Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Is it time to call Tom Brady again (only mostly kidding)

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Matthew Coller and Manny Hill talk about the Vikings having a good chance to make the playoffs with decent QB play, which means they should call Tom Brady again to see if he wants to play a few games. That's mostly not serious but how do they look at what happened with Josh Dobbs and what's to come with the final four games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Hope you are enjoying your evening of Monday Night Football Doubleheader and two games that look, at least as of right now, like they're pretty gnarly. But after the Jake Browning incident, Manny, I am always a little hesitant now to make declarations because we start the show at 8 o'clock and then crazy stuff can happen about, you know, these football games. And so I want to be careful that I don't end up getting owned

again by whatever is going on in the football, but, uh, Manny Hill, great to see you. A quick question before we dive into the headline of this show. Um, do you like to take red eye flights or have you ever taken a red eye flight i have never taken a red eye never in my life let me tell you it's a bit of a challenge i took the red eye back from las vegas there were lots of different options and i wanted to make sure that i could be on kevin o'connell's press conference as I was earlier today. And we'll talk a little bit about that. I don't think there were any major takeaways like Justin Jefferson's organs seem to be in shape. Thumbs up to that, I guess.

Right after that hit, it certainly looked like they may have been rearranged a little bit inside there. I thought when someone gets hit in the back and has a chest injury, that seems like they got hit really, really hard. there. I thought when someone gets hit in the back and has a chest injury, that seems like they got hit really, really hard. Uh, but it actually wasn't too bad for me on the red eye. The hardest part is getting back home as the sun is coming up. So I once over a summer worked at a grocery store where I had to do the night shift. I would go in like 11 o'clock at night, and then I would work until seven in the morning, and you'd walk out of there and be like,

what is going on? And it was definitely that feeling today for coming back on the red eye. And I felt bad that the people around me were trying to sleep. I cannot sleep on planes. Are you a person that could sleep on planes? I've tried doing that, but it's just not

comfortable. I got to be on like a Delta flight and watch a movie or something to keep me occupied, especially if it's like a two or three or four hour flight, which I've been on several of those. I got to have something that can kind of keep me occupied because sleeping is just not an option. Not in those tiny ass chairs and with no room to like lean back and get comfortable. Well, our good friends at Sun Country sponsor the show. They have a thing where you can hook up your phone to their like in-flight Wi-Fi and watch movies. So I watched a couple of I like to just watch action movies that I don't care about. I mean, why would I watch Academy award winners on a plane? The noise canceling headphones are helpful, but I mean, so I watched Iron Man three and you know, some other action movie, but

it was, it was okay, but I'm back and I'm shaking it off. And I feel like after I slept two different times today, I am in the right mindset. And I woke up from my nap this afternoon trying to catch up on sleep. And I saw it all, Manny. It was all so clear. It was so clear what the answer was for the Minnesota Vikings. And it was like I had had a dream and I had seen the Vikings raising Lombardi's trophy. And as the fog cleared away,

and I was saying, who is that? Who is that holding that trophy? And I saw a square jaw and a perfectly crafted nose, square hair. It's Tom Brady. That's who it is. That's who's holding the Lombardi trophy for the Minnesota Vikings. You know, around Thanksgiving, this got missed Manny, but Scott Zolak, who's a radio personality in Boston and former Patriots quarterback said that the Vikings reached out.

And I was talking with Murph earlier and I couldn't remember who this was on the show that I recorded with Murph. Like who was it that said that they reached out to Brady? Scott Zolak said they reached out to Brady and he said that he's done playing. But if we were talking about the craziest thing that could happen, but also the most on brand thing and something that in some universe makes sense for Tom Brady to be like, I couldn't play half a season, but can I give you four? I can give you four. So should Kevin O'Connell send the text? Because what we saw yesterday,

