Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - How good will Sam Darnold be for the Vikings?

Episode Date: May 25, 2024

Sam Darnold is starting at OTAs. Do we expect him to play? How many games? What do we like and dislike about the idea of him playing? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Once again, one hour before the Minnesota Timberwolves take the floor. It didn't work out as great for us doing it last time, but we'll give it another shot here before game two and just talk a little bit of football. And I'll tell you what's on my mind for today is normally on the written side I do a Friday mailbag each week so that means fans send in all their questions I answer them in the mailbag you know how that works and one of them in particular caught my eye that asked about Sam Darnold and whether we should discount Sam Darnold as the potential quarterback of the future. Now, I think I know what you're thinking is probably the same thing that I was thinking is,

okay, okay, let's not go crazy here because Sam Darnold was brought here on a one-year $10 million contract and has no history of success in the NFL before. But the argument that was being made was, look, it's not just that he had bad circumstances. He had the worst circumstances and players can develop. The situation here is very good. And when you look at just the pure talent that he has, we have seen this come to fruition before. Now, have we seen it come to fruition where someone was really this bad through that many passes and ended up turning it around entirely? That we have not seen. Even when it comes to the Baker Mayfield example, Baker Mayfield had more previous success than Sam Darnold when he was with the Cleveland

Browns. I mean, Baker Mayfield was a couple of passes away from going to the AFC championship with the Cleveland Browns. They lose Chad Henney runs for a first down. You know, the chief's defense makes a couple stops and then he doesn't get there. But at very least Baker Mayfield had shown signs before, whereas we haven't really seen that from Sam Darnold outside of a six game stretch where he went four and two, two years ago. And then the way he played for the San Francisco 49ers in the one start that he got and the one relief appearance looked pretty comfortable and looked pretty good. So I don't see Sam Darnold as making an argument for being this team's future quarterback that would be a lot to ask and it would be one of the biggest jumps that we've ever seen the only

guy that I can think of and Gino Smith was pretty rough too with the Jets and many years later after being a backup for a long time got his opportunity with. But I don't even know if he was as poor as Sam Darnold. Really, Vinny Testaverde is the only guy that I can think of. Another Jets connection there, but Vinny Testaverde came into the league for the horrendous Tampa Bay Buccaneers and then had a 12-win season at one point with an awesome defense Jets that had, I think, Curtis Martin on that team rushing for whatever thousands of yards back in the day. So you don't see this very often that

someone could turn around their career to the extent where we would be talking about this guy can be a difference making franchise quarterback. But I also think that when we're trying to create expectations for the 2024 Vikings which it's that kind of year to or that kind of time of the year I mean to create expectations and start talking about what we really think this team should be and could be we have the schedule now we've got most of the roster now probably 99 of the roster at this point and we can look around and go what do we really think that sam darnold is going to do if he does end up starting for the entire season the bar being set at hey make a case for being the quarterback of the future that's too high for me to even even even in a best case scenario, it feels like Sam Darnold having a very good season and going nine and eight going 10 and seven,

something like that would be the best case scenario. I have a very tough time seeing them get to the end of this year and having an internal conversation at any point to say, wait, should we just stick with Sam Darnold? That appears to be very unlikely. And just to even show you how high that bar is to get to that point. I mean, consider Case Keenum, right? Somebody who had in the past, and I know there's a skill set difference there between he and Sam Darnold, but in the past had not shown real signs of being a starting quarterback and then has an amazing year in 2017. And the Vikings still said, no, no, no, that's not good enough.

