Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Final thoughts on the Vikings roster coming out of joint practices

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Matthew Coller talks with Vikings fans about the final takeaways from Vikings-Browns joint practices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and one more live night on hotel Wi-Fi. So hopefully we do well there. Then I will be flying back tomorrow to Minneapolis and we'll be back in the old studios. And the next time you hear from me on the podcast, we'll be following the Vikings second preseason game, which, of course, has had a lot of the juice taken out of it. But we still have a lot of things to watch in that game against Cleveland. But I'm not staying for the game. I'm going back home.

Maybe if J.J. McCarthy had been playing, it would have been a little different. But I'll be watching it. And Dane Mizzutani and I are going to have a full breakdown after that game of everything that we saw, but I figured we would jump in here and talk about today's practice wrapping up for the Minnesota Vikings and the Cleveland Browns, which I had a chance to attend. And it was a beautiful day out here in Cleveland and another physical practice. I don't think it was quite as aggressive as the first day. There was a lot of, you know, John going on and so forth, but it wasn't quite as much the Cleveland Browns dominating the Vikings offense today as it was yesterday.

So we'll dive into that. We can run through some of the notes from today and then talk about the implications of these here joint practices. But I did want to start with a mild celebration. Let's celebrate this fact that this podcast in its name, the headline does not have anybody's injury. So for today, the Vikings largely came out. Okay. Injury wise, Blake Cashman had a finger thing and it doesn't look like it's going to be too serious. But aside from that, there was no cart. There was nobody being announced out for the rest of the year. So progress has been made from the last couple of days of covering the Minnesota Vikings.

And we can just go back to talking about normal training camp stuff, like where the roster stands here, what things looked like in the joint practices and what it all means to where the Minnesota Vikings are going. Big takeaways. And of course, happy to answer your questions here this evening. And I apologize. I'm on a little bit of a wobbly desk here in the hotel room. So if I'm pushing buttons and I'm wobbling around, I apologize for that.

So let's start off though, with just some of the headlines on the injury front, all not too bad. Jordan Addison avoided major injury, which is what Kevin O'Connell said to us, the couple of reporters who were here. He did say that yesterday, but then came out and confirmed today that no major injury, a couple of weeks. And just by the way that he said it, I got the sense that they don't think that Jordan Addison is going to miss any games. And that is a big bonus for them. He doesn't need a lot more practice.

He's Jordan Addison. He's very good at football. We all know that. So this one truly was a tweak. And if you've been around long enough, you know, the reference to the Daniel Hunter tweak. And then he ended up out for the season a couple of years back. Uh, but this one truly was an ankle tweak for Jordan Addison. Uh, Shaq Griffin was doing some stuff out here doing a little more today and just jogging, getting warmed up. And Kevin O'Connell said

somewhat definitively that they expect him to be back and ready to play in week one. I actually thought that the cornerbacks today had a pretty good day. Didn't get dominated at all. Dwight McLaughlin got a notable interception and the defense was way ahead of the offense today. It was an excellent, excellent day for the Vikings defense against Deshaun Watson and an offense that I got to tell you in Cleveland, they should be panicking about that's somebody else's podcast, but Deshaun Watson did not look good. Jameis Winston looked even worse over these last two days. They could probably use Joe Flacco back from the way that this looked. There was very little in terms of execution, but that's also on the Vikings side, very much a positive toward their defense, which we'll get into. So Shaq Griffin, if he returns, that would

be a bonus for them. And Blake Cashman with the finger injury, not super serious. Seems like he just got a cut and we'll be stitched up and he'll go back to playing. So let's talk about the defense started out the day. So I mentioned yesterday that I try to, uh, the way that it works, two different fields. And I try to pay attention to both and get as much as I can. I can't see every single thing that happens and every single player who subs in or subs out because I'm trying to watch offense and defense. So I stood in kind of the middle of the two fields. I can look over here. I could look over there, see the offense running

the drills in the red zone. I could see the defense playing 11 on 11s with Cleveland. And what I noticed right away, it actually started with a seven on seven drill. Ivan Pace Jr. jumped in front of a ball, picked it off, would have been a pick six, if you will. They got a lot of turnovers today in this game and also or this practice. Sorry. And a lot of balls that would have been sacks that Deshaun Watson eventually threw and maybe were completed. But there was a lot of pressure on him. Brian Flores was really getting in his bag. And I think if you're on Cleveland's side, you have to be extremely frustrated with these couple of practices. I'll be interested to go and look at some more Cleveland media and see what they said about this because yesterday the Cleveland media was none too pleased with their offense. And I don't think

it was any better today against this Vikings defense that I'm starting to be convinced can be very good this season even if they have to work around the corners but you know there was no real update on Stephon Gilmore aside from Kevin O'Connell saying he would like to see him here I didn't say that exactly so don't quote that anywhere it just that was the vibe the vibe is that Kevin O'Connell has continually, when he's been asked about Stefan Gilmore, heaped praise upon him and, uh, said that they're more or less waiting on maybe a decision from Stefan Gilmore. I'm filling in a little too many of the blanks from his actual quotes, but that's my vibe. That's what I'm getting from them is that they would like Stefan Gilmore to play here. Uh, and they're waiting on a decision from him, but even without Stephon Gilmore,

there was a lot of success on the defensive side. Uh, here in this practice, the edge rushers particularly stuck stood out to me. Uh, I thought that the safeties wreaked all sorts of havoc in these practices. They were stopping runs. They were getting penetration. There were a few plays where corners got beat as there always will be in practice, but they were taking the ball away. Just lots of, lots of problems. And I know this is not one of the better offenses in the NFL, in the Cleveland Browns still, though they were making them look like the worst offense in the NFL. It probably helped that they didn't have Amari Cooper today for this practice. He left early in the practice.

I didn't see whether he came back at all, but it didn't look like it to me that he came back and was practicing. And the main thing was Watson just could not seem to get on the same page with his receivers. Didn't look like he was in rhythm at all. It looked like the Vikings defensive line was really throwing off the dropbacks. There was one particularly strong rep from Dallas Turner where he shoved his man back into Deshaun Watson. He scrambled, but he would have been sacked. And you hear the whistle blow like that's a sack.

That's always something that the offense wants. And then when they did the two minute drill, the Vikings gave up just nothing, nothing to Deshaun Watson whatsoever, nothing to Jamis Winston whatsoever. And what we might be seeing a little bit more of here and don't want to jump the gun on this, but a little bit more along the lines of depth and the cornerback position doesn't really count here at the moment. We're still talking about the same things at the cornerback position, but as far as Patrick Jones working in Jihad Ward is working in a lot with the first team as part of a pass rush package. And if Patrick Jones is in the right role, then Van Ginkle, Grenard, Turner, and Ward, who has played a lot in the NFL and was at his best when he was with Baltimore as a situational pass rusher, suddenly you feel like you got kind of a lot to work with there as far as a bunch of pass rushers. really showed when they were having someone like jihad ward rush up the middle patrick jones rushing up the middle a bit and turner has just looked like he's really coming along and somebody

that can make an impact right away and that's at least as far as yeah you're not going to see jj mccarthy but there's this other guy in dallas turner don't forget about him that appears now at this point that he is going to be a major part of this defense and they couldn't have asked for a better training camp from him. Start to his preseason. He just zooms around the left tackle, ends up getting a sack in the game against the Raiders. I don't know if he's going to play. My guess would be no, because he took a ton of reps in these last couple of days, which I think they wanted to see from him as somebody that is going to probably play a pretty big role in this defense.

Metellus was very good today from my eye. Harrison Smith was causing a lot of problems. Just the confusion that you saw from quarterbacks last year with Flores, it seems to be even more now because they have just more talented players than I think they did last year. And the defense looked very strong. There was no way to come out of this and not say, you know what, this defense is going to have a chance to battle each week and they're going to have to do it because they're going to face some very good offenses to start the season, not against New York, but then after that they will, they're going to be tested, but if they're healthy in every place, except for Makai Blackman being out, then this defense could be stronger than it was last year. And that was really on display from what we saw here in Cleveland on the offensive side, a few things that I noticed. I just wrote Jefferson because always Jefferson.

But in the red zone drills, he was very, very good. Caught a couple of touchdowns. A lot of yapping back and forth after that with Cleveland's cornerback. And what I did notice today that didn't look very good yesterday was that they were running the ball pretty well. And Aaron Jones, Ty Chandler, this duo has a chance to be a huge upgrade on where they were last year. And Aaron Jones, we'll see what happens with his overall health.

