Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Everything goes wrong for the Vikings against the Packers -- what now?

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

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Five takeaways, five questions from Vikings games. And today, 43-34 and the worst defensive performance of Mike Zimmer's Minnesota Vikings career. So, Paul, where would you like to start us off with this one? Yeah, let me just go through my pages and pages and pages of notes that I wrote down to get to you. I want to start with a poll you actually put out on Twitter that has Vikings Twitter split a little bit, and that's which performance against the Green Bay Packers was worse.

Today's, you just kind of outlined the basis of how bad the defense was, or last year's Week 16 game, all the hype going into that game, so much promise, so much, like, can Kirk knock out the prime time, and then they just fell flat on their face. So which loss was worse to you? Because the poll is really split. It's pretty much 50-50. It's absolutely right dead

down the middle 50 50 on my twitter so if you want to go and vote for that one and try to swing it one way or the other please feel free to do so and I could see why I think there's really good arguments for which loss is worse week 16 had a lot of pressure on them and the door was still open at that time for the Vikings to compete for the division if they could beat the Packers in that game, and we pumped it up and pumped it up, and after they lost that one, and the way that they did not being able to move the ball at all in that game, it felt so deflating, like this team really can't go anywhere if they face anyone in the playoffs with a dominant defensive line.

That's exactly what happened in San Francisco. And so the killer part of week 16 was that you knew their fate was sealed in the playoffs because they were going to go up against the Packers again, or they were going to face the 49ers. Whoever they went against was going to have a good defensive line, and that was going to be it. That's exactly what ended up happening. Whereas today, there's just so much hype, so long since we've watched a football game, and you go into it thinking, okay, the Vikings should be right there with the Packers. The Lions are probably still a step behind. I mean, they're a sneaky team to some people,

and we'll talk about that maybe a little bit, what happened with the Lions, because boy, did they Lions today. But, you know, you go into this game thinking, okay, it's a new year. Put all that behind you. The Packers should regress. Your offense should still be good with Gary Kubiak as the offensive coordinator. And you come out, and not only does the defense get absolutely smoked pretty much from the outset with those long drives from the Packers and eventually they started finishing them off but the offense also played a pretty significant role in getting them behind in this game and that's why the statistics are just not going to tell the story of how this game really went they have a drive that is perfect they go down the field they score a touchdown it looks like right, we might be in a shootout mode here. And then it's a safety, so they don't take advantage of

a goal line stop. And then it's a three and out. And there was only so much bending and not breaking that the defense could do in this game. So, you know, I look at the Week 16 game as being a little bit worse because you felt like this team should be legitimately good. They could, you know, finish the season and at the top of the NFC North, potentially, if they win that game and all those conversations that we were having going into it. Whereas this one, there are some built-in excuses here. You don't have the fan noise. That was clearly a factor for this team. Nobody's going to admit it, but they all said, well, look, we're not going to use it as an excuse,

but here's how it may have impacted us. Here's how it was different. Here's how it was weird. And just a new team with so many new players. And it was the guys that are in new positions as corners that really got smoked today. So you could say, at least for this one, hey, it's week one. It's a long season to go. This one does hurt for the Vikings. It does hurt them in the future. But at the same time, it's not like the season ends today. With week 16, that was the end of an era of Vikings football and still feeling like well you can't quite get over the top so I would say week 16 was I might go with a much worse loss than this because this you can recover from you can bounce back and you can go forward and have a good season

week 16 last year sort of it felt resigned to their fate after that loss that they just weren't going to be good enough to get to the Super Bowl? Yeah, I was actually surprised on how close it is. I'm on your side with the 2019 loss. I think it's probably just a little bit of recency bias. Everyone was excited heading into the season, but I kind of looked at it at halftime. I sent out a couple of tweets about it because everything that was hurting the Vikings was things we kind of expected to potentially hurt the Vikings. There weren't any like surprises. The cornerbacks, we knew they could be a problem coming in. I want to kind of ask you about that because we thought they were making so much progress during training camp, but that maybe didn't show up so

far. So we knew that was going to be a struggle. The offense got going in the second half, but in the first half, the offensive line was getting pushed back. They weren't doing great. They were all right, but you were seeing the issues that we were normally used to seeing, so I wasn't as surprised with this loss as I was of that Packers loss. I remember being in that stadium. I was at one of that game, and I don't think we can discount the amount that the fans could have helped them today. Because last year, they had the fans, they had Daniil Hunter, they had already faced the Packers, they knew their team. Xavier Rhodes might not have been playing super well, but they knew what they were going to get out of him week to week. I don't think Zimmer quite knew

what he was going to get out of the corners today, what he was going to get out of the pass rush today. And so there are those built-in excuses. They didn't have the offseason. They didn't have those things. I don't think that can be your sole reason for why they played bad. They just played bad. You can't chalk it up to that they didn't have an offseason for these corners, just flat out. They played badly. But I definitely agree. It's last year based on how much they had at stake and just what that meant going forward. This is week one. They can change a lot from what they look at, what they look like, and they could get a lot better. Maybe they don't get a lot better.

