kevin Seifert talks about the path out of 0-3 and what it all means long term

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

ESPN's Kevin Seifert joins Matthew Coller to talk about how Kevin O'Connell is handling being 0-3, why the Carolina game could dictate how the front office handles the roster, why the schedule opens the door to getting back in the hunt at some point and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, inside TCO Performance Center, Matthew Collar here, joined by Kevin Seifert of ESPN after the Vikings dropped to 0-3. How are you doing, Kevin? You doing all right? Good? You rolling along? I'm doing okay. Fortunately, I'm not 0-3, but it is always a little bit of a less pleasant day at work to come in when they're 0-3 compared to 3-0. Yeah, an empty locker room, not a whole lot to discuss from that. But I would like your opinion, though, on Kevin O'Connell

and his handling of 0-3. Because I think that he has no other choice, being the coach that is trying to be positive, than to say, hey, I once coached on a team that went three losses in a row in the middle of the season what a reach he had that one prepared after a seven and one start uh-huh and with aaron donald and vaughn miller and jalen ramsay anyway that's not the point not the point uh so he's he's going motivational but at the same time he's not really defensive to critiques from us like hey so your defense blitzed Justin Herbert 40 times and from at least PFF stats he had 124 quarterback rating when that happened so he seems

to be acknowledging the issues while not saying everything is over what how do you feel like he's handled this as going through his first true adversity as ad coach yeah that the comparison to the uh the super bowl winning rams i don't think you know necessarily was relevant or applied uh to the situation but i generally respect the idea that he doesn't live in a public fantasy land like i don't hear him saying things that don't comport with reality you know they're an optimistic view of reality but you know he I asked him about you know you referenced the defense I asked him about the blitz rates and whether there should have been adjustments and he took the question you know he addressed it he didn't he didn't take

the opportunity to second guess his defensive coordinator or himself for not you know adjusting as time went on when we saw how the charters were going to respond to those blitzes and what they had up their sleeve. And in a similar way, they didn't necessarily adjust to what the Eagles finally got to in terms of their running game two weeks ago. So you have one week where they give up 259 rushing yards and another week where they give up 455 passing yards and never really slow down the opponents. But he, you know, long story short, he seems to be willing to acknowledge reality, but to take a positive spin on it. And that's his personality. Like, he had come in today and just been raging, lunatic, raising his voice, cutting people off,

insulting people. And we've all seen that. And I'm not just talking about people here. We've seen that across the NFL. We see it it across sports that coaches feel compelled to match the the intensity of the moment with their public personality and I didn't expect that from him and I would have been really surprised had he been that way there might be a level that he could get to but you know it really as much as people on my own network and others are talking about the extent to which the Vikings should be planning to trade Kirk Cousins in the next week or two, it's really early to do anything other than assume, if you're in his position, that things will even out and they will win some of these close games. They won all of them last year. They lost all of them this year and and usually it ends up in between so i wanted to ask you about that but i think that with kevin o'connell handling it in a somewhat even-handed way where if you're asked about the defense struggling

if he came out and said i don't i don't know what you're talking about we we were we were fine you're like if you want to if you want to focus on the negatives i've gotten that a lot over the years if you want to focus on the negatives well that's it's negative because you lost right right exactly and also you gave up a historic day to the opposing team's quarterback but yeah we've certainly had that uh zimmer was a back and forth where sometimes he would just destroy his players and he would use us for that we could have just said good morning mike and he would have said screw the secondary or the offense or whatever, probably the offense. And, you know, other times he was very defensive as if like you guys don't even know football enough to know how good we actually were.

That was kind of 2021. But I think that as of this moment, it's not completely over. And they haven't had a truly horrific type of 48 to 3 type but you know every loss you could argue it was within three it was within one score even though it wasn't that close in philly philly but he tried and then yesterday you are a bounce off the hands of tj hawkinson away from winning game. So what are you supposed to say? We're horrible. And then I thought he showed a little bit of teeth when he said, basically, if we keep fumbling the ball, I'm going to bench some people for fumbling the ball. And that was the first time I've heard that type of through the media message to his team, which I thought was interesting.