And they have not given him a ton of reps throughout this entire training camp and preseason out of precaution because he's Aaron Jones and he's 29 years old. And once a running back hits 29, it's like any of us being 68 in their years. But he looks like he's got some juice to him still and some jump that he had at the end of last year when he was dominating for the Packers. And that showed up today. They got better blocking on the offensive line today. I thought that they had a better plan for Miles Garrett, where they got Josh Oliver hitting him a little bit more, and Oliver made a great catch today as well. He did yesterday. Also, one of their better plays was kind of a line drive down the middle of the field to Josh Oliver, and I'm really curious about

how they work that, whether we're going to see Oliver and Johnny month, whether Oliver is going to get more of the Hockets and reps. It's always felt like it was going to be months doing that, but Oliver has started to get in more involved in the receiving game. And I think that they always saw when they signed him and gave him a lot of money upside in Josh Oliver as a receiving option. He does catch the ball. He's got enormous hands and he uses them pretty well. I'm a little bit interested to see if he's on the field a lot more than he was last year. And if he's a little more involved in the receiving game because TJ Hawkinson is going to be out. So it was a good day for him on a couple of plays.

Tristan Jackson has just brought it during this entire camp and preseason. We talked about Tristan last year somewhat, and he ended up, if I'm not mistaken, he made the practice squad. He stuck around. Did he make the team? I thought it might've been the practice squad and eventually ended up on the roster. I think that's what happened last year, but he's a guy who's been around for several seasons and has developed himself into a receiver who can go deep. And he caught another deep ball today. That was from Nick Mullins, almost grabbed another one in the end zone. It was a two point conversion. He stands out almost every day. And there is a bit of a battle, I think, for the back end of the wide receiver group. And I want to talk more about kind of the battles,

but Lucky Jackson was good today. Lucky Jackson got a shout out for some kick return stuff for maybe some kick return blocking is what Kevin O'Connell was referring to. They did a lot of kick return stuff in this practice. And I'm curious about how the special teams would play into this. Now, the reps for the game kind of looked more like Trent Shurfield had a better chance. With Jordan Addison banged up, O'Connell talked after practice. I asked him about the receivers, and he was very complimentary of Shurfield. Brandon Powell, we know, is on this team. But Lucky Jackson getting the special team shout out might make a difference there.

Surefield has a toughness to his game, but he's been catching the ball more often and making plays had a nice catch in the end zone. If they have to choose between one, I'm curious who they go with. Surefield is probably a lot more in the NFL, or if they keep just the five receivers, if it's Naylor, Powell and Tristanistan or if they stretch it to six knowing that they may only keep three tight ends we still haven't seen Robert Tunyon come back so that might just end up being kind of a failure to launch for something that looks exciting early on in camp and in mini camp but Shurfield I think is making a case for himself and when we

talk about this preseason game which we can a little bit tonight, if you want, uh, yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the biggest things that I'm looking for is the battle for those receiver spots right now. It would be really hard not to put Tristan Jackson on this team, but if you're wide receiver five blocking in special teams, tackling in special teams, there's going to be a lot more kickoffs that could end up mattering quite a bit. Now, the, uh, unfortunate part of the day, as far as results go, uh, was the Darnold two minute drive. And this I thought was, is it, um, how, how, how can I phrase it? Like it was, uh, demonstrated the yin and the yang of Sam Darnold, right? Where in this two minute drive,

he drops back, throws a perfect pass to Brandon Powell and he's right there. And it looks like the drive's going to go. So the next play or maybe two plays later, there's a shot to Justin Jefferson. And then there's another one along the sideline. And then there's another incompletion to Jefferson and they lose the drill to the Browns defense. Three plays in a row, all pushing the ball to Justin Jefferson. He had one-on-one deep, so it made sense to go for it. Just barely overthrew him on an out route that was kind of giving Jefferson a chance and then forced the ball in the third one and it didn't end up working out. And I think in a lot of ways, this is where if Sam Darnold is going to be better than Sam Darnold has ever been,

then these types of things have to be shored up because it's a lot of decision-making over his career. When I went back and watched a lot of him in 2022, it was really decision-making over his career. When I went back and watched a lot of him in 2022, it was really decision-making that, that was problematic. And, you know, when we're talking about Sam Darnold, everybody brings up the saw ghosts and that's tough and unfair. I think in a lot of ways to Sam Darnold, to consistently bring that up over and over again. He said that it was on TV, whatever. It's not fair to him that it was just one quote that he said on the sideline. And then you end up with that being thrown in his face. But I also think that sometimes he can get a little bit locked into one thing. Sometimes he can force the ball to one place and often go back and identify, well,

actually I should have put the ball here. I should have gone to this person. I should have ducked it underneath instead, rather than, uh, you know, going for it, but it's always going back and talking about it as opposed to actually doing it in the game. A lot of times with Sam Darnold throughout his career. And I think that this is where they have to mitigate some of those issues or just live with them. That there will probably be a lot of times where he is just going to be forcing the ball toward Justin Jefferson. And I think that that's their best chance is if he's forcing the ball toward Justin Jefferson. But sometimes he could just hit the easier pass can they convince sam darnold that it's okay to just hit the easier pass that i

don't actually know uh that i i just don't know that you can undo that from him i'm trying to think of like another comparison for an athlete um i feel like it would be a golfer who always pulls the driver even when they know they should go with the three iron and hit it out into the middle or the hybrid i guess and hit it out in the middle of the fairway but they always go for the driver and he is sometimes when he has pushed the ball to justin jeff, it has resulted in some absolutely awesome plays that have been highlight reel and the team could tweet them out and they look super cool. But then other times, um, there has been, you know, I think spots, sorry, let me readjust here. There has been spots where he could have just taken the easier route. And that is something

that you'd like to see him doing. And I think when he goes back and he looks at what he saw today on the practice tape, that he'll probably say, yeah, I should have taken the easier route on a couple of those plays. And he did say that after practice. And I guess I just think that strap yourselves in is the way I would put it for Sam Darnold and what you're going to get, because now that we know you're going to get Sam Darnold for the rest of the season, and maybe they need to look at bringing somebody else in. I don't know if Ryan Tannehill is still interested in playing football or who else might still be out there or whether they could pick up another guy off another team. We know that they can't really make a trade with no draft capital, but they certainly could try to pick somebody else up that gets dropped by another team going into the season. But when it comes to Darnold, he's your quarterback. And you're going to have to just prepare yourself for this

because I, after today, am not convinced that he will play point guard. I think that's a thing that he is saying because he knows it's right. But can he actually make himself do it day in and day out? I don't really know. So it was only one drive, and it's something that they're going to look at. And it's also kind of told me a little bit too, that Sam Darnold's in this odd position where everybody else knows the offense better than him and has been in the scheme and he's still learning it and he's still commanding it.

And they're trying to bring them along and try to get them to fully understand where he should go with the football. And of course, Jefferson always wants a chance to make the plays. And he sort of joked like, I have a lot of tape that says it's a good idea to throw it up to me, but it's got to be in the ballpark. And this is another thing that Darnold has struggled with through his career is just the consistency with accuracy. Completion percentage is not a great stat for accuracy. I don't like that very much. A lot of time it's on scheme, but still at the same time, if you're completing under 60% of your passes, that's not good. Like that means that you've got some accuracy issues. And I thought all three throws to Jefferson, but especially two of them,

they could have been there and they just were a tick off. And it really shows you how tight the margins are. and so i'm kind of just preparing myself as far as with sam darnold to sometimes be very impressed and sometimes be like i don't know what happened there i don't know what happened there and uh i think what we saw from the defense means that this team would have a chance to still compete despite that roller coaster because their defense is going to be good. But the question is how good do they have to be? How healthy do they have to be? Do they need another corner that could get them over the top or are they still going to end up kind of stuck in the mud and stuck in the middle if that ends up happening? So a lot of

thoughts coming out of the, uh, the practices here. And if you guys want to start throwing in questions, comments for me to react to, hopefully this is working out. Okay. As far as a hotel wifi goes, it's giving me like no bars. So I'm hopeful, please somebody give me a thumbs up to let me know that it's going. Okay. Uh, looks like it on my end and a lot of you are watching. So, but it's just a constant struggle when it comes to, you know, the Marriott Wi-Fi. Well, thank you. I will do the ad read shortly enough. I appreciate that. I did not pull it up here. You guys are the best with that. I give you an assignment. What else can I have you guys do for me and not have me pay you? I'll get to that in a minute, but let me get to.

