Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - How do Sam Darnold and Kirk Cousins stack up statistically?

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about how Sam Darnold and Kirk Cousins compare statistically this season and then discusses the Vikings approach to facing Cousins, what Cousins had to say about coming back to Minnesota and answers fan questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Inside with Matthew Collar here with you. And it is fans only night here on the show. So jump on in, ask questions, comments. It's your show. Anything on your mind as the Vikings get set to play against the Atlanta Falcons. I am here to answer those questions, comments, takes, and so forth. Also, I thought it might be fun if I go through some of the statistics in comparing Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold as we lead up to this game of the previous Vikings quarterback versus the current Vikings quarterback. And I also thought I would show you kind of what I do when I'm going to take a look at two quarterbacks. So how do I approach it?

And I've got the screen share ready, the PFF website ready to go through what Sam Darnold and Kirk Cousins have done this year. And maybe some of the differences between Sam Darnold and Kirk Cousins even from the past. So we could talk about that. Doesn't look great for Stephon Gilmore and his chances to play against the Atlanta Falcons. He did not practice. And Kevin O'Connell, oftentimes if there's any chance, Kevin O'Connell will say something like, yeah, I'm feeling pretty positive about him.

And he was more talking about how maybe there's a chance that he could get back on the practice field this week. But he did say that they don't feel like it's a serious injury. He reiterated that. Josh Oliver was back out there today. And otherwise, the injury report is pretty clean for the Vikings as they get set to face the Falcons. And on the Falcon side, they don't have a big injury report either. Darnell Mooney didn't practice, but it also said rest. So it seems like he's going to play in this

game and he's been a key player for the Atlanta Falcons too. So there you have it. There's not much to say there. And as far as the approach from both of these teams, from both sides, from Kirk Cousins and from the Minnesota Vikings, I would describe it as cordial. I wouldn't describe it necessarily as super warm and fuzzy. I don't think Kirk today necessarily poured out his guts. Ben Gessling from the Star Tribune was down there, tweeted out a few of the quotes from Kirk Cousins. He talked about how his neighbors were great to him. The people of Minnesota were great to him. And Kevin O'Connell talked about all the things that Kirk Cousins did well when they were together and the comebacks and things like that. But nobody got missed the eye. They're going to go play each other and there is no revenge game to it. I didn't expect that there would be, but it doesn't even really have that

feel. Kirk Cousins did what he thought was best for him, which was to go to Atlanta. He made some jokes about tampering. Kirk still got jokes, but he goes to Atlanta and gets the big contract. The Vikings did what was definitely right for them, which was to move on and go address the quarterback situation with a bridge quarterback and by drafting one. And I think Kirk Cousins is probably looking at the Vikings and saying, well, maybe they would have been a better team because of their defense. The last, what is the last time Kirk Cousins had a good defense? Was it 2019? Probably. And I know we're all looking for the person responsible, but, uh, you know, the fact is

that he has not had that, has not had an elite defense many times in his entire career. Some of that might be turnovers, three and outs that he tends to strain a defense more. I ran across the stat today that he has more fumbles than anyone else in the NFL since 2018, which is 66 fumbles. That's a lot of times you're giving up the football, take sacks, things like that. So there, we know that there are other things that happen with Kirk Cousins to stress his defense. At the same time, he does have to be looking over and saying, man, you know, if I had that defense, maybe old Kirky wouldn't be six and six. I'm sure that that's gone through his mind. But as far as the franchise he's with, the players

that he's got, the coaching staff and the contract, I think it all worked out well for him. And he's competing for a division. And the only question is whether he could get to the finish line of that division and physically compete for the rest of the year. Because last week, what it looked like is that he couldn't, that he could not physically compete in terms of his arm strength and then here's on the other side Sam Darnold putting on some kind of show with his arm for three straight weeks really the entire season but the last three weeks he has had a ton of big time throws and we're going to talk about that statistically as well. So if you're just jumping

in here, it's a fan show questions, comments, doesn't have to be about the quarterbacks can really be about just about anything, uh, Viking and football related, toss it in happy to, uh, talk about whatever you want to discuss. But I did want to go over some of these statistics for these two quarterbacks. So let me do a little screen share here. And here is the PFF page. Hopefully you guys can see this pretty clearly on your cellular devices or whatever you're watching this on. One of the things that I like to try to figure out

when I look at statistically for a quarterback is the style in which they have been playing. So what has their coaching staff been having them do? What types of passes are they throwing? How quickly are they throwing them? And then how effectively are they throwing those passes, which is a good place to start with Sam Darnold and Kirk Cousins. So in the overall PFF rankings, Sam Darnold is eighth. He's behind Mahomes, Allen, strangely Derek Carr. I guess he's had a very safe season. Not very many turnover worthy plays. Justin Herbert, Jaden Daniels, Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson. So the Derek Carr one definitely sticks out as being a little bit odd, but the rest of them, all good names, Gino Smith, uh, Jameis Winston, of course has all those,

uh, big time throws to his name. The PFF system has always been way, way too high on Jameis Winston. It's weird, but, uh, nothing is perfect. No ranking system is going to be perfect, whether you do it or your friends or a writer or a grading system with quarterbacks. But Sam Darnold right now is eighth. Kirk Cousins is 23rd. And at the center of Kirk Cousins being 23rd is the big time throws and the turnover worthy plays. And I think both of these sort of speak for themselves, what they are and what they mean. I'll sort by big time throws first. The best way I could describe a big time throw is that Sam Darnold had a 97 yard touchdown pass where he threw the ball 50 yards in the air, dropped in the bucket. That's a big time throw. It's also a big time throw. What he did to Jordan Addison last week, which wasn't

30 or 40 yards down the field, but he layered it over a defender, kind of dropped it into the perfect area, almost like a golfer on a green that's surrounded by water. He just put it right in the only spot that it could be. That's a big time throw. Turnover worthy plays is also pretty simple. It's throwing a football that a safety drops or catches. It can be intercepted or should have been intercepted. Also, I believe fumbles are involved in this as well. That it's, if you get strip sack, that's a turnover worthy play, but maybe you recover it still turnover worthy.

So Sam Darnold is very high on this list and his percentage of his plays that have turned into turnover worthy plays are also very high on this list, but he's third internal or in a big time throws and second in the NFL in his rate of big time throws. So deep down the field into traffic, layering it over people. The only guy that does this more often in the entire NFL than Darnold this year is Josh Allen, who very well may win the MVP. And there is no quarterback on the other side of this who has had more turnover worthy plays than Kirk Cousins and his big time throw rate, you have to scroll all the way down among starting quarterbacks. Kirk Cousins, the only guys who had lower rates of big time throws are Daniel Jones

and Gardner Minshew, which tells me that they are having to play extremely, extremely safe football with Kirk Cousins. So then I'm curious to go look at Kirk Cousins page here and you can see the moment that it started to slip after the Tampa Bay game for Cousins, but I'm curious about where he's throwing the football. So I want to look at his reports here and go into the passing depth. Where is he throwing the football? And what jumps out to me immediately here is that he has only 14 completions on 36 attempts that go farther than 20 yards, two touchdowns, three picks, and a 62 quarterback rating. Now that is not really the Kirk that I know. The Kirk that I know, if I go back to last year, 117 quarterback rating

on deep passes, 2022 79, he had some interceptions, but still got a very high grade 2020. I think he was amazing on deep throws right now, 97 rating 2021. Oh yeah. 2021 is where he was amazing on deep throws, 120 quarterback rating that year and 2019, 121. So the point is that Kirk Cousins this year is significantly worse and throwing at a very low rate deep down the field and his intermediate passing, which has usually been his calling card, has been pretty miserable. Only an 85 quarterback rating, more interceptions than touchdowns. The short stuff is where they have done pretty well. He has 108 quarterback rating, 77 grade,

and they average 7.3 yards per attempt on short stuff. So you can see, and this is the bigger chart, the middle of the field really stands out, but the short stuff in general really stands out as being excellent. And if you go into that 10 to 20 range, seven interceptions in the middle of the field this year on that 10 to 20 range. So they have made a lot of their hay on their offense on the short stuff. And that's where I'm very curious about how this is going to work with Brian Flores' defense. I've seen opposing teams have success on the short stuff against Sam Darnall. I'm sorry, I've seen veteran quarterbacks have success on the short stuff against the Vikings defense is what I mean to say. We saw it from Goff. We saw it from Matthew Stafford. We even

saw it from Kyler Murray last week. So is there going to be an adjustment from this defense to address the fact that this offense for the Falcons can move the football on short and underneath passes that don't travel more than 10 yards. And then when he does try to throw more than 10 yards, can you pick them off? That's another big question that we saw the Chargers certainly answer last week. Or can you pressure him? Can you force him into bad throws, strip sacks?

And if we look at Sam Darnold similarly, and you see how few bad games Sam Darnold has had this year, the Green Bay game, mostly in the second half was pretty tough, the Jets game. and you see how few bad games Sam Darnold has had this year. The Green Bay game, mostly in the second half, was pretty tough. The Jets game and then Jacksonville, not too good. But these last three weeks have just been fantastic for him, as you've seen in front of your eyeballs. And as we look at the depth from Darnold,

94 quarterback rating when throwing deep. He does have several interceptions, but completing over over 50 of passes that go 20 plus yards is extremely impressive where they've really improved is these intermediate throws and the short stuff Darnold's been excellent at executing but you can see they're throwing almost 13 of their passes downfield, 25 or 24% in the medium areas. They are pushing it down the field with Darnold and having a ton of success in doing it. So I'm interested in what you think about this matchup. And I think we all know that Sam Darnold is playing better football than Kirk Cousins, but in terms of the statistics and what they say about these two quarterbacks, their style of play and the style of offense that Kevin O'Connell has had with Sam Darnold

has been, uh, uh, was it, was it a little blurry? I'm sorry if it was a little blurry for you guys. Uh, but, uh, the style is different. They're playing different football than they did offensively with Kirk Cousins. They did push it to some extent, but it's much more down the field with Sam Darnold to take advantage of his arm talent. So there you go. There's the statistical presentation. Maybe you felt like you were on a Zoom at work there with all the numbers and charts being thrown at you.

