Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Everything we learned about the Vikings in minicamp

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about his list of notable things from minicamp, from where Sam Darnold will start training camp to the receiver situation to the big winner of minicamp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here, and I am indeed on the road here for a couple of days so be patient with the publication of podcasts if you will but I didn't want to leave y'all hanging since the Vikings wrapped up minicamp they have a couple more OTA practices left to go but for the most part we have it all figured out all the takeaways from minicamp so I wanted to run through those and then answer a couple of fan questions run through those and then answer a couple of fan questions for you guys and then i'll be back talking with dane mizzutani about the final ota practices and jj mccarthy is scheduled to talk about what he thinks of his spring we

heard from sam darnold the other day and darnold told us stories about how he's learning the offense using poker chips to get the alignments right and practicing his dropbacks in his apartment and things like that. But it seems like Sam Darnold is feeling pretty comfortable with the Vikings offense. And so I'll run down all the different takeaways that I had. And I think it's a good place to start is right there with Sam Darnold and J.J. McCarthy. We've talked a good amount about it and so I don't have new information from that but the big takeaway is just that Sam Darnold is clearly far and away QB1 and J.J. McCarthy has been brought along quite slowly during this period.

I will say though that Thursday's practice the final min camp practice was actually a little more intense for JJ McCarthy he got quite a bit more reps than he has before they did some more hard full speed type of 11 on 11 some red zone drills things like that that you might actually see in training camp and I thought that JJ McCarthy handled himself pretty well. He had one very nice throw to Trent Shurfield that the team put out on their Twitter, if you want to go see that. But overall, I don't think that there was anything that happened with J.J. McCarthy to change our minds about where he stands. And that goes for whether you're talking about the fact that they have to develop him or

the fact that he's also very talented like you could see both of those things during this OTA and minicamp period but it was very clear that Sam Darnold is QB1 heading into training camp and I think we wanted to know during minicamp and during OTAs where do they stand is it back and forth reps does it look like the Vikings want JJ McCarthy to win this job or start winning this job right away in minicamp and instead no it was Sam Darnold all the first team reps working with all the starters day in and day out and looking very comfortable in doing so so we'll continue to watch that situation as it plays out in training camp where we will get a much better sense when they have the full speed reps happening all the time. And then we can really say QB1, QB2, QB3 and so forth.

We can get a sense of what that depth chart really is because I don't think you really can in minicamp most of the time even with rookies when they put them over on the rookie field that everybody wants to hear that the rookie looks like the best player ever during minicamp but usually that is where they're trying to just get some things figured out and do a lot of teaching with that player and it was no different for J.J. McCarthy. So that's kind of the biggest overall takeaway. The thing that we were watching by far the most was where is the quarterback situation going to start training camp? And I think we can easily say for sure that Sam Darnold begins training camp as the starting quarterback. And the first day of camp, he'll be running the 11 on 11s for the offense. But will J.J. McCarthy be the second quarterback that's coming in there and getting a lot of work? And look, Nick Mullins also doesn't need a lot of work in comparison to J.J. McCarthy, not just because he's the backup,

but because he's a veteran, he's done this a long time. He knows the offense better than both of these guys. And so even the rep distribution won't fully tell us probably who's going to be the starter the backup on on day one but if we see it play out through training camp that J.J. McCarthy starts making gains starts putting good days together and Sam Darnold maybe isn't as strong then we could have a competition as of this moment I don't look at it as a quarterback competition in training camp I'm seeing Sam Darnold as the starting quarterback and JJ McCarthy is the development rookie quarterback that they don't want to start right away which they have said over and over and over my mind can absolutely be changed though and that's why we'll go out to

training camp every single day is to see if my mind and their minds are changed about where J.J. McCarthy stands but everything that I saw from him I would just describe as pretty normal for somebody who's never played in the NFL before and if you read reports around the league if you look at what the Patriots are saying about Drake May and so forth you're going to get a lot of the same stuff which is well you know some throws are being missed and the guy's still learning the offense you got to give him time and all that stuff but you do see the arm talent from J.J. McCarthy and the athleticism and all those things that make him a promising first round