Tom Brady at least gets him to 13 points, and maybe that gets you into the playoffs. Maybe that makes you scary with his defense. I mean, with the way Brian Flores' defense is playing, it doesn't seem like you need a whole lot to win games right now. And, I mean, Tom Brady, I would think, has to give you, even though he hasn't played a game in, I mean, almost a full calendar year now,

if we talk about that last playoff game for the Buccaneers against the Cowboys back in January. But he's got to give you, I would imagine he'd be able to give you something more than what we saw yesterday. I don't know what the hell that was yesterday. I just can't even, I'm looking at this and I'm just, I'm cringing. Every play, I'm just, my teeth are like gritting. Like, come on, like this, this, it has to be better

than this. Come on. It's, it's, I know Justin Jefferson got, you know, banged up in the game and he left the game, but you still have Jordan Addison. You still have TJ Hawkinson. This offensive line is still supposed to be good. How do you, how are we halfway through the fourth quarter and nobody has any points? I don't understand it.

It's, It's true. And I was thinking if Jimmy Garoppolo had played, they would have been screwed, which is a weird thought. He would have put up at least six, I think, for the Raiders. Yeah, that's how hideous that game turned out to be. And especially offensively where whatever magic was there for Josh Dobbs is now gone. And I did want to ask about your Dobbs and journey, because we will all remember our Dobbs and journeys where we went rocketing up into the sky, so to speak after two weeks and up there in the stratosphere somewhere, we all looked around and said,

man, maybe this could, whatever, lots of things. Maybe he could be the bridge quarterback. Maybe he could be the franchise quarterback. You people in the comments. I remember when you compared him to Randall Cunningham. I saw it. I saw it. Steve McNair.

I don't think soir i don't think so i don't think so and i stayed with ryan fitzpatrick and boy as it had been a ryan fitzpatrickian type of thing and i thought like best case scenario maybe they could prop them up and it can be uh one of those great next stories for the vikings where this guy comes and saves the team and to have that dream die for everybody officially against the Raiders assuming that they're going to go with Nick Mullins going forward because he was able to survive I don't know that for sure Kevin O'Connell would not commit to it it I mean that quite the whiplash like this whole season has been quite the whiplash from in Green Bay oh my gosh this team is incredible now to oh

my gosh what's wrong with kirk to kevin o'connell's like teaching jobs the offense in his headset and somehow they're winning to now that he knows the offense he can't play i it's been a time it has been a real time tell me about about your Dobbsian journey, Manny. It kind of feels like, I mean, just to kind of highlight Josh Dobbs' alma mater, it kind of feels like the journey of a Tennessee Vols football fan as well, which I can kind of speak to, where you feel like things are going really well and then just something weird happens. You lose to

vanderbilt or something like you're having a nice year and like south a mediocre south carolina team beats you late in the season and you're like where did that come from well it's like it's like last season i mean tennessee was they they were number one team in the in the first college football playoff rankings they go into ge into Georgia and they lose to Georgia. And it's like, oh, okay, well, that sucks, but Georgia's really good, you know, defending national champions. And then they just had this weird game at South Carolina where Hendon Hooker, who's having a great season, gets hurt on like a scramble. He tears his knee

and then everything just falls apart for Tennessee after that in that game. And, you know, they rebounded and had a nice orange bowl performance with Joe Milton. But it's kind of that same thing where it just – things are just feeling really good and you're like, oh, wow, this could really be something. And then you just – it's like the wall that just pops up out of nowhere and you smack right into it.

It's just really, it's really weird, man. And it really kind of goes back. The Bears game was kind of that. I mean, I think you could look at the Broncos game and say, okay, he wasn't Dobbs' best game, but he wasn't terrible and they were still in it, so they had a chance to win. And, you know, Courtland Sutton makes a great catch in the end zone to win the game for the Broncos. But the Bears game was just, it was like, what happened? Like, wait a minute. Like that's,

the Bears stink. That's not a good team. Like that's not supposed to happen. He threw four interceptions in that game. And so, and so yeah it was and then it's like Justin Fields making throws late in the game to put the Bears in position to win like that's not supposed to happen what is this you know so it's it's weird man it's it's a weird weird experience and now you know especially after what we saw yesterday this thing is over it is over and i am reminded and was when i was in vegas of a text message that i got from you after the vikings traded for dobbs where you said i love this man because you're a huge tennessee vols fan but this ain't gonna get it done and then we came on and talked about him sort of splitting the difference between really trying to go for it by trading for Andy Dalton or something or Jacoby Brissett and having to give up real capital and not doing anything and just letting Jaron Hall start the rest of the way, which we would have ended up seeing Sean Mannion instead in Atlanta, as opposed to Josh Dobbs.