But clearly, Darnold is having the better year. And what you also see is that the entire field is open. And I asked Aaron Jones about this today. I asked him about what Sam Darnold's arm does for the offense. And he said, the defense has to cover every blade of grass, which is a great way to put it that there is no area where you can just sort of slack off because the guy can't put the football there. And there's something else that I want to show you guys that I thought was interesting about Sam Darnold. This one may crash the computer. So I hope not, but that I've been tracking for a

while and I've been mentioning occasionally on the show. But as we look at it statistically, I'm, I'm so intrigued by this is that when we look at Sam Darnold and his career game log, and I'll try to flip this, uh, try to screen share this here as well. So this is pro football reference. And if I search by date and I highlight Sam Darnold going back to 2022, it's supposed to pop up with his total statistics and then it did not do that. So that's a fail. Let's try to, well,

it's still spinning. Maybe it'll do that. Oh, there it is. Okay. There it is. Hopefully you guys can see that. This is Sam Darnold since 2022. He's as 19 starts, 65% completion percentage, 32 touchdowns, 14 picks, 98 quarterback rating

and eight yards per pass attempt. Plus over 300 yards rushing. He is putting together a sample size that is growing of success and even a fair level of consistency that I think we have to look at and factor in when we have this discussion about what Sam Darnold is, is the fact that he's had success. Now going back a ways. It's been quite a while since he has not been a good quarterback. So there you go. There's your numbers. And I think it's very telling of what the Vikings defense has to do, which is, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of Blake Cashman fake blitzing and dropping back into those

zones underneath. They cannot let the Drake London, the Darnell Mooney, Kyle Pitts, Bijan Robinson get all over them on short passes because you know they're going to be trying to get it out of his hands. On to your questions, comments, thoughts, opinions. Doesn't have to be about this subject. Anything you got. Let's start with Sean sean best division in football history how does the 2024 nfc north compare top three teams are 30 and three against non-nfc north opponents that is insane sean and 34 and eight overall if my math is any good while i drive off the top of my head. I do not have an answer for this, but I think I saw a stat on it that no, that no division has ever had this much success from the top three teams. It is pushing to be potentially the best division ever. And think about if the bears had

beaten Washington, then that's an out of division win. They would be right up there too. If they had beaten the Patriots, then they would be right up there as well with how good this division is. And I don't think that it's going anywhere. And it is kind of the irony for the Vikings that they get it resolved for a lot of time. Well, Kirk was here. The division wasn't special. It had Rogers and he's great, but the bears were bumbling. The lions were tanking. Matt Patricia was here. There was opportunity. And then in 2022, one of the main reasons they won 13 games was the fact that the division was down and it wasn't that good that year. And they got a lot of free wins. How many wins did Cousins get against the Detroit Lions? I mean, probably quite a few, right?

So his numbers against the Lions while he was a Viking were incredible. And now, not only are these teams good, but they also seem to know what they're doing. And they have plans, other than the Bears. But the Bears have an opportunity to hire a new coach and go forward from there. So if the Vikings continue to have this success, they will have to absolutely earn it. Uh, Adam says, what's the percent chance Darnold is back right now, I would go with maybe 30%. Let me know what you think. 30% seems about right to me.

I still think it's less than 50 right now. But the track is there for him to take this team into the playoffs, win in the playoffs, be great. He's got the talent to do it. He's got the offense. He's got the weapons. And it he's got the offense he's got the weapons and make a real case for himself i think that they are still leaning toward the plan and sticking with it but every single week that darnold comes out and plays this way like he has the last three weeks

and when he's a top 10 quarterback it's always the thing that you go back to, right? Like what did Kweisi Adafo-Mensah accidentally tell a reporter from the very start about Kirk? Great quarterbacks win the Super Bowl. Kirk's a good quarterback. Well, Sam Darnold has played great football and is a great talent. So if he's able to play great football to extend that sample size that I was just talking about all the way deep into the playoffs, it would be incredibly difficult to then punt on that, to turn it over to somebody

else where you could fiddle with the salary cap to try and keep this team together with Sam Darnold and take another shot at it next year or over the next couple years. He's not even 28 years old yet. He's still a fairly young quarterback. And we've seen a lot of quarterbacks throughout history become the best version of themselves in their mid to late twenties. All those things have to be considered. I don't think we're there yet.

I don't think they're there yet as far as that conversation but 30 i might go as high as 40 but i also don't want to be kind of prisoner of the moment after a game-winning drive in the last couple games that have been really good there could always be a bad one around the corner or a bad one in a playoff game that you know changes people's minds what happens in the playoffs shapes what front offices think of themselves and what ownerships think of their franchise and everything else. As much as you'd like to say, oh no, these teams are irrational and they look at the bigger picture. It's true, but winning in the playoffs really does something. I mean, the Vikings extended Cousins after his 2019 playoff win. And then in 2020, they missed the playoffs and win

seven games. So, uh, there are a lot of, uh, re reactions, um, to play off performances. And that's why you can't go too far on this meter just yet, but it may, that may change. Uh, must've served as a, not too worried about Kirk. We all know that he almost never gets the job done when it matters most great guy, but a thief of a quarterback. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if I would call him a thief. Probably I would call him a business hall of famer. And I always said this about Kirk cousins and I would stay with it is that he didn't pay himself. So you can't blame him if he wasn't worth the money. You have to blame the team if the investment they made wasn't worth it. If you buy a car

and the car turns out to be a clunker, well, that was your choice, right? You're the one who decided to make that investment in a car that wasn't worth it, right? So I look at it the same way that Cousins was really good as Vikings quarterback. How many quarterbacks were better than him when he was here over that period of time? A handful, but it was a handful enough of teams that were able to use their cap space to build around their quarterbacks or a handful of quarterbacks like Aaron Rogers, who is so decidedly better than cousins when he won MVP, that he was worth that money. And cousins has always been stuck in a strange spot. Now I, with the contract, I mean, this is the thing too, about like, you can't blame him. He said, Hey, the Achilles will heal. I'm going to come play football for you. Okay. Well, that's fine. But the Atlanta Falcons believed it.

I mean, the end of the Atlanta Falcons believed that he could just wave a magic wand over his leg and have different results than anybody else at that age. So they were the ones that made the mistake there in signing cousins, or at least it looks like that right now. What I always wonder about is if the Atlanta Falcons weren't there to make that move, was anybody else actually interested or would the Vikings have taken him back as the bridge quarterback? If nobody else made an offer, would they have taken him back at 30 mil if nobody else jumped in or was there always going to be another team would the raiders have been there will i mean if you're the raiders why not they ended up with gardner minshu so maybe

there was interest from other teams but it really seemed like the falcons were the only ones that they kind of bid against themselves which again again is their fault for doing that. Knowing that, I mean, the car comparison, the car is already broken when you bought it. Sorry to, the metaphor is not perfect, but if the car is already got a broken, something that would be bad for cars, not a car guy, I drive a Honda, but then you pay top price for a car that you know already has an issue. That's your fault if it goes wrong. Maxwell, are you tuning into the Aaron Rodgers documentary? Absolutely not. No chance. Never. No, thank you. I have had way more Aaron Rodgers than I ever need from the internet, from Pat McAfee shows to other interviews, to whatever else he puts out there for, to the press

on a weekly basis. So I've seen all the people he blames and everything, all of his opinions. I need nothing else from Aaron Rodgers. I'm good. In fact, it would be a great time for him to just move on, but I imagine he'll find himself in front of a camera somewhere somehow, but thank goodness we had more access to Aaron Rodgers as if we hadn't had enough of it over the last couple of years. i am good thank you uh aaron rogers one of the all-time great quarterbacks previously now just in your face all the time for no reason doesn't win doesn't but yet i see him constantly always on tv anyway uh bas dry dock. Is it really KOC fixing quarterbacks or Josh and company? I mean, you mean Josh McCown? Well, Kevin O'Connell is the head of the entire organization. So everything

that happens with quarterbacks goes through Kevin O'Connell. Is it fixing quarterbacks? I don't know. Sam Darnold had played well recently in 2022 and then got a good opportunity in San Francisco to take a step back, which we've seen work for Bryce Young. We've seen it work for Anthony Richardson. I think the step back is great for a young quarterback. The only reason that teams don't do it more often when their young quarterback is struggling is because they know the media will go crazy. And they did with Anthony Richardson. They did with Bryce Young, but it was right with Sam Darnold and the fixing. I think it's a bunch of different factors.

One, the quarterbacks, O'Connell, McCown, they understand football from those eyes. How many human beings on earth, how many even coaches understand football from NFL eyes in a pocket, making a throw, drawing up a route combination, whatever it is, what your quarterback actually sees out there. McCown played how many games in his career? He knows what all this looks like. He knows what all of it feels like. He's seen it all before.

So that's helpful. That's a great hire for them. Kevin O'Connell also is blessed to have the best receiver on earth, a first round pick receiver, who's very talented, and then a top five tight end in the entire league. Those things have helped. And this year they're blocking it up as well for Sam Darnold. So it's, it's all the things together. Call it the environment. You have Kevin O'Connell that when your quarterback throws three interceptions, O'Connell makes sure in his post-game speech to point to Sam Darnold and say, Hey, we're going to need you. We know you're going to bounce back. That positive approach

to players I think is inspiring to them inspiring to them or at least confidence building. Confidence is a huge part of this sport. The other thing that's confidence building is Justin Jefferson. I mean, people could throw to the best receiver on earth. So there's a lot of different things that they've put together here to help Sam Darnold become the best possible version of Sam Darnold. There's some throwing technique stuff. There's some understanding. And I think this is where O'Connell is really good. Understanding of what he throws the best, what he's most comfortable with, and then leaning into that as opposed to, hey, this is my offense.

So it's all those things working together. It's good to have a good defense. For some of the season, they've had a good running game. All those things have worked out in Sam Darnold's favor. I guess the question as they face this future decision is really, how much do you believe that this will work for someone else? How much do you believe that Kevin O'Connell's coaching, the wide receivers, the linemen, and Josh McCown all push your odds of success for JJ McCarthy so far to the plus side that you can move on from someone who's playing top 10 football. That's not a, that's not a leading thing I'm trying to say. That's just how this decision works is how much do you believe that all of this will create the same results for a different quarterback as it has for someone

as gifted as Sam Darnold, who has been flawed in the past. Uh, Aaron says, does cousins have an advantage knowing Flores and the defense, or does Flores have the advantage since cousins appears to be on the low end of the roller coaster? Um, I do not know. Uh, they both know each other so well. Cousins had an entire training camp against Flores' defense, which threw everything at him in that training camp to the point he was pretty frustrated. And Flores and Kevin O'Connell know the weaknesses of Kirk Cousins. But neither is a big secret.