quarterback it's just that we're not used to having to be this patient when it comes to something like this. But look, I mean, Teddy Bridgewater didn't start right away either in his first year. And he was young when he came out in college and somebody that needed some work. And then he got in the game and he had his moments in 2014 and maybe that's what this will look like so I just can't say enough that we need to take a long-term approach to analyzing J.J. McCarthy and his development rather than trying to overreact to each practice or overreact to even what happens in the early part of training camp you would like to see by the end of training camp, the accuracy increase, the timing, the rhythm and all those things. But I thought that even from the start of OTAs to the final day of practice Thursday in minicamp that he improved

and Thursday was his best practice by far, I thought of all the OTAs in minicamps that we've seen. So even just a little bit of progress progress there it's not something that just happens quickly or it clicks in and then suddenly he's just got it all we're going to have to give it time but for now the biggest takeaway of course is that Sam Darnold is QB1 and has made a really strong first impression I think just in general on his teammates and with the way that he's run practice and then we'll see where it goes from here uh the other takeaway of course number two is justin jefferson's contract but you know since we've talked about that so much i wanted to throw in a little nugget that uh maybe didn't come up too much as we were talking about how they negotiated jefferson's contract and so forth which was that quesisi Adafomensa talked

about using different avenues and different, you know, maybe structure to the way that Justin Jefferson's contract would be negotiated. And he talked about some of the delay was trying to figure out what that structure was going to be. And then once they could not come to some sort of agreement on that structure, then they said, all right, we're going to have to go another direction. And one ends up being a four-year extension, but the way that this played out, here's what Kweisi Adafo-Mensah said. He said, quote, we exhausted our ways in one avenue and got to the point where we didn't think that was going to be done. So we had a conversation, hey, let's try this other avenue. And once the other avenue, it became pretty clear that these deals for premier players are out

there there's a blueprint to go off that we're working different things i told his agent i'm trying to build a championship team so it's recognizing the player but also structuring it in a way that we want to go over that um go over for a number of years was critical. So, you know, I think that it just sounds like they wanted to go a little bit longer with Justin Jefferson and they ended up going with four years instead of five years. And that's how you negotiate is, you know, working through here's what the team wants, here's what he wants. And they end up coming to the agreement to get that done. And I asked Kevin O'Connell how important it was to get this deal done before minicamp and he said it just it just gets everybody going on the right

path gets a handful of reps banked with Sam Darnold and the offense not that we didn't think that Justin Jefferson could show up on the day before training camp and start going from there or the day before the season and probably start going from there based on the day before training camp and start going from there or the day before the season and probably start going from there based on the type of shape that Justin Jefferson was in. But it does get him on the same page with Sam Darnold that gets him in the meetings and the learning phases of what's going to be new with the offense and things like that. So, you know, it was important for the Vikings to get that deal done with Jefferson by mini camp and have it all set, all settled. There's no drama within the organization.

As of right now, we know the Vikings can always find ways to create drama where there isn't any, but there's no drama with Jefferson. There's no distraction going into training camp and everybody can just, you know, focus on developing J.J. McCarthy, getting Aaron Jones involved, you know, Jonathan Grenard, the defense and the changes there that we're going to see. And there doesn't have to be this daily, what are the insiders saying about Justin Jefferson? What are the rumors? What are the, you know, all the other nonsense. So that was important to the Vikings timing wise to get that done so of course Justin Jefferson if we were doing a winners and losers of the you know OTA and minicamp period

clearly Justin Jefferson the biggest winner with his 140 million dollar contract next thing on my list Blake Brandel and Dalton Reisner it appears will battle for the left guard position that Blake Brandel, they said, O'Connell said specifically that they told him after last year, we want you to just focus on left guard. We don't want you to practice at left guard, right guard, right tackle, whatever, because he had been a swing player. We don't want that. We just want you to be the left guard. So they had plans even though they wanted to bring back Dalton Reisner to have Blake Brandel fight for that position and with offensive linemen development is really challenging and and we saw that from

someone like Garrett Bradbury over his first couple of years he got benched at one point his PFF grades were terrible and then all of a sudden the light kind of came on and that's not to say that bradbury is an elite center at this point but he's become a reliable good nfl player or solid nfl player and it took three years in order for him to get there well someone like blake brandle was drafted in the late rounds a couple years ago he came in as a left tackle he's worked at a couple different positions played a little right guard last year in a game maybe a couple games played a little left tackle the year before when Christian Derrissaw got hurt and now after a