Hey, that was active Sean Mannion for the Seattle Seahawks yesterday. So he, I mean, his Wikipedia has got to be wild for the number of teams that he's gone back and forth ping-ponging to, but that would have been their only other option, which would have been just to, you know, try to play Jaron Hall if they had not traded for someone, or they could have tried to get Joe Flacco, who's playing pretty well for the Cleveland Browns, which kind of will tumble into our next point about second guessing and make clear. I want to make clear that anything we say about what they should have done about the quarterback would be extreme second guessing

because I thought it was a fair enough move. You just knew the reality of Dobbs. You've been a fan of this guy. You followed his career and you knew probably what was coming. No one should ever apologize though, for getting excited about what happened. I've seen a few people on Twitter being like, oh man, they fooled me. They got me. and those two weeks were legitimately exciting and i was asking people like hey what do you think like is this going to continue or did the league miss something and you think that like everybody has the answers or something you know in football i don't even think people in the team understood what's going to happen next here as they got them.

They were probably thinking the same thing as us after new Orleans, like, okay, like this guy's going to make some plays and sometimes those throws aren't going to be accurate, but whatever. And we're going to figure it out. We're going to keep, you know, teaching them the offense and here we go. Like we're going to go to the playoffs.

I think that it coming tumbling down like it did to this level was not something that was expected at that point. It was much more what you said was right. And Denver is kind of what I envisioned it looking like where you go. And there's like, oh, okay, that was a good play. And then there's a little like, oh, bad turnover or a bad sack or something. Cause that's more of what he looked like in Arizona, but you could all project it to, it's a better offense. It's a little like, oh, bad turnover or a bad sack or something, because that's more of what he looked like in Arizona. But you could all project it to it's a better offense.

It's a better coaching staff. It's a better offensive line. It's a better situation. But since some of that stuff is broken down and that's what I came away yesterday after really thinking about it was if anything breaks down when you don't have a starting quarterback, it's hard to make up for it. And what broke down was the protection. What broke down was the receivers.

I mean, they dropped a lot of passes. KJ Osborne on his own probably had three drops yesterday. I think that they totaled something like six. And this is not a guy who could really be asked to do that. No one should apologize for getting excited about what they saw because you can't erase the playmaking and some of the really good throws that happen. It's just that there's wild ups and downs to a player like this. And you just got hit really hard by one of the downs. But I wanted to ask you if you had total hindsight, 2020, like unreasonable second guessing,

I mean, we can look back and say probably Flacco would have been better, but I'm not even really sure that anything changes the ultimate fate of this. But do you think with hindsight that we should second guess what they did with Josh Dobbs? No, not really. I think because, you know, they, they made that move. I feel like largely because it was inexpensive. It didn't cost them very much. They were in a situation at that time too, where, you know,

they didn't really have a lot of healthy bodies at the position. They just needed somebody else to, to be able to play that position and be on the roster and be active for that Atlanta game because obviously Kirk was done for the season and Nick Mullins was dealing with a back issue. And so your other option was Sean Mannion, and it's like, okay, no. So, you know, I don't really – I still, even though it's kind of hit a thud here, I don't blame them for going the inexpensive route because you don't want to,

I don't think you want to make a move to try and go for it all here this season when you don't really have, you don't really have enough to do that anyway you know and i think it was just sort of a low risk um potential high reward if everything went really well for you that okay find a way to still make the playoffs and hey you know maybe uh play one of those teams that's better than you and there's like an injury or something on the side you're not rooting for that obviously but you get some things that go your way hey maybe you can win a playoff game or two you know that sort of thing if everything goes right for you but the reality is is that was not a reality and it was never going to be so So I think it was fun for a couple of weeks.