I'm sure we'll get into that with the corners and how much better they could get, but yeah, it definitely has to be the last year for me. I would compare this loss to the one that they had, I believe it was week four, 2018, against the Los Angeles Rams, where we said, wow, if they play defense like this for the rest of the season, it's going to be an absolute nightmare.

And then Mike Zimmer found ways to turn it around. Here's the thing about today's game. Yannick Ngakwe did not play a whole heck of a lot. I didn't see a snap count yet as we record this, but I wouldn't guess any more than 20, 25 snaps for Yannick Ngakwe. Not super easy to take all of training camp off and then be put into a new defense and make an immediate impact, and then you don't have Daniil Hunter as well, and that was the biggest factor in this game, aside from the corners, but as we talked about in the lead-up here, these two things play off of each other.

I can't wait to see from Pro Football Focus what the pressure numbers were, but just by my guess, I think Rodgers dropped back 44 times. He was not sacked at all. I would guess he was pressured maybe 7 to ten times, if that. And here's what we know from, of course, all time with Rodgers, but even old, washed Rodgers, if you give him tons of time, he's still got that arm. That was exactly, you said it perfectly,

that everything that we talked about leading up to this that could be the case in week one was the case in week one. If you don't pressure him, he'll shred you. Bingo. Devontae Adams can take over the game. He's that good if he goes up against an inexperienced corner. Bingo. That's exactly what happened. And here's the other part that I want us to not talk around when we focus so much on the defense, that if you are going to win a lot of games with this team that is not going to have as strong of a defense, you have to respond as an offense when things go wrong, or you have to take advantage as an offense when your defense does get stops.

So when you get stops at the goal line a couple times, or you force them to kick a field goal after the safety punt, you have to have a long drive there. You have to give your defense a rest. You can't come away with a sack. You can't come away with a safety. And this, it has a bit of a 2018 feeling where I still think we're going to see a lot of very good performances from this offense. Adam Thielen, especially in garbage time, of course, but Adam Thielen was very good when he had the opportunity. We saw some Delvin Cook, some flashes of that. Doesn't look any slower than he's ever looked.

At the same time, you have to be able to go back and forth with these offenses and these quarterbacks that you're going to face. Phillip Rivers threw for 360 yards today. I mean, he's going to do the same thing next week. He's going to throw for a lot of yards against his team. So whether their offense can respond at the right times and not allow them to be on the field for 40 plus minutes, I think is going to matter quite a bit. So what's your question number two? I think we both agree week 16 was worse because you have time now, but of course, this is concerning. So what's your second question, Paul?

Yeah. And just one other point before I move on to that is, if you were to build a defense for Aaron Rodgers that you didn't want him to face, it was what we saw from the Vikings. Young, inexperienced corners in a stadium where he can hard count. He's never been able to hard count. You saw the defensive line jump off sides, but corners that are going to struggle with that man coverage on Devonta Adams and then the the line without Daniil Hunter so though that's just not going to be a recipe storm yep perfect storm that it might look worse today because of Aaron Rodgers and I think we have to have a conversation about if Aaron Rodgers if we should have really doubted him as much as maybe people have coming in or if that was the Vikings defense that made him look so good well why don't we why don't we talk about that

real quick yeah because here I think that we were right on with Rodgers though leading up to this that the whole washed Rodgers is washed I mean it's like kind of a joke but kind of not really because he does not have games like this as consistently as he used to. He had a game last year where he had a perfect quarterback rating. He had a playoff game last year where he was really good against the Seattle Seahawks and they won. And that is still in there in Aaron Rodgers. But it's mostly because the arm talent is still there. Some of his bad habits, they still showed up. Today he he held onto the ball too long. There was one or two possessions where he got a little pressure, and it was a problem for

him, but the arm is still there, and there were three or four throws that were just on a completely different level, and when he had that opportunity to strike and put a dagger in the Vikings with that throw to Devontae Adams, which was just otherworldly, he did it. And that's why the Packers still have a very good chance to win this division. That's why they can still beat the Vikings. If he was completely washed, like, say, late Joe Flacco or something, you would go into a game and go, oh, well, I mean, this guy, he can't really play anymore, and he's not scary.

What makes Rodgers scary is that that arm still exists, and so we knew that going in. We figured that going in, and it's even funny because you look at his numbers, 364 yards, and his weapons really weren't even that good outside of Devontae Adams. Valdez Scantling dropped two passes in a row that were, you know, one's on third down, another one's 45 yards down the field, and he still ends up with this kind of day. So if you're a Vikings fan, you look at that and say, if you don't pressure him, that's exactly what's going to happen to you unless these corners take huge steps forward throughout this season.