couple years of development he's ready to go and I think that that's a typical path for a late round type of player if they have a chance to be a starter and his size gives him an opportunity maybe to be an improvement in the run game which is what they should really be looking for because the run blocking was just not great last season from that position they bring back Reisner though as a just in case so it's not entirely the blake brandle show and they assigned risner to a contract that was similar or a little bit less than blake brandle so it wasn't a hey a starter contract you're coming back at 12 million dollars a year and go forth here and be the starter it was much more a competition type of signing for Dalton Reisner and it's a

backup plan that provides you I've talked about this before a baseline or a bar to clear that if the bar to clear is Dalton Reisner then that means Blake Brando will have to look pretty good in training camp in order to get there so if Brando looks good in training camp in order to get there. So if Brando looks good in training camp, I assume he's going to play some preseason games and so forth, and they evaluate that and say, yes, he's better than Reisner. Well, we know that Reisner's an average starter in the NFL, and that would mean that they believe that Brando is going to be average or better or an improvement in certain areas, and that competition will be kind of a daily who's taking the reps.

I think Reisner, I did not see this myself somebody mentioned maybe Andrew Kramer that Reisner was taking some reps at right guard as well I don't think there's a competition there but it might speak to just Reisner's role if Brando wins the job could be a swing guard and if you look at their backup line this might be the first time ever we're talking about them having a good backup offensive line with David Questenberry proven offensive tackles played a lot of games Dalton Reisner could be a backup there they drafted Walter Rouse so they've actually got some depth Dan Feeney I should throw out there as well has played a lot of games in the NFL and can be a decent fill-in

type of player so they I think depth on the offensive line with 17 games has become even more important it always was but as you know when you have a weak link system you can't just drop off from a good player or a solid starter to someone who doesn't know how to play which happened a couple times during the Zim era where we saw them go from maybe an average right guard to suddenly Drew Samia or something like that. And that just got blasted over the right guard time and time again. You can't have someone who gets crushed at that position. You can survive it most of the time, but not just someone who's getting beat over and over

again and if they have injuries this year that won't happen based on the players they have so they're looking for another development story that's good for them you know they've got somebody like Josh Metellus who was on the bench for a couple years then steps into his role Anthony Harris a few years ago same kind of deal and. And they're hoping that, you know, Blake Brandel can become the same sort of thing. Next takeaway for me was that Jonathan Grenard has been a nice fit so far with the culture of the room. It just looks like he's fitting in. He's got all the guys doing these post-practice ab crunch things.

But something else stuck out to me when I spoke with him the other day just about his connection with Brian Flores and he talked about how he really enjoyed the fact that the players could give feedback to Brian Flores that of course the players aren't running is working we want to change this we want to change that and Flores is willing to listen to that so it comes out as this room that's got a bunch of high intelligence experienced players all working together to form the Vikings defense and Jonathan Grenard is a really good communicator he's a great talker and he just fits in right away and I think when you're looking at outside free agents you always always wonder, well, how's the guy going to fit in personality wise? And with someone like Jonathan Grenard, that personality fit seems to be there right away. I did look into Jonathan Grenard as far as trying to project him forward for this year and his pressure rates and his sack amounts and so

forth. And I will say that 12 and a half sacks last year was by far his career high and his pressure rates and win rates by PFF data were not really reflective of someone who consistently is going to get 12 to 15 sacks. If he ends up getting eight and he's a good pressure creator he had 48 pressures last year which is solid the best guys have quite a bit more than that I mean Daniil Hunter might get 70 pressures in a year and I know he's going to play more snaps and so forth but someone like Hunter can create pressure a little more often and so if we're trying to look at you know Jonathan Grenard and where he should stand maybe 12 and a half sacks is a little high of a bar for him but to put him alongside Van Ginkle Dallas Turner I think they have a better overall group of pass rushers