Now, I mean, they're going to Carolina here and i feel like this is the game where it all can swing one way or the other yeah if they beat carolina they're gonna i'm and we'll work on this later but they're gonna be like okay now we gotta win we're rolling we're on our way that's that's we really are as a team if they lose a go to oh and four though i you cannot be responsible for what's said on espn about trading kirk to Jets if they lose to Carolina because I might agree with them at that point. Yeah, I mean, I think 0-3 historically is like 2.5% of the 0-3 teams since the Super Bowl era started in 66 have gone to the playoffs. 0-4 is going to be a lot less than that. And you start talking about all the things that –

I mean, really it's an interesting pivot point because when if you get to one and three you and the nfl is always like this in a way that you know it's a it's the sun comes up or down based on what happened that particular week but if you get to if you get to one and three then you can start having those conversations if you get to oh and four all the things that we have kind of filed away as offseason or you know questions for the postseason end of year press conference like become relevant now like what at what point would what would be the point of bringing kurt cousins back when your team is not going to make the playoffs under his leadership whether it's his fault or not what would be you know what would be the point, if you're Justin Jefferson, of jumping back into contract negotiations right away if they have a really bad losing season and it's not clear who the starting quarterback is going to be moving forward?

And so you get into all these existential things, and you're not even out of, well, we'll be just into October at that point, right? The game's October 1st, I think? Yes, that is correct. So we will be one day into October and potentially point, right? The game's October 1st, I think? Yes, that is correct. So we will be one day into October and potentially having those conversations. Whereas if they're 1-3, O'Connell could make the argument that, hey, maybe they're not a Super Bowl contender,

but we went on the road and beat a team, and this could be sort of the bottoming out point. And so it really is, I think, a good point that that's a a pretty big leverage point yeah it's been a while since i've had this type of situation i mean 2020 was kind of like this but i remember and this is what i want to look at with you at the moment i remember 2020 looking at the schedule going forward and thinking i know what they're going to do they're're gonna get back to 500 they're gonna tell us we panicked at oh and three or whatever and then you know they're probably gonna still miss the playoffs when you look forward so you have carolina and at chicago you should win both of

those games there's no guarantees in chicago i've seen everything happen there so it goes back for decades yeah chad hutchinson game absolutely like lots of kyle orton lots of history there uh what would kyle orton score like 50 points on them or i don't know if it was quite that but he was uh it extended his career for many years that's it uh and you got kansas city in between t swift could be in the building it could be absolutely nuts uh that one i don't think i can write as a victory. And San Francisco after that, National TV, that defensive line, again, it's pretty tough. Then you go at Green Bay, at Atlanta. Both of those teams can beat you.

And probably Derek Carr is back for New Orleans to come here. And I think that New Orleans team's got a lot of talent. I just don't see it. I don't see the, like, Jacksonville coming up in carolina the year in 2020 where we knew they were going to win some games chicago okay even if we say look at that franchise that's a w kansas city san francisco green bay atlanta how do you even come out of there with two wins well the the old i mean the the initial analysis you know going back decades was where do you play the lions you know because those are the two you'd always count on those two i think like mike tyson and brad childers patrick royce he

always jokes that those guys got extended contracts because of the lions and so you can't do that and what you're describing is basically a first place schedule you know they they weren't they won the nfc north last year and that means that they have a tough schedule tougher schedule than they would have otherwise um If you, you know, analyze schedules the way my friend Mike Sandoe does at the athletic, it's by the quality of the opposing quarterbacks. And so, you know, you're naming teams and you could also just name, you know, Justin Herbert, Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purdy, if you want to put them in that group, you know, there's a Joe Burrow down there. There's, i think uh golf is playing pretty well in detroit um and so there's a lot of uh you know really good quarterbacks

coming up on this schedule and one in a couple they've already passed through um and given how this defense has been like if you wanted to make the argument of what you talked about in 2020 get to 500 you know are they going to get to five who are the wins they're going to get they have to have their oh and three they have to get you know net out three wins to get to 500? Who are the wins they're going to get? They have to have their 0-3. They have to net out three wins to get to 500 over the course of the next eight games or so. Where are those wins and who are the ones they're going to avoid losing to? And by the way, between October 1st and November 27th, they are at home three times. I mean, it is on the road at chicago but at lambeau are you a better defense at lambeau probably not and even atlanta now atlanta was

horrific yesterday against the packers who have much more defensive talent than this lions yeah i'm sorry the lions who have more defensive talent and at least a couple of players you're scared of on on the lions uh they also um you know didn't play that well offensively when they beat the packers right the first half of that game but we just watched a eagles team run for 250 so there isn't even anything you can sort of match up wise lean on and be like oh well if a team runs the ball all the time like atlanta they'll be able to stop them. I just don't see that.