I expect that they'll get better, but again, if by the time you face them again, you don't have Daniil Hunter and Ngakwe isn't playing at a high level, there isn't anybody else on this team that can step up and create consistent pressure. I think that that is clear. All right, so we'll get on to, I want to make you do a pie chart here on blame. So I guess we could go with the offense. I think we'll keep that as a whole. There was some questionable play calling in there. I would say the one that resulted in a safety, the play action, and then the fourth down call, which sounds like Zimmer maybe roasted Kirk

a little bit after the game. You can get into that. So, maybe the offense as a whole, and then the D-line and the pressure that they created, and then the cornerbacks, and maybe the coaching. So, try to split it up between coaching, the defensive backfield, up front, and then the coaching. So try to split it up between coaching, the defensive backfield, up front, and then offense. Okay, so I'm going to start off with the defensive line, who I know that this may be a controversial opinion,

but I'm going to give them the most blame for not creating pressure. And look, I mean, Hunter's out. He's a superstar. There are three or four players on earth better at doing that than Daniil Hunter. And so it's not an excuse. It's an explanation for why you wouldn't be able to create a whole heck of a lot of pressure. But not having him, not having Ngakwe yet at full strength. And some people said that on the broadcast, they were pointing out he was getting his ankle taped and he may have been dinged up a little bit so he wasn't at full strength clearly Jalen Holmes just might not be an NFL player I don't know we're gonna have to see as we go along here but he hasn't shown almost anything they're mixing Eddie Yarbrough in there who is on his I think third or fourth team and Jaleel Johnson has never proven he could pressure the quarterback. Shamar Stephan, that's never been his strength is getting after the quarterback. But at the end of the day, when you put no pressure on Aaron Rodgers,

you're not going to win. I'd love to go through it. Maybe I will. See how many times last year Rodgers got this little pressure and how many times he won. I bet it was every time. So I'm going to start there. And I'm going to give them and I'm going to give them,

I'm going to go 40% of the blame because Rodgers smoking the defense is the reason you lost for the most part. So then I will go with 30% to the corners who just could not cover Devontae Adams. They couldn't cover Marquez Valdez Scantling. They couldn't cover Alan Lazard. They got beat on a couple of plays where they didn't tackle very well on Aaron Jones or the running backs. So I think that there were a lot of problems there. And even there seemed to be miscommunications, which is not generally a thing that happens to this Vikings defense. But, again, some new pieces, and it happens. So 70% there. some new pieces and it happens so 70 there on the offense i will go another 20 on the offense because if you break down the game by just situation and where the game swung it was really on that interception i think by cousins and then the safety kind of happening back to back

is where we really felt that shift toward okay now you're going to have to have a big comeback instead of maybe this is a slugfest. So it really changed there. So I'll give them 20%. And then the final 10 to coaching. I mean, look, I understand what Gary Kubiak is thinking. Fourth and three, Packers are going to load up expecting Delvin Cook. Take a shot there.

Clearly, Mike Zimmer felt that Adam Phelan had the better coverage Kirk Cousins said that he saw a safety rolling over that way and we've already got this post game thing happening with those two um which you know we always know there's the capability of that happening when things go wrong so look I mean the the play action at the goal line I think that's a great job by the Packers designing a blitz that the Vikings wouldn't see coming and also knowing tendencies. The Vikings love to do that. They love to, oh, we're backed up. No one expects us to throw the ball.

Let's do play action and look for a big chunk play here. The Packers clearly knew it. They dialed it up correctly and made a great play. So I don't look at that necessarily as the coaching screwed up because if that works out, if they run that like they have many times and they get 30, 40 yards, then we're saying, wow, what a call from, you know, Gary Kubiak. So I don't know if there was also a mistake when it came to picking that blitz up. Certainly they could hear the signals called in the stadium, but I won't go too much on coaching on this one.

Maybe if you were really reaching on coaching, you could say they should have had them more ready for some of the snap counts and things like that. But, you know, I think this was a lack of execution by the players much more than it was for coaching. I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota Sports inspired goods.