and you could see it with Dallas Turner out there Van Ginkle was still working on the side he's recovering from an injury he should be back for training camp but with Dallas Turner out there. Van Ginkle was still working on the side. He's recovering from an injury. He should be back for training camp. But with Dallas Turner out there, the depth of that position, though, is still a little bit spotty. We saw a lot of Andre Carter working in. Andre Carter doesn't look massively bigger to me than he did last year, but he's somebody who has that huge wingspan. He's got explosiveness and speed, big UDFA for them and the fact that they haven't brought anybody else in suggests to me that they think that Andre Carter can handle a good percentage of that job Patrick Jones is still doing his thing still getting a lot of reps maybe some development there last year by the number of snaps that he had was one of the lowest rated pff players with over 500 snaps on

defense last year that's a little concerning with patrick jones if they're going to have to go to him at some point even if they do have more edge rushers so i don't know if they'll go out and look for somebody before training camp it's kind of last chance is the few weeks before training camp to pick up somebody maybe they do at that position but andre carter getting a good amount of run for them right now hey us cellular customers i've got some good news so do not hit that skip forward button just yet i'm talking about their special customer event us days what's us days it means exclusive offers just for their customers. Just to say thanks. Like $1,200 off any phone plus $300 off any tablet.

No, I did not misread that. They must really like you all. Us days at U.S. Cellular. Exclusive offers just for you. Just to say thanks. Right now, U.S. Cellular customers get $1,200 off any phone plus 300 off any tablet terms apply i talked about the winner of minicamp was justin jefferson because he made so much money it's probably also sam darnold as well being clear- as QB1. But I'll give you the other winner of minicamp. And that is Robert Tunyon.

Robert Tunyon, who was a good receiving tight end for the Green Bay Packers for a number of years, had multiple 50 catch seasons, 17 touchdowns thrown from Aaron Rodgers to him while he was in Green Bay, went to Chicago last year and just had a tough go of it. It did not work out very well at all for Robert Tunyon. I think he had 11 catches on 17 targets or something. Not a good passing offense, not a good quarterback. They already had Cole Komet there, so he just didn't get a lot of work. And he comes here, does a workout. Wes Phillips says, yeah, we all just looked at him and said, we're going to sign him. Like, we're good to go with Robert Tunyon.

And during minicamp, you know, Johnny Munt obviously getting a lot of the work as somebody coming back in this offense. But Tunyon has fit in really well right away and looks extremely fast for the position. I mean, he's not the hugest tight end that I've ever seen. He's more of a receiving first type of tight end, and he was just catching everything and getting a ton of targets from Vikings quarterbacks. And I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he starts the season after the whole training camp as tight end one, because he's more like TJ Hawkinson than Johnny Munt. Johnny Munt has always been more of a blocking tight end and Robert Tunyon

is more of a receiving tight end. And it just shows he has really good hands. He catches a lot of passes. I don't think we saw him drop anything and looks very fast for a guy of his size. So I was impressed by Robert Tunyon and it looks like somebody that has a great chance to make the team and even have an impact and they could end up keeping four tight ends uh could end up being you know we'll talk about Nikhil Harry in a second as one of the big takeaways but you know him Johnny Munt Josh Oliver and of course TJ Hawkinson he's probably not going to start the season healthy and doesn't look like he's anywhere close just walking on the side during minicamp. But we didn't see Nick Muse out there.

Not sure what the injury is or the absence. They don't have to tell us during minicamp. And I don't think anyone asked. With all the commotion going on about Justin Jefferson's contract, the day that we spoke with Kevin O'Connell, we didn't talk about Nick Muse. So I don't have an answer to that but it looks like Robert Tunyon has a great chance to make the team speaking of tight ends Nikhil Harry is moving to tight end we talked about a little bit the other day but I think

it's interesting just maybe if he can make the team gives them a little more depth he has the skill set to do it he has the size to do it but this is one of those last chance in your career to make something in the NFL type of things for Nikhil Harry and he might end up developing a little bit of tight end here and going somewhere else if Robert Tunyon is going to make it because I have a tough time seeing enough room in the room for Nikhil Harry to end up making the 53 man roster but now the fact that you can keep veterans on the practice squad they might end up you know keeping him on the practice squad but all of a sudden that is a very crowded room because I can't see Johnny Munt or Josh Oliver