It's probably a one year thing. He's likely to regress and we're going to move on and sign Kirk Cousins. Sam Darnold would have to throw for something like 35 touchdowns, eight picks, win 11 or 12 games to make them say, you know what, let's stick with him. Maybe even win a playoff game. Would it be win multiple playoff games? The bar is just ridiculously high

because they invested a first round draft pick in JJ McCarthy. The other thing that would have to happen is they would have to believe that McCarthy was not going in the direction that they wanted him to go if they were going to decide to stick with Sam Darnold. So the boxes that you have to check in order for Darnold to make that argument or to have for them to have that conversation are he has to have an unbelievable season and McCarthy has to, and truly unbelievable, like beyond all projections that we could ever make for Sam Darnold. And then JJ McCarthy has to look so far behind him that the Vikings say, all right, well, we're going to franchise tag Darnold. And even then it would still be because of his history, more of a year to year thing with just a franchise tag and see what happens in 2025. I can't see even if he had a really, really good year and got into the playoffs, had a

really good playoff game or won a playoff game, I can't see them dismissing McCarthy unless they felt he was so far behind, but they could push the ball down the road another year and franchise tag Sam Darnold to make sure they have him for 2025 and then still plan eventually to go to JJ McCarthy. So I just don't see that as a scenario that is within the realm of possibility because so many things have to happen. But what is realistic? I would love your guys' thoughts about if Sam Darnold, if I told you, look, he's going to start the vast majority of the season maybe McCarthy gets in a game or two here there starts a week 18 game or comes in for an injury for a game or two but it's mostly Darnold's show this year what is a reasonable expectation I will give you mine

and I'm sure that I'll ask this question to a bunch of guests along the way throughout the summer. But for me, I would say that 4,000 yards passing is likely when you play for the Minnesota Vikings. So we can kind of start there. Yards passing doesn't really matter, but just if we're kind of creating that profile of what it looks like, 4,000 yards passing, something like 27 touchdowns, 25 touchdown passes, 12 to 14 interceptions, and a win loss record of eight and nine or nine and eight. If we're being as reasonable as we can

be to give Darnold credit that he's never been in a place like this before, but also factor that he does have a very large sample size of making a lot of mistakes at the NFL level that it's hard to see them just disappearing that, that a quarterback could suddenly go to a place like this. And then all the mistakes go poof. Uh, particularly when you are talking about an offense that relies a lot on the quarterback and rests a lot on the quarterback shoulders to go out there and make throws into tight windows to throw with anticipation. Kirk Cousins had a pretty fair number of sacks and turnovers when playing for Kevin O'Connell also put up a lot of numbers as well as they increase the volume. You saw more mistakes at

times, and then you also saw the reward of throwing more often. We might see that from someone like Sam Darnold, but realistic and fair expectations would put them in my mind around a 500 team and around maybe the 15th best quarterback season in the league. What makes the NFL so wonderful is that we never really know what's going to happen. And there are outlier seasons that happen all the time, even early in a player's career. It'll happen where somebody comes into the league and is really good, and then they fall off. And we usually don't look at that as the random outlier season. So for example, you know, Carson Wentz comes into the league, plays great, great football

in his second season, has that injury. And then the Nick Foles thing and everything else. But we looked at it as, well, what happened to Carson Wentz? He totally fell off after it looked like he was going to be a superstar. In reality, it might've just been his pop-up season where everything came together, schedule, offense, offensive line, receivers, coaching, and then luck and randomness. And they had good health and the YOLO passes that he launched down the field. They were caught by people that year, like Case Keenum's were in 2017. But when someone

does that in their first year, we just assume that that's who they're going to be. And I'm sure that some of you Jordan Love skeptics are saying, hey, could this be Jordan Love? Maybe. I don't think so, but maybe. But we can point to those seasons still and even say, like, that's not who that person really turned out to be. And, you know, like sam darnold maybe it's kind of flip-flopped here that at some point someone with his talent under the right circumstances could have a very very good season that none of us see coming and with justin jefferson with jordan addison that's altogether possible i put it more under the category of, I think it would look like what Baker Mayfield did with Tampa Bay last year. And if it does,