And that's what I was getting at when I asked O'Connell today to sort of try to reconcile how he's processing the fact that a good rushing team like the Eagles went for 259 and then a good passing team like the Chargers went for 455 passing. And the worst-case scenario is their defense is just so bad slash so undermanned that whatever the opponent decides it wants to do. And the Eagles have a strong running game, make perfect sense. Chargers are built around Herbert, you know, makes perfect sense that they can do not only do well,

but like get historic numbers like this. We had, and i'll write this later in the week but we had elias sports bureau research how many times has this ever happened where a team has um gone like given up 455 yards passing and 259 yards rushing in consecutive games one way or the other and it's only been like a handful of times going back to, and one of them was like 1948. And so like, and people will say that's a random stat, but like I think that the relevance of it is that usually you're not as vulnerable in both areas.

Like you're one or the other. But if you go by the cliche of it all starts up front, then that's how you can be equally gashed by the run in the pass if you are really deficient up front. And if you were curious, I looked it up because I was. The Los Angeles Rams of 2021, en route to the Super Bowl in the playoffs, allowed 282 yards per game on the way to the Super Bowl. So they're going to have to maybe get a little bit better if they're going to turn things around the way that he's trying to say i shouldn't make fun of that i know what he's he's reaching for something yeah to say it's not over i get it

it's just that i like the worst thing that i feel like i can do content wise conversation wise is be like guys it's over guys it's over go you know go watch Oppenheimer again or whatever like no I mean we don't want to do that uh but when I look at this I also have to be realistic and just you know it's very hard you play Denver and Chicago back to back and Vegas but at that point I mean are you just too far gone yeah to even win three games in a row and then you have Cincinnati, Detroit, Green Bay, Detroit. So even if you tried to get yourself to, I don't know, what's that? 12 weeks. If you were six and six at that point, we might be going or even seven and six. If everything was perfect at

that point, uh, as you're going into Cincinnati, you still can't really sell me that you're getting much past eight or nine wins. And at that point, why? Like, what would be the purpose? So it's almost like, in a way, losing to Carolina would take care of all of this. It would just be like, well, okay, there's nothing left to worry about here. But I also think that there is a realistic possibility that that run of Denver, Chicago, Vegas, like saves their season for a minute and then they just get continually exposed the rest of the way. Yeah. I mean, what, basically

what you're describing is them needing to win nine of their last 14 games, go nine and five, the rest of the way, starting this week in Carolina. It doesn't sound like it's unattainable and completely unreachable and unrealistic but um knowing the teams that are involved there i think that's probably the best case scenario so if i give them carolina chicago we're gonna have to split green bay yeah uh let's say they beat atlanta denver chicago vegas that gets me to six and maybe joe burrow's done for the year or something like i i don't know i think the best thing we can say in getting to those wins is that despite giving up that much rushing yards to the eagles and despite giving up that those many passing yards to the the chargers

had they not committed the turnovers they probably win one of those games if not both which is wild and crazy and not sustainable. But it speaks to the possibilities that could be in their future. We're not talking about whether that would lead to a single playoff win, but just to get to the playoffs. It's a very unevenly built team and a very unevenly skilled team. But if they can get the high-end players to be mistake-free high-end players, that's where the path lies. The problem is what happened to Dallas yesterday. Dallas had a shocking, stunning, can't-believe-it loss.

Are you telling me the rest of the way they will win? They won't have a single one of those. They'll just win. This team, like, oh, they took care of that in a single one of those? They'll just wait this team. Like, Oh, they took care of that in week one with Tampa Bay. Well,

they, yeah, that's, that's the old, you know, they left themselves no margin for error whatsoever. And, um, you know,

I, I don't blame them for being optimistic and positive. Like you can't be anything else at this time of year, but they've set themselves up to be, to need to be, um, you know, if, if their very best is reaching a hundred, they need to be at 99 the rest of the year. Folks want to remind you to make

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So grab some friends and enjoy a few slices during the tastiest hour before kickoff. Folks, we are going all in on prize picks this football season. And this week, I figured that Justin Herbert was going to throw for a lot of yards and nailed my pick, but I underestimated Kirk Cousins. Let me explain. If you haven't heard of it, prize picks is the easiest and best way to play daily fantasy. Instead of battling against thousands of other fantasy geniuses who spend all of their time doing fantasy, you just pick more or less on between two to six players stat projections.