going anywhere and I know that they like Nick Muse last year so he's going to be in the mix as well they signed an undrafted free agent who's kind of interesting trey knox there's a lot of bodies there at the tight end position and i did think about maybe they will you know decide to uh use a little more too tight end stuff because of that and they're going to want to run the ball better and and we you know we heard about that last year with uh oliver and he got a fair number of snaps but maybe there's a little more mix and match if Tunyon stays on the team after TJ Hawkinson returns now we're looking you know quite a bit farther down the road here but you understand the point is that they will probably keep four tight ends and I would imagine that they will use them Ivan Pace Jr. looks like he's

going to have the green dot I don't want to say this definitively the green dot for those not, uh, you know, aware is the defensive play caller. And last year when Jordan Hicks went down, you probably heard the green dot quite a few times, uh, because it was moved over to Ivan Pace. Now Ivan Pace is a very quiet guy. So I think last year he had to kind of learn, like, hey, you can't be quiet, man. You're going to have to be loud if you're going to be that green dot. But he said that it was a great learning experience for him,

and he started to understand how the entire defense all worked together in everyone's assignments and how to communicate with his teammates and so forth. And so just the way that Kevin O'Connell answered the question, he said that Brian Flores is putting a lot on his plate. And we also want to have Blake Cashman and Camu Grugier-Hill ready to handle some of that green dot work is the way that he put it, which insinuates to me that it's going to be, you know, Ivan Pace Jr. as the guy who is the main defensive play caller. and I was just thinking about how funny it is that we quickly move on when someone is good we go all right well Ivan Pace Jr. is really good and all right on to the next guy is this guy going to be good is that guy

going to be good and we need to always kind of pull back and marvel at what Ivan Pace has done because I can't remember somebody who as an undrafted free agent came in as quick as he did and all of the sudden took the job and then by the middle of the year he's the highest rated PFF linebacker among all rookies and he's an impact player he's a pass rus. And then he's calling the defense. I mean, that is so much to ask for somebody who wasn't even drafted. I mean, that would be a lot to ask for a first round linebacker. We've seen first round linebackers need plenty of time before they can develop. I mean, look at someone like Patrick Queen with Baltimore. It took three years before he was putting up good PFF grades and was a centerpiece of

their defense and here's ivan pace jr doing it right away so now he's just a leader and a very important piece going forward and he could be a main part of brian forrest's defense for a very long time and i think it's a big step for him to be getting green dot opportunities here when they do have a veteran in Blake Cashman coming in uh next thing I have on the list Shaq Griffin I think he could actually change up the cornerback group that this signing my initial impression and there's a long way to go here but my initial impression was kind of meh okay and then people wanted to talk a lot about compensatory picks which the Vikings say they did not give up a compensatory pick to get Shaq Griffin that they never expected one

I don't know we'll find out next year I guess but what they have for compensatory picks but the way that there could be or at least appears to be early on a trickle down effect from signing Shaq Griffin which allows Byron Murphy to play inside more we talked about a lot I even wrote an article about Byron Murphy playing in the nickel when they signed him that that was the plan because he had such better numbers in the nickel than he did on the outside throughout his career and he's he's not the quickest he's not someone that you can put one-on-one with top wide receivers all the time. So they played a lot of zone last year.

But now Shaq Griffin is more of a man corner where they might be able to use more looks on defense. I mean, last year we gave all the credit that it deserved. But Brian Flores had to push every single button in order to make that defense work. And this year it looks like he will have a little more opportunities to mix up coverages maybe not have to blitz every other play with some of the more pass rushers and and that could be an underrated part of this as we look at how good this team could be is you know can they get into the top 10 I don't think they have quite the talent to be in the top five defensively and they have a tough schedule but

could they be in that range because last year they were solid in the NFL and average defense with not average talent and so I think Shaq Griffin could have an impact there him and Makai Blackman playing on the outside Byron Murphy inside that gives you more flexibility with Josh Metellus you can move Metellus back to the regular safety position, take Harrison Smith off the field sometimes to give him a little bit of a break. There's just more options now. And I think the signing of Shaq Griffin gives them a little more of a trickle down effect where you're not asking a Caleb Evans to start every game. You're asking a Caleb Evans to be a solid guy off the bench.