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Yeah, and I'm glad you gave a good fair share to the offense because I do think that's an important part here. People look at the points that they gave up. It's the second most yards they've ever given up in the Mike Zimmer era. Other than that Rams game, it's by far the most they've ever given up at home. So I think that's going to be the takeaway. And then you're going to see the score and just the garbage time points and say, well, the offense, you know, they tried to make it interesting, which they did. And the defense had some opportunities when they were down just two possessions in the third and fourth quarter to get a stop and maybe they make it a little bit more interesting but I don't think you can like

underestimate what happened in that in that first half they Kirk Cousins had five attempts in the first half Dalvin Cook had six runs the they had 10 runs as a team. So they just didn't have the time of possession necessary. And a lot of that is on the defense, not getting them off the field. But part of that has to be they went three and out a couple times in a row after that first drive. And so if they could have just mustered a little bit, because at some point, the defense was going to get tired, and you saw it in the second half, you saw it in that final quarter, as the scoring just ramped up, it was the defense was just out of gas. And that as the scoring just ramped up. The defense was just out of gas, and that's kind of what happened last year, too. The defense was just on the field for

so long, and at some point, you can only ask those corners to run around for so long, and you can only ask those defensive linemen to continue to run into those offensive linemen over and over again. You need the offense to do something, and they did it in the second half when Green Bay kind of settled back and played a little bit more pre-event, but they needed to do it a little bit more in the first half. So I'm glad we gave a little bit of the blame to them. I do still think it's a lot on the defense, but the offense had a major part in it. Yeah. To follow up on that point about the offense, because I do think a lot of people would look at this score and go, well, what do you mean? They scored 34. It wasn't the

offense's fault. But when you look at it situationally, and I think of this kind of like a basketball game where a team has a chance to hit a three or two at the end of the half and get closer and give themselves a chance, but then they give up a couple of threes and all of a sudden they're nowhere close. That's how this felt. So the score, it's just crazy looking at this score,

is five to seven at one point, right? And so then the Vikings do a good job of holding the Packers to a field goal. So then it becomes eight to seven. So right there, you're almost at the half. You feel like, okay, eight to seven. This isn't terrible. You've got a chance to go down the field, get a field goal, take the lead, take the pressure off of your defense. They go three and out and get sacked and then give the ball back. That's where the Packers, if you give them enough chances, will take advantage. They fly down the field, score a touchdown. You come back out and mismanage that situation, by the way, to not give your offense time to have a real drive. So instead of calling timeouts,

giving your team maybe a minute and a half to drive down the field, you've got 39 seconds. I mean, anybody who's ever played Madden knows you call timeout to get yourself more time when you get the ball back. So they got 39 seconds. Okay, now they've got to be super aggressive. Well, Kirk Cousins being super aggressive in the drop back passing game, in his history, has a tendency to make mistakes, and he turns the ball over, boom, another touchdown,

all of a sudden, now you feel like you're way down in this game, and it's going to be a huge problem to get back. So if the Vikings, instead of going three and out punting after the safety, if they just, you know, put together some type of drive there, then all of a sudden you're back in that kind of game. And maybe your defense gets a breath. That was another problem, too, is that Green Bay had a 12-play drive. Then they turned over on downs. You have two plays, you get a safety.

Right back to the Green Bay offense. Three and out, right back to the Green Bay offense. Three and out, right back to the Green Bay offense. So Green Bay ran 12, 8, that's 20, 31 plays to the Vikings' five over those possessions. It has to be to some extent the onus on the offense to not have your defense out there for that long, and that's where I think the game really swung. And then in the second half, it was just Rodgers abusing those corners with no pressure. Yeah, Rodgers had 28 pass attempts in the first half. Kirk Cousins had 25 for the game. So like that just, it just can't happen. So that kind of takes me into where I wanted to get

a more like holistic conversation on the offense is how do we assess it? Because in the first half, they had that first drive. It looked nice. They were doing kind of Vikings-y things, running the ball. Dalvin Cook and Alexander Madison both had a couple nice runs. Kirk found Thielen a couple times. They had a penalty that got them in closer, and then they scored.

So that's kind of what we've come to expect for them. And you're saying, okay, they lost Diggs, but Thielen's come in. He's kind of filled in that role. They've been able to figure some things out. And then those next drives happen, and they are just stalled for the rest of the half. And you saw some encouraging things in the second half, even if they're playing prevent defense, like Thielen's still beating some guys. Kirk is still delivering the ball.

But how do you assess the offense in that when they're down so much and when they're just trying to come back? Like, what do you think we can take from this and move on? Yeah, it's hard to take anything because even Mike Zimmer said the Green Bay defense is not playing their usual defense when Kirk Cousins is putting up those numbers and when he's hitting Adam Thielen for those passes that he did. And when you look over the box score, you go, okay, I mean, big day for Adam Thielen and nobody else really here. B.C. Johnson, a couple of catches.

Irv Smith, Jr., man, we spent the entire offseason talking about you've got to find Irv Smith. He looks great during training camp. Like targeted what? Let me double check this. One time, one target for Irv Smith Jr. That just can't happen. If you're going to sustain drives, if you're going to have a successful offense, Irv Smith has to be targeted more than that. He's got to be a huge part of this offense. And, you know, I look at the rest of the weapons here, and they just, you know, you hit Rudolph for the one play at the end of the half.