Flores' defense is not a huge secret. You just don't know when he's going to do all the stuff. You know what he's going to do, but you don't know which one it is. So I was looking at this chart from Field Vision where they track the coverages, and they had cover two, three, and four, I think, in zones. I think it was two, three, and four zones as 25%, 25%, 25%. So Flores is using three different types of zones a quarter of the time each, and then playing, you know, man, the rest or a prevent or something, the rest. But

he is so much switching up these coverages that you don't know which one it is. When you drop back to throw, you don't know which guy is rushing. When you go back to throw, which has always thrown off cousins. It's always thrown off a lot of quarterbacks, but cousins also knows that as they game plan for this Vikings defense, he knows what type of post snap stuff that they're capable of. And I imagine there'll be a few wrinkles that he maybe hadn't seen. And on the other side, Flores knows cousins isn't throwing it down the field this year so are you going to dare him to do that dare Drake London to beat somebody deep down the field or are you going to try to you know jump certain plays where you know you're trying to read where

Cousins is going with the ball and the nuances with Kevin O'Connell would be very deep of he understands this he doesn't understand that because they work so close together, probably mild advantage to Brian Flores. But, you know, I think both of them, like this is a styles make fights type of thing. Like both of them have their own style that they're trying to play and trying to take away from the other one. Cousins trying to get the ball out fast, trying to get it quickly to those playmakers. Flores is going to be trying

to send his rush to get into the grill of Kirk Cousins right away. Cousins has been good at picking apart defenses in the past, but it's not just blitzes. It's also different coverage looks and dropouts there. If Cous cousins hadn't thrown four picks last week, and maybe he was just coming off the new Orleans game. We'd be talking about what a great heavyweight matchup this is versus a really good offense and Flores is defense. The last two weeks though, they have just fallen completely off the edge of the earth.

Joe says it's time to talk about a new center. Is Grady Jarrett going to get up the middle it is not time in my opinion at all to talk about a new center and maybe i'm just gonna have to always have this up so i can show the screen grabs but or the the screen shares but i don't i think that brad barry's first three seasons were such a struggle that his reputation became reality for a lot of people, as opposed to what he's really been as a center the last three years. Right now, he ranks 11th overall by PFF. The pass blocking is still below average. It's still in the bottom third of the league, but he's not giving up these fast pressures that are destroying

quarterbacks anymore. He's much more hovered around the middle of the league and a little bit toward the bottom half, but nowhere near catastrophic. And then when you consider the leadership, how he's handled and managed Sam Darnold this year, he's been a good center in the NFL. Not great, not all pro, not all world. No one thinks that about him, but he's been fine for several years. I just think it was reputation to the point where every single time he gives up a pressure, then all the people who assumed he was a bust, just like, there he is. He needs to be replaced, but you have to go tell me which center you're going to replace him with and how you're going to get that player. Who's the free agent? Are you spending a bunch of money in free agency? Another thing to look at too for this game, you talked about Grady Jarrett.

He has not been anywhere close to the Grady Jarrett that destroyed Garrett Bradbury early in his career. This year, he's got a 61 PFF grade. He peaked at 90. He has 22 pressures. He peaked at 57 in his career. Good player, but on the older side now, he's 32 years old, just not having the same impact that he used to. So I think the Vikings interior line should be able to handle him. Doesn't mean that they're just entirely going to eliminate him, but he's not on the same level as what he used to be. Nick says, if the Lions lose to either green bay or the bills and the vikings win out we have the first seed that is true can the vikings win out i have a tough time seeing that i mean it starts this week if they win this week then you're talking what chicago seattle green bay detroit it

would be shocking if the vikings could win out versus the teams that they're playing, they've got good quarterbacks each week. One of these games is not going to go their way and it might be this week. And then all the people who've been telling me this team is a fraud are going to say, see, they lost the game. They're a fraud. And I was like, okay, well, I guess for this week you get that, but probably not going to win out. I still see Detroit as being at the top of the list, but another Detroit defensive lineman got hurt, DJ Reeder, and he was out of practice today.

They don't have any of their D linemen, except for Elaine McNeil, who's very good. That's something to keep an eye on against Green Bay and then against Buffalo. So if the Lions were to stumble down the stretch, could the Vikings win three of the last five? I think so. And remember, if they win three of the last five, it's a 13 win season. But they could, they could win three out of the next five. If Detroit started to fall off, it still is hard to see. Detroit is really good. They've been able to overcome a lot there on the defensive side. Even if Detroit splits against Green Bay or Buffalo, I would still pick Detroit to win the division, but week 18 could get interesting. That's what

the Vikings are really looking for is can you make week 18 matter? Manju says teams normally struggle immensely after playing the lions. We play them right before the playoffs. Should this be a concern? I don't know if it should be a concern or not because we don't know how much that game's going to matter. If it doesn't matter at all while different vibe, right? Then they'll play maybe the first half and sit everybody else. If you have a crazy difficult game for the division, well, so it might not matter because you might be playing for the conference, depending on what happens with Philadelphia. If you're playing for the conference, then it won't matter because you'll get the week off playing for the division. You'll get a home game that would help.

The Vikings struggled after playing the lions when they had to play on thursday night on the road i don't know if i totally buy into that that whole like after you play the lions you just fall apart it did happen to the vikings but i just i don't really know if there's a big enough sample for us uh to make a judgment there. But I generally would say, yes, it should be a bit of a concern if they have to play a really hard game against the Lions and then go on the road to say Tampa Bay or Atlanta or Arizona, something like that, playing a hard game at Ford Field, then on the road. Then if you win, on the road again, maybe back to Detroit. That's a lot. That's a lot to ask. They would be in a better position if they could just

solidify their spot in the NFC playoffs before week 18 and play Nick Mullins or play Daniel Jones and just go from there. Speaking of which, Daniel Jones, oh gosh, says, do we believe Danny Dimes has a for sure backup slot next year? No idea. He's not under contract for next year, so he has to sign with the Vikings to be their backup next season. And if Sam Darnold's still the quarterback, then no, he probably won't be the backup. It'll be JJ McCarthy. And if it's McCarthy, then it could be Daniel Jones, but someone else could also offer him a spot to compete because he's not competing with McCarthy, but he could compete with somebody else somewhere else. So a long way down the road to figure that one out. That's not on high necessarily on my list of things I've been thinking about, but yeah, I,

I don't know. Could, could happen. Uh, let's see. Uh, Matt says, I wonder, uh, what the Vikings did with a cheaper quarterback and upgraded other players will devalue the quarterback position. I don't think so because around the NFL, they, I'm sure, well, two things. Number one, teams already know about the rookie quarterback contract advantage. So you'll see drafted quarterbacks a little higher than maybe you expected like Bo Nix, who a lot of people thought was a second round pick. But one of the reasons to draft Bo Nix, if you're Denver is so you don't have to get Gardner Minshew and just be bad. And you've got a chance to build around that quarterback over a couple of years.

And we've seen just okay or good quarterbacks go deep in the playoffs or reach the Superbowl teams know that they've figured that out kind of a long time ago. And the elite quarterbacks are impossible to replace. Just impossible. There's no replacing Mahomes. There's no replacing Allen. But where it is tricky is the fact that a Trevor Lawrence or even a Dak Prescott got those big deals. And now the Prescott deal looks pretty horrendous.

How is that team going to stay And now the Prescott deal looks pretty horrendous. How is that team going to stay together around Dak Prescott? How are the Jags going to build around Trevor Lawrence when I'm sorry, he's hurt, but it's just not that good. He's not the type of quarterback who you just roll out there and you get at least 10 wins. And it's not just the Vikings. It's also the Pittsburgh Steelers who are winning with Russell Wilson on what? Aren't they paying him like $1 million or something like that? But how often does it work? That would be my question.

How often does it work? It didn't work for the Raiders to go out. I mean, great for them. They got Brock Bowers and nobody to throw him the football, right? Gardner Minshew. How many times ever has a Sam Darnold, somebody with this type of talent and who could actually play and had played good recently, end up on the market for that cheap? It doesn't happen much. I mean, Baker Mayfield. So I think that swings will always be taken, but that's not any different than always.

Swings are always going to get taken at guys who were high picks. If Bryce Young became available, then there would have been 10 teams trying to trade for him just because you're trying to figure out, hey, could we get that advantage that you're talking about? That's what everybody's hunting down. But on a given year, how often are there actually quarterbacks available who could win you any games? The Vikings fell backwards into

this. We could have been talking about Ryan Tannehill. We could have been talking about Jacoby Brissett this year and a Vikings team that had four wins right now or five wins as opposed to a team that is 10 and two. But it's rare. It's not something that I think is very repeatable. And the organizations, look at the organizations, the Vikings, the Steelers. These are good organizations that pulled this off. Joe says, would the Falcons make a switch mid game? And what would, what would that do going from a righty to a lefty? I don't think it would do anything going from a righty to a lefty, but, um, I mean, you're still playing the same defenses. Maybe you're rushing them off the blind side a little more.

I don't think they really think too much about that. Would they make the switch? Depends on how the first half goes. They have to, if he throws three interceptions in the first half, or if they're down 24 to three in the first half and cousins can't move the ball and he's just throwing inaccurately, they would have to, I don't know if they're going to, but, uh, if I think that they would have to pull them out of the game if they got to that point. Now, the one thing about the Pennix decision in terms of benching Kirk Cousins is once you do it, you can't unring the bell. So once you

do it, you got to stick with it. The way that it looks right now, I tend to think that they should just do it because it's over with Cous cousins. We all know that this train is not going toward him next year, unless he pulls off a miraculous end of the season looks masterful. He's throwing left to right 400 yards a game, gets them into the playoffs, wins a playoff game, but anything short of that, anything short of a tremendous end of the season for him, what would be the point in retaining him for next season? I mean, maybe they could trade him to somebody, but I don't know who wants to trade for a quarterback with a messed up Achilles who can't put anything behind the football. I mean, maybe there's a team that would take him in the right situation cap wise.

Somebody took Russell Wilson, but Wilson looked okay last year for Denver. This has not looked okay. This has looked really miserable the last couple of weeks, and maybe some of it is defenses figuring out tendencies and understanding where he can and cannot throw the football. But if you're Atlanta, you let him play this game, and if he doesn't play well and it goes poorly and you

drop to six and seven, I think you just make the change and say, Michael Penix is our quarterback going forward and whoopsie. That that's what I would be thinking in Atlanta, but there's people who made the decision and their jobs are at stake and all that. Or maybe the owner just made the decision and it's his mistake. I don't know. Bill says Kirk is washed. I can't imagine how our outside linebackers mouths are watering, thinking about going after a dude that can barely walk fast. I'm curious now, since you say that how often cousins has been pressured this year,

I'm going to pull that up since we're doing a lot of statistical analysis here. How often cousins has been pressured? Because he's got to be getting the ball out pretty quickly. I don't think that he's been, yeah. So he's been pressured on 32% of his dropbacks. And when he's under pressure, he's been absolutely horrendous. When he's under pressure, 64 quarterback rating, eight picks, five touchdowns, 51 PFF grade.

So if you could get pressure on him, then you're going to do pretty well for yourself. 12 turnover worthy plays under pressure. That's number one in the entire NFL. And when under pressure, he has one of the shortest average depths of target. So he's always throwing underneath. How about sacks? You take a lot of sacks.