And that New Orleans game, it's really still looking back on that almost a month ago now. It's just hard to believe, to still see how well he played, especially in that first half of that game. And then to see everything just get worse and worse and worse in the weeks after that um and i you know we talked about this a couple weeks ago i i thought giving him another shot going you know getting getting the bye week getting justin jefferson back i thought all of that was going to help for him and that he was going to come in and play well against a bad team.

And we were going to be like, all right, well, that Bears game was bad, and we have to acknowledge that. But this was a nice little rebound performance, and it was just – it was not that. But I think overall I can't really fault them for going the route that they went because I don't think it hurts. It doesn't hurt them long-term at all in any way. Yeah, and that was always going to be the important thing

because if you are living in reality as Kweisi Daffomenta, you understand that you need to try to find somebody who could play quarterback for you where Nick Mullins is heard. And even with Nick Mullins, you likely would have needed somebody else anyway, even if he was healthy at that time, because you didn't think, and clearly they don't, that Jaron Hall was ready to take on a full load of being a starting quarterback, which is totally fair for somebody who's a rookie and came from an offensive system that was nothing like the NFL and so forth.

So that was their mindset at that time. We can't ask Jaron to just, Hey, put the whole franchise and all these veteran players on your back and try to win. Although got to think Jaron puts up a sick spot yesterday. Got to think now, now when the bar is three, you can really get around almost anybody. Um, but when it comes to the second guessing, there was a report about Jacoby Bursette that they were offered a six for Jacoby Bursette and they wanted more than that. Jacoby Bursette is slightly better than Dobbs. He's closer to a starting quarterback. Does that change a whole lot?

I mean, the three and two, since this happened, would they be four and one? I don't know. That's a pretty tough sell, isn't it? Like the, maybe it happens in a different order if it's a different quarterback, but if they trade for Andy Dalton, if they trade for Teddy Bridgewater, if they trade for what, like who is better than three and two at this point, as ugly as it looked. And the accumulation of the offense since Dobbs got here, I would guess is probably like the 17th best offense after yesterday, because they had some highs and lows. And that's about what you would expect. If you bring in a backup quarterback,

there are very few people who could raise the expectation of what we thought when Dobbs got here, like who would be so significantly better that we would say, oh, they'd be undefeated right now. You know, maybe they would because the defense was so good, but Joe Flacco, by the way, and that's the one where you could say he was doing nothing. He costs nothing. And he was just around last year. Joe Flacco started four games, went one in three

with a 75 quarterback rating. And so far, even with Cleveland, he's sort of the talk of the town and as an 83 quarterback rating, I mean, there's just no path that takes you anywhere special, except of course, Tom Brady. Uh, but I, I really do think that when we're talking about what they should have done, even if there's a quarterback, that's a backup that you think might have some potential, like, should they have trade for Trey Lance or whatever? Again, that's, it's hard enough for a veteran to come in here and you're going to ask somebody who struggled to learn the offense in San Francisco to show up and do it. So there's no option that you just like go down that path and, Oh, well that was the obvious path. Uh, I am laughing a little bit

at this though. Um, from DM in the, in the comments, bringing Tom Brady back up again means this channel is running out of things to seriously discuss. Uh, this channel does attempt to have fun talking about stuff sometimes because yesterday's game was not exactly my favorite game that we've ever watched and you have a list later and i just think that when the head coach says you wouldn't believe some of the texts that were out there and then somebody else in the nose says they texted Tom Brady. And then I was laughing even more at where's, where's Clifford. I lost this one on a scroll. Clifford said, oh, here it is. Here it is. Clifford said, if you bring in Brady, it better be more like eight games, not four games. Like, cause you're going to win the four games and then

go all the way to the Superbowl. There really is. There really is only one thing they could do from here on out that would give you a chance to compete for a Superbowl. And it is to sign Tom Brady, but trust me, I am well aware that that's not realistic that Tom Brady is very old and he doesn't seem to have any interest in coming out. This has this type of thing does get attempted in the league sometimes where they call former quarterbacks and say, Hey, Phillip rivers. Yeah. I mean, I know you got like 11 kids to raise, but you want to drop by, see what you got. I mean, because even when the Vikings got their nickel corner hurt in 2019, they asked Terrence Newman if he felt like playing just for one playoff game. Didn't Charles Haley miss a year and show up in the playoffs or something?