You hit Jefferson a couple times in the second half when they're playing way off. I mean, I don't know if there's a whole lot that you can really take away from it because, I mean, I'll make a hockey comparison here. When you look at puck possession in hockey, you don't want to look at when it's six to two, because the team with two is probably going to have a lot of possession, because the other team's way up and they're just, you know, playing not to give up goals as opposed to being aggressive. Same kind of thing here. Can we really judge how Adam Thielen played as the number one wide receiver, how BC looked as number two, how Irv played, when you're just down by so much for most of the game, I'm willing to hold off on making full assessments of the offense, but I would also say this, that they told us, hey, continuity is our best friend.

We know this offense. These are a lot of guys who came back. Jefferson is really the only new guy here, and Tajay Sharp, who gets targeted at a big time in the game, bizarrely. But these are really, I mean, mostly guys who have been on the team before. All the key players here, Delvin Cook, Madison, all the linemen were on the team last year, and it looked very much like what happens when the Vikings offense goes wrong early in the game, where they just sputter and they can't get anything going. And they have to constantly in years past rely on the defense to get Kirk Cousins the ball back a bunch more times in order for them to finally get rolling. Well, in the last two years, that's happened quite a bit.

But in this year, that might happen less especially if Daniil Hunter's out for more than just those three weeks so my assessment from the offense is they still have the same kryptonite that they had before and it really showed when Cousins got sacked by Zedaria Smith who just shoved Brian O'Neill right out of the way and went right into Kirk Cousins for a sack it's like there was another play that someone created a pressure. It might have been Kenny Clark just running right through Pat Elfline. We are going to see a lot of these things. And if you don't get a Delvin Cook 75-yard touchdown run mixed in,

I think there's going to be a lot of inconsistencies when you play good teams. And if you play teams with bad defenses, they've got enough talent to to light them up but how much different this is really going to be on offense I don't know but again we're only talking about a handful of plays here that you could really judge off of so I think we'll learn a lot more next week against the Colts who are far less imposing on defense than the Packers yeah because you can look at the first drive but they're scripting out that first drive so they've looked at the first drive, but they're scripting out that first drive. So they've looked at that first drive for a long time. They know what they're going to call. So you can say, okay, they figured that out. They were able to do that. The safety,

they're back in their own end zone. There's not much you can do there. You're just trying to get out. You're trying to do something. But then those couple drives that they fail, they go punt, and then they get an interception, and then they have the field goal. Those are the ones where I feel like you can look at it, because they're still within striking distance. The defense on Green Bay, still the first half, you know, it's 8-7. So it's that punt. It's the offensive line got pushed back a little bit. It's a couple of those Kirk runs, which were a little bit interesting and kind of nice

to see that he's actually doing that. And then there's the interception, the field goal, which just didn't have a lot of time to assess it. And then you're punting on your first drive in the second half. You're turning over on downs the next drive. That's the Kirk throw to Tajay Sharp. So, yeah, there's just, like, if you're on Green Bay's side, you have so many drives to look at and assess the offense and say, okay, here, here, here is why Aaron Rodgers isn't falling

off. We can show you it, but there's really no way we can say, well, we know Justin Jefferson's going to be good because he did this. There were just not that many times we could do that. Irv Smith wasn't targeted in any big moments, but there were just like seven moments where he could have been targeted that we can assess. Like, we still can't say he's not going to be a big part of the offense or we underutilized him because yeah, we still can't say he's not going to be a big part of the offense or we underutilized him because, yeah, maybe in one of those seven you want to get him involved, but you just don't know. So it is one of those things where you leave week one a little unsatisfied

because it's really hard to make a clear assessment of where the offense is. We can give a pretty clear assessment of the defense because they were out for 41 minutes. We saw a lot of them, but you just didn't see that. And the next thing I want to get to is I want to kind of get your temperature on the team right now. Like your freak out meter, 1 to 10. 1 being, you know, everything's fine. It's just week 1.

There were, you know, I'm not worried. And 10 being probably the current state of Vikings Twitter right now. Probably 10. Yeah, yeah. I definitely got a few tweets that said season over tank for Trevor Lawrence. And hey, Trevor Lawrence looked great against Wake Forest. So I had a couple hashtag fire zimmers. So they're already out right after.

They're already out there. Let me put it somewhere around. I'm going to go just short of five. I'm going to go like 4.75 here because I don't want to clear the threshold of halfway to complete freakout after one game. Mike Zimmer pointed out, hey, back in 2015, a young team that was unproven in a lot of ways in 2015 had a horrible week one against the San Francisco 49ers.