And that is it. So if a quarterback's number is 250, you say more or less and bang you're playing you can pick from hundreds of players and numbers this football season i nailed my justin herbert pick going over 283.5 by a country mile but i went less on kirk cousins going 297 and uh yeah missed that one he went well over 300 yards but the cool thing is it was quick, and does not cost an arm and a leg to play. You can turn $10 into $250 with just a few taps. It will fit your wallet and your busy schedule. This is something we're having a lot of fun with all season long on Purple Insider.

So go to prizepicks.com slash purple. Use the code purple for a first deposit match up to $100. That is prizepix.com slash purple. The code word purple. Daily Fantasy Sports made easy. So in terms of the big picture. And sometimes 100 won't even be enough to win a game. Right, because what happened to Detroit last year?

They start one and six, and then they got hot, it didn't matter yeah at the end of the day right the big picture here question that is coming up a lot is about the general manager and about his decisions personally i think this was the route that they wanted to take from day one and it is on track for them that doesn't mean the micro moves have all been right but it's this is the track that they were taking and not surprisingly it's left a lot of holes on the roster because that's what happens when you rebuild but what is your i guess feeling about it when you start oh and three and then you start looking at that draft class man if you had you know a couple more defensive players or mar Marcus Davenport hasn't played yet

and you took kind of a bad risk there in hindsight with his injury history and everything else. At the same time, there's a pretty good argument for if you are mediocre to bad this year, that that was kind of expected from at least the front office. Obviously not the head coach, but from the front office. And you're kind of on the route that you thought you were going to be on.

But I think that's also hard. It's a long fall and it's a long winter when you have to deal with this. And I don't think anyone expected them to be this bad through the start and just lack the competitive part of competitive rebuild. Yeah, and I think a couple things. I think almost all of the decisions that he may has made on departures um have been right yeah and not always easy you know um departures or decisions not to extend contracts i don't think you know i mean well it'll continue

to be an evolving um take on on cousins but to have the flexibility at the end of this year to decide what's best for the long term uh of the organization at quarterback is something that hasn't been available for a while so um you know ideally they would he would be as at his best for the next few years and he they'd ride him to a deep playoff run so but the backfill of all those decisions has been probably below average you know if you you look at the draft and you look at some of the free agent signings, and, you know, if you were just to,

I don't know if there's a quantitative way to add up the talent on a roster, but I wouldn't say they're, you know, they're probably around average to a little below average, you know, one through 53. And so that's, you know, that's the other side. That's the other part. You know, it had to be done at some point, but the decisions in drafts and in some cases in free agency have left some

things wanting. So I think that's kind of how I evaluate his performance. But I also think that because that process has taken two years, they, and we've probably talked about this before but they've left themselves in a position where entering the third year the offseason between the second year and the third year is potentially going to be the most uh riotous i guess i mean they did do a lot of things this past offseason but potentially changing quarterbacks potentially you know trying to figure out the justin jefferson future um seeing if they can do that um you know needing trying to figure out the Justin Jefferson future, um, seeing if they can do that, um, you know, needing to rebuild at least one line and maybe two. Um, and that's a tough combination of factors to be facing when most reasonable ex owners expectations are that in year three, like you're hitting the, you know, you're hitting the

fifth gear, you know, in a, in a, in a sports car. You're not, that's not the part where you're like reaching the most, you know, the most violent part of your teardown. And so that's the, you know, really the, the gray area that, that this, you know, approach has, has delivered. And maybe he has more than three years or feels like he has more than three years he that hasn't been reflected in what he said publicly he's talked about a two and three year plan um the coach wants to be competitive every year obviously and but he knows what's up as well and so i i think that's um where i see like the the really um nuanced and multi-faceted analysis of Kweisi Adolfo-Mensah's performance is that they're heading towards worse before it gets better, potentially.

Right, which is very unique because normally when a coaching staff gets fired, it is the bottom. It is rock bottom. And then, I mean, like the New York Giants, right, when they hired Dable, they are just truly putrid and pathetic. So even them winning nine was like, oh, they turned the organization around. Yeah, which, you know, obviously that didn't hold because they paid Daniel Jones.

But this situation was a, they felt that it was a culture problem. And I think the Wilfs were talked into by a lot of the veteran players that we have the talent. We just need a different coach. And they kind of proved it right. And however random it might've been, they proved it right. It definitely wasn't a barren situation.