Not really, not really. 18th in the league. They're trying to get the ball out of his hands. It is so clear that they are trying to get the ball out of his hands really quick. And the Vikings are going to know that and presumably adjust accordingly. So if you're talking about the outside linebackers, what we might be looking at. Yeah. So cousins has the third fastest snap to release in the league. He is just catching and throwing. Just get rid of that football. If you're Andrew Van Ginkle, that might be something that interests you. And that's exactly what Todd says here. It's gink time, sacks and interceptions. Van Ginkle's got to be frothing at the mouth, knowing that Cousins is trying to get that ball out of his hands as fast as possible. Marley says the Vikings need to get out to a 28 point lead at halftime.

Kirk getting pulled is a worst case scenario. Yeah. Yeah, it might be. You're right. Kirk getting pulled. I don't know. I don't want to assume that he's not going to play well just because he didn't play well last week. This is the NFL for you. And it always has a way of completely shocking you where you think you've got it all figured out. You know how this next week is going to play out. You got it. You're all set. We don't even need to watch. And then the results, you go look and you go, what happened? What did this guy do? And with Kirk, how many times I'm writing about that, an article about that purple insider.football, go check it out. I've been gaining a lot of subscribers recently. So thank you to everybody who's doing that.

But I'm working on that right now about Kirk. He's had so many bounce backs in his career, so many bad stretches, so many bad games that the next time out, he just comes out, plays great. It happens all the time. That's the reason he's still a starting quarterback, because if you stay down, you're just out as a starter. So I'm not assuming that they could just get out to a 28-point lead. I'm not even assuming that they could do better than they did against Kyler Murray

in a different way because of the quick passing game. They have to prove that, that they could stop the quick passing game. That is my biggest concern because that's where Goff, that's where Stafford, those veteran quarterbacks had success. Yes, they throw the ball a lot harder and a lot better. Blake Cashman could be huge in this game. I just, I just don't want to ever go into a football game against someone who's had as much success as cousins saying, guys, it's going to be fine.

I mean, even like the Jaguars game that felt like a guys were going to, you know, everything's going to be fine guys. Don't worry. It's the Jaguars. They should win by 27. And I actually thought that against the Rams. I didn't realize the Rams were getting Puka Nakua back. The NFL is weird and cousins has seen a lot of stuff and has bounced back from a lot of stuff. He, he needs to be taken seriously, but if they're up a couple scores at halftime, yes, him getting benched could be the worst case scenario because Penix has a lot of talent. Joel says Kirk made a comment in 22 about not fully knowing the offense until week 10 or 11 and played really well in 23 before being hurt.

Do we think that Darnold's play continues to improve as the season goes on? When I look at the defenses that he's playing, there's a good chance that it does. Packers have a decent defense and the Lions have a decent defense, but the Seahawks not really ish, kind of ish, like week to week, it's different. The Falcons do not have a very good defense. And these last three weeks have just been so big for Sam Darnold because he was, he was down in the dumps after Jacksonville. And that was the spot to go lose to the Titans. And we all go, okay, it was never real. And instead played a great game against the Titans played even better against the bears. And last week, last week, he put some of it on himself. I think I'd put some of it on the Cardinals doing a great job,

Aaron Jones fumbling, them not finishing some drives, all those things played into the offense in the first half struggling. But then the game-winning drive is just masterful by Sam Darnold. And now he's done this several different times where you can count on him and he's confident. And the way he's leading it is it's real. Like you're not seeing, you're not seeing some lucky launches up into the rafters and somehow a Viking receiver catches it for a touchdown after it bounces off three helmets. You're watching the guy make number three overall pick throws and play like a franchise quarterback over these last couple of weeks.

It should keep going because the supporting cast is the same. And what, one of the things, why reasons why Kirk cousins has bounced back so many times is because he's always had digs or Jefferson or Drake London, or like all these great players to Sean Jackson back in the day that helps your odds. It's like having bumpers at the bowling alley. You start to go a little bit off and don't you run into having TJ Hockinson on your football team. That's kind of what happened in Jacksonville, right? They won that game and they had the ball the whole game because they had bumpers. Oh, they took away Jefferson. Dunk.

That's okay. You can still knock down some pins. I think that plays big time into it. And what you're saying is right. It's a complex offense. We also need to say that Kevin O'Connell changed it for Sam Darnold. They run play action more. They run the football more.

And they push the ball downfield looking for big plays more that and work to sam darnold's strengths with cousins i think that o'connell wanted to put a lot on him mentally knowing that he could parse through defenses make changes at the line of scrimmage do a lot of stuff just a lot on his plate and he could handle it all. And maybe he asked him to do a little too much in the early parts of 2022. Uh, Kirk Ploppy says on a scale of not going to happen to inevitable. What are your chances? Kirko gets a, you'll like that this week.

I'll go. It's a good question because you could see Kirk Cousins winning the coin toss, scoring his first touchdown and yelling you like that after the first touchdown. So 0.5, oh, that's a great bet. That'd be a great bet. Like have with your friends around the game or family over under 0.5, Kirk cousins you like that i'm gonna go under but i mean he could do it on the first pass i don't know he loves that uh speaking of which i could use a fantasy question if someone's got one at some point for the underdog fantasy read uh let's see reconnected do you think dwight mcglothern will see playing time this week not unless someone

gets hurt uh dwight mcglothern was really good in training camp totally fine if he's active i don't think they want him out there covering Drake London, covering Darnell Mooney. These are great wide receivers. They on defense want to develop players. And this is frustrated a lot of people with Dallas Turner. They want to see Dallas Turner play 70 snaps and rush the passer every play and get 10 sacks. He has not hit the over for the sack totals that we were expecting from him when he came into the season. At the same time, who were you taking out to put him in? Not Van Ginkle and not Grenard. And the one time Van Ginkle got banged up, Turner played really well in his spot against the Indianapolis Colts. But even with the guy that they gave up a lot for in the first round, Brian Flores has been

very slow to bring him along. So I don't expect it to be different with McClother. The only guy that that hasn't happened with was Ivan Pace, who is a very unique cat, very unique, very unique in how fast Ivan Pace got on the field. But there wasn't any other choices. If you recall, it was Ivan Pace or Brian Asamoah. Both were young and inexperienced players. They're going to go with Fabian Moreau out there. He started off pretty tough with the pass interference, gave up the touchdown, but overall they threw at him five times. He allowed two receptions. He he's playable His career, he's playable. Fabian Moreau, but it's a downgrade versus what they had with Stephon Gilmore, for sure.

I just would be surprised in a game like this where you're trying to get to 11-2 if you're putting in a rookie who was undrafted versus a veteran that you know can be trusted in this system. But I think he's got a good future. I mean, if you look toward the future, Byron Murphy Jr. I think will resign here, and Mekhi Blackman's going to come back.

Dwight McLaughlin, you continue to develop. Maybe you bring in one other veteran, and you're improved significantly in the secondary into the future. I like where McLaughlin is at and the way they talk about him. Mike says, if they go deep in the playoffs with Sam, I think you need to consider a franchise tag and give JJ a full season and a season full off season and season is the backup. Yeah, that's it. They always have that in their back pocket. They always have that in the back pocket. And when we talk about this decision, sometimes

it's discussed as if they kept Sam Darnold, it would ruin the whole plan. It's not going to ruin the whole plan of playing JJ McCarthy. It's only going to push it down the road to see if they can run it back with Sam Darnold if they have to. So if they were to get to the NFC championship, it's just so hard to tell Sam Darnold to they have to. So if they were to get to the NFC championship, it's just so hard to tell Sam Darnold to take a hike. We got our guy and quarterbacks get hurt. So if you have a backup who you love and is your top draft pick for a year and he's 22, I don't worry so much about, well, yeah, they would be wasting a year of his rookie contract, but not wasting.

If you're competing for a Superbowl, that's the thing about what the Packers did. They weren't wasting Jordan love. They were competing for Superbowls with Aaron Rogers. They just waited one season too long, uh, with Rogers. And that's where they did waste a year of Jordan love, uh, Brady photography as a 40 plus year fan, considering that I'm jaded and do have my doubts about JJ, we're discussing the Vikings here. You know, the thing about every generation of Vikings fans has their different thing that they like to kind of lean on with this team. And what I mean is that no matter how good it might look, if you're a 40 year fan and you've seen them lose all the Superbowls, you're always kind of going to lean on that. Well, it'll probably go wrong. And then if you grew up when I did,

and you saw Gary Anderson missed to the left, you'll probably say, well, if the 20 or the 1998 team couldn't win, then how is this team going to do it? And what I think is who said thief earlier said like thief of football or something, thief, uh, the Kirk cousins with a thief. This is a thief of joy. This is, this is every, if every single thing that happens, every single win, every single game, every single draft pick, every single 10 and two start to a season. The thing you go back to is they'll probably blow it because they're the Vikings. You're just taking other people's joy. That's just not fun at all.

That's brutal. And it also has nothing to do with now. I don't think that Fran Tarkenton plays for the Vikings. It has nothing to do with now. The Super Bowl or nothing was ever worth it mindset. I just don't know how you continue to watch football for that long if that's how you do it, right? If your mindset is something's going to go wrong,

well, you're usually going to be right because you think about 31 teams not winning the Super Bowl, you're just going to be right all the time. There's lots of franchises that don't win the Super Bowl or who have never won the Super Bowl. There's all sorts of them. So if your assumption is something's going to go wrong, almost every team is right.

How about Buffalo? If that's their mindset, well, they've been right a lot because Mahomes. I just don't get it. I don't see where it gets you anywhere. It seems like something that people kind of enjoy talking about is their misery and pain that the Vikings have caused them, which I think is, is fine from a like shared experience type of perspective. But the team is in the best position they've been in since I've covered them period outside of when I was flying to Philadelphia for the NFC championship. I would have argued they were in a better position then, but aside from

that, they're in the best position. one of the best positions in the entire NFL. Listen to any analyst outside, it's not me, any analyst outside of this building talking about where this team is at with their quarterback future, their roster build, their coach, their general manager, all of it, their organization, the owners, everything else. I think it's uncomfortable for people to have the team be so competent you've been so used to them finding ways to do something stupid that will screw up for you that when the gm builds a team through free agency this last offseason with a 10 million dollar quarterback who's this good and then finds all these great defensive players there's not as much to complain about so we focus on Garrett Bradbury I guess you know like I I think that this position is uncomfortable and for me I've had to get used to this over the last year plus two years of reporting on this team because when Kweisi da fomenta took over and they went competitive rebuild mode i was very skeptical of that i thought you got to tear it all down now

man what are we doing here with trying to run back something that doesn't work and they did and it sort of worked and it sort of didn't but then they got around to the tearing down last year and since the tearing down the way that they handled it it was really a fork in the road for quesadilla fomenta kevin o'connell the way they handled this last offseason and what we've seen is they went the right way and now the team is just good they might lose on sunday and then you can come back and say see i told you so i've watched the team for a million years okay well that might happen but uh overall the bigger picture is there's only about a dozen teams in the league who have any clue what they're doing and the

vikings happen to be one that does not guarantee you the super bowl but if the only thing you're here for is the super bowl i guess i would just say check in on february 9th or whatever and see if they're in it it's i mean the ride of sports we can watch it and enjoy it is that not true watch a season and see how it goes i don't know uh marley says uh this game will go one of four ways blow out either way last second game winning drive or an absolute total sinking abomination akin to the raiders or bears games last year that's kind of a definition of every game in the nfl usually it is close in the nfl we've seen that from those one score game stats. And a lot of times it does come down to the final moments with Kirk cousins. Heck he threw four picks and it still did last week. It still came down to the final moments with the chargers. I would that's if I'm projecting it,

I think most of the world is going to say that the Vikings will win by two scores here, and that might be right, I'm probably going to go that the Vikings win close, that they need Will Reichert or Parker Romo or whoever to kick a last second field goal, or they need Atlanta's kicker to miss a last second field goal or something, that Kirk will have the ball in his hands. This could be completely, totally exploded on Sunday by the first quarter, but I just can't get over the six years I saw of every time we thought Kirk was done. He leads a game-winning drive, right? I mean, think about even last year. If they lose at Carolina, it's over for this team.