They went on to win the division. Many things have happened in week one that have not correlated to the very end of the season. At the same time, this quarterback schedule doesn't do you a whole heck of a lot of favors here. I mean, if you can't blitz the quarterback or pressure the quarterback and you can't cover other teams' or pressure the quarterback and you can't cover other teams' number one wide receivers, you're going to have a really tough time. I mean, next week, I still think that the Vikings have a great chance to win. We're talking about a Colts team that lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars and might be very bad this year. I don't know. I thought they were a little better than that, but Rivers might be washed and he might struggle even against the Vikings defense that isn't as good. So we'll see how that

ends up playing out. If Phillip Rivers throws for 350 yards and four touchdowns with, you know, not having a true like Devontae Adams type of talent on his team, then I might crank it up a little bit more. But look, it's week one. At the same time, this wasn't a fluky four touchdown, 360 yard performance. This was every bit of you earning it. Guys were in the wrong places. Coverage wasn't great. There were times where they missed tackles, where it looked like people gave up on coverage and they could have given up another 40 or 50 yards on a couple of plays, specifically if not for a drop by Valdez Scantling. So the fact that people were also wide open,

and it wasn't just Rodgers doing crazy things, or it wasn't bad bounces, oh, you had a ball hit off somebody's helmet and pop up in the air, and the other team scored. It wasn't something like that. Like this was a well-earned victory for the Packers over the Vikings, and that makes you say at this moment they have a lot that they need to improve on. The difference between how this feels and the game against the Rams was that Rams game was a shootout.

Both teams going back and forth, scoring on each other. It's like, this is kind of fun. Today was not fun. I don't think, I mean, this was the least enjoyable 43-34 game in NFL history. It just was at no point did you ever believe they had any shot whatsoever at coming back. And so for all those types of reasons, the fact that we just didn't see the offense click and go back and forth with Rodgers,

which is what you're going to need this season, that all the things that could go wrong did go wrong in terms of the defense. Yeah, there's some freak out deserved, but I'm not hashtagging fire Zimmer yet, and I'm definitely not declaring them out of the race. Would I adjust, and maybe this can be a weekly thing, what, you know, just what we think the win-loss record is going to finish at. I had 10, 10 and six going into the season and I might adjust to closer to eight and eight or nine and seven now. I think, I mean, of course, you know, when I picked the schedule, I didn't know Daniil Hunter was going to be out. And in this case, one guy can really swing things. So yeah, I mean, there is some deserved freak out level here,

but I would not declare the season over tank for Trevor just yet. Especially with Detroit getting their loss, I don't believe in Chicago. And I also thought that if this Packers team played the first half like they did against other good teams, they might lose. So, you know, yeah, I'll go 4.75. What would you go, Paul? I'm a little closer to maybe like a six or something. I'm also not in the this season is over, this is a disaster, you got to wipe the slate clean. But you mentioned it with the quarterback schedule.

They go Rivers, Tannehill, Watson, Wilson, Ryan, Rodgers again, Stafford. So if you're trying to give your young cornerbacks some time to kind of figure stuff out, it's going to be hard. It's going to be a trial by fire. They have a lot of good weapons they're going up against. They have the Colts, Phillip Rivers. We don't totally know, but that offensive line is going to be a problem. Daniil Hunter is not going to be there for that one. I don't expect the pressure to be much better than what they did against the Packers. The Packers had a couple of linemen go down.

They were down the right tackle. They were down a guard, and we still weren't seeing any pressure. So the Colts are supposed to have maybe the best offensive line in football. They're going to rely heavily on that back end again and it it just it's not fair to expect it from the guys that they have out there there's eight combined starts between Holton Hill Mike Hughes Gladney and Dancer I don't even know if we saw Gladney much at all I couldn't totally talk I don't think at all on defense which um I did want to mention if you don't mind me jumping in here that that it was a little, I want to say kind of bizarre or really surprising. And I don't know if Jeff Gladney had an issue with his meniscus still, or they felt like he was set back, or they just felt like he didn't have a very good training camp at all.

Because if there was a time to just rotate them in and out throughout this game after Dantzler was clearly struggling it would have been in the second half to say all right well we're going to work in Jeff Gladney a little bit here and even when the game was not that close toward the end we still didn't see him we saw Cam Dantzler the whole way so are they convinced that Dantzler is so much farther ahead than Jeff Gladney? And if so, like that feels a little bit weird that your first round pick is way behind where your third round pick is. So that's going to be something that we're going to watch here going forward.