that's very good. And that could get them to the playoffs and that keeps them in every game. And it accomplishes the goal of being competitive and having a good season while you're developing a quarterback. But I don't believe that that would change the direction. And one of the reasons why is look at Baker Mayfield and what he got paid this off season. The goal was to move away from a middling quarterback who was getting paid too much. And if Sam Darnold has a look, Baker Mayfield was probably the 20th best quarterback by PFF quarterback rating, maybe somewhere like 15th. He was a mid pack quarterback, which is good, but now they're having to pay him a lot of

money. If Sam Darnold has a mid pack season, unless they really don't believe in JJ McCarthy, they're not going to want to give him mid-pack money because that's what they're trying to escape by not giving Kirk Cousins the bag as they could have this offseason and he likely would have stayed maybe if they had said we won't draft a rookie quarterback might have been something he wanted to avoid the point just being that unless he can put together elite quarterback play and you think he could do it for the future then it isn't really a consideration for the quarterback of the future but a season that is similar to what Baker Mayfield did last year is exactly where I would

draw the line of reasonable if you think he's going to be absolutely horrendous and the team's just going to collapse around him well then I don't agree with that because not a horrendous quarterback in Carolina the way he was for a big portion of his career with the New York Jets. So there is proof that he can play around 500 football. And I went back and watched those games and saw a lot of good things from Sam Darnold in those games and a lot of reasons why it's not likely

that he becomes the next franchise quarterback for the Vikings. Then there's another part of this, and we'll get to your comments here. And whatever other questions you have, by the way, you want to ask about the defense, the coaching, the schedule, the future, whatever you want to ask about, fire away in the comment section. I'll get to it in a moment. But as fans, I want to know your perspective. Would you be happy? Would you be okay with watching Sam Darnold for the entire season? I think it's easier to tell me it now than to actually do it. But do you envision yourself being okay with the idea of Sam Darnold starting?

And a lot of this is just based on the fact that he was taking all of the reps. We'll get another look at OTAs on Wednesday and see if that's changed at all. I don't expect it to. Maybe in minicamp, we will see more first team reps for JJ McCarthy. But as of right now, Sam Darnold is your QB one. Are you good with that for a very long time? So let's start out with JP here who says, I just hope he's good enough so there won't be any pressure to throw McCarthy out there when he's not ready or too soon. Yeah, totally agree with that. That if Sam Darnold can at least keep them as a 500 win one, lose one type of team, then it sort of keeps the vultures away. And the vultures might be us in some ways

asking Kevin O'Connell, hey, are you considering starting JJ McCarthy? And I'm guessing that O'Connell at some point, if we get into this situation where Darnold is playing, but they're not winning, he will be displeased with the media for asking time and time again if J.J. McCarthy is going to start, but it won't be just us. It will be the entire outside world if Darnold struggles off the bat. It's going to matter a lot how it begins. If you go to the New York Giants and lose, and if you lose to the Packers, if you have a tough start to the season, then there will start to be pressure. It's so easy for everyone to say,

including the owners, including the coaching staff, the general manager, we're good. You know, we're good. We're fine. He's going through rocky times, Darnold, but we're going to stick with him. We want to develop McCarthy, but there is a point that's a breaking point.

And we even saw this with Jaron Hall. The breaking point was Nick Mullen's four interceptions. That was the breaking point. This isn't when you compare the situation to someone like Jordan Love. The difference is they were never benching Aaron Rodgers. No one was calling for Jordan Love and never would have, especially as Rodgers was winning the MVP. No one was calling for Jordan Love and never would have, especially as Rodgers was winning the MVP. No one was saying, you know what, we really need to see that other quarterback,

not until he started to really fall off and then they had no other choice. But in this scenario, there is more pressure. So I agree with you that the bar for him should be play well enough to give McCarthy as much time as he possibly needs. Guard guy is on hand and says Darnold won't be as good as he could be without the improvement of the guard positions. You know, guard guy, the thing is that even though you're kind of a shtick, you're right. You are right. And that's why I am a little perplexed overall by the fact that they haven't done more at this guard position and when we listen to wes phillips talk it just sounded like they have loved the development of blake brandle and over the years we have seen this a number of times where a player gets better on the bench, getting occasional starts,