They're trading everybody away. Maybe even Kirk Cousins finds a way to win. It's an ugly game. They figure it out. And then he comes back, plays great against San Francisco. And there's just so many times where you think it's over and it is not. Scott says the Falcons have two good safeties. Do you expect a short passing game from Sam as well? They have some good cover players. It's almost odd to me that there's such a bad defense, but they can't pressure the quarterback at all. And that's where if you can,

my guess is they're going to hunt big plays, even though they do have two good safeties that you're not talking about Ed Reed and Troy Palomaro here. They're good, but they're not mega stars in their primes. They can't pressure the quarterback very well. They may try to blitz and they'll go to the underneath game. I would like to see a lot of the underneath game. I was watching Colt McCoy talk about Russell Wilson, and he was pointing out that the Steelers kept running four verticals and running everybody down the field and throwing underneath to the running back.

And it just kept working and working, which is what I do on Madden every year since 1994, which is run everybody down the field and throw it to the running back. But I think the Vikings do need to do things like that a little bit more than they do. And instead of the running back, Hawkinson, everybody deep, Hawkinson underneath. But you know they're going to come out looking for shots because they believe that they'll be able to protect Sam Darnold. And no matter how good those safeties are, if you could protect him and he's got time to throw, then you, he's going to, he's going to sling it. Oh gosh. Got to look at KOC as a mechanic using all of his tools and lifts and knowledge and manuals to fix the car. Yes. Not every quarterback is fixable though. And this is why as, as much as Kevin O'Connell deserves

a ton of credit for Sam Darnold, Sam Darnold deserves a ton of credit. This guy could have given up so many times or been egotistical, not taking a backup job or lost his confidence, lost his belief. How many quarterbacks have we seen have that happen? Who had the talent or not tried to get better or been arrogant or blamed other people? I probably mentioned on the show, I was watching some podcasts with Christian Hackenberg, who was just not good enough to play in the NFL. And he was blaming the jets for not trying to develop him enough. Like buddy,

huh? That's not Sam Darnold. That's not, he didn't, he didn't blame anybody else. He hasn't done it all year. So he deserves credit too, because he came in seemingly with an open mind about what it was going to be like to work with Kevin O'Connell, learn the offense, listen, became a leader. Those press conferences are not going to change lives, but every time, you know, we're with him for a press conference, I think this guy has just been so professional the entire time from training camp to the McCarthy thing to everything else. So he deserves a lot of the credit himself for continuing to develop himself along the

way, along with, and one time Kirk said that to me about development, quarterback development, because I asked him about it. And Kirk said that in the NFL, you have to develop yourself. The coaches can do something for you. The players, they can do something for you as well. The supporting cast and all that's a big deal, and he's absolutely right. But if you're going to get better, you better be outside this building. You better be in the playbook.

You better be working with other guys. You better figure out a way to do it yourself because the coaches in the NFL just don't have time to sit there and develop you. I think what O'Connell and the Vikings supporting cast has done is just given him the best chance of succeed, but he's grown a lot himself. Even when you go back and watch him with the jets, he's hopping around back there. You know, he's up on his toes, bouncing around around his his wind up kind of is longer and he's flinging it down the field wildly like that's not how he's playing quarterback now so he's growing a lot uh marley what is the falcons offensive line pass blocking grade slash win rate defense doesn't

guarantee pressure up the middle so i'm not sure gran or Van Ginkle will feast as much as we'd like to see. Let me take a look. So they are, let me see here. Where is Atlanta? Pretty mid they're mid. They are 18th in pass blocking grade. Do I have that right? Sword, right? Yeah. They are 18th in pass blocking grade. So they've just been okay. The re the real thing for why cousins hasn't been pressured is that he's just getting rid of the ball. So with Grenard Van Ginkle, number one, there has to be patients there. They also have to drop back into spots where he's going to throw when there's pressure. So I think that there's going to be a lot of the type of pressures that if you watch what Arizona did to them last week, it was really good. It was really smart. I was, I, when I watched it back on tape, I thought Arizona is going to be

a pretty good team with this coach and this defense, cause there's no stars over there, but they did a good job. One of the things they did. So kind of picture in your brain, the defensive line and add a couple other bodies there. So you got maybe seven people along the defensive line at the line of scrimmage. And what they did was they would overload one side with rushers. So they would send four from one side and maybe one or two from the other side and drop two guys out into the zones. And that was hard for Sam Darnold to identify. I wouldn't be shocked if we see something like that from Flores this week. And they do variations of that each week, but even if he's not blitzing, but dropping people out after showing a bunch of guys at the line of scrimmage

to try to get Kirk into those short passes and then jump in front of them, make quick tackles. That's what they do a lot. And I think you're going to see that because they know he's not going deep down the field. Gus Buss, Josh Oliver being back should really help the offense. I'm looking forward to seeing him block up some duo runs. Well, Gus Buss, that's a ball knower right there. If you're looking forward to him, you know, blocking up duo. Yeah, Josh Oliver is a good player. They missed him, I think, on the short passing game too,

because he was becoming a pretty legitimate underneath option when he got hurt. He was doing really well at taking advantage of the underneath stuff. Mustin, sir, like I and many others would say, if there's someone out there in free agency to replace Garrett, pay the money and get the guy, he's still a liability. He's not a liability. I just think that everyone is too far.

Ryan Kelly is horrible. I'm sorry, that was the next message about Ryan. Ryan Kelly is done, man. What like we got to watch some other centers around the league and compare Bradbury. That's what we use the numbers for, right? We use the numbers to show that in terms of pass blocking, it's been fine the last three years. It hasn't been great, but it's been fine. He's not crushing people. He's not Jason Kelsey. He's not Creed Humphrey, but he's fine. And in run blocking, he's above average in leadership. He's well above average knowledge

of the offense, well above average health, well above average for that position. He's always out there. He is a good glue guy to that line. He's led Sam Darnall. Don't, I mean, I did a story on this. You guys got to read over at the newsletter. I did a story on this. You guys got to read over at the newsletter. I did a story on this, how important Bradbury has been to Sam Darnold in terms of their leadership and communication. All those things matter. I think that it just goes back to three years ago. That first impressions matter so much. And the first impression of him was bad. He was bad for three years at pass protection. He really struggled. He got benched at one point since he's come back with KOC and with Chris Cooper, he's been a solid NFL center. That's not an issue. I think to worry too much about

now, nano Joe says, Brandel is the weak link. What I would say is that the weakest link on this line is way better than the weak links before. Now that Dalton Reisner is in there, this is a top 10 line. PFF put out their list of offensive line rankings this week. They had the Vikings in the top 10 because there's no massive weak link. There's no Dozier. There's no Compton. There's no person Ingram who just gets beat immediately and kills your quarterback. That said Blake Brandel, the last couple of weeks, there's been some struggles there. And what I was thinking about with Brandel is the number of snaps that he's played. When is the last time this guy has played this level of snap count? I think there is some exhaustion level to that.

So maybe wall that he's going to have to power through because it does feel like his play is dipped. And when I say feel like by the numbers, his play is dipped in recent weeks. And there's been some big misses from him that were not there earlier this season. That's something that does have to be addressed. K-Max says,

I think it's confirmation bias with Bradbury. Fans notice when he gets bulldozed, but miss the good stuff. Yeah, it really goes back to he's allowed 20-something pressures this year. So there's been times where pressure has come up the middle. The Vikings had Christian Derrissaw. They have the best right tackle in the league. So what happens is teams try to pressure up the middle against the Vikings. That's what Arizona, where they made some hay last week, that's going to result in more difficult challenges for your center than other teams that have Miles Garrett or Micah Parsons on the outside are just attacking tackles or other teams with mediocre tackles that aren't Christian Derrissaw. So that impacts it sometimes with just, if you're on the other side, are you saying I'm going to go after Derrissaw? No, you're saying I'm going to go after the interior, which is what they mostly do on a weekly basis. So he's facing more there and

he's done fine. It's, it's been fine. It's not mind blowing. It's not going to the hall of fame, but in past protection, leadership adjustments at the line of scrimmage, working with the quarterback, these things are all worth it. And, um, you know what they do with them next year. I don't know, but it seems like there's, there's this, there's this real serious need to be worried about the offensive line when you're having the best offensive line year I can remember. Truly the best offensive line year that I've covered.

Sam Darnold's holding the ball forever, and he's throwing down the field. Last week, they missed some assignments, and also the Cardinals did a great job in disguising some stuff, and he took some quick sacks, but other, but the full season, they've had opportunities to throw the ball downfield all year long. It's not a, it's just not a bad line and it's center is doing okay. Uh, let's see. Caleb says, uh, can the Vikings franchise tag Sam Darnold and trade him next year? They can. I think there's something there that they could potentially do if they want to.

And there's probably a team out there that would be willing to give you a high draft pick for him, but it all depends on what happens. Is that an option? Yeah. Like, is it something? I mean, I just don't, they shouldn't, if they can franchise tag and trade, they shouldn't just let him walk, but it would depend on the offer because then you're talking, you know, compensation pick,

which you guys love so much and all that. So I don't know. It's a complicated situation. What I know is the better that he plays the harder that decision gets for the vikings the farther that they go the more success that they have uh then you know it gets it just gets more challenging now this uh is is an interesting angle from Steve. There is zero evidence that KOC can develop a rookie quarterback from scratch. Stafford, Cousins, Darnold, all six years of experience before KOC were already fundamentally developed. McCarthy is not. I mean, I don't know what to tell you, Steve.