I mean, this, it has happened. And if I were Kevin O'Connell on that flight home, I mean, if he's got the in-flight wifi and can connect and whatever he needs to do, maybe a DM on Twitter, whatever it takes. I would send a message to Tom Brady and be like, are you sure? Cause we could get you here and like two weeks, just hang out two weeks,

get, get into shape. We'll play you for those last two games against green Bay and Detroit. We'll make the playoffs and we'll go win. But is it a super serious comment? Of course it is not a super serious comment. I do think though. Yeah. It was a three nothing football game yesterday. Like I'm not going to,

I don't want to spend an hour breaking down a three nothing football game. We're having fun, man. Well, it started out bad and it continued to be bad, but nobody was good. So they won. There's your recap of yesterday's game. Listen to our hour and 10 minute recap with Dane Mizutani and I, where we try to sort through how, how mad you should be at the coaches.

I don't know. I didn't feel like that tonight. I just, I, I don't know. Anyway. So Christian says the Vikings need to incorporate their running backs into the game better.

You know who does that great? Tom Brady. And starts with the quarterback and other players, 174 receiving yards for Madison and 90 for Chandler. There are some things, Manny, and yesterday was this case for sure, where I go, what is the deal with that? And that's one of them, what Christian is bringing up there, that if you were going to say what, what Christian is bringing up there,

that if you were going to say what can help a backup quarterback the most other than talent around him would be short passing game, screens, play action. And I saw a great stat today that only 30% of Jake Browning's passes yesterday were anything other than a screen or play action. And that is where, when we talk about second guessing, I'm trying to figure out how much do you second guess the game plan? How much do you second guess the coaching? How much do you, how much can we really go down those roads? Um, and I, I would like your opinion because I have trouble deciding. And I know that that's like the the reaction

the first reaction of everyone whether it's media fans you know people people who are really knowledgeable about the sport or not at all are like what's the coach doing but I I'm having trouble figuring out how much when Kevin O'Connell talked today and I asked him about adjustments to Josh Dobbs he really focused mostly on how they changed their running game and the running game was better. And Dobbs, I think did scare the Raiders as far as his legs go, but it didn't sound to me from what Kevin O'Connell said, like they made a lot of adjustments in what they wanted to do with the passing game after he had thrown four interceptions. And that's where I'm like, I think that we can say some things like what Christian is saying without

going completely crazy and saying, Kevin O'Connell has no idea what he's doing. Maybe, maybe some of those text messages that are going to Tom Brady should maybe go to Gary Kubiak. Maybe, I don't know. Just saying.

Yeah. I, I think to me, I mean, Josh Dobbs and Kirk Cousins are obviously very different quarterbacks. And obviously, Kirk is a much better quarterback, as we've seen. But they're so different in that, you know, Dobbs is a guy that can run and he's athletic. And, you know, you want to try to get them outside of the pocket as much as possible, because you look at some of the really good plays that he's made, you know, in the first couple of games, at least he was getting outside the pocket and, and making things happen. Now, obviously we saw the bears try to take that away and kind of restrict him to

being inside the pocket where he really struggled. But to me, it's if you're Kevin O'Connell, you've got to try to, like, make an adjustment to the adjustments that other teams are making to you. And I know that's probably easier said than done, but you've got to look at who you have playing at the quarterback position, and you've got to look at what he does best. You've got to put him in a position to have the most success. And it doesn't really feel like – it feels almost like they tried it a little bit, but when it didn't, like, spark and work exactly the way they wanted it to work right away, they just completely threw it out and just threw it in the garbage can and was like, nope, we're going to go back to what we've been doing this entire time with Kirk Cousins the last year and a half. I just don't think that that's just not good to me.