Andrew Booth Jr. We'll see. You know, I haven't seen anything in mini camp that's going to change my mind about where he stands. I don't think right now that he's that high on the depth chart. It's going to have to be one of those things where he has a really good camp in order for him to make an impact. But as of right now, that cornerback group is pretty set. And it's quite a bit better than it was last year, where Makai Blackman was a rookie. And you had Jawan Williams starting out there at first. And then he loses the job. Caleb Evans ends up in there. And Evans did a good job for about half the season.

But the longer it went on, the more teams figured out how to attack him. And it was a struggle at the end of the season but the longer it went on the more teams figured out how to attack him and it was a struggle at the end of the season and the better receivers they faced the more difficult it was I think he's an NFL player and I think he can be in the lineup if you need him to be if you had four games where somebody was hurt it's just that Shaq Griffin has been a longtime starter in the league and they're you know hoping that he's more reliable than what they had last year. Next thing on my list is that Jerry Tillery could be a low-key signing for them. That turns out to be something. He was taking all the first team reps out there, him, Harrison Phillips. They brought back Jonathan Bullard, but they're looking for somebody who could create a handful

of pressures. He's an enormous guy, former first-round draft pick somebody who could create a handful of pressures he's an enormous guy former first round draft pick you could see the sort of physical specimen element and with no physical play going on out on the field I can't tell you whether he was winning his reps or not but I can tell you that he was taking a lot of them and that they've talked about him as somebody who might have a chance to kind of shift that defensive tackle group a little bit. I mean, last year, Harrison Phillips was playing way more snaps than he ever had. Jonathan Bullard was playing way more snaps than he had in many years since very early in his career. And they had nobody who could create real pressure from the

interior. And Tillery, you know, he had a good number of pressures last season as a rotational rusher we're not talking about somebody who was a game changer somebody who's your grady jarrett your chris jones but if we're talking about you know better than what they had last year just areas that they've improved on defense i thought in minicamp overall we could see where some of these signings that weren't that notable might end up making a difference as we go forward now some of you have asked about Lewis scene and what his status is going to be going forward and as of right now it doesn't look great for Lewis scene because Theo Jackson had a very good minicamp and these guys really seem to like Theo Jackson.

He was a guy who was drafted in the late rounds by the Titans. And actually when Louis seen got hurt, they signed him last year. He has to step in for a couple of plays against Philadelphia, gets an interception, becomes a rotational player and has just pushed Louis scene down on that depth chart and what it all seems to come down to with Brian Flores is do you understand what you're supposed to do out there are you a high intelligence player who can read and react and make plays and Theo Jackson has proven when he's been out there that he's capable of doing it I don't think that they would want Theo Jackson to play 700 snaps, but as far as his fill-in and rotational role, he just seems to have a lot more trust than Louis Scene does,

and nothing has changed with Louis Scene or Brian Asamoah or Andrew Booth Jr. That 2022 class was all playing with the backups out there, and I wouldn't expect any of that to change. The question is, do the Vikings want to move on from Lewis scene to make a spot for somebody they're going to use or do they give it one more year and at this point probably makes sense to move on but you know the fact that Cam Bynum is a you know a free agent after this year that might might play into it. They might say, well, let's see one more

year with Louis Seen. But at some point, you've got too many players that you need to keep. And you might have other guys that you believe in as depth players and just want to say, all right, well, we're not going to keep 17 safeties. We're going to keep 16 instead and just move on from the guy who was inactive last year. And if you were projecting it right now, probably would have the same thing for this year. A lot of interest in the wide receivers. I will give you a name of an undrafted free agent who stuck out to me at minicamp and then he could be cut tomorrow. And if he is, I apologize for shouting him out, but just Sean Jones who played a long time at Maryland, I'm sure big 10 fans have seen him catch passes against the Gophers or whatever,

had a good number of receptions last year. I've got it here. 56 catches for 790 yards. So had a good season last year, dealt with a ton of injuries early in his college career, but he's kind of got that, like he's 6'1", he's probably 190 college career but he's kind of got that like he's 6'1 he's probably 190 pounds but he's got that natural athlete type of feel to him and I think that that stood out at minicamp he had a lot of catches had some nice plays and just you know if we're talking about run around in shorts and it'll be a lot different when we get there but if you know the opportunity is there it's possible that he could end up winning maybe a practice squad spot or something like that we didn't see Jalen Naylor by the way which is just raises an eyebrow about whether Jalen Naylor is going to be