playing here or there and practicing every day, playing special teams. And the team gets a much better look at that guy than we do because they're in the meetings with him, they're in practice with him. And then they say, I think it's time. There have been also instances where they think it's time for a situational player or a bench player to take that step forward to being a starter. And then what we get is much inferior play to what they expected. And that would be the Alexander Madison, for for example type of thing where the guy gets elevated from a backup to a starting position and then he is not able to carry that load and for

blake brandle uh i can't tell you how he's looked in the last training camp or whatever i only know like i wasn't watching a whole lot of Blake Brando in the last training camp, but I've seen him in a couple of games and he's looked like an NFL player, but can I try to project that he's looked good enough to be the next quality starting guard? That's impossible to figure out because the margins from being a bad guard to a good guard are so thin. If you allow one quarterback pressure a game, you are a great player at guard. If you allow two, you're pretty meh. If you allow three, you're terrible. How am I supposed to know if Blake Brandel is going to be one, two, or three? We just know his draft status, that he isn't an unbelievable athlete, but he does have

massive size. Maybe they want to do more stuff with a road grader type and do more of power stuff with Aaron Jones. And that works for having a bigger offensive guard. Will Ed Ingram take another step? If Ed Ingram only plays like he did last year, that's a reasonable start. It's not a good one. It's okay. That guy can start without ruining your football team, but you can't have two guys that are just at that position. When you don't have a dominating center,

then all three positions become suspect. And we've seen that movie many times before. Daniel says, I'm fine with Darnold starting the entire year if JJ needs it. I am good with that. Now, is everybody else going to be good with that? If it's two and four, if that's the first six weeks are two and four, do you become a little less good with that?

And do you kind of throw up your arms and go, what's going on here? Why don't we just start JJ McCarthy? There's also another part that can you ruin a quarterback is a question by putting him in too early. Maybe you can under the completely wrong circumstances, but do we think that that would really be the case with JJ McCarthy? I couldn't tell you for sure, but I think there's a little

mythology with that. I mean, there have been a lot of quarterbacks who started off under pretty tough circumstances. Some took their licks and I'll give you a good example would be Joe Burrow, a guy that really got beat up his first year he got sacked a lot they didn't have a lot of talent around him their defense was bad and he fought every single game in that first year he did end up getting injured I don't remember the injury was it random uh quarterbacks get hurt I don't know but it didn't ruin him it sure as heck didn't ruin him because he went to the super bowl the following season and you saw those signs of his leadership that he could get in there and there have been a lot of quarterbacks over the years that even if they

didn't start week one they got a good amount of experience uh into you know the following weeks into the second half of the season and it didn't destroy their entire souls so I also agree with you though if he sits for most of the year and plays week 18 that's cool with me if that's what they think that he needs or that it's going well enough with Darnold but I also believe that if somebody's got it that they can kind of figure it out a little bit out there and figure out how to run an offense. You got to get that experience somehow, and you're not going to get it unless you actually play. Don't push him.

But if he's got to go out there because the season is falling apart, let's see how it goes. And if he struggles, is it going to completely destroy him? I don't know. If he's good, it probably won't. Realist says Darnold does have success. He had a great season in 2022. He was four and two and Mayfield was one in five.

Well, four and two with something like a 90 quarterback rating where he was kind of mildly okay is not success to me. Got to put that as success where if you, even if you compare that section of the season where he went four and two, it's probably the 20th best quarterback in the league. You know, I watched those games. There's some good, there's some bad in that four and two. It's not like he came out and threw for 350 yards and four touchdowns to get

to four and two. It was, I mean, if success means did not completely look like an epic unmitigated disaster, then that is true. And got a couple of wins by playing good enough football where they largely protected him and didn't throw a lot, didn't throw a lot downfield. Then yes. And I've looked at that sample and said, okay, well, maybe it's not a disaster and it could be better here. I would not call that success though. Justin saying, cut the cheese. We're not in Wisconsin, Justin. We all want JJ to be QB one for the season. He is the future. So, you know, that's something that I do agree with that the best case scenario for the Vikings for all of this would just be that JJ