I mean, I think that if you're saying that Sam Darnold was fundamentally developed, that might be a stretch because he was fundamentally horrendous. And now he's not. I also actually did see with these hair eyeballs, the development of JJ McCarthy already. Now you did not because you weren't at OTAs, you weren't at mini camp, you weren't at training camp, but you probably saw the preseason game, which was a culmination of all those things. But I did see how JJ McCarthy

and Kevin O'Connell worked together and how the development plan went from McCarthy during OTAs, having almost no idea what to do, how to throw the ball, all those things, the footwork and everything else. And then look where he was during that preseason game and look how much he developed over the offseason. Yeah, I mean, you can't invent things that didn't happen in the past. He did have Stafford cousins, but I wouldn't say Stafford and cousins are like Darnold in any way. Darnold is a young quarterback who had nothing in the past. He did have Stafford cousins, but I wouldn't say Stafford and cousins are like Darnold in any way. Darnold is a young quarterback who had nothing in the past. This was a real test case

for Kevin O'Connell and he's not doing it alone. He's not doing it without number 18. He's not, you know, right. If they go to JJ McCarthy, they, first of all, have developed him quite a bit already, but that means that their confidence is extremely high that he can repeat this type of performance and they can support him in the way that, that they've supported Darnold. And that in some ways he might be able to do even more. He is a little faster than Sam Darnold. He is a little bit better at seeing the field. I think sometimes than Darnold, be a little better decision maker than Darnold or potentially, potentially he could be those things. And the arm strength is close. He's also got a rocket. Now Darnold has a little more touch on the football. There's nuances between these two guys and they might not have to make a decision

between the two. They might just have both of them for next year. But I think that as far as quarterbacks that you could put in somebody's hands around the entire NFL, that if your son was a quarterback and you were saying, all right, little, little Tommy has unbelievable talent and he's coming out in the draft. Where do I want him to go go tell me you're not picking kevin o'connell jefferson addison hockinson the line that's been better i i mean i don't know man i guess it's true that did you think he was gonna develop jaron hall like i i don't know i'm just not sure what to say to things like that like there's no evidence of it like of course not there's no evidence of it. Like, of course not. There's no evidence of it that you saw. But there's also, cause I did. So I believe more in it than you do, but I mean, I don't know.

Whoever knows what, what's going to happen with any young quarterback, the guy got hurt. So we didn't get to see it. Are you, are you saying that they should stay with Darnold because there's no evidence of this. Like, I'm not really sure what the point is other than just saying stuff, I guess. I'm not, I'm just not really sure like what that's supposed to get at. Uh, David says, I like the mentality that Sam has, which is what I think O'Connell envisioned originally and push Sam to continue to refine. Uh, he could make some mistakes, but if he gets on one, it could be glorious. Yeah. I mean, he's been on one like these last couple of weeks, you're seeing what the potential is there. It's been against three teams that are not the worst on defense. The bears can be pretty good on defense. Arizona was, I think 11th on defense defense you're not maybe going to see it against atlanta but i do think

you're seeing what they can be as far as an offense when sam darnold plays really well it hasn't been perfect it certainly wasn't in the first half but if sam darnold plays like this like this then you have a quarterback that you can't let go. Digit says with the available cap in 2025, the value of quarterback proficiency signed Darnold to a three-year $120 million deal and refined JJ's development. And then Scott follows up by saying, is it December 4th or March 4th? Come on. I tend to agree.

I tend to agree, Scott. The thing is that we crossed the line when they got to 10 and two and Darnold put up the game winning drive for the second straight week and played great. We did cross into a territory where this is a real discussion. So I'm allowing it. The judge is allowing it. I'll allow it because we're there. That my whole thing the whole year was, I'll talk about it when I have to. You lead a drive like that. You get to 10 and two. We have to. We have to start having the conversation. But I agree. I mean, they're playing the Falcons. It's a big game. It's a big stretch. It's an exciting race to the end.

We don't need necessarily to negotiate contracts for Sam Darnold, but we can definitely talk about, is he making a strong argument and what would he have to do in order to convince the team to stick with him? Let's see. David says, don't see a last play end of the season check down in our future. Well, you know,

you never know how it's going to go. The future is so bright with the rest of the organization that it's time to read your Oakley promo. Cause you need to wear the shades. I still have the shades. Oakley has not sponsored the show in a long time, so I don't have a promo, but I do have

their shades because i didn't have to give them back after they sent them so thanks to them for the shades they're pretty good but i only i only need those when things are getting real hot in there i don't i don't think we're there quite yet uh bill says uh guys sam's not going to be here next year. He's just not. Best case scenario is we tag him and trade him to LA. Yeah. I mean, any definitive statement, how can you do it? How can you make any definitive statement about what's going to happen? That's what makes the end of this season so interesting along with can they compete for the Superbowl?

So number one story by far, I hope for all of you is can your football team actually go into the playoffs and win games and get to the NFC championship and have a chance to chase the Superbowl? I think more people started to accept that that's on the table after last week, when you get to 10 and two, it's on the table. You can't deny it anymore when they're seven and two and they're off a couple of losses to play bad team. Okay. Well, you know, you get to 10, you're already in the playoffs. You're already there. I mean, they need a couple of things to happen this week to have a playoff spot, but they're basically there right now. So then it's on the table.

Can you do that? And then connected to that storyline is the future of the quarterback situation, which is always very relevant. Futures of coaching situations, futures of quarterback situations, they matter so much to the organization, to how you build everything around it, that those two storylines are interlocked. But I do want to remind everyone to focus on the first one as well, and not just the future situation. Mike says, if they sit Kirk going forward and he's a backup at 2025, he'll wave his no trade and go play somewhere as long as he gets the money. That is, I think he's already got the guaranteed dollars.

Yeah, that is the Atlanta situation is someone else's problem, which is nice for everyone who watches this because they like the Minnesota Vikings. But from my seat, what I see is a team that made a very smart move in drafting a quarterback in Michael Penix. Because you can deal with the issue of Kirk and his cap and everything else when they have to move on from him. If they had nothing else, no answer, oh my goodness. Where would they be if they didn't make that pick?

Where would they be? They didn't make that pick? Where would they be? They would be in a heck of a lot of trouble. Mike says, after watching back the game, do you still think Sam deserved that D minus for the first half of the game with Dane? There were several people who were unhappy with that grade, made some nice throws without knowing the calls, tough to grade him so harshly. I don't know, man. I don't't know i just wouldn't worry about it yeah when i watched when i watched it back the results matter and the quarterback has to have the protection set ultimately everything's on the quarterback if you own your own business your employees screw up, it's still on you. And at the end of the day, they had 75 yards.

They were barely on the field. They got sacked out of a bunch of good situations. There was a third down and two where he got sacked and tried to scramble and didn't see an open guy underneath and they were losing. So yeah, I'm fine with us saying it wasn't a good half. I mean, it's just a made up grading system though. So I wouldn't get too stuck on it, but it was a bad half of football for the Vikings offense. And the quarterback is most responsible for that. Uh, it's not responsible for Aaron Jones's fumble and it's, and I didn't say he

made no nice throws, but you can't have 75 yards. And the overall grade for the game was a B plus because of how great he played in the second half. So yeah, I just wouldn't freak out about a grade we gave in an instant reaction right after the game. But I understand what you're saying and you're not freaking out. You're asking if I would still grade it that way. And the answer is, yeah, I would still give it a pretty rough grade because it was rough. You can't have too many halves like that and expect to just still be in contention against good teams.

The Arizona Cardinals let them hang around in that game. It has to be better. That cannot happen. Doug, how many more weeks until the rookie kicker is ready i don't know seems like this week they're trying to get him ready and they probably would like him to be ready this week but parker romo's done such a great job they don't have to push it the windows open we'll see it looks like the paul is coming back because they wave jake mcquade at long snapper but they may wait another week since they haven't cut Romo.

I'm guessing they have to see how it plays out through the rest of the week. Mustin, sir, all these boomers keeping being negative does nothing. I don't know. Mustin, sir, you were talking about you can't stand any of the offensive linemen earlier. I'm just, I'm just messing with you. But if you think it's always going to end bad, then just stop. Yeah. I mean, so I don't want to, I don't want to be that harsh. Cause I get it. Like I want to be respectful of what these people who love the Vikings since the seventies have gone through. If you were showing up at a game where it's 10 degrees watching Joe cap or something in

1969, and then you see them go get whooped in the super bowl, that probably hurt a lot. And it probably hurt a lot to see Gary Anderson kick that ball wide left. And those are things that are hard to get over. But I just think that there's no real connection that every season is something new and all the franchises who win a Superbowl, Tampa Bay, Tampa Bay was anyone more of a joke than Tampa Bay. They've won two. I don't know. You just never know what's going to happen in football. So I don't think it makes you happier or enjoy football more to only focus on what happened in 1977 or even 1990. My gosh, I was 12 in 1998.

So, I mean, we're a long way from that. Blair Walsh, that was more recent. That was more recent. Pete says, of course, we want a budget-friendly quarterback but statistically it's more likely that most first round quarterbacks are not one do we roll the dice that jj beats the odds well that's the whole discussion is do the odds change see the odds make no difference when when you do the odds of all quarterbacks who are drafted that doesn't actually tell you anything because the bears drafted those quarterbacks and the

jets, the worst organizations in football drafted those quarterbacks, not your team, your coach, this player. That's the thing. Every individual and every individual situation has its own set of odds. JJ McCarthy's odds for as the Minnesota Vikings quarterback are not Mitch Trubisky's odds. Mitch Trubisky just wasn't a great prospect. J.J. McCarthy is a really good prospect. Now, they drafted Trubisky really high,

but I think the resume for McCarthy, the age, the upside, probably higher. And then the circumstance, way, way, way, way, way, way better. Way better. So all those things, all those things make a difference. Everybody has their own odds coming out of the draft. And with the Vikings, they're pushed majorly in their favor. Uh, James is not allowing B. John Robinson to get going. We'll go a long way in rattling cousins, a hundred percent, a hundred 100% 100% they did a good job when it came to um slowing down james connor in the red zone last week but connor did get off some runs and robinson will get some runs against this team

it's just not letting him hit the big home run i shot you 99 is this uh off season, the similar to get Kirk cousins or extend Keenum? No, no, it's not the same. It's not the same because number one case Keenum is just not Sam Darnold. Those are two very, very different human beings. Very, very different. Uh, also Kirk cousins was the most expensive quarterback in football you would be going to the least expensive quarterback in football in jj mccarthy kirk cousins was proven he had years of being mediocre middle eight and eight what did he go eight seven and one and then seven and nine like there was a lot of evidence that Kirk Cousins was just an okay

starter in the league who could maybe compete for a playoff spot. There's no evidence of what JJ McCarthy is except for what we've seen so far, which to them is a lot. Um, to the outside, it's one preseason game to them. It's months and months behind the scenes. So that, that will play into the decision. Sean says, uh, Phillip river sat behind drew breeze for two years and ended up. Okay. Don't see why it would hinder JJ to do the same.