that wide receiver for clearly Brandon Powell wide receiver three and we're kind of running out of time a little bit to sign somebody else. I mean, they can do it before training camp, but then that person has to learn the entire offense, and it seems that they're just going to ride this out with the depth wide receivers or view Trent Shurfield as that signing. Shurfield had a great catch from J.J. McCarthy the other day, but it hasn't looked like he's been one of their top targets during this thing. Maybe during training camp, he can come together with the offense a

little bit more. He's the new guy learning the offense and be an impact player. He hasn't been so far in his career, but Brandon Powell wasn't either. Sometimes it is about fit, but the fact that Jalen Naylor, we didn't see him. Again, similar to Nick Muse, we don't know. They don't have to announce an injury report. And we didn't ask about that yet. But not the greatest sign for Jalen Naylor if it is an injury that's keeping him out because that's what kept him out all of last year. and the last thing that i have for my notes is that we have folks a very legitimate punting competition seth vernon the other punter that they brought in uh was punting the heck out of

the ball now it was really windy out there so maybe i could have punted at 50 yards in the wind uh probably not but ryan wright and set and Seth Vernon were both letting it rip the thing that makes me think the competition is very real is just simply the fact that Matt Daniels was honest about the struggles last year of Ryan Wright he called it a sophomore slump for Ryan Wright I would agree with him that his first year was very good and then his second year he dropped significantly in all of his key metrics for punters and that opens the door for Seth Vernon so they don't uh you know they they certainly don't wait around for punters to get it back together it's you know like once if you struggle

they're gonna look for somebody else they're not gonna like hang around and say oh you know let's give them three more years of punting and see what happens like they need that production right now um uh Ryan Wright looks like he's spent the off season getting in shape and you know maybe that's part of it uh but Seth Vernon appears to be a really good athlete played some wide receiver in college and so at least if we're judging how they kick the ball I was very impressed with uh Seth, but we're only talking about a handful of punts that we saw. So, you know, I don't know. We'll see. But that competition feels very, very much real. Okay. Let me get to a couple of questions that people had before we wrap up this Matt on the road in a random hotel room here podcasts uh just running down the takeaways from minicamp and if you missed any of the other episodes from inside tco performance center or

the first ever porch podcast go back and listen to those those were fun conversations and a lot of you thought that dave campbell was out of his absolute mind not ranking randy moss as uh the number one vik Vikings wide receiver or thinking that Justin Jefferson is already on his way to being that. And I agree with you. I think that Dave is crazy to say that Randy Moss is, you know, easily, easily at the top of the heap, but you know, controversial Dave Campbell surprised me, but it was a really fun. We had him rank a bunch of stuff. It was a good thing for the first first porch podcast i hope there's more of those in the future a couple of questions here one from a subscriber to the newsletter make sure you go check that out purpleinsider.com

asks now that jefferson is locked up and they've got their rookie quarterback and revamped defense when do we start looking at contract extensions for kevin oConnell and Kweisi Adafo-Mensa I would say still next year I guess if they announced it tomorrow it wouldn't be stunning or anything but usually the way that it works with the Wilfs is when you get to the year before through the year before your final year so if it was indeed correct that they both got four-year contracts when quesia da fomensa and kevin o'connell were hired then it would be next year would be going into year four so after this season and it makes sense for them to give it another year and let it play out a little bit to see what they think of the overall direction one thing we know is that the wilfs are not okay with terrible performance i don't know how many owners are totally cool with that but i guess if you were tanking you know in chicago

you would be but the wilfs want to see a playoff team they want to see this team in the mix and look like they're headed in the right direction you can give it another year to see about the overall health of the organization but I do think that every box that Kwesi Adafo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell needed to check this offseason they did and that they have built up through this offseason a lot of trust because you get to the end of last year and you go okay well you've got a huge quarterback decision. You've got a Justin Jefferson contract. You've got a defense that clearly isn't good enough to actually take you anywhere yet that showed some signs with Brian Flores, but needs improvement. So how are you going to juggle all

these balls at once? And I thought Kweisi Adafo-Mensa ends up nailing it with drafting a quarterback without having to trade up, getting an impact edge rusher in the first round, then signing a couple of players to big contracts that were impact players on their teams last year in Van Ginkle, Jonathan Grenard, and filling out the defense pretty well. And then, you know, ending up with Justin Jefferson's contract getting signed before any serious drama happened in training camp. No holdouts, no fines, no reports and rumors and things like that. I mean, just very well done for completing the plan.