McCarthy goes to battle in training camp and dominate Sam Darnold plays much better and ends up winning the job. QB one week one. Everybody's pumped. Justin Jefferson is saying this is the next great quarterback in the National Football League. And then off we go into the season. Is that really realistic? And when you look at the beginning of the season and the schedule that JJ McCarthy would have to face if he were to begin week one, all right, well, he can go to uh play against the new york giants and even they have a pretty decent defense but then after that i mean it is a murderer's row of teams that have very very high expectations for this season and if you match up

the super bowl favorites against the vikings schedule you're going to see a lot of them in the beginning of the season. And that's might be a lot to ask of JJ McCarthy to go out there and play against teams that are that good right away. It isn't like you can really ease him in to the season and okay, one tough game, one game against a team that's not that imposing kind of go back and forth it's like hey go to New York which is not the easiest thing in the world go on the road to New York and play you know Brian Burns and Dexter Lawrence to start your career so we shouldn't completely roll our eyes at the Giants defense and then come back home and you've got a bunch of really difficult teams. You've got Lambeau Field on there. It might just be a lot to ask for McCarthy.

But again, if they did name him the starter for week one, that means that they would be extremely, extremely confident in what he could do because they do have a ready-made QB one starter in Sam Darnold right there for them. And that would mean that he was able to beat out somebody who has been in the NFL before it was one games in the NFL before, and who looks pretty good with San Francisco as, as their guy last year. And Sam Darnold, you know, in San Francisco had to beat out Trey Lance for that backup spot, which I'm sure the 49ers would not have preferred to have traded the guy that they moved up to number three to get.

I'm sure they would have at least preferred to have him on the roster, but instead Darnold forced their hand there and Trey Lance forced their hand as well. So yeah, I mean, if he could beat him out, then that's a really good thing for JJ McCarthy's future. If he can't beat him out, I'm not going to judge McCarthy's future at all based on that because of the amount of development that has to happen from point A to point B in order

to be ready to be a good NFL starter. And I think what we see is that whether you sit a guy or whether he plays right away, I'm not sure there's a big enough amount, a large enough amount of examples of players who have sat. It's not like we could take 50 guys here and 50 guys there, and we could simulate it 10,000 times and we can go wow you know if you sit then you are this much more likely to succeed but if you are on the sideline and you are preparing for the games you're learning defenses you're practicing against NFL players you're working with coaches every single day that might be with no pressure as good of an experience or better for someone to try to learn how to play quarterback in the NFL,

then just saying, all right, buddy, I know that you don't have the offense totally locked down yet, but why don't you just go figure it out? That would be a very difficult. And when we talk about, well, McCarthy's really hardworking and he's really smart and he really wants it. I believe in all of those things. That doesn't mean that right away, right off the bat, snap your fingers, throw them in there. He's good to go. The all-time example of this, of course, is Peyton Manning throwing something like 29 interceptions in his first year. And you cannot have a bigger, better football brain than Peyton Manning. But even then there was a lot of mistakes that went on through his first year with a quarterback who should be considered the greatest of all time, or one of the top

five greatest of all time that just even from years ago, that example tells you how difficult that it is. And with CJ Stroud, there were even moments with CJ Stroud where it was a pretty rocky ride for him before he hit his stride midway through the season. But everybody has a different timeline. And just because somebody is smart and works hard at it, doesn't mean that it's all going to lock in and you can truly get it. Think about the first time that you got your driver's license. Were you actually a good driver at that point? I will tell you the truth.

I was not. I wasn't an insane driver, but accidentally pulling out in front of some people, maybe not always knowing the total rules of the road at times having trouble figuring out like, should I be in this lane? Should I be in that lane? Uh, total control of the car. Absolutely not. I could drive it, but I needed more driving reps.