Let me get to some of the roster stuff where position battles stand. If you guys just want me to go through it. Oh, good. Good to hear that the audio and video are fine. Appreciate that. Thank you very much. So I'm just going to go through quickly positions, position by position with maybe a thought or two about where we stand going into the final preseason game and what some of the battles might be after we've now really seen a lot of reps in the way that I believe they want to design the lineup. the offensive line, what I'm really curious about is whether Dalton Reisner actually makes this team or if they would consider someone else. Tyrese Robinson is a guy that hasn't really got any

discussion, but took a lot of reps with the second team. And I think Dan Feeney was maybe out today. I'd have to go back and check, but the offensive line, there might be some surprises there. Michael Juergens has a good chance to make the team, and there might be, if it's Dalton Reisner or Feeney, somebody that they don't stick with on the second team that maybe we expected. It just feels like there's more of a battle there than I gave it credit for initially, where it looked like it was just all set. Good to go, but maybe Robinson has a chance to make it a guard he's someone we haven't really talked about at all other than that blake brandle took every

single rep he's your left guard we've always thought that but this made it very clear that blake brandle is your left guard he looked okay to me uh during this last two days, maybe not as much in the first day, but today I thought, and look, I'm evaluating an offensive lineman from, you know, the sideline, but yeah, I thought he came along, uh, in the offensive line was a lot better today, but that group may have a little bit of a surprise as far as the wide receivers go talked about that a bit, but I am really interested to see, do they want to keep Tristan Jackson? Do they want to keep Lucky Jackson, who's had a really good training camp, and Trent Shurfield? I think those guys have separated themselves. It's really unfortunate that Thayer Thomas got hurt. He had a concussion yesterday,

but they were thankful that it wasn't more. The way he went down was a little bit scary, but ends up being a concussion for him, which may count him out. And Thayer, I thought, was having a good run and may have been a practice squad guy. Wasn't likely to make the team, but it's really Shurfield, Jackson, other Jackson that are battling for spots there.

In the backfield, Kenny Wongwu had a big run in the game. He's going to be the kick returner it was a lot of aaron jones and ty chandler and as far as duane mcbride they might want to look just for someone else uh who gets released someone else that they might potentially like from another team another free agent if they want one more guy there because mcbride doesn't really look like an nfl player to me um so that's kind of the offensive side, the tight ends. It's unfortunate with Robert Tunyon, but now at this point he would have to come back and there's not really training camp practices in the same way after this. Um, technically it's still training camp, but after the second preseason game, it is now

onto week one mode. And I don't think that there's enough time for Robert Tunyon to make his case. Maybe they'll release some sign him back to the practice squad, which you can do. Um, you know, so, uh, Rob, uh, yeah, Brandel over Reisner for sure. It's, it's a hundred percent Blake Brandel. He's never taken anything except for a first team, uh, rep, uh, Brandel has not taken any with the backups. Reisner has not taken any with the starters. And I guess I was wondering if they might keep one of the younger players and move on from Dalton Reisner. They did not give him much money to come here, to return here. And if he's not happy with his situation, he did miss some practices.

They might just decide that there's somebody better. And that's why I was looking at Tyrese Robinson, who had a very good preseason game as a pass protector. I don't, I don't know that that's not like sources or anything. It's just, I'm wondering if there's a bit of a surprise potentially on the offensive line. So with the tight ends, I think we're pretty much set there. It's just unfortunate for Robert Tunyon that he got that injury, but that allowed Nick Muse to step into a role where he's been pretty good. And we know one and two are going to be month Oliver. And then when Hawkinson comes back

on the defensive line, uh, that one, I think that Jihad Ward is going to make the team that was on my initial 53. I did not have him because there's always a veteran signing that just doesn't make it and i thought well maybe that's going to be this is the kendall right or this is the daytona jones or something a guy we've kind of heard of but just doesn't make it but the way that they were using him in certain packages makes me think that he will be in and they'll probably try to add the other guys to the practice squad. Gabriel Murphy hasn't been practicing. And on the interior, Levi Drake Rodriguez, I didn't see taking a lot of first team reps here.

I think that may have been to get him a lot more experience in some of the practices where Jerry Tillery wasn't there because they want him. What they usually want from a backup is to emulate the starter. And I think that Levi Drake Rodriguez can be sort of the backup Jerry Tillery, but he's not likely to jump right in there and start. Uh, they will have a decision to make on someone like Jaqueline Roy. It might be a little surprising if they cut him after one year, but I just have not seen him really step up to the challenge. He had a very tough game against the Raiders. So I don't know if they're going to end up keeping him. And that group with Bullard Phillips and Tillery is really set there. Trying to think if anybody else has really stood out on the defensive line, not so much other than Levi Drake Rodriguez on

the interior. And they've had kind of a lot of guys battling for those spots so that they'll probably keep maybe one more other than that. Maybe Jaqueline Roy doesn't end up staying. It still has a weakness. I think the starters are stronger than they were last year. Now that Levi Drake Rodriguez is there. And I think Jerry Tillery, uh, has looked good these last couple of days. Linebackers should be pretty well set. Kamu Grugier-Hill and Brian Asamoah should be the backups. I think that other edge rushers on that front seven and linebackers are probably going to end up...

Oh, James Lynch. That's the one. Yeah. I'm going off the dome here because if I open a new window, I know it's going to melt this Wi-Fi. James Lynch, I think, has a decent chance to make the team. Yeah, I'm going off the dome here because if I open a new window, I know it's going to melt this Wi-Fi. James Lynch, I think, has a decent chance to make the team. Yeah, I think so. Because they're going to need backups for kind of each guy's role.

And James Lynch did a pretty good job a couple years ago. Feels like he's had a decent enough training camp at preseason game, it can be really hard from the sideline to see the interior without a video camera right over top showing you what's happening on the interior every time. That's hard to see. So it's a little more difficult to figure out. But based on reps, James Lynch has been getting in there quite a bit. I would say that he has a decent chance to make it where it gets kind of interesting. Well, the safety room, Lewis scene, I don't think is going to make the team. I think they're going to keep Theo Jackson there and end up with the five or the four safeties and maybe Bobby McCain. They'll have to maybe choose between those guys. Uh, the four safeties would kind of make sense to stick with. Bobby McCain has been

in a lot, taking a lot of reps and he has some versatility to his game. Could see that. And on the corner position, a lot of J ward, Dwight Mcglethern was out there. I mentioned Dwight Mcglethern had a nice pick. I think that if Stefan Gilmore doesn't sign here, then, you know, a guy like Dwight Mcglethern should make it and a Caleb Evans, Byron Murphy, Shaq Griffin, and that's kind of going to be your group. I don't know about Duke Shelley.

He seems like a veteran who gets cut and then gets added to the practice squad. Jay Ward, that's the thing about Jay Ward. He's now a corner. So where does that fit with their numbers? But if they just count kind of defensive backs he might get the spot that they would have maybe gone to lewis scene that's yeah that's tough that group and then of course you have the punter battle which i'm not sure it looks like ryan wright is leading the punter battle and the reason i think that is because he's done all the holding, um, uh, not as in holding people, but as in holding the football for Will Reichard and Will Reichard is the kicker. There was no question about that. And he was great today. Just absolutely great

today at kicking. So that's kind of my thoughts, but I mean, obviously you guys know the roster. Well, maybe some of you could open it up in a tab and ask any questions about it because I was kind of just going off of the top there of my memory from how things were looking today lineup wise and what my expectations are. So let me go back to the top and we'll go through your questions and comments. Hunter saw a nice Josh Oliver highlight any chance that he gets involved in the past game. I do think that I do think that I don't believe that TJ Hawkinson is the only one who can catch balls in this scheme because this scheme is going to draw a lot of attention to that number one wide receiver

and the number two wide receiver. So that allows for the tight ends to get a lot of open space underneath. And Josh Oliver has proven that he can go a little more down the middle and a little more downfield than you would expect for a guy as massive as him. And he is a humongous human being, but he's also such a good blocker. And one of the things about Sam Darnold is if he has a clean pocket and he has time to throw, he can really deliver the football. They might actually want to use Josh Oliver in six-man pass protections a little bit more if they can, a little more too tight end possibly with Josh Oliver than we saw last year.

But he caught some balls last year. He only had really the one memorable fumble because that was a really good play. And then he lost the football but he can catch i didn't feel like when they were throwing it to him he was dropping it or struggling the last two camps he's shown that yeah i think he should be a little more involved uh ben how does brando look that's huge for sure but is he getting pushed around or beat easily in past protection i didn't think that i I did not think that Blake Brandel was getting dominated or has struggled at all really during this camp. There were a couple of plays in the preseason game

that I didn't love from him, including one time he tried to pull and just sort of went down with his head and the guy went right by him. The margins are thin with somebody like that. Uh, what I would say about Brandel is I don't view him as someone who could be a potential difference maker, but I also have not thought this is a liability. I haven't been, been seeing him get beat so often or struggling so much in the run game that it's just pathetic and they're going to struggle

because of it. It looks very average to me. It looks like sometimes if the guy makes a good move or gets underneath his pads, he can be moved a bit. Although he really does anchor him. So he's huge. He's like six, seven. Uh, so he, I think because he was a tackle and a really good pass blocker that he can anchor himself against stronger defensive tackles. But the movement in the run game is not amazing because he is so huge. It all looks kind of replacement level, but if it's average, we talk about this all the time, then you can work around that.