Sorry if I didn't let you finish your point, but I wanted to get that out because that was sort of a really noticeable takeaway from this game is that we just didn't see Jeff Gladney at all. Yeah, no, that was the big part was we just don't know what we're going to get from the cornerbacks week to week. And we saw Daniil Hunter's not going to be here for the next three weeks. So they're going to go up against Derrick Henry in a couple weeks. They're going up against that Colts offensive line, and it just showed me kind of the fragility of this defense. If you take away one of those pieces, albeit it's probably the biggest piece, but we talk about defense not being, it's not a one-person thing. Like you can, it's plug and play. It's often your kind of weakest links, but we talked

about how bad this defense could look if they're losing a Daniil Hunter, if they're losing a Harrison Smith, if they're losing one of those pieces, and we saw what it looked like without one of them, and so my six is almost a little bit about we know he's going to come back. We know the pressure is going to get better from where it is, but if at any point we lose him again, he's not ready week three it goes far further into the season it keeps reoccurring they lose Harrison Smith like we we saw what it would look like today and it's not good so the sixes they need to stay healthy they don't have cap space anymore to oh they could always sign someone like they're not they don't have cap space like they're not going to go get

Prince of Mookamora they're not going to be able to go get some of these guys that are out there unless there's another corresponding roster move which there isn't an obvious one out there right now so and the other point is sorry the other point is just that how much can Zimmer scheme when you have weaknesses in that front four because he has always relied on that front four and Harrison Smith said it after the game he's always relied on the front four to get them in second down and long third down and long and then they could do the pin their ears back or the blitzes or the pressures and all those things and if you don't have those those situations if it's second and short if you're getting first downs on first down then this really the house of cards kind of falls apart, even though you have

pro bowlers all over the field still. I mean, Eric Hendricks, I thought, played well today. You know, Yannick Ngakwe had at least a couple of pass rushes that looked decent, and I'm sure he can improve on those. But you're right that defense is a fragile thing, and it is a weak link type of thing. And so the only answer really is get Daniil Hunter back, have Yannick Ngakwe play a lot more, and have the corners just play better than they did today. And the guy that shouldn't be left out of that, because Dantzler obviously is the focus,

but Holton Hill did not play very well either. And they went after him quite a bit. And so that's going to be a situation to watch too. How long will they give Holton Hill if he has more games like this? So I don't know where we got off in terms of the questions. If you've got maybe one more. One more. So now it's, I don't know if you picked Vikings for the division prior to this.

I think you were around 10 and6, which would be right there, probably the division winner. But at this point, it kind of feels like it's firmly Green Bay's division. Am I wrong? Because the Bears and Lions went back and forth. There was the Lions hype, and maybe it's just this one week. They had a bad week too. If we're going to say Minnesota had just a bad week,

we can say maybe the Lions just had a bad week. They let Trubisky come back from like a 20, 23-point deficit, something like that, and he was throwing like darts at the end. And so I don't think any of us totally believe that's going to stay consistent. So they didn't look great. Again, the Bears don't look great. And so Green Bay seems to at least just have the least amount of question marks. And so in my eyes, at least,

it feels like it's firmly there's division unless the Vikings can show that this wasn't what we're going to see. Get back to the conversation just a second. But even though sports took a break, your business didn't. You have to keep moving. And that makes hiring more important than ever. Indeed is here to help. Indeed.com is the number one job site in the world because indeed gets you the best people fast unlike other sites indeed gives you full control and payment flexibility over your hiring you only pay for what you need you can pause your account at any time and there are no long-term contracts at all. Plus, Indeed provides you with powerful tools to make your search even easier, like sponsored jobs, which are shown to be three and a half times more likely to result in a hire. And with 73% of online job seekers visiting Indeed each month, Indeed is

going to get you the important hire that you need, just like they have for over 3 million businesses. Right now, Indeed is offering our listeners a free $75 credit to boost your job post, which means more quality candidates that you will see fast. Try Indeed with free $75 credit at Indeed.com slash BlueWire. This is their best offer anytime, available anywhere. Go right now to Indeed.com slash blue wire terms and conditions apply offer valid through September 30th. Yeah. I'm far from declaring it that yet because I still do believe in the

regression of the green Bay Packers at the same time. There were some little things there today. Tyler Irvin, Jay Sternberger, who they targeted a couple couple times, didn't make catches, but he is healthy and back. And Josiah DeGuara was another guy that I was sort of intrigued by. They lined him up at fullback. They lined him up in the slot. They were kind of moving him all over the place. And it just, Al Mazzard played a lot better. Valdez Scantling had the

drops, but also had a couple of catches too. And even incremental improvements there, even if it wasn't a huge jump by drafting someone like Justin Jefferson, could make them a little more dangerous and stave off some of that regression, especially if their defense remains good. I don't think their defense will remain as good. And I still see them as a 10-6 or 9-7 type of team. So no, I'm not at any point willing to say, oh no, Packers all set. But are they the team to beat? Let's put it that way. If we were on NFL Network and they were putting the little thing across the bottom, are the Packers still the team to beat? That I'll say yes. Is it their division for sure? No. And also, just to wrap up here, oh my gosh, Lions. Oh my gosh. Like, we spent all the offseason talking about, hey, you know, the Lions have everything written all over them to be that team that takes that big jump