I probably should have had more practice reps, honestly, before I got my driver's license. But if you can K-turn, they'll just give you a license. How many K-turns do you do ever? But they're good with that. Driving in the highway, how about a roundabout? We should make people do a roundabout. But it's similar because when you're driving,

there's a lot of things that come up that you don't expect and that you have to learn through experience. And you got to be totally ready to get behind that car or you're going to crash it. And everybody's different. There are some people who, my older brother, he was ready to drive a car when he was like 14. He was driving tractors and so forth. He was a way better driver than me quicker. So everybody works on their own timeline and really you can't trust somebody until they get it. Hopefully that metaphor fits. Uh, KFT says best case for me would be Darnold playing good enough to put the transition tag on him and get a second or third round pick. Uh, I think maybe it would be good enough for, I don't think that's going to happen.

I think that it would be, maybe there's a different version of that scenario. I mean, you almost never see that transition tag thing. That just doesn't happen. But maybe a scenario that would be similar is if Sam Darnold plays pretty well through the first five or six weeks of the season and somebody else's quarterback gets hurt and the Vikings are ready to go with JJ McCarthy, let's say they're two and four. So they're kind of floundering a little bit, but Darnold has been okay. And somebody else who is a real contender has their franchise quarterback go down.

And now the Vikings are trading a second or third round draft pick for, you know, that team to get Sam Darnold. And then JJ McCarthy goes in. Nick Mullins remains the backup. You could always put in Nick Mullins later in the season if McCarthy really struggles. But at that point, you're kind of at, hey, let's just see how it goes on a week to week basis. How bad could it be

and see if he could turn the season around. And then if he did, it would be very good for them. Uh, Mike says, uh, don't you think Sam would handle the tough schedule and probable losses better? Yeah, I do. I do. Uh, He has gone through that before, maybe more times than he wanted to. He's gone through difficult stages in his career where he's lost games and he's dealt with that and he's had to bounce back and so forth. With each player, how they deal with losing confidence-wise, you really can't figure that out until you actually step out on the field, lose games, get beat up. I remember with Justin Fields, for an example, that there was a couple of games early on in his career where when he lost and it was a tough game. He sulked and moped and kind of slinked away. And I just was put off by that.

I thought that's not a great sign because in college he very rarely ever lost. So any loss, I don't mean, I don't know. He went to Ohio state. How many losses did he have one or two in his career? Any loss would be totally devastating but in the NFL you could lose two three in a row and you're a normal football team I mean the what was it that Kevin O'Connell was talking about the Rams that won the Super Bowl lost three games in a row at one point during that season the Vikings last year lost three games in a row they had to bounce back and were in line to have a pretty good season still, even after they had had that bad, you know, bad start. And then of course, Kirk gets hurt. And that just tells you

how often you have to do that in the NFL where things don't go your way and you get banged up and you get, you get into a losing streak, or you have a couple back-to-back losses that some quarterbacks don't handle that well. Some quarterbacks bounce back. It was one of Kirk Cousins' best things about him, even when he was a younger quarterback, that if he lost the game, he was able to go out there the next time and be the same Kirk Cousins that he always was before.

We saw some of the worst losses, and then he would come back and he would play well. I think of 2019 for that it was a terrible loss to chicago stefan diggs is going rogue and or mia or whatever and there was truth to all rumors and everybody's upset espn's crushing them uh kirk's apologizing to his receivers the all that stuff and it felt like TCO Performance Center was on fire. They went to New York, destroys the New York Giants. The next week he plays maybe his best game ever as a Viking against the Philadelphia Eagles. And the season was back on. And that's one of the things that

made Kirk Cousins or has made Kirk Cousins a long time starter, a pro. and you won't know how McCarthy deals with that until he actually gets out there but what would be pretty tough is if you started McCarthy from the beginning of the season and you lose two three four games in a row and everyone's looking around going you're wasting a season man like what are we doing here playing this rookie you are totally fine with waiting too long to put them in. What you wouldn't want is putting them in and then having to go back to Sam Darnold because you have to bench him. That's where it could be pretty tough. First name, last name. Best case for me would be to have JJ and Darnold look good enough during the off season that we can do a Bradford trade Darnold to a quarterback needy team. That one is