You listen, we have seen a lot of, and I'm not in any way, shape, or form writing off Kevin O'Connell yet. Not ready to do that yet. It's very early. But we've seen a lot of head coaches, particularly offensive guys, that get very consumed into their system. And we're going to fit our guys into our system. Even if it's a square peg round hole situation, damn it. We're going to make this work because it's my system and my system works. We've seen a lot of head coaches not survive that man. We saw, we saw Brad Childress not really survive that.

His system didn't really work until he had one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time quarterbacking it. You know what I mean? So I think, you know, Kevin O'Connell is going to have to like, and I'm thinking way big picture here, he's going to have to really think about like, do I want to try and mold a quarterback into my system or do I want to look at what this quarterback can do best and sort of mold my offense to what he can do best and then while also trying to develop you know more of a pocket presence you know a pocket passing

type of quarterback because that's obviously the type of system that he wants to run um but you got to look at the guys that you have and you got to try and if you're if you're trying to win right now if you're trying to make the playoffs right now which they've been you have and you got to try and if you're, if you're trying to win right now, if you're trying to make the playoffs right now, which they've been trying to do, you got to try and, and sort of mold this thing together to, to fit the style of the quarterback that you have. Otherwise you're going to get like what we've seen the last two weeks where

he just was not playing well. And then you ultimately had to bench him. This show is being brought to you by BetterHelp. Folks, the holidays are an exciting time for buying gifts and spending time with family, but you have to remember that sometimes the best gift is the one you can give yourself. If you're finding the holiday season tough on you, maybe the best gift is paying a little more attention to yourself, whether that's therapy or just finding time away from the holiday stress. If you are interested in getting someone on your

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And I think what we've seen with Jordan love, and I don't know how he's playing right now. So if he's playing badly erase this compliment, but I think Matt LaFleur has done a really good job of shaping things around Jordan Love and working to his strengths. The counterpoint might be Shanahan and McVay, where Shanahan drafts a quarterback that's different from any quarterback he's had before, where he's had Matt Ryan in Atlanta 2016 MVP season, then Jimmy Garoppolo takes him to the Super Bowl.

Those are different quarterbacks than Trey Lance. And he tries to get Trey Lance to run what he wants to run and then added an escapability and athleticism to that. And it just doesn't work because he's not that type of quarterback. And maybe it was just bad scouting. I don't know. Like that was the COVID year. And that was weird for everybody to try to scout someone who barely played in. And maybe, maybe in the year, like 2031, Trey Lance shows up and he's good all of a sudden. I don't know. Like now with Gino Smith and Jake Browning, all of a sudden it's like, I guess we should rest quarterbacks for five years and develop them or more than that. But the point just being that they went to Brock Purdy because he does the things that Shanahan really needs, which he seems to have full control and operation over that offense. And sometimes I get irritated when it's like, well, this quarterback's not that good because he's throwing the wide open people like, okay, that's true. And that's very helpful,

but you also have to make all the checks changes reads adjustments and then deliver that so maybe with the complexity of what kyle shanahan needs his quarterback to process that was the right fit and with sean mcveigh i mean the guy made one of the biggest bets and gambles ever by trading for matthord, a move that both you and I, after watching a ton of Stafford, we're like, I don't know, man. I mean, is Stafford just going to like throw 20 picks? And then he did, but he also threw for 5,000 yards and got on a heater in the playoffs and won them a super bowl. But one of the things that was clear was that McVay had all these things that he wanted to do that he felt he was held back a little by golf skillset.

And he found the guy who fit exactly what he wanted. And this makes me think more of like, go find your guy, Kevin, go find exactly what's going to fit what you want to do and not try to fit to what they want to do because you might not be that coach. And with Josh Dobbs, that's, that's how I came away feeling is you might not be that coach who can just totally morph what you're doing on the fly to that guy. Instead, you should look for the guy that fits you. And for right now, the guy that fits you is Nick Mullins. Is it great? Probably not. But it clearly, at least Nick Mullins could throw with a little bit of accuracy and understands the offense. So that's going to have to be the way that it's going. I want to get to the comment section though, because you guys are heated up tonight. I see, I put Tom Brady in the headline. I'm getting, you know, criticized for it, but there's people joining, wanting to talk about Tom Brady.