Totally agree. He'll be 23 years old, an old 23. If they, uh, or would it be even, no, it'd be 23.

If, if they kept Arnold for another year. So, you know, that that that goes into it as well uh Kerplupp he says there's times I watch Darnold and my jaw is dropped I don't know if I'm so used to mediocre football if this guy's legit the throwing's legit the throwing is absolutely legit um uh Aaron says he just listened to Darnold's press conference. Uh, and I asked him a bunch of questions today about his arm and his throwing, his throwing is legit and his

mentality is legit. We have a big enough sample size now to say that the way he handles himself is legit. Uh, luminous grin says, try watching a team for 50 years and get back to us do you think i'm like a child i grew up in buffalo new york watching football at the age of four years old so that gives me about 34 years of watching football teams that constantly disappoint their fans. I got the badges. Trust me, I got all the badges. I've seen Wide Right lose a Super Bowl. I saw Washington kill the Bills in the Super Bowl. I saw the Cowboys kill the Bills in the Super Bowl. I saw the Music City freaking miracle. And guess what? Since I've been here, even in Minnesota, I saw Teddy Ridgewater get hurt. I saw them losing the NFC championship.

I saw Kirk get hurt last year. I saw Kirk check down. I, I don't know if I'm pretty sure I got a good resume when it comes to this, but every year I go into it and say, it's a new year. Let's see what happens. Go back to week one. Listen to what I said. Then the outside world doesn't think your team's that good. I think they're a little bit better. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. Every year is a new year. You never know. I thought the bills wouldn't be that good this year. I thought the bills would fall off because they're in transition roster wise. And they would be like a 10 win team and just kind of be like, okay. And they're amazing because their coach is great. And because their quarterback is an all timer, John Elway, you want to go back?

You want to talk old? I can talk old with you all day. If you want to talk NFL history, John Elway lost how many Superbowls? He was only not clutch in the Superbowl until he was, he lost a bunch of Superbowls, got killed in those Superbowls and his reputation for his entire career was, this is the great quarterback who just can't get over the top. And then he did. You got great teams, good matchups, found a way. So I've got a bunch of examples for you all through NFL history of teams and players who were dubbed as they're cursed.

They're not clutch. They can't get it done. And then they do. How about Steve Young? Get the monkey off his back. 1994. You want to talk old football? I can do it all done, and then they do. How about Steve Young? Get the monkey off his back. 1994. You want to talk old football? I can do it all night, my friend.

That's 1994. That's what Steve Young said coming off the field when he won the Super Bowl. Got the monkey off my back because he was always talked about as a guy who couldn't get over the hump. Even Peyton Manning early in his career. Every year, you never know. I watched Nick Foles beat the Minnesota Vikings and then beat Tom Brady on a trick play at the end of a half. I mean, I don't know, man. I think the reason you watch this sport is because you never know what the

heck can happen or who's going to win or what year is your year for your team. So it makes this thing great. All these one score games, they just up the variance. They up the possibility of your team being that team. But I think 34 years of watching teams that have been cursed does get me in the club. I think.

Jared, I'm working on a list of fan-based behavior stereotypes. What would you say describes Vikings fans, bitter, chronically pessimistic, broken, scarred. I don't know that you can just put everybody under one umbrella. You have different approaches to all of it. You have people who paint their faces and go to the stadium and think the Vikings are winning the Superbowl every year. You have people who are chronically pessimistic, bitter, scarred, broken, frustrated. Yeah, there's all that. What's great about this, doing this all the time is that all of you are a melting pot in the chat and i get lots of different viewpoints this year i i have felt like there's cynicism within a large portion of the fan base and i felt it at u.s bank stadium the other day that there is a oh it's one

of those years where we're a fake team kind of cynicism. And I've tried to present some of the statistical arguments against that, but I can't say everyone's like that. I mean, I think that the fact that think about this, the fact that those fans, no matter what, fill that stadium every single week and travel the way that they do. I don't think you could call them broken and scarred. I don't see the fans of the jets traveling all over the country to see their crappy jets. When the bears came here. Yeah. You got some people who are from Chicago, but they don't take over the house. I mean, it's, it is, it is a kind of a, I would say like a dyed

in the wool for better or worse type of franchise. Like you, your fans of Vikings of the Vikings didn't just start yesterday and decide to jump on board, right? Like if you're a Vikings fan, you've been doing it a long time, probably since birth and you're going to follow them no matter what. And so I think that some of it is just a little bit of a defense mechanism. Uh, luminous says, uh, it was in reference to the boomer comment. Now you, I see, yeah, I see what you're saying. Um, fair enough, but still, I mean, it doesn't matter how long you follow the team. It's just not the right approach to a season like this to just constantly talk about what happened many years ago. That's my point. As we go from game to game, we don't need to bring it up every first half.

That doesn't go well. Heat Grim says the boomers who gatekeep Vikings fandom are the worst. You shouldn't under any circumstance have to validate your fandom. Well, I don't have any, I don't have any fat fandom. I just know NFL history. I mean, my, my point is just that having lived in Buffalo and grown up there and then moved here to cover the team professionally, seeing a lot of stuff go sideways for these franchises. And I get it. And there's a similar, it's different, but there's some similarity there to thinking that the worst is always around the corner. And I just don't see what good it does. I have a lot of experience talking with fans because I did sports radio in Buffalo and here. So that's the job, right? Talking with you guys.

And this comes up all the time where it's just, well, you know, the worst thing's going to happen to us. It just always does like, man, I just don't get it. I just like that. That doesn't make Sunday fun. Are you hoping for it to go bad? Um, are you hoping for it to go bad? Uh, Steve, you said, uh, you're saying the Viking should stay with Darnold. Yeah. But I don't think that your argument that Kevin O'Connell's never developed the quarterback is the right way to make that point. The right way to make the staying with Darnold point is gestures at Darnold, 10 and two top 10 quarterback. He's played great and it doesn't look fake.

That's, that's the right way to make that point. Not that O'Connell may or may not know what he's doing. I mean, I think it's pretty clear. Kevin O'Connell knows what he's doing. I mean, I think it's pretty clear Kevin O'Connell knows what he's doing. I mean, they have won so many football games. The organization is in such a good spot. This is a coach. It was brought up the other day, would you trade O'Connell for something?

They're like, no. You wouldn't trade him for almost anything because you believe in what he's been able to do with these quarterbacks. And he's already worked so closely with McCarthy. We saw his big time development. There's a plan there. So that's, that's not the reason why the reason why is Darnold's good. That's it. Let's see. I'll just call you a blunt. Good to see you though. Good to see you. If you got offered Kirk Cousins money to start a Falcons podcast, would you do it?

You know what? Tell you the truth. Money is not that important to me. It's just not. It's not what I do this for, obviously. Although Diet Dr. Pepper, if you want to jump in anytime soon and sponsor the show please feel free uh but it's not it's not what i do this for so you know but

kirk cousins money 45 million dollars just talking football about another team. Yeah, I could do that. I could do that. I mean, I talked about Kirk Cousins for six years, so yeah, I'm pretty familiar with it. I actually, I already could probably do the podcast in my sleep. I did it hundreds of times talking about where the team was at with Kirk Cousins. So yes, if it was that much of a discrepancy, then yes. But since I don't think that's going to happen, probably won't have to worry about that. First name, last name, I'd trade KOC for Pat Mahomes and Andy Reid. Yeah. Okay. Well, within reason, draft picks. Yes, I koc for sean mcdermott and josh allen well there yeah okay for the best quarterback in the league of yeah i would do that anytime but short of that

though short of someone giving you joe burrow josh allen or patrick mah, you're not trading him for much because of the confidence that he can develop McCarthy or can get the most out of Sam Darnold. Scott says, imagine if this team fired its head coach, like the bears did last week, hashtag blessed and saluting Casey. Hey, look, it's an interesting place to be because where Vikings

fans have lived so long is your organization isn't crap and it isn't down bad and it's not a disaster, but it's just not good enough. I get it. I understand it. There is a unique place in the sport for the Minnesota Vikings. They have their own tier. When you talk about the tiers of franchises of like the Steelers and Chiefs and just the best of the best. And then you have this teams that any given time it could sort of go right, sort of go wrong. Who knows teams that are just in the dumps and are awful the vikings have their own tier which is they always seem to know what they're doing for the most part they have a good plan they have star players guys who are going to the hall of fame usually good coaches mike zimmer was a good coach just lost it at the end but i mean still a

good coach it's almost hard to find bad coaches less steckle in uh vikings history there's not many but yet can never break through and go over the top and this sort of leads to why vikings fans are slow to buy into a team that's really good like this one is is it's not 98 and they've seen the good and not flawless version come up short many times but good and not flawless kind of defines everyone in the nfc i think zoomer kev is the season gonna end in philly maybe maybe i don't know it might guess we'll have to watch find out if they go to philly that that is where i would say that philly's the one where you don't want them to go that is no matter what happens that you'd much rather have them play the lines of ford Field where they're comfortable and they've played before, not Philadelphia.

The line, the running game, they have great tackles. They have a really good defense. It's violent up front. They're way better up front than Detroit. Kufu Matthew, I have to say your work for inside information shows up night after night. Thank you. Just want to say thank you. Well, I really appreciate that. That's very nice of you. Very nice of you. Uh, it's not hard work, but I like it. So I do a lot of it. Like it's not, it's not hard to go talk to Sam Darnold or whatever, or talk to you guys,

but I, I do a lot of it because it's fun. So I'm glad that it works out for all of us. Steve says, Sam already came refined when it comes to fundamentals. His offseason coach is Jordan Palmer. Same as Josh. I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying. That Sam Darnold was more experienced. He's worked on it a lot more.