Right, right. Exactly. So they had all this talent. Now they could have ripped it apart last year and done the same thing they did this year, but they didn't. So then i feel like

you almost have to start the clock with right now or start the clock when you draft a quarterback and then there's also this weird element of kirk cousins is playing really well and you're like i don't know what to say about this i mean yeah they're they're cruising especially on that sorry to interrupt you but they're they're cruising towards like the hardest possible decision on him he's he's throwing tons of touchdown passes leading the league in yards um clearly has a connection with jefferson at least on the field um and no sign of obvious physical decline i mean i think it's fair like's not running, but he didn't ever ran. You know, like there's no, you know, the arm is what the arm has always been to me. And so still very serviceable to above, you know, serviceable.

But will the franchise be in position to capitalize on whatever he can offer in the future years? If they continue on this route and have a losing season, probably not. But then, like, are you going to replace him with somebody better? Probably not. And look, the way he's playing right now, if he looks at Daniel Jones' contract, he's going to say at least $10 more million than that. I mean, he's playing at a level that would be, at this moment,

worth like 45 million dollars it's not quite to the borough but i mean it's it's quite good but how in the world are you going to fix all these other problems and i think it's always been clear that when there are other issues on the roster and weaknesses that there isn't an ability to go to another universe and have the arm talent or have the running ability or whatever it is. And I don't know how many quarterbacks at this point can overcome this level of defense. I mean, this is like Drew Brees' 7-9 territory,

where, I mean, I'm not comparing Kirk to Drew Brees' talent level, but this defense is that bad. And so it's almost like if you punt three times in a game, you might lose just be, if you have one fumble in a game, you might lose because the margin of error is nothing. If you have a bad bounce or something, when the defense is this bad. So in a way, what would be the purpose of extending him? Unless you had an answer there, but they are not one defensive lineman away. They're not two. They're not three. I mean, this is like the lebron speech only for lacking defensive linemen right you are just you

got nothing and and so you need high draft picks you need huge dollars spent you need everything i think with a secondary you can patchwork it sometimes you can't patchwork finding pass rush nick bosa like you just have to either spend massive dollars or or high draft picks and i feel like they're years away from being able to figure that out so why would you want kirk cousins at age 36 37 38 going through this for three more years as they rebuild that for maybe one shot in there but if he regresses with his health or with his just being old and doesn't play as well as he is right now you're going to lose anyway so i feel like the best option is to create that cap space for yourself to draft the quarterback and then these guys are

going to live and die on that decision but like just thinking through that that's year three like do they are they like i mean how much they're these are not 10-year contracts these guys get you know if you talk to people around the nfl they're already wondering like how quickly are they going to get this turned around like do you have and like that is probably like the best or most organic way of getting to where you want to be is you know bone it up get you know get the height get the high draft pick, get the quarterback, start building around him, capitalize on the fact that he doesn't have a high cap number and start using that cap dollars elsewhere. But then you're talking about these first two years having, for that,

been for naught, basically, because there's not many people they've added. You could count on one hand probably people that they've added in the past two years that would figure into the next three-year cycle of rebuilding if that's what it comes to so do they you know do they get this quasi get the the runway and his staff and even o'connell get the runway to then go through another three-year process starting next year and make it you know year five before anyone would have a realistic expectation of them winning the Super Bowl, that's, to me, the argument that would lead at least some people maybe in ownership to say, like, you know, keep the quarterback,

you know, and do better at drafting. You know, find the cheap people at other positions, you know, we'll pay the quarterback. And so, and I don't know that as a fact. I'm just saying like that you know could i mean you like it's very rare in the nfl that that gm would be given five years before there's any expect you know there's a high expectation that his rebuild would be kicking in no that's right and not being able to draft a quarterback and not having an answer on the roster i mean jaron hall was fine in the

preseason but that's not an answer nobody thinks that he is yeah uh nor should they and if he becomes a good backup then that's a fine draft pick i guess but they weren't finding their brock purdy or tom brady i don't think uh in the fifth round so then what you have to deal with is what you're saying is rookie quarterbacks almost never win so you're talking about drafting a quarterback putting him in right away and then winning six or seven games and saying to ownership give us another year give us another year but the the sunny side up of that is there are examples of quarterbacks who have come in and with the right circumstance right away had success i mean dac pres, not too long ago. Of course, they built up the offensive line, which this still needs to improve.

But you have two good tackles to work with. You get some cap space and so forth. I could see of all the situations in the NFL, a rookie going to Minnesota being the best possible one. Because you almost never get to join a team with Justin Jefferson. Right. Right. And so I think that there is like this world where, okay, the draft picks not that ready.