They need that from the left and the right guard. And the right guard. And the right guard at Ingram was not impressive in the preseason game. So far in training camp, hard for me to say that I can figure out whether he's going to be different or not, but the guards remain an issue. Has he looked competent? I think so. I think that Blake Brandel has justified them wanting Blake Brandel over Dalton Reisner and also made you wonder if they should have spent a little more money for some of the guards that were out there, but guards got huge prices. That'll probably keep happening. Maybe that's a next year thing,

depending on how he plays. Uh, Topaz had a friend, uh, who had the car when I was in high school, uh, of all the unknowns unknowns what do you want to see answered the most before week one it's a good question I think it's most still probably the wide receiver position that I want to see answered and that's the one thing that we can easily evaluate in the preseason game still one thing we know for sure is that Nick Mullins is going to throw that football and I think Nick Mullins is going to play a lot. They need to evaluate these players. So they need someone who's going to throw him the ball. And at this moment, I just don't trust Jaron Hall to really do that. So I would think that the first half of the game would probably,

uh, probably end up going to, uh, Nick Mullins. I think, I think Kevin O'Connell didn't make any announcements like that, but I want to see Shurfield, Lucky Jackson, more of Tristan Jackson. These guys have all been pretty good at different times in training camp. And I think that's a really close battle for who makes the 53. I don't know that there's a lot of other questions to be answered at this point though, as we go into the second preseason game it feels like after this joint practice that we've got a really good sense and then it might be just preference for the coaching staff between one guy or another at the 52nd spot the 53rd spot lewis lewis seen and how they feel about him there doesn't feel like there's a ton left to be

resolved uh which corners they keep on the back end do they add gilmore i mean that's probably another one do they add gilmore so if i guess if i was going with two of them that's not the punting competition come on we got to find out what's going to happen there although that i think is pretty resolved as well then uh i would, I would like to know, are they going to add another corner? Are they going to add another running back? Like who else could come in here? And then who's making the backend of that wide receiver situation because they've all been good. Uh, let's see. Um, Todd says, uh, you keep mentioning playoffs. They'll be lucky to win one of their first seven games. Well, you know, the thing is, Todd, that when you have a team that's well coached, and I'll

just use at the end of last year as an example with those Mullins games against the Lions, I just have a tough time seeing them lose all the games that they're not going to be favored in. Now, could they win six games because Sam Darnold isn't good? Yeah. I mean, that's very possible. You could have a good roster top to bottom that with average quarterback play would win nine games and then not get it. And that is something that, you know, I said, prepare yourself, strap in because a lot of outcomes are possible. I'm not running away from the outcome that Sam

Darnold is just bad. And they end up, like you said, winning one of their first six games. And then they would have to deal with that. That's not what I've seen in training camp. What I've seen is some very exciting highlight plays and some other times where I went, okay, that's, yeah, that's not great. And if there's that, then they're going to need some really good defensive performances in those first few games. I look at it as if you win three out of the first seven, you're in pretty good shape. Can you beat the Jets? I don't know what's left of Aaron Rodgers.

Can you take maybe a game against the line? Surprise them. Packers, it's always 50-50 with the Packers. Can you take week one, but you're, you're not wrong when you look at their schedule and go, who would pick them to win? And I remember, I think it was Mike clay was on the show and we were talking about this. He projects every single game. And I think the Vikings had other than the giants, every single game was projected to be a loss. Um, their defense is good enough to surprise and win some games. It's also the NFL. Everyone is so good that if you are an average team, your chances to beat a good team are still good. It's still 55, 45.

Uh, if they go three and four, then they're staying around in the race and they'll have a chance to get back in it in the second half of the season. If it's anything less than three, then you may end up being right. It could look pretty, pretty tough. Uh, let's see from Evan. So McLaughlin for Mr. Mankato, Hmm. Mr. Mankato. Yeah, that's a, well, I, I gotta tell you, it's gotta be Will Reichard. If he, if Will Reichard goes out and he's a sixth round pick very much qualifies for Mr. Mancato. If he goes out because I'm, I'm trying to think if there's any real true surprises on the roster. I don't think so. Tristan Jackson got in a game last year. It's been around long enough. I don't

think he counts as Mr. Mankato. Will Reichardt, I was standing right underneath the goalpost when he was warming up today. And so he was kicking right directly at me and right over my head, right through the middle of the goalpost time and time again, he just put on a show and then five for five today, a long of 52. He has gotten a lot of buzz from us. He made his game winning kick. Well, the game winning kick, if he kicks even decently in these next two games, it's Will Reichert is my pick for Mr. Mankato. Skull Vikings says, do you think that the Vikings are more likely to make the playoffs or have a top five pick? See, this one's hard. After I watched the defense play, make the playoffs. But then

after I watched the offense play, I might say. But then after I watched the offense play, I might say against the Browns, this is the best defense in the league and the Browns, or at least top three, top five. Then you're like, well, it's up. I pick if you're asking more likely, sadly, the more likely outcome is that they would have a top five pick. That's just a fact because the quarterback that they have is career winning percentage would suggest i think he's won maybe two out of every five games in his career and numbers wise that that's more of a type of if he has an average season for his standards then you are going to be picking very high. Or the other thing to think about is Darnold has been banged up a couple times

in his career, as a lot of quarterbacks are. If he gets hurt, well, then you're in one of those San Francisco seasons where they had to start Nick Mullins for the entire year. So the answer is more likely to be a top five pick because you can have one or two things go wrong. Justin Jefferson gets banged up. We saw it with Jordan Addison, and the offense was better today for sure with the backup wide receivers, but Addison went out and was, Whoa, this is not a scary, a bunch of bunch of guys

here. Any setbacks for Hawkinson, any injuries on defense, which right now is actually quite healthy outside of the ACL injury to a Mackayay blackman but if there are three injuries on defense if it's granard van ginkel and somebody else josh metellus or something you're in trouble because it's not the deepest i think it's a much deeper defense than it's been before but it's still not the deepest where you could just lose star players and be fine. They don't have the quarterback that is the driving force. That's just going to win you games because he's that guy. You have to make a bet for making the playoffs that he will outperform anything he's ever done before. I think that he will based on what I've seen or that he can based on what I've seen. But if you were asking me to

put odds on it, it's probably not that likely either way. It might be make the playoffs 30% chance, miss the playoffs, or I'm sorry, top five pick 20% chance. And then the rest is all what we think somewhere in the middle. Uh, Skoll Vikings, when will the Stefan Gilmore sign with the Vikings at this moment? It doesn't look like he's going to, I get the sense that he is looking at some other teams and he'll probably go through whatever process he wants to go through, uh, make sure the training camp is over so he can just jump right in. Maybe they snuck them a playbook. Maybe they went to one of those printer things and printed it out and just gave it to him. Stuff this in your bag on the way out. Make sure you go study it so you can come back. But, uh,

no, I, I don't know it right now. It feels not that likely that he signs just because he hasn't done it yet. And I'm sure that he left the building with a pretty good idea of how much the Vikings were willing to pay him. And my guess is that he went to whoever else he wants to sign him and said, this is the type of offer that I've got. Uh, that's just, that's just how I might expect it to have gone with Gilmore. But I don't know if he really wants to play football and the Vikings are the only ones that are putting a legitimate offer on the table, he may come here. I would guess within the next two weeks. But remember, Dalton Reiser didn't sign until what, week three?

It can still happen in the middle of the season. There's no real timeline on those things. Blue Stork, odds on Rodriguez making the team. How does he look? Levi Drake Rodriguez has looked really good. I think his odds of making the team are extremely high. Usually guys do not go into first team reps and get a lot of work today. He looked, he walked by me at the end of practice. He looked like he had had a full practice. You know, he got a ton of work this week. He's gotten a ton of work in the game. They like what they see in Levi Drake Rodriguez. And I also think that other people like what they see as well. You saw some of the quickness when he got that, was it a sack or a QB hit? I think it was a sack in the game. Uh, he's, I think he's going to make the team. I think he's a pretty good chance of that.