another situation that I feel like it's unlikely because if you started McCarthy and well, you know, I guess that did happen with a rookie Wentz, didn't it? That did happen with a rookie Carson Wentz and Carson Wentz was talked about as a guy who was supposed to wait a year and he ends up just playing well and they trade Bradford Bradford with the situation was a little different because Bradford was miserable and he had requested a trade and then rescinded his trade request a little bit of an ugly scene in Philadelphia there where this is not that with Sam Darnold. So would you rather have Darnold just be JJ McCarthy's backup if he wins the job out of training camp, knowing that Darnold has been a backup before he's comfortable with that role and the 49ers seem to be pretty darn

happy about him. Well, then, you know, maybe he can handle that. KFT says, I don't think there's a negative to sitting unless you're, unless you are doing all the things right mechanically and reading coverages and throwing with touch. Yeah. Because when, if you're sitting, then you're, you're trying to improve, right? Each time that you're going out for practice, you're sitting, you're motivated to improve, to try to win that job, to continue developing. And I've never thought that it was a bad thing for a quarterback to be on the sideline. At the same time, there's a lot of quarterbacks that we thought should be on the sideline because they were too young and too raw. And then all of a

sudden they were starting and they played pretty well. First name, last name says, I'd rather have a bad JJ McCarthy rookie year. If he can handle it and learn from it, then sit for someone like Darnold. That's a big if, but guys like Manning and Allen made it work. Allen is a good example of a guy who didn't win the job out of training camp and then was quickly into the game and figured it out from there. The difference with Josh Allen is that he was so physically freakish that even though he did not know how to play football yet, he found ways to play football because he's a monster. McCarthy is big.

Don't get me wrong, but he's not Josh Allen, six foot six, 250 pounds big, where that's like a Dante Culpepper looking dude that can make plays with his legs and scramble. McCarthy is more of a playmaking scrambler than he is a, I'm going to run for 800 yards like Josh Allen type of scrambler. So if something goes wrong, he doesn't see where to throw the ball. Josh Allen could just run over people. That's not really what JJ McCarthy could do.

But to your point, sink or swim maybe has ruined some careers in the past, but how many really? If you're good, you should be able to find a way with a good team. Let me answer a couple more quick questions because the NBA never starts exactly on time. So I'll get a few questions in. And just another thank you to all of you for the patience with the internet issue. I'm glad we got it back, though. I shot you 99.

Is Jaron Hall's time in Minnesota essentially over. Doesn't have to be. No, he could be QB four for this year. Although if JJ McCarthy wins the job out of training camp, maybe they cut Nick Mullins and just keep Sam Darnold. Or maybe that happens where they trade them away to a QB needy team and Mullins remains the backup. There's no reason to get rid of Jaron Hall. He's not expensive. You can cut him and put him on the practice squad. I very much doubt anyone's going to pick him up. And what you hope is that Jaron Hall can be what Nick Mullins is, where he can be an experienced backup after a couple of seasons. Uh, what about Bob's is I hope they keep Mullins. He's like a mini Brett Favre.

He thinks that he's Brett Favre. I really enjoyed it when Nick Mullins came out, a Walmart generic Brett Favre. That's funny. When he came out in the first throw we saw in OTAs from Nick Mullins was a 25-yard back shoulder throw to Robert Tunyon. All right, well, Nick Mullins has not

changed. We know that. But I think that Nick Mullins is a good guy to have around. I would not get rid of him. Mike says, JJ watching Sam handle some losses on a pro level would be a valuable learning tool for a rookie. Yeah. I don't have any problem with him watching that and see, seeing how Sam Darnold goes about his business because regardless of Sam Darnold's history and career I just have a ton of respect for how he handles himself even the way he's talked in front of us the way he's handled his career failures kept going sees this as a chance the way he handled being a backup last season I'm just impressed because a lot of these quarterbacks do not want to do that

if they were drafted high. Zoomer Kev says, we won't know how McCarthy handles losing until it happens and it will happen. Never had to deal with it before. Could be bad. It could be. You're right, though. We don't know how it's going to happen.