Todd says, why does nobody ask KOC if Jaron Hall is in consideration for starting? I mean, one is that he's talked about Jaron Hall at length throughout the season. He's been asked a number of times. And it's always been very clear that they didn't want him to have to play this year. And it was in case of an emergency. And they would rather have the veterans. And when you have a top defense and you have all these playmakers and everybody else asking someone that you don't think is totally ready to go out there as a rookie and carry a team

to the playoffs is just too much for me. So I think unless they're out of the playoffs, there's really no reason to even talk about Jaron Hall. I mean, he's the third quarterback. So clearly behind the other two veterans. Uh, it's just that people want to see the younger player as they so often do with this position. Um, so Breck says, what do you guys think about Dobbs? All the abilities gets mentored by KOC and starts day one, 2024. I think if you had said that to us three weeks ago, we'd be like, maybe I'm not like maybe

today, Manny. I think that that ship has sailed. Yeah, it, it has. I mean, I was making comparisons to, you know, John Kitna starting for the Bengals when, when they had drafted Carson Palmer and just kind of being that bridge guy and Kitna came in and played really well. And the Bengals were like a 500 team. And it was, you know, it went pretty, it went about as well as the Bengals could have wanted that situation to go. That ain't this anymore, man. This is not, I would be honestly surprised. I would be shocked if Josh stops is even on the team next year. I mean, I can't, he's going to be a free agent.

They would have to obviously negotiate a new contract if they want to bring him back. And I think with just the way the Bears game went and the way things went yesterday, I have a hard time believing he's even going to be on the team next year. Yeah, I think that's probably right. I mean, if he can't operate what Kevin O'Connell wants him to, to even get more than, I mean, the last two weeks,

we're talking about 13 total points and 23 in the last 10 quarters. Like that's just not gonna work. And the only time he was able to operate the offense was when it was pared down, when it was being explained in his headset, when, when he's making crazy plays, which can only last for so long. As we saw, Bobby says his Mullins expected to degrade after a couple of games. He just will disintegrate. He does have that back issue, which is concerning. Or can he carry the team all the way? I mean, all the way to the playoffs, but all the way past the playoffs is probably not going to happen. I do like this

for the creativity. Can we split quarterback duty, start Dobbs and bring in Mullen Mullins as a closer Nick Mariano Rivera, although it was a baseball score. I said to a Lavelle, Neil was with us yesterday. He was in Las Vegas. And I said, Lavelle, you feel right at home with the three Oh ball game. This is what it's like for you. You're not used to writing about games that have 27 points or something. Now, there is, remember with the Eagles way back in the day when they would try to have Jaworski play first and second down and Randall Cunningham play third down?

No, I don't think that that's really a potential option but didn't the didn't the cardinals didn't the cardinals do that with kurt warner and matt leinert they did something similar to that too i think ken wisenhunt did that like one year where like leinert played the majority of the snaps but like warner would come in for like two minute drills or something like that or maybe it might have been vice versa but there was some sort of situation where they, like they would both be playing in the game for some weird reason. I, I don't remember that exactly, but I can be convinced that that happened because that was a weird situation with Matt liner, uh, that they had to keep trying to play him, but they also knew that he wasn't prepared.

It was bad. I mean, I remember watching not too long ago that we are who they thought they were game. And Matt liner is the starting quarterback. And I can't remember. I think it's Joe Theismann calling the game and he's just losing his mind about how great he thinks that Matt liner it is.

And the, the Cardinals had like five turnovers and that's how they lost it. But yeah, would you be shocked though if Nick Mullins got hurt and they had to go back to Dobbs? So when we say you've seen the last of Dobbs, that might not actually be true because everyone is getting hurt all the time. So that does happen. Let me scroll a little bit here.