And then you struggle and win four games. And then everyone goes, wow, you just wasted Christian Derrissaw and Justin Jefferson and so forth. But there's also a universe where Kirk cousins might, by the way, also be like, you know, I'm good. I'm good. Hey, Kirk, you won the last seven games in a row and got us to the playoffs. Come back.

No, I'm good. You know, I've always wanted to play in another city because, hey, you guys never believed in me. And we're already seeing a little Kirk tension in these postgames. I think he's irritated that he's playing well and not getting Ws next to his name. But I think that there is also a distinct possibility if you draft a Quinn Ewers or a Drake May or a Shadur Sanders or whoever, and they come into this situation that you can be very competitive right away.

And if you are, then ownership is like quasi genius. Yeah. is like quasi genius yeah yeah i mean and that's uh banking on the less likely outcome just based on history like that you know there have you're right there have been quarterbacks who've come in right away and like you knew you know they were plug and play quarterbacks basically like drafted them or signed them or whatever and you know purdy is another example where they were at least you know keeping you at the level you would otherwise be at. This team might need somebody who can do more than that. And but just like if you just like you just think I'm just thinking of Zach, the Zach Wilson's of the worlds.

And, you know, and there's so many of those, too, where everybody in the world was convinced that this guy was going to, you know, was worthy of the number two pick or a top five pick, the Josh Rosens, there's always players like that for when they finally get here, just don't cut it. And if not more often, turns out that way, or at least they turn out to be pedestrian, then they do people who can win right away. So if the path to Kweisi and O'Connell being successful by going to a rookie quarterback next year is the Dak Prescott one, then I don't like the odds. Folks, you might feel like it's getting a little chilly outside, but this is one of my favorite times of the year to get out on the grill. What's better than cooking up something great in front of a hot

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but just, just to hang with me here, if CJ Stroud wins six or seven games, but looks really good and the whole world. And you know, these owners watch your network and NFL network, and they're all going on there. And Kyle Brandt's talking about how,

man, this CJ Stroudoud he's the next best guy and damian woody is cj stroud you know if the vikings have that situation and they only win eight games or seven games with a rookie i don't think they're gonna say all right you're all fired they would say we'd need next year and we can you know sign all the people because kirk is off the books and everything. You can see that path. And the other thing is that rookie quarterbacks, when they have the roster around them, have succeeded sometimes even when they're not that good. So like Baker Mayfield had a really good year and was a couple of plays away from what the AFC championship.

And you have Carson Wentz and Jared wentz and jared goff and like brock purdy i'm still not convinced he's more than case keenum but like it works because of the team so i think that if you're making that argument you're saying this year you win seven games as the vikings with kirk assuming they don't lose this week and trade them to the jets and then and then you draft queenie words or whoever you give them justin jefferson you show promise and then you draft Quinn Ewers or whoever. You give him Justin Jefferson. You show promise. And then you hope. And then you hope that you can build a good enough roster through spending all that money.

I can see it. The question is, around the margins with Kweisi, that's where I have some questions. Some common sense stuff with Kweisi. Like, you know, drafting a guard in the second round and asking him to start and then never seemingly choosing to evaluate him until two weeks into the season when you when you get uh dalton reisner when everybody knew that was a massive problem the davenport there's some common sense issues with his health and things like that uh you think you're getting some steals but you're not um um, the Justin Jefferson contract

not happening, which to me, I just write them a blank check and slide it across the table. You know, things like that, where I'm like, even though the quarterback seems the solution for everything around the margins is where a lot of wins happen in the NFL as well. And I'm not convinced on all that. No. And there's, you know, the word're only now I think getting a better idea of the team building the impact of his sort of team building whether it was all intentional or whether it was just him making the best decision that he thought out of not a lot of great options but

the lack of investment in both lines really you know the one draft pick for Ed Ingram like you know that suffice it to say they haven't hit on that one you know and it may you know the one draft pick for ed ingram like you know that suffice it to say they haven't hit on that one you know and it may you know he may be nearing the end of his time uh frankly as a starter uh if if reisner gets in the lineup uh this week or at some point soon and so and the defensive line is so under emphasized that brian flores is basically not playing anybody except for harrison phillips um i mean they're like i i don't really have a way of tracking what their most um common grouping is but it feels like it's the one with one defensive lineman on the field and that's that i don't want to say insane because it's not insane but it's really unusual um and