We don't know how he's going to deal with failure and he will have to learn about it, but I think there is a point there to seeing Darnold deal with it first before he has to go out and deal with it himself. There is a point there about that. Preston says, how old was Manning and Josh Allen rookie years? They weren't that old, probably 21, 22. Quarterbacks didn't used to come out at 24. This is a weird thing that's happened recently. They used to come out mostly at J.J. McCarthy's age. Maybe one year later, I think Manning could have come out as a junior, came out as a senior instead.

Intrepid Fool says, KOC has a QB-friendly scheme and positive demeanor, but it's still on the quarterback. Dobbs was still streaky. Mullins still went YOLO. Cousins still checked down on fourth and eight with the season on the line. A hundred percent true. Kevin O'Connell can get in the headset and he could do everything he can to help his quarterback at the end of the day or at the end of the play. The guy with the actual football in his hands is who he's going to be.

Kirk Cousins was more comfortable. He took on more of a leadership role than he ever did before. I think the man was happier, but was he different? I don't think so. I mean, they still had some of the same exact issues with Cousins as before, not just the fourth and eight check down, but even getting down in games and then trying to bring them back strip sacks that happened at key times, stuff like that. The lack of mobility is not something that Kevin O'Connell could create out of nowhere, but with JJ McCarthy, he at least does get a chance to mold them as a quarterback. But I think you're talking about Sam Darnold where it's not likely to change the stripes completely. You can push the meter. So like

some guys I think are hard to push off of greatness. That's Patrick Mahomes. He can have receivers drop balls, bad offensive line. I think he's always had good coaching, but he's going to find a way because he's the best quarterbacks last year Josh Allen threw interceptions didn't have the same team clearly some issues with Stephon Diggs still great right they still had a great season with Sam Darnold he might be a guy that you could push the needle backward pretty far if you're incompetent. So we know the Vikings aren't incompetent. He can be one of the worst quarterbacks in the league. If you're incompetent, they're not that, but how far can you push it the other way? Can you push it over 10 wins?

Can you push it to, he's not going to make the same mistakes he has in the past. He sees the game completely differently. He does, you know, he's more accurate than he's ever been. Cause he has been erratic with his accuracy. That's just hard to see. That's just hard to see a complete change, but I think you could push the needle to nine wins and in competition toward the end of the season. I think that's realistic to be able to see. Let's see next presser with McCarthy from What About Bob. Can you ask what his 40 time was while training? The Madden people want to know what his speed should be.

That's funny. Probably not. But I mean, I think he's fast. I don't think he's blazing fast. There's quickness with your feet, and then there's blazing fast. And he has quickness with your feet and then there's blazing fast and he has quickness with his feet. If someone's coming at him, he can go scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot, and get away from them and make a play still with the ball. But if you're asking him to get out in space and like run away from safeties, there's two quarterbacks in the league, or maybe three who can actually do

that. Um, so anyway, uh, last question, where did I get the old school mini pennants behind me? A listener actually sent them to me. Yeah. Uh, a listener found them in their garage and they emailed me and said, Hey, I've got these things. Would you like them? Uh, Jason who lives in the Michigan area said, Hey, I got these things. They're still in the box. Would you want them? And I said said heck yeah so as i was decorating this whole thing i was like man we gotta put those up so all right well it's basketball time so i want to let you get to that and thanks everybody who hung through and uh got back to the internet working so we'll definitely uh carry on with that i think probably just a

one-time thing uh with the windstorm going on outside, but really appreciate the patience, good conversation, and we will talk to you all again soon. Thanks everybody.