Uh, David, how is the team's demeanor? You know, these these guys a lot of them are really trained to just keep going as far as demeanor wise everyone we talked to said pretty much the same thing about jj mccarthy it's not good everyone's sad they wanted to see him play they loved his swag they liked where he was going and i don't recall maybe it was was, uh, was it Sam Darnold, either Sam Darnold or Justin Jefferson was talking about how, you know, all the things that he showed and, you know, the right track that he was on. It's just, everyone's disappointed because of that. It must've been Darnold that was talking about all the things he could learn while he wasn't playing. And that's a major part. Like it's been put in perspective

that, you know, he's going to come back. He's going to be fine. He's going to go forward as the franchise quarterback. When players go down, I think there's maybe a day of, oh man, gosh, that's bad. And then, all right, you know, moving on, moving on next day, next man up. That's, that's what they've always been trained to do. Every one of them has been on the field for guys who get hurt. They've seen guys go through rehabs. This is football injuries happen all the time in football. I don't think that McCarthy getting injured was soul crushing to everyone because they knew that Sam Darnold was going to be the quarterback anyway. it's more of just frustrating and disappointed. If Jordan Addison had gone out, maybe the demeanor of the team would have changed

a little bit, but they're, they're resilient people. They're going to keep working on through this. It's just, you know, sometimes at some point it starts to add up, but once Addison was not a terrible injury, then I think they were okay. Like almost, whoa, we got a good break and felt better today. But getting that news yesterday, some players hadn't gotten the news yet, which we discovered. But most of the team, anyway, that knew, got the news yesterday. And then that was tough to go out there and then watch

addison get hurt i think that did hurt the demeanor of the team a little bit but for the most part they move on people get hurt remember 2017 you had sam bradford and delvin cook get hurt they you still got to play the games so they went out there and played to their strength. George says, if we score 17 and they score 14, or we score 31 and opponent 28, my advanced analysis says we win either way. Well, that's true, George. That's some really good analytics.

Maybe 2024 is the year of 17 to 14. My question is, can Sam Darnold play in a way that would win you 17 to 14 games? Or can Kevin O'Connell call games from play calling that will win you 17 to 14 games? Because I honestly think with the defense the way that it is, you can win some games that way. Maybe even a lot of games that way. What it looks like against actual other competition. Because you never really know until you see them play somebody else. And then once you see that, then you get a better feeling for, okay, this is how it's going to look when the other team's

really trying to beat you, as opposed to maybe you caught a glimpse of the script that the offense is going to use today, or you've seen these plays before that the offense is working on and you can kind of get a little bit of an advantage, you know, all the players you're going against, but to see it so dominant today, even against an offense that I don't expect to be great. It's like, okay, maybe some lower scoring games wouldn't be the worst thing in the entire world, but can Kevin Oconnell who didn't really want to adjust his offense last year can he adjust his offense to play in a way that's going to protect sam darnold from himself that i'm not convinced because he didn't do it with josh dobbs and he didn't do it with nick mullins those guys aired it out but maybe maybe they'll go 31-28 the defense will still be good but it's because of all the interceptions i

don't know i think this team could play in a more defensive style or maybe should with aaron jones in the backfield uh we'll see if that's something they actually want to do though they have been run a ton of play actions and stuff like that in practice maybe that's going to be part of it but i i think that o'connell is going to be be O'Connell and they're going to be a passing team still. Real quick, since I was reminded about the ad reads and didn't get to them yet, let's start with U.S. Cellular. U.S. Cellular, presenter of the show, appreciate them. They noticed that the way that we use our phones is ironic. We try to put our phones down for dinner, but the menu is on a QR code, which is ironic. We hit the like button on social media posts that we don't actually like.

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$250 bonus cash. So there you go. There are the sponsors of the show and hopefully there are more. Hopefully we have to do two ad breaks at some point because there are so many. All right, let me carry on. Uh, let's see. Um, Mike, the bike says, says, Sam Darnold seems so nervous in front of the media. How is he around his teammates and in the huddle? So I think that Sam Darnold came out of college at 20 years old and went to the most difficult media market in the world to play in, in New York, and really makes a strong effort to not make headlines, which I think is the training. If you are in New York, even with someone like Eli Manning, who we know has a huge personality, he was not a quote machine in New York because you just have to kind of be that way. And even today, someone asked like, how good do you think this offense can be? And he just went right into cliche mode. So when he is asked questions that are a little more direct, I think he's pretty good at answering them, but any sense of, are you looking for a headline here? He's going to clam right up, which I totally understand that defense mode. I think

Kirk cousins got to be really good at understanding that it's, you know, it's Minnesota and the fans really connect with the players a lot and like personality and those kinds of things. And he got to be much more comfortable with that. Maybe Sam Darnold will as well, as he gets to know us, as he gets to know the fans and fan base, but he's not a huge personality guy. Like what we saw from JJ McCarthy was big personality, big personality out there, jumping, running around, celebrating, dapping guys up. I don't see quite that same outgoing nature of Sam Darnold. A lot of the guys were familiar with him or knew him before he got here and have talked about how they like him a lot and they've hung out with him

and he's been somebody that they've known and respected for a while. And I think he's been a pro, very much a pro is how I would describe it. I don't see a huge, huge personality, but he's come in and acted like a pro. And there's a lot of credit that needs to be given there, but I don't see him as like a rah-rah type of, let's go and all this sort of stuff jumping around. That's not really who he is. I think he's more of a, an even keeled type of guy and look to go through what he's gone through in New York and Carolina to come out on the other side and have a team still believe in his talent. I mean, you gotta be, you gotta be even keeled for that. I don't think you can wear things too heavy. Like Christian Ponder, you know, couldn't survive in

the league as a backup. I think he just carried around the fact that he didn't succeed, but Darnold, he just keeps moving on. So I look at him as being at the podium, maybe a little bit of a challenge to get, you know get a detailed answer out of him because he is in kind of the mode of, okay, I'm not going to say too much. Also, I don't want to be making headlines or anything like that. Keeps it kind of low key. That's fine. And we'll see how it goes from here. No problem for me when it comes to that but his teammates seem to relate to him really well i think what is going to be something i'm watching for is just how the offense is managed by a guy who's still learning it when everybody else still knows it and garrett bradbury was talking to us about about this about how he was kind of working with sam and making suggestions about hey let's

change up the cadence. Let's do this for a protection call, something like that, communicating with Sam and that guidance might end up turning out to be valuable from Garrett Bradbury because he's been in this offense for a couple of seasons. Um, and it's, I think it's a very difficult offense to just walk into and say, I'm the man here because look, we know who the man here is, right? It's Justin Jefferson. Aaron Jones comes in right away with a lot of personality, a lot of leadership quality. So I think if Sam Darnold just does his job and throws the ball where it's supposed to go, makes a few plays here and there that he could be really

effective here. Takes a journeyman quarterback type of mindset i just don't see him doing it and i don't see him doing it in practice i see him trying to air it out and make big plays but i mean maybe when we get in the games it'll be a little bit different but when he said you know i'm just trying to play point guard and stuff i thought oh yeah though that makes a lot of sense with the team that you're on and then we see today now i'm going deep to Jefferson. Okay. It could be very Mullens-y. It could be.

But, you know, if it's Mullens-y from last year, entertainment value is going to be high. And so are interception totals. Todd says you can't have a top 10 defense with two poor positional groups. Other teams exploit the weaknesses. Flores isn't touched by the hand of God. Well, I don't believe that I suggested Brian Flores is touched by the hand of God, but they had a lot of weakness on their defense last year. Somebody tell me where they ranked in points.

It was pretty good, right? It wasn't that far away from the top 10, even though they had those injuries at the end of the season and they had weaknesses all season long, even a weaker cornerback group than last year. I think what they had last year was worse than it even is now with Fabian Morrow here, who's at least played in the league and has been okay at times. I mean, maybe because Blackman was there, but they only played him something like 400 snaps.

So, yeah, I mean, when it comes to the defensive tackles, that's an interesting one because I'm sure that that's what you're saying. Defensive tackle and corner are two very weak positional groups. And I mostly agree with that, but Harrison Phillips was a well above average player when he got here and did through his first year. He was grading in the top 20 by PFF. It was really only last year where he struggled. And now if there's more guys there to rotate in with him and he doesn't have to play 800 snaps, that helps. Jerry Tillery has been good for this team. I'm not saying it's not below average and they don't have a beast there, but those guys kind of do their role and stuff the run and create

lanes for blitzers. it can still be somewhat effective it's really hard to make up for the cornerback group so i mean i don't disagree when you're talking about having weaknesses of that much to be a top 10 defense i'd put them in the fringe of the top 10 right now because their linebacker group see you say that but the linebacker group is or pairing is one of the best maybe in the league. If Ivan Pace continues to where he's going and then the safety group has to be the best in the entire NFL. So does that balance it out with some of the weaknesses? I don't know.

I guess we're going to find out. They play a lot of good quarterbacks. I think it's reasonable to say fringe top 10 sloth. What's the pecking order for wide receiver five Tristan or Trent man. Tristan has just been so good. He's made play after play. I'll admit I was a fishing a little bit when I asked, uh, today, Kevin O'Connell about the wide receivers and he praised them all, but they were all good. I was trying to find out maybe who he thought got a little bit of an edge there. Trent Shurfield has some toughness to him that I really like. Tristan Jackson just keeps making plays and Tristan Jackson might be a legit deep threat.