But I think that we're having an issue here with the discussion about JJ McCarthy, Kevin O'Connell and quarterback development between X has anything to do with Y like JJ McCarthy's development and whether Kevin O'Connell can develop him more., doesn't really have much to do with what's happened with Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins, or Sam Darnold. He's already developed J.J. McCarthy immensely since he arrived. And that's why when he talks about working for information, going to OTAs and watching J.J. McCarthy, go watch my podcast after where we talked about, man,

like, is he going to struggle with this accuracy? Then go watch my podcast after his preseason game where we are wowed by how much his accuracy improved. It's true that Sam Darnold has been in the league longer. He's worked on his fundamentals longer. He's a different quarterback now. But can Kevin O'Connell's offense and the way he works with his quarterback and the people he has in the building, he's not doing it himself. Josh McCown. I mean, can these guys take a quarterback with a ton of talent, work ethic, vision for the field, playmaking, championship pedigree, and give him a really, really good chance to succeed. I mean, we never really know until he's out there. So that might

be a better way to make this point is that Sam Darnold is more predictable. But if you're giving me coach receivers, coaching staff organization to get the most out of somebody and develop them. I mean, I'm, I'm going to take this one toward the top of the list. And the fact that I already saw him do it over this summer would give even more confidence, but no one is ever, ever going to be a hundred percent until it's actually there. And that's why the decision is so difficult because there is an element of not knowing versus knowing with Sam Darnold. But even then year to year, it's never a guarantee. Don and Bethany team is really good. Great organization and culture, interesting characters, no matter how the season ends up, it's been a fun season it's been the most it has been the most yeah the

most fun season that i've covered for this team from the way the locker room is the way they respond to the coaching the games the entertainment value like yeah i, 2022 was really crazy, but it was also stressed by the fact that everybody knew it wasn't legit and that they were kind of getting away with it. And the defense was so bad. Uh, BGZ says, would you say most of the Vikings beat reporters are indifferent towards the team or somewhat fans of the team? A hundred percent indifferent. Uh, but that, but indifferent is the wrong word. Um, so I shouldn't say a hundred percent indifferent. Indifferent is the wrong word. Like we're not indifferent. Like we care greatly about covering the team. Uh, but as far as whether they win or lose, uh, that would be indifferent. Yeah. I mean,

the proof is in the work. Like if you read any of our work and when you say beat reporters, I mean the professionals, the people who are there actually covering the team on a daily basis, the Ben Gessling, Andrew Kramer, Alec Lewis, Kevin Seifert, you know, the beat. So not like random internet accounts or whatever who write insider on something, but like actual reporters. It would be indifferent. Yeah. And if you just look at all the things that have happened through the time that I've been

here, any of those people, you can see it. We're covering the team the same way, whether they're bad or they're good. And the way that we talk here is always trying to parse through the facts and frame things in the right way toward what the truth is about the team, where they're going, what's happened. It's not to cheer them on. They have millions of fans. We're the ones that are supposed to be just what our job is. Our job is to be the go-between. Like what I'm doing right now, it's to be the go-between.

Fans and the team. So the team's message, what interesting stories inside the team, what we're supposed to do with the wins, the losses, the ups and downs, the salary caps, all those things that you guys want to know because you're so interested then like we're here to bring you that information that's the job not to not to root them on uh when there's a season like this it's certainly more entertaining it's more fun to go into the locker room because everyone is excited. Right.

So, you know, I mean, when the players are all pumped about how good the team is, then they're usually available for interviews, but, but even that's selfish, right? That's just like, we want good stories. So that's, that's how I look at it. I look at it as I'm here to provide, I'm here to learn everything I can about the team, including getting to know people, getting information, hearing from the coaches. I'm here to gather everything I can get and then answer your questions. So what do you want to know about your favorite team? I can give it to you and then, you know, be opinionated when it's necessary.

Kerpluppi says, fantasy question. Are you starting the new 49ers running back? Oh, great time to remind everyone that this show here is presented by Underdog Fantasy, the easiest place to play fantasy sports and the fastest growing fantasy app in the industry. And if you so want to jump into, they got some best ball tournaments going on that I got into and drafted really terribly, but you could definitely do better than me. They go through the end of the season into the playoffs, which adds extra excitement and the pick-ems we do every week. Love those. So use that promo code purple to claim your special pick and first time deposit offer up to $1,000 in bonus cash.

That seems like a lot. So promo code purple. Must be 18 or older. Terms apply. Concerned with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Who's the 49ers new running back? Honestly, I haven't looked. I saw that Mason's out and McCaffrey is out.

Who played for them last week? Who is playing for the 49ers? I enjoyed that game, but I kind of checked out of actually watching it. Who would that be? Oh, Isaac. Uh, is it, uh, Garendo, Isaac Garendo? He's a freak though, right? Isn't, isn't he, doesn't he have crazy like 40 yard dash and leaping ability and stuff. Anyone who plays for the 49ers, my answer would just be yes, that you should start them because they're always going to run the ball and they're always going to be good at running it schematically. So Isaac do your thing.

Uh, must insert, uh, says, uh, I've seen a certain chilly person say that harrison smith is the most overrated player by vikings fans is there truth to that chilly person um harrison smith presently is doing a lot mentally to quarterbacks that is hard to pinpoint because it's not splash plays, but he's not making the splash plays that he used to. He's not getting the sacks. He's not getting the interceptions. He's not getting the pass breakups quite that he used to. I think they're playing it maybe a little more safe with him than the risks they used to take with Mike Zimmer. But as far as his career goes, I wrote about this last

year. I think that he has had a borderline Hall of Fame career. And the reason that he's not considered a Hall of Famer is kind of silly, which is not enough Pro Bowls, not enough All Pros, not enough big playoff moments, which he can't make the playoffs all by himself. So that was on a lot of other people, not him. He made a defensive MVP case in 2017, consistent excellence by PFF grades, by all the data. The last couple of years, he's been more of an average safety by that data and a little bit more than average when it comes to the mental part of the game, but overrated? No, I would not say that. I don't know who the most overrated player by fans is. It's probably whoever the backup guard is. You know the most overrated players, whoever they would sign on

the interior of the offensive line in free agency. the player who should have been able to save the whole offensive line. Uh, but I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know, uh, who the, that's a good question. Maybe you guys have some nomination. Who was the most overrated player by fans? I mean, not counting any preseason real players, not guys who were good in the fourth quarters of preseason games. And then really big on Twitter, like not people like that, but, um, not, not, not players that some fake film analysts tried to tell you was really great. And then they got cut out of camp, like not that, but actual players who would be the most overrated. I don't know. I don't know. It's Harrison Smith's not overrated. Like you could talk to anybody in the league, anybody. I mean, look what Aaron Rogers said about Harrison Smith a couple of

years ago, what Bill Belichick has said about Harrison Smith a couple of years ago, what Bill Belichick has said about Harrison Smith. I wrote about this last year, his hall of fame case, because I thought it might've been his last game. And I talked to Sandejo. I talked to Harris. I talked to a couple other people about Brian Flores and Durante Jones for that article about his impact. But then also in my research discovered things from Belichick, things from Aaron Rogers like that. No, no, not, not an overrated player, not even close, but he's not in his prime now. He's definitely not in his prime now, but he's still a contributor though. Uh, let's see.

Jared reporters and journalists are supposed to remain somewhat impartial. That is very true. Completely impartial really. But you know, the thing is that when it comes to all medias, it varies a little, uh, you know, I mean, I think this one in particular plays it. And if you read the articles, you can see it plays it very, you know, down the middle with stuff. There's other medias that cover teams that maybe are a little bit more cheering them on and maybe some that are a little bit too harsh. So it might vary and it's not the end of the world if it does so i'm not trying to be like journalism school like no i'm not trying to be that way it's just i i just i try to do the job that way is be opinionated and also bring as much information as i can and i hope for you guys someday that

you get to see your team win a super bowl and all the people who said they couldn't do it or wrong that would be great for you guys. If you got a parade, it would be a lot of fun to see the state go crazy. So there's that, you know, it's that this isn't the white house. It's not, you know, you don't have to be too serious about it, but just in general, I had a player asked me about this, about the fan thing. And my answer was that it would be really hard to work covering the team and also cheer for them.

It would be, look how exhausted you guys are at the end of the game. They win or lose. I type, publish, go down the locker room, same job every time. Doesn't make a bit of difference to me. I'm trying to think of, hey, what am I going to write about this? What's the most important thing that I need to convey to the fans from this game? What do I need to say about it? Who do I need to talk to? That's my mindset. If you were mad at losses after every game, just stress the whole game by every up and down. Oh my gosh. I have no idea how you wouldn't have any energy left to write an article.

And also fans always want us to yell at people. Like in press conferences, like it's, if you ever watched like a Disney movie or something, the media runs up to the ice dancer or whatever. How dare you? Or it's like, that's not how it's done.

Anyway, uh, let's see. So let me, uh, answer maybe a question or two more. We could put a rap on it. Cause I do have some to write. Kerpluppi, did you see Wong will return for a touchdown? Whatever happened to Miles Gaskin? The kick return extraordinaire. I don't think that Gaskin was actually supposed to be a returner so much as a make sure you don't drop it-er. Kevin O'Connell's philosophy has been that he's just not going to mess with this kickoff. He's done it very rarely. One of the most rare in the league, which is okay because you mitigate the mistakes.

You get the ball 25, you're going to go play football. I don't think that he wants to mess around. Kenny Wong was great at his job. It's great kick return. Nothing short of that. They may have felt like they needed more depth as actual running back, but I didn't really love that. You know, that was probably the most criticized thing from the Vikings.

Cutdowns was moving on from someone who could be a game changer for you and is capable of a 99 yard touchdown. Wong was special. If it was the nineties. Oh man. If it was the nineties, Kenny Wong would have been a star as a kick return. So Buffalo won a Superbowl. When was that? When was that? AFL, AFL days. Maybe they did the AFL championship.

Uh, getting weird now. Oh, it must be nine o'clock. Oh, it is. But yeah, to the point about, uh, so one more after this, but to the point about Kenny Wong one more after this but to the point about kenny wongu that's one i thought they probably overthought it a bit but then again he failed a physical and that made me wonder if there was some physical issue that they just didn't want to bring up but i wasn't shocked the guy's great at it uh zoomer kev you get the last question who is my thursday pick tomorrow night detroit green bay quite a contest unfortunately you folks will have to root for green bay it's better for you it is what it is neither one's great root for a tie no wait does a tie help both of them i don't know anyway i think green will win. The Lions are banged up on defense big time.

Green Bay is playing really well recently. I think that they will find a way to pull that one out. And then we're talking about a serious race going into Sunday. But if Detroit wins by 30, then you never heard this. I don't know. I just think that the way the both teams are playing, Green Bay is playing a little bit better right now than Detroit in their most recent games against good teams. So Detroit has played so well at times that they're bound for a stumble. They got away with it against Chicago. It feels like green Bay is going to make this super interesting. And then we're going to have one of the most incredible races for the division ever, ever. So anyway, uh, all right.

Thanks everybody for the great chat fun as always entertaining. I hope for you guys as well. And definitely interesting. I feel the juice this week. Last week is like, okay, they're getting back at home. But this week with Kirk coming to town, chance to go 11-2, I'm feeling the energy from you guys

and I'm enjoying that very much. So thanks so much for your time, for watching slash listening. And we'll talk to you all tomorrow night. Me and Manny Hill, we'll get to hear Manny Hill's all-time list of Atlanta Falcons. So get ready for that.

All right. Talk to you guys later. Football.