from last year, worst to first type of team, and they draft a running back who's supposed to be the difference maker, DeAndre Swift. He's got it in his hands to win the game. And at this point, I will concede. I have always just been a little bit hesitant to say poor Matt Stafford because I think, come on, overcome something, get in the playoffs, win a game. Poor Matt Stafford. Oh my, oh my, oh my. I mean, perfect throw, perfect read, perfect throw, right in front of your face mask, two hands on it, and they lose. And so you know that the Lions will miss the playoffs by that one game.

And also I saw another thing that's great. The week one freakout is my favorite, that Mitch Trubisky was showing haters today. So take that, haters of Mitch Trubisky. I mean, their own team tried to get another quarterback, but, hey, haters. So anyway, well, to put a bow on it, Paul, I would just say this, that if you watch this game and were deeply upset by the way the Vikings performed, yeah, you should be. I mean, it was way worse than the score looked and to have an opportunity

to be in kind of a slug fest and let it get so far out of hand as they did both on offense and defense is extremely concerning and the packers and matt lafleur just have mike zimmer's number at this point so if you can't go to lambo and beat them i mean you're going to be talking about what three years without beating matt lafleur or two years without beat, what is it? Two years without beating Matt LaFleur. So it's, you're not in a particularly great position at this moment with that situation, you know, going up against the Packers. That doesn't help you for your chances for the division. It doesn't feel like there was anything to take away and say, well, yeah, but you see, all they did need to do is there's a lot to go here,

and they will need a turnaround very similar to what we saw after that Rams game. Right away, it will have to happen in Indianapolis, or I mean, you get to 0-2, and then Tennessee's coming to town. That seems good. So then you got to go to Houston and play Deshaun Watson. This next game turns out to be massive for them. So, Paul, any final thoughts from you? I would just say, kind of going on the schedule, I think they wish they had the Panthers and the Jags coming up instead of the state they have coming up.

But who knows? The Jags just beat the Colts, so maybe the Colts aren't that great, or maybe the Jags aren't as bad as we thought. Yeah, right now, right. Stuff happens early in the season, in a normal offseason, when teams have like everything that they're used to, and they don't have anything they're used to. Minnesota doesn't have the home field advantage. So just a lot of weird things happen, and everything kind of will end up coming back and meeting in the middle where it probably should. And so things are going to, around the NFL, things are going to come back to normal. It's just whether the Vikings are going to end up being one of those things. Yeah, let me make that one last point just about the home field advantage.

It was a morgue inside U.S. Bank Stadium. Like I cannot – from what I saw from people saying on Twitter that the sound was really loud in comparison to the analysts. Oh, yeah. You couldn't hear the analysts okay that's not how it felt inside the stadium you only heard the crowd noise and so you're like well maybe the maybe the vikings d line was thrown off by their own crowd noise because we can't even hear the no no no it was i am kidding you not us if you're if you wake up early on a sunday morning go to a park and feed the birds like that was the level of serenity inside of that place.

You could read a novel easily inside of U.S. Bank Stadium on third down when the Packers had the ball. And this is a big deal. Like the Vikings are 20th in sacks since 2016 on the road, first at home since 2016. This was a road game for the Vikings, the way that they had to play Green Bay. And look, I mean, would putting 5,000 people in there make that big of a difference? Maybe, I don't know. I mean, it's a huge building that might just die out, but I could tell you with what they're allowed to do there, this is a different type of football season than you've ever seen before and if you're

the Vikings you're rooting hard for people to wear masks and not have gender reveal parties with a bunch of people over at their house spreading COVID around like that's what you're hoping for is that we get rid of this thing and they can get fans in because this atmosphere was nothing like playing football at US Bank Stadium it felt It felt like the nine-man high school championships or whatever, where, but even then, you at least have kids from your school who bring their little band down. This had nothing, and it matters. So, well, Paul, great stuff, great questions, and I liked me getting to do a pie chart. Usually, it's I'm setting up everyone else to do the pie chart. You did the'm setting up everyone else to do the pie right

too so what's that you did the math right too so yeah well i mean of course i'm i'm an ace with the pie charts it's uh only the guests who struggle so anyway uh well i appreciate all of you taking the time to listen here in a game i'm sure you didn't want tons of more reliving. But, look, this next one is going to be huge for the Vikings. So, of course, as always, we will be covering it, and we'll probably do the same thing, get together after every game with Intern Paul and I. So, Intern Paul, you take care, and, hey, we have football back. So at least be happy about that, and we will talk to you soon.

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