I mean, he's been making a lot of plays in the deep game. I don't know. I think that's going to be a very difficult decision. They might think that it's easier to get Tristan Jackson back to the practice squad again. Now you can just keep putting guys in the practice squad. I don't know if there's a limit to how many years you could be on it anymore. There used to be, I think it was two, but now you can put veterans on it. Whoever they cut, I think is just ending up on the practice squad. I would be surprised if someone picked up Trent Shurfield or Tristan Jackson or even Lucky Jackson. But I'll be very curious, though.

I think, gosh, it's hard. I think it would be Tristan Jackson right now or they keep six. But that's hard to work out on a 53-man roster. Trent Shurfield has really come along. I didn't notice him hardly at all early in camp, but he's come along. Mike says that I see lewis scene get a pick today i didn't see it i thought he maybe almost got one i did not see him actually intercept the ball but maybe maybe i didn't have a good angle on a play maybe you saw a highlight i on

a twitter i didn't see that it's just hard to find a spot on this team for lewis scene it still is they gave him a lot of reps and they gave him a lot of reps in preseason. But if you're talking about a guy who is a first round pick, that's this far into his career, can't get on the field and has taken a ton of second team reps this deep into his career. It's just hard to see. It's maybe they would cut McCain and keep him and hope for some upside but it feels like it's probably over uh mike mcglothern seems to be one of our better corners what the way that i would qualify it is mcglothern has shown a lot of promise as far as one of the better corners maybe one of the more talented corners but i don't know if he is better right now than a Fabian Morrow. Definitely not that

Byron Murphy, probably not than a Caleb Evans because he's going to need a little more experience before he can get to that spot. But one thing I just noticed consistently is the guy knows how to play the football. He did not have amazing athletic scores coming out of college, but he's just always kind of playing the ball, getting PBUs, interceptions. And that's something that is a very good skill. That's maybe captain obvious, but it's a very important skill for transferring that over to actual games, but guarding wide receivers all the time through an entire season as an undrafted free agent. Not everybody can be the next Ivan Pace, I think. What I would do is keep Dwight McClother on the back end of the roster, have him play special teams, learn about the NFL,

and hope that next year he takes another step and becomes somebody that they can go to. That's how usually it goes with UDFAs. It usually doesn't go the way that uh it went with ivan pace that was really something uh reconnected how did beau richter look in cleveland i'm going to tell you the truth i didn't pay a lot of attention to beau richter specifically i'll say this uh beau richter is the type of guy who always catches everybody's eye and everybody always root for and you should. You should root for Bo Richter, but he's also somebody that you can very easily put on the practice squad, develop and see if there's anything there next year.

There's a lot more experienced players like Jihad Ward who are more likely to make the team at that position than Richter. He did a good job in the preseason game. It was also late in the preseason game when he was doing it. Um, so, you know, Paul's asking, do Richter Levi and McClother make the 53? I definitely have Levi Drake Rodriguez on the 53 McClother. And if they don't sign Stefan Gilmore is on the 53 for me, I believe Richter would not be just just signing the practice squad i mean it's just unlikely that you're going to lose somebody like that that they're going to get picked up and even if you do the upside and he's a good athlete but the upside

is unlikely to be a starter at that position i mean those are the guys that are starters at the that position are usually dallas turner or guys that you spend a lot of money or high draft capital on not to downplay how good he's he's been he's stuck out to me a number of times but I think it's going to be hard to find a 53 spot for him total practice squad guy that can start working his way up uh high times kg says would have loved to have had tier tart tart i'll tell you tierre tart is a beast he is a really good player and for some reason teams keep getting rid of him i i don't know i don't know not with the way this team does things there are some teams that always bring in those types of guys and sometimes it works and they said he wasn't a scheme fit

i don't buy that tier tart's a really good player more likely is that he wasn't a personality fit and they just said go away he was the one who got thrown out of joint practices with tennessee they released him mid-season after i watched him in practice i was like whoa they got rid of that guy but then he didn't stick anywhere else i i think there must be something more to that story so i'm gonna pass on tier tart though very good player very very good player uh luis how does garrett bradbury look garrett bradbury's not going to look different than he's ever looked before he's going to have more responsibility and i'm curious about that as he leads a new

quarterback but the strengths are the strengths and the weaknesses are the weaknesses what I'd like to see with uh Garrett Bradbury I just mean that they're not going to change I think he put on some weight this year it's just not going to change I thought the last two years though uh is he him developing into a pretty solid NFL center. He still got mauled by Kenny Clark, as he always does, but I would take him over maybe a third or half of the league at center when you consider his leadership and how he's grown into this system, how he's played a lot better in this system. His run blocking, I think, is okay.

It's not maybe the perfect fit for this scheme. I'd like to see them get him out on screen some more like they did maybe early in his career when it was Kevin Stefanski and Gary Kubiak. I would like to see that. He's a little better when it comes to the zone blocking. I think he put on extra weight so he could do the other blocking. But that weight, off a season, it doesn't stick normally for guys who don't carry it like that but overall there are a lot worse players in the league he started off his career with a lot of problems in pass protection especially but i

think he's learned some craftiness around that after 2021 it was kind of a i think a wake up call for him i think that's what he maybe called it when he got benched for mason cole and he's been a lot better under kevin o'connell so i don't think it's different it's it remains a question mark with that whole interior three but he's probably the most stable of the three uh melka mel kill sorry mel kill uh do you think koc said mccarthy's out for the year to cover himself seems like a long time for a young stud with a meniscus maybe set up for heroic comeback at the end of the year i suppose it's possible i saw that being bandied about uh earlier today on the internet i i don't i don't know uh he was first, when then we were first going over it,

the whole thing with, is it going to be the short term? Is it going to be the longterm? Uh, I was looking back at the people who had had the longterm, uh, in the season. And sometimes they were able to come back toward the end of the season. Adrian Peterson really pushed himself to come back in week 14 and he was terrible. And then he stopped playing after that. So there wasn't really a great comeback. It was one game against Indianapolis that went horribly. And then he stopped playing. Uh, that's not really inspiring for McCarthy. Here's the part where they might be thinking out for the year saying out for the year is, are you going to bring a quarterback in that hasn't had any of the footwork, any of the reps, any of the torque throwing off of his knee or his leg for an entire year for six months or four

months or whatever it is, and then tell him to go in and play a game. Wouldn't you rather have him just go through the entire off season? Now, maybe they could have it be all week 18. JJ's back. He's going to play, I guess, but I think I would rather, I would rather JJ McCarthy just take the whole year off rather than pushing it and trying to come back at the end of the season and end up not looking good, not being confident. You might want his last game to be really good in that preseason game. That might've been something they talked about. And they have, in a few instances, held a player out maybe longer than when they could have come back jaylen nailer now that was a concussion situation but it's just maybe a

precedent last year they didn't bring him back in i think maybe he could have come back in based on where he was at but maybe just a better idea because i had the same thought when o'connell said out for the year and i went out for the year. Okay. That's unusual based on what I think the timeline is, but he may have just said, why would you push someone to come back in week 14 or 15 when they could just take their time with this rehab, take their time learning, then go into the off season at 100% and not have any risk of banging up again. That's another part too, is that if you try to bring him back at the end of the season, what if he gets hurt? And then you're talking about a whole off season wasted. And now we're

just in hell. If that happens, you might rather just put them on ice and see what happens next year. Uh, blue stork has tied. James been a person at all. He is a person. I can't remember if you've mentioned him at all. He is definitely a person, but unfortunately, no, I haven't really noticed him for the entire training camp. Uh, maybe a candidate for the practice squad if they like something that they've seen there, but I just haven't seen him making plays or really even getting out there. Uh, the number threes don't get a lot of work he has not gotten a lot of work it's hard to pop in a pre-season game when your quarterback jaron hall just can't operate the offense really at all against las vegas so yeah he's one of those

guys that gets attention when he gets here the mercer it would be fun but it just uh haven't seen a whole heck of a lot that would make me think, uh, that anything was going to go anywhere there. I think he's going to get cut and that will probably be it for him. Uh, but we'll see. Let's see. Uh, Rob says any update on Hawkinson? There has not been, he hasn't done anything in practice. There hasn't been any steps that have been taken. We asked a few weeks ago to Kevin O'Connell, and he said that he was ahead of schedule, but he kind of always thinks people are ahead of schedule. And that's the best I got.