i don't and i don't think it's reflective of what Brian Flores has necessarily done in the past. And he's probably doing what he thinks is getting the best 11 people on there. And if only one defensive lineman is somebody that is amongst your top 11, then maybe they took the value of defensive linemen and making decisions there a little too far because there's nobody winning up front except occasionally Daniil Hunter. And so that, you look at it and say, like, not only have they not really addressed defensive line,

but they've got an accomplished defensive coordinator who's had success everywhere he's been defensively and doesn't seem to want to play any of them, at least not yet. And I do think that, as O'Connell said, the Flores will be a week-to-week game planner. But there's really been no games yet this year where they've seemed to feel like their defensive linemen are among the most important people

to have on the field. Yeah, there's two quarters where they've played good defense. Yeah, first half of the Bucs game. Yeah, and they were really trying to sell. Like, we were playing pretty good in the start of the Eagles game. They were booing. I'm like, what? They will boo anything in Philly.

Come on. I mean, that's a pretty tough sell. So maybe a couple possessions against Philly. And aside from that, you're just getting smoked. And the reason I'm very hesitant to criticize brian floris is because even though i thought it was strange that there wasn't an adjustment or a change or whatever as they were just smoking the blitzes over and over but i don't know any other way to create pressure and so i understand why he keeps pushing that button and i also think that the roster up

front is just so incredibly poor it might be the worst defensive line in the league i mean it's the it's the extremes that should catch your eye like he didn't just blitz a lot against the chargers he blitzed 83 of the times like 40 basically 40 of 50 41 of, 41 of 49 dropbacks. That's the most that ESPN has ever recorded since they started tracking blitzes 17 years ago. So maybe you go back to Buddy Ryan. The fact that he felt compelled, I mean, the average is like 26% for an NFL team. The fact that he felt compelled to go in that extreme is notable the

fact that he feels compelled to use groupings against a power run team of one with one defensive lineman or sometimes no defensive lineman is also very telling and I don't think it's him being a mad scientist and like being so committed to the bit that he nobody can talk him out of it i think that that's what a really good and respected defensive coordinator has decided is is the best situation and that in itself is is extremely telling from a from a roster building standpoint um getting back to to quasey being in charge of that yeah i think what brian floris was trying to do is run the wildcat like that was the first the defensive version of the wildcat right we're just gonna try something kind of crazy and out there yeah and see if it works and uh the answer is no it

didn't work but if he played regular whatever it didn't work by the way byron murphy i i think our first impression of him was that he's pretty good had about the worst day you can have yesterday i mean just got thrown at all was put in a position where he's pretty good. Had about the worst day you can have yesterday. I mean, just got thrown at all the time. He was put in a position where he's guarding one of the NFL's best receivers with the assumption that, you know, the other eight of the other ten players are going to be pass rushing. And when they didn't get home, like, that's tough for a lot of cornerbacks. You know, they paid him a fair bit, but they didn't pay him like J get home like that's tough for a lot of cornerbacks you know they paid him a fair bit but they didn't pay him like jc jackson money you know of all people um to be like a shutdown cornerback i don't know if anyone expected him to be a

shutdown but like i think that was an extremely difficult assignment that he got yesterday i think so too uh pff has it as 10 for 14 with 185 yards against i mean that's pretty tough just any receiver or keenan allen uh any receiver but it was probably mostly allen uh also josh metellus was targeted 10 times for 10 completions only 62 yards on that one though and of course a caleb evans had the ball bounce off him that's pretty tough uh but i guess you know just in tracking how everyone's doing that they signed like that one has not been a game changer for them either. And so we're talking so much about the D line that the secondary is getting kind of a free pass for a day like yesterday. Yeah. I mean, but I went in the season like I feel like everybody was talking about secondary.

And if you looked at all these various lists of what's the area of most concern for the Vikings, people were saying secondary. My response, and I think I did this as part of our season preview that we ran, like what's your biggest worry? To me it was pass rush. They went into the season with one or maybe two, if you counted Davenport, with Daniil Hunter, people who can win one-on-one. And with Davenport out, they now have one player who can win on one and no one else has showed us that they can. Even, you know, Ivan Pace has gotten a lot of

publicity for the work he's done and he's been great for a rookie, but, and he does blitz a lot, but, and he, and he makes good contact and he pushes people back, but I haven't seen him do anything that's disrupted a lot of plays. Right. I mean, Pace yesterday had 17 pass rushes and two pressures. So it's not like he's just making a huge impact. And when you look at without Davenport, and boy Kevin O'Connell has let us know that Davenport's not in there, Patrick Jones graded a 50 and DJ Wanam a 49, which again sounds about right.