But you're going to want to see it out there on the field and see what it looks like next year. Not that I think if they won six games, they would fire everyone, but maybe the extension talks would be a little bit more tense as a, and unless, you know, if they won nine games or 10 games, well then it's a pretty easy decision. And as far as O'Connell goes, I think that the NFL PA survey giving him, I think it was an A plus or an A from the players. Two years in a row, they have been one of the highest ranked teams as far as culture goes. And the way that the players feel about their coach matters a lot. Is he perfect? No. On game day, are we going to have

criticisms? Yes. I think that he's still figuring out some things as an offensive play caller. Last year was really chaotic and bad quarterbacks make all coaches look bad but this will be the challenge this year of managing the Sam Darnold situation developing JJ McCarthy and how does it look a long time from now I mean things change by the week in football much less an entire season of new information so I think that they will wait if if they did it i wouldn't be against it sure like extensions don't mean a whole heck of a lot because you just fire people whenever if you're the owner of teams you see all the time this guy got an extension then

got fired the next year it happens but um as far as when they'll look at that normally it would be after next year and i I could see them, you know, wanting to get a little more information before totally locking in Kevin O'Connell and Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. But I think as far as hires go, you know, we go back to that, hey, they hired somebody and what's it going to look like? I don't think that they could have done much better than what they've done as of right now, because they've gotten from point a to point b they got a coach that is managing the locker room that has a good passing offense that seems to work and now you know we go from here and see if they can actually take that from point a to point b and win games because that's you know the easy part is getting

a team on the field that you've revamped and you've made in your vision. And the hard part is to put the final pieces on it. I remember my friend Eric Eager, who came on the show many times, he said something like it's not that hard to go from five wins to eight wins or something, but eight to 11 or eight to 12 is very difficult. And that's what they're trying to do. And we're going to see how that plays out over the next two years but as of right now I think that both guys are deserving of that contract extension all right one more question Ben says would it be a bad thing if

Darnold started the whole season if he was good or average no I don't think it would be a bad thing at all in fact I think it's totally fine the J. The JJ McCarthy thing is going to be very intriguing. Of course, that we're all going to be watching that really closely. You know, every step of the way, every amount of progress is going to be worthy of commenting on and reporting on with JJ McCarthy. But if we all try to put our rational hats on, We can say if he sits the entire year and Sam Darnold has them in the playoff hunt come December, then this was a success. This idea was a success and we'll go into training camp in 2025 expecting big things from JJ McCarthy, but it's okay if he

doesn't play very much. If he only gets into a couple of games here or there or starts the final game because they're either out of it or already in a playoff spot. That will be an okay result. And I also think that you want to see the Sam Darnold thing come together if you're the Vikings. You don't want to have this weekly Darnold's playing bad. Should they go to McCarthy? You don't want to have that. You would much prefer that he's playing average football or good enough football to be in a lot of games. And, you know, look, if they lose close games and they end up seven and 10, well, okay. But you, you kind of want a little more than that. And if he's above average, then you can be in that playoff race. story to stay simmering on the bench rather than knocking at the door and having fans cheering we want McCarthy or something like that inside US Bank Stadium that's not really the outcome that

you want so I think that what you're talking about is what they're hoping for which is that he is good or average and that that allows J.J. McCarthy to have no pressure to jump in right away all right there's your everything we learned at minicamp. And we'll hear from Dane Mizutani a little later in the week from the final OTA that I'm not able to attend. I had some things that I had to deal with on the road here, but everything's good. We're fine.

So I appreciate everybody listening slash watching, and we will catch you all very soon. Thanks, everybody. Football.