I just would not expect TJ Hockinson anytime really soon, because as we sit here right now on the 15th, he would have to start getting back fast to be going for week one I suspect it's more down the road a little bit in the season a couple weeks into the year uh Brian says assuming the Vikings don't play offensive starters and remaining preseason games what will you look at to see how the offense is progressing before the start of the season. There really isn't a ton more that I can look at after this. I think we get another week of open practices to the media. If I'm not mistaken, I try to remember how the schedule cadence works, but I think we get one more week that's open where there's no fans and that's it. And they're starting to put in the offense at that point,

not really trying out for jobs anymore. Um, So you're looking for just how they look. Are they ready? Do they look close? But, you know, sometimes the haze in the barn a little bit here. And we'll start to talk about some bigger topics, start to get some more guests on next week, because this, for all intents and purposes, was the end of the evaluation period of this whole thing now it's they're going to start getting ready to play games and the team is the team and i remember last year no two years ago kirk cousins had about the worst practice i've ever seen him have in front of us we were actually in tco stadium for some reason he threw like five picks it was horrible it was one of the last that was open to the media. And we went to Kirk after and he was frustrated and we were like, what the heck was that? And he came out and destroyed the Green Bay Packers in that first game. I mean, at this point, we can't make too much of these final practices.

Everything's pretty much installed. They're going to go back home and start preparing for what they're going to do against the New York giants. And that's where we're going to be. Um, so there's not much more to look for. It's really kind of watching the preseason games and seeing who stands out, seeing if anybody changes the narrative about them, see if any of the receivers stand out. I'm actually going to take a much closer look now that I don't have to watch JJ McCarthy in the games. I'll take a much closer look at the offensive line and the backup defensive line and how they're used in the preseason and what that might mean. But from here on, the practices are going to be starters going against starters, and they're going to be working

on stuff for the New York Giants. And these preseason games are basically going to be starters going against starters and they're going to be working on stuff for the New York Giants and these preseason games are basically going to be who's got a jersey that we don't really care about this year you go play especially the third one maybe a little bit but the thing is if you matter you were practicing your butt off over these last two days so even these last two preseason games are going to be and I'm going to do post game, but it's not going to be a long one because there's not going to be a whole lot to talk about. I'm sorry, everyone. I think JJ McCarthy could have made it very entertaining, but unfortunately it's not.

It's not going to happen this year. Next year training camp though. I'll be there. You'll be here. Subscribe, do whatever. Make sure you're here. Let me scroll a little bit here um let's see evan says when addison sustaining a minor injury that may sideline him until week one is a big break yeah i know that's just where we're at man that's just where we're at uh let me

dispel some fake news a little bit of a little bit of fake news in the old uh timeline here george says i hate the fact koc had to beg jim schwartz not to be physical with his offense the vikings are so small and weak that is not true that's not what happened so let me tell you what happened thayer thomas went kind of on an out route and the ball went his way and he went down, he hit his head on the ground and he was knocked out. Now, last night, I didn't want to say for sure. I thought it was a concussion because I wasn't a hundred percent sure and they didn't announce it. And I feel very unsafe about saying injuries when I'm not sure. But today, Kevin O'Connell confirmed it was what we thought it was a concussion. And what O'Connell was saying to Jim Schwartz, because normally what happens in football

is somebody gets hurt, they move the drill 10 yards, and they just play around the body. And it's pretty craving. And so I think what he was saying is like, this could be a serious injury. He's really down. And let's just take a water break and then we'll get back. And this is coming directly from Kevin O'Connell, by the way. And he was saying, let's just take a break and let them, you know, help Thayer work with Thayer here, get him up, evaluate him, see if we need the cart, all those things, just take a break. And then we'll get back to it after

this has been dealt with. But if it's very serious, then, you know, they might need to cancel practice or something like that. They did that for, uh, I think it was Rondell Moore when he broke his leg. So that's what Kevin O'Connell was saying to Jim Schwartz. Now, when it was put out there, um, I, I, I'm not sure which reporter said that there was a conversation between them, but it was in more of a, this is what it could be as opposed to this is what it is. And I think that got misconstrued and sent everywhere. And I got to tell you, I mean, just looking at the stuff that showed up, even myself. So I tweeted yesterday that the Browns players were heckling and they were heckling the Vikings.

Oh, they were saying, you know, oh, you're one for 12 or whatever. And you can't catch a cold. So the Browns. And it was great fun. It was it was a really funny like they're going back and forth. They were doing again today. They're John. It's football.

We're out there having a great time. So I tweeted out like, oh, yeah, the Browns are really going after them, and they're talking all this trash and everything. And then I see all over the Internet, oh, well, the Browns, you know, Darnold was one for 12. I'm like, what the? That's not what I said. We are in an era now where anything that anybody gets put out will get

twisted and spit back out in any version that sounds salacious here's my suggestion to everybody if something you see makes you go what the what the heck what is this and you have a like a jump reaction to it take a, look at who it came from. Who's putting it on their Instagram. Who's putting it on their Twitter. Is it me, the real reporter who's here, a real person, or is it a fake thing of a person who doesn't even tell you who they're, who they are, who's not here, who's not actually doing anything. And Mark Craig, by the way, clarified with Kevin O'Connell what that conversation was after practice yesterday. And yet still here you are. And I'm not blaming you, George. This is not your fault. This is the internet's fault. Here you are thinking the Vikings were so soft they were giving up and

asking them to beg for mercy. That's not happening. You you know i think there's also a difference with kevin o'connell between i disagreed with the approach to jordan addison wholeheartedly uh i did not think that it was strong enough when it came to the punishment or lack thereof for jordan addison i didn't think any message was sent whatsoever and they could say it was behind the scenes but it wasn't outwardly and it wasn't in any football type of way that we saw. But I don't think that that has to equate to them being a soft NFL team. I think that's a, those are two different things or getting high grades on the NFL PA thing, being a player's coach, I don't think has to mean that the players are soft. Like, I don't think that Justin Jefferson is soft or Christian Derrida or Jonathan Grenard or Dallas Turner or Blake Cashman, or, you know, Harrison Smith. If you want to call Harrison Smith soft, you can, but I'm not going to. So I think that that, that whole

thing, just, it's my suggestion. Ask yourself, who is this coming from? Is this real? Or is this being presented in a way to just rile me up? Because you know, that crap ends up back on me or back on other reporters where we're trying to put out the truth. And then people are saying, well, it says here that you reported this, that, or the other thing like that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That's not it. Somebody takes one line from from a podcast one line from an article and says well matt says this like what okay maybe i said that as part of a 15-minute conversation about something you know it's it's gotten pretty ugly out there it's gotten pretty brutal so if you can take your time if something immediately surprises you and makes you outraged or upset, and this goes for everything, by the way, take a second, maybe go to a real source and see what the actual information is. I will stop now, but that stuff ends up getting back on us with the team and people see it and they go, what did you really say this or what's going on? And all the time we're having to fight this battle and being like, no, that's just somebody

begging for attention on the internet. Who's not actually here. So that's, that's enough. That's enough. That's enough of that. I'll continue answering your questions. Uh, is the faithful says, uh, any possibility that KOC changes and runs the ball a lot that is on the running back. I don't think that changes completely is really going to be in the cards. Um, I really don't because it's just not who Kevin O'Connell is. He came from a team where he won the super bowl with the quarterback throwing for 5,000 yards. And I think in his fantasy world, if he, uh, was daydreaming about what the best outcome for this team could be, that outcome has Sam Darnold throwing the bleep

out of the ball, right? That outcome doesn't have him running for 2,400 yards and a handful of play actions. It's not going to look like 2019, but if you're running back is better, then you're going to feel better about running the ball. Stands to reason Aaron Jones is better than uh Alexander Madison and here is another thing too litmus test if Aaron Jones can't run successfully in this scheme then it's a bad scheme then you know it's not the running back because Aaron Jones looks great if he can't succeed in this, then it's not him. Uh, it's going to be, uh, the scheme. Caleb says, uh, I, I know, uh, JJ will get mental reps and learn from watching film, but he will get physical reps before the season end. Won't just play in games. Am I wrong? He'll be able to run and throw in four to six months. Yeah. I mean, he's going to be able to move his

body to some extent, uh, and he could be back and maybe at the end he's practicing and throwing after practice. That's true. He's going to, to miss all of the parts where he would have been going in and playing and everything. And it's not good. It really truly is not good. I mean, there's been a lot of kind of attempts to silver line it because you have no other choice. The only thing you can really do here is look at the positive side of it, which is he's going to be back. They believe he's the franchise quarterback. He showed a ton during that time. And you can buy into that, uh, that fact of what he showed you right here that he can jump back in because he'll be 22 when he comes back. That is not better.

It would have been better if he got in and played and look great. That would have been the best case scenario. The next best case scenario is that he learns a lot from this experience, uh, and, uh, comes back, has a whole offseason to get that footwork back, lock in on what he needs to do, and then is ready to roll. Start of 2025, that looks like what it's going to be. A meniscus is not something that when it's fully repaired, you start thinking about, oh, no, this is going to be a long-term thing or he's not going to remember how to walk.