And there's not a whole lot you can do. So I guess my question, just to not just continue to belabor the point about the D line is just. Do you think that they turn itport gets back from the ankle injury that everything else will kind of, the domino will, you know, everything else will go back to the way it was originally intended. I think they've been careful and rightfully so to not paint Davenport as, you know, we'll have Reggie White, you know, in here, and that'll, you know, he's going to disrupt everything. But that instead of asking DJ Wanham to rush 50 times or whatever it was

or play 50 snaps, they're asking him to do 10 or 15, and Davenport's doing that, and he's got a better chance of being disruptive and a better chance of holding up against the run if they want to do an Eagles type of approach. But I don't have any easy answers in terms of how the defense um you know but one of them will be not all offenses will be quite as i mean you're not facing justin herbert every week you're not facing the eagles running game every week including this coming up week but if

you're if you're pinning your hopes on defensive improvement on context which is the quality of the opponent then that's not a encouraging sign well i think that the panthers have about the worst group of wide receivers in the nfl but also andy dalton gives them a way better chance than bryce young again against uh you know all the blitzes and stuff right they were beaten by getting the ball out and i that's what andy dalton does he beat this team, what, two years ago? No, 2020 with Dallas, and then came this close to beating them with the New Orleans Saints.

So I think that it's a maybe more respectable opponent. And here's what I'm waiting for as well. We're just assuming the offense is going to do this every week. There have been times throughout Kirk Cousins' career where it's just not his day yeah as it goes for anyone just like dak prescott yesterday if he goes to carolina with those good pass rushers dalton reisner trying to play for the first time maybe garrett bradbury's back facing derrick brown like one of the best players in the league like there's a world where this just goes sideways

and it's over i don't know like i'm not going into this game completely confident that it just like steam rolls over and they're fine. No. And if they go into it or anyone goes into that game thinking, oh, this is our get well game, then they're going to get killed. You know,

like this has to be, this is not like the preparation for this game. Can't be based on context at all. You know, what makes me sad is the wrong word. I'm very happy covering football uh maybe disappointed in this season is i thought it would be interesting i thought it would be really like a roller coaster of evaluating so many players on a week-to-week basis and where

it's all going and so forth and already before october it's just what's the front office gonna do what's the you know like I I really enjoy breaking down the matchups and like oh this could be interesting between this coach and that coach and I feel like especially if they lose against Carolina that fun is over with and lasted four weeks yeah and I've been in situations where a season is over before it started I guess is the best way to put it but it does there. There are some interesting things, not just for media, but for fans to to watch when younger players start to get opportunities, assuming they do, that teams aren't hard headed and keep playing the guys that aren't going to be around in future years anyway. of guy to keep following and then you find hey he actually did some really fun stuff and so i don't know how the vikings would react in that situation you know forget the cousins trade part um you know just in terms of there's some veterans on this team that were brought in for very or here for

very short-term assignments and whether it would make sense to continue to see them on the field or you know people that were more recently drafted or on the practice squad and you don't want to turn it into a preseason game. But from a, from a, I guess I'm just trying to optimistically point out something that has been genuinely interesting to me over the years to see how they handle that, to see who they put out there and who they don't and, and whether they have sort of the competitive courage to, to do something that's different than what might be best to win that particular week. Yeah, I guess this week could spin it. I guess I kind of just explained tanking in a weird way.

Yeah, I was going to say, you absolutely did. You said tanks can be fun to watch. Well, they didn't suck quite enough for luck, and who knows what happens at that point right but yeah for me uh i i'm sort of wondering here like are we going to get to week 11 and be like oh well this is a huge one for them or are we going to be talking about jaqueline roy getting 40 snaps and how interesting that is and then looking at tankathon.com to see where their draft status is and that's and uh so the there's one part of me that enjoys you know previewing a game that really wants some relevance yeah but then also i've been talking about tearing it all down and drafting high for a long time so i don't know it's uh

there will be interesting things along the way but we'll see what those things are i think after this week we'll really know yes it's all coming down to their week four game in Carolina. Who would have thought? Just as we expected. Kevin Seifer, you're the best, man. Thanks for having me. Thanks for all the time here. And I mean, I know you got to write up all those interviews from the locker room we had

today and everything. A lot of transcription. A lot of transcribing. All right. Well, we'll talk again soon. Thanks for all the time. This was fun. No problem.

Thanks for all the time. This was fun. No problem. Thanks for having me.