It'll be okay. It'll be okay. And that's kind of the main point there it's just not great uh lizard says uh if we are in playoff contention by week 13 then darnold is playing well enough i agree with that if they get there by the middle of the season then they have a chance to go down the stretch and give themselves a shot because the the first part of the season is so tough schedule wise. They're going to need to catch some breaks in there. They're going to need the other team to fumble. They're going to need the other team to get banged up before they come here or they go there and they're going to need Donald to play. Well, this is the tough thing about football sometimes is that you can have so many other things that are in your favor.

But if that one guy struggles there's nothing you could do there's really no answer a lot of the times Hunter says the thing that's odd by saying he's out for the season is implies he won't be healthy enough to even practice toward the end of the year I don't know the details of the surgery or if they had to do more than they expected as far as the timeline my expectation was that meant he's not going to play but maybe they could have him practice at the same time you might have to give up a roster spot to bring him off ir you can bring guys off ir now it used to be if you put them on IR, they were done for the whole year, but you can put them on IR, bring them off eventually. Yeah. I really, I really don't

know, um, it, why he was so definitively set out for the year, but I think that it just means, look, this guy's not going to play this season. We're going to use it for development. We're not going to force him in at the end of the year just because he's ready to go physically because we want him ready to go completely as a player, ready to play against NFL players, and they want to control that environment. That's just my guess. I mean, I can try to ask. Caleb says, percent chance that KOC and KAM are extended. Who else would you want coaching this team? Side note is Ben Gessling coming on. He's a great listen. Yes. Ben and I have already talked about that next week. Crystal ball podcast will be happening for sure. Maybe we can even do a

porch podcast. We live in the same basic neighborhood. Uh, but as far as the chance they get extended, it doesn't seem very high. I mean, Mark Wilf saying that they hadn't had that conversation. I just don't see it. I think they'll wait and they will want to feel good about where the direction of the franchise is going. But let me tell you, JJ McCarthy throwing the bleep out of the ball on Saturday had to be for someone like Mark Wilf, you own the team. I mean, you don't want to lock into a coach who hasn't won playoff games and all that, but you had to see that for McCarthy and go,

this combination of KOC and McCarthy could be pretty good. They'll get extended after next year, unless it goes so supremely terrible. I guess with the Vikings organization, it's always possible that something goes supremely terrible, I guess, you know, with the Vikings organization, it's always possible that something goes supremely terrible. But if it's an average outcome, if it's Vegas's outcome, if they win seven games and they're in some other ones and they're close in others and Sam Darnold tries his hardest, but he's just not quite good enough, they'll get extensions, but it might be only two years.

Now, if they play playoffs might be four years there might be a little more of a negotiation if they don't make the playoffs because it's really that's the hard thing about drafting a quarterback midway through your tenure is that you have a past and if your past is one good season where you didn't win in the playoffs and then the next season is not good then the next season is not good, then the next season is not good. Personally, I think you got to stay on the Marvin Lewis patience. Bengals let this thing develop. Believe in what you have.

I'm in with that. I am 100% in with that. But if I own the team, I might be like, well, it's okay if I make make you show this to me, right. Before I just, you know, right. Before I just give you huge extensions, show it to me, go over achieve. We're in a tough division, but this is this football. I've never thought it's a bad thing to hold people to a high standard. I've never thought it was a terribly bad thing for the wolves to not ever want to tank. I get it. I like tanking. I think it's fantastic. I think it works for a lot of teams, but if you're the ownership and I own

the team, I might feel differently than that. I might feel like, wait a minute, I'm not paying this much for all these people that have these jobs. Let's go win guys. Come on. You're the ones that talked me into, if I'm Mark Wilf, you talked me into Sam Darnold as opposed to Kirk Cousins. So go win. You've got a great defensive coordinator. We spent a bunch of money. I'm being Mark Wilf again, not talking at all like Mark Wilf.

He's much more deliberate in the way that he talks. It's much more of a, we are the stewards of the franchise and we want to win football games. No, that's not a very good Mark Wilf. I'll work on it. The point is, if I'm Mark Wilf and Ziggy, I'm looking at this team and saying, we spent a lot of money on it. We gave a lot of extensions. We missed the playoffs last year.

We were not happy. And you told us that you could compete with Sam Darnold. So let's see it and if they don't make the playoffs and they're bad and they struggle then i don't think it's time to be fired but you need to win in these jobs right it shouldn't be horrible you should be able to coach them to be a competent franchise and then you should give me reason if i'm the owner so want to see a lot more of this or to be skeptical of it if they win four games how am i supposed to say you know what four-year extension personally i

think they're on the right path i think they need to see it through i just understand the perspective of an ownership that always they want to be the steelers they want to be in the playoffs every single year and i don't think it's some craziness of what they're doing. You got to win. What about Bob? Need a run game coordinator. Also linemen, tight ends, wide receivers that are coached up to buy into running the ball. Haven't seen it yet with KOC squads.

There's that. There's guards. There's also running backs that haven't been good. Dalvin Cook pretty well proved exactly where he stood last year when he just couldn't even get on the field. That's the guy who was running for them. Same guy in 2022. He just didn't have it in the second half of the season. The first half of the season, he was running the the ball okay but then it just completely fell off so i want to see all of this this mid-zone kind of thing they keep talking about i want to see it with a better running back

till i see it with a better running back i can't be too judgy because ty chandler did average four and a half yards per carry it was miserable i thought they maybe should have changed run game coordinators i don't disagree with you but alexander madison kept running in the back of people and really had a tough time there's only so much you can really do there um life is about the odds says look at how poor talent wise this roster is after three years of quesadilla fomenta remember jefferson and Darisaw were drafted by Spielman. He is on shaky ground. So I don't, well, I mean, yes, that is true that Jefferson and Darisaw were drafted by Spielman. That's true. I don't mean there's not that many GMs that are new that drafted all their players. But if you're saying, look how poor talent wise the roster is is that really

true i mean they drafted jordan addison who uh does have some issues with his driving that need to be shored up and he's got a little bit of an ankle footsie injury at the moment but he'll be back he had 10 touchdowns last year as a rookie that's pretty good they acquired him um aaron jones in the backfield, TJ Hawkinson, they traded a draft pick for pro bowl player is out with an injury at the moment, but that's pretty good. We'll see on the guards, of course, but they drafted Ty Chandler, Aaron Jones. If they put together a good backfield on the defensive side, their edge rushing unit is top 10 in the league. If Dallas Turner is good, it's

maybe even better. Day one free agents, three of them. You look at the safety position, they've created maybe the best in the league. They've got cap space to spend for next year. It's more of a GM's job than just a one-year thing. And the outlook, oh, and by the way, they drafted some quarterback who looks awesome. That's another part too, but I guess we can probably credit Kevin O'Connell more to that because he's the quarterback and that's what you brought him here for. But still, if we're talking about a regime in the total roster, I look at it as not so much shaky ground. I look at it as having an opportunity within one year to bring in more free agents.

Remember they got top tier free agents, Jonathan Grenard, Andrew Van Ginkle, and Blake Cashman. Those guys were right away in free agency. You're one year away and lots of cap space away from being able to stack up this roster a lot more. They found Ivan Pace, undrafted free agent by spending on him. And they found some other guys that could be promising there as well. I look at the rosters in very good shape for the future, but you can't just go running from point A to point B when you take over a team that you have to take apart. That's the awkward thing about where the Wilfs put Kweisi Adafo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell. They put them in a position to take a team apart and then put it back together again in the middle of their tenure

usually doesn't work that way usually you get hired and then you take apart and then you build in your vision as opposed to actually can you win in somebody else's vision sort of 13 wins uh but actually now can you tear it apart and then not win as much? I mean, that's a tough place to be. Uh, I think they've navigated it quite well and made some mistakes along the way for sure, but, uh, navigated it in a way that they have a chance to spend. And also still, even as we stand here right now, and one of the strangest things I've seen over the last few days after JJ McCarthy got hurt is I bet you wish you had Kirk cousins. No, what? That was the best thing they did. Their negotiations with Kirk cousins from quasi-doppelmensa were exactly what they needed to be, which was either you take the

year to year type of deal, or we'll see you and not spend a hundred mil. So they did that. Okay. This is a great, this is a great way to end it right here. Great question to end it on. It's been a super fun chat longer than I expected, but you guys were, um, you guys were great tonight. A lot of great stuff. Really appreciate it. And I'm shout out courtyard Marriott internet held up. No troubles. Good job. What positive things can we cling on to following this season? I assume you mean following along with this season, not like following after this season. After this season is pretty obvious.

JJ McCarthy comes back and they can spend all that money. But as far as following along with the 2024 Minnesota Vikings season. I just think, uh, Oh, I have to go on Cleveland radio. Oh no, I gotta go. What positive things you guys think of some, thanks so much for the chat.

Forgot about my radio hit. We'll see you guys later. Football. Hello. Yes, it is. What's up? Um,