So Miles says it would be perfect Vikings moment to get obliterated by Jake Browning next week. There is a clear difference, I think, between the two situations. One is that Jake Browning got to be their backup for multiple years. He's been there since 2021. So 2021, two, three. So he's been there for three years and really knows their offense inside and out. And also they're a better team than the Vikings. They were always a better team than the Vikings.

If they had Joe Burrow, I would have been convinced that they could potentially go win the Superbowl and they were my pick before the season. Like that's a complete team top to bottom. And what we started to realize the last few weeks manny is with justin jefferson out but even if he comes back in i think this is true is that there are still a good number of weaknesses on this team and the defense has not been one of them uh but the offensive line maybe wasn't quite as good as we thought they were for a bit there and the receivers delete all your three deep, you know, tweets or whatever with Osborne. And it just, it took in order to win those games without Jefferson, it took everyone playing the absolute best version of themselves, including Jordan Addison, who may have started to hit a little bit of a rookie wall here and that was just not something to be expected for an entire

season to be able to keep everybody playing the line the receivers the I mean even you know Madison came along the last few weeks it just wasn't going to happen for an entire season like it can with Cincinnati where they have this complete team. Well, and it's also, we also have to remember like for as well as Kirk cousins was playing before he got injured. This was also a team that started the season. Oh, and three, and they were one in four at one point early in the season. So it's not, it's, it's not like this team was, you know, was seven and oh, and then all of a sudden, you know,

just things just started to kind of fall apart because a bunch of people got injured. I mean, they were 1-4 to start off the year, and that was when Justin Jefferson and Kirk Cousins were both healthy. So, you know, I think ultimately what we're seeing is that this team just doesn't really have enough, and you thought those first couple of games with Dobbs that you know maybe this could be a fun little journey to the playoffs and maybe

they compete hard and you know go down and sort of a close game in the postseason but that's just not when when you when you sort of you know rub your eyes a little bit and get a little bit more clarity, your vision starts to really sort of clear up. You start to realize, OK, yeah, this is still a team that's at least a year, maybe two years away from like really going on a deep playoff championship run. Folks, I hope you've enjoyed listening to us talk about prize picks this year but if you've missed it here's how it works you go to prizepicks.com and it is simple you pick either more or less between two and six players stat projections and that's it now you're playing so if it's x number of yards for a quarterback you just decide are they going to throw for more or less than that number of yards but it works with lots of different options, receiving yards, touchdowns, even field goals,

all sorts of sports as well. PrizePicks.com slash purple. Go there, use the code purple for the first deposit match up to $100. One of the reasons I like PrizePicks, it is very simple to use. You'd see how we do it on the show real quick and easy and then we talk about our picks and also not expensive either you can turn ten dollars into 250 by nailing just a couple of picks so go to prizepicks.com slash purple the code purple daily fantasy sports made easy i think about that quite a bit with this defense and the way that they've played and how

it might accelerate their thought of what the timeline should be. And I would warn against that a little bit. Now, nobody's more impressed with me or than me. I don't know who's impressed with me. No one's more impressed than me with Brian Flores and what he's been able to do. And Ivan Pace Jr., the guy that they found there, Josh Metellus, Cam Bynum. And I mean, I think these guys are a great foundation for the future and that this defense is very legit. However, and this again is not to downplay at all. You can only play who your schedule is. It has been a really long time since they've played a good offense. The 49ers were the last one. The 49ers averaged nine yards of pass play,

and they didn't have Debo Samuel or Trent Williams. And the quarterback got concussed at the end of the game and kept playing. And they were able to move the ball in that game. They also fumbled at the goal line. Like they, it was a weird night for San Francisco. That's the last time they played a really good offense, and this is going to be a different version. So we'll see a little more test for this defense.

I still look at the other defenses that are considered the elite, the Ravens, the 49ers, the Cowboys, and I think that's kind of more, you're going to need more talent there. You will need more talent there you will need more talent because you're not going to likely win with a okay defense you know how people always want to say well you know teams that do this win teams that do that win teams that are great on offense and defense win like if you want to win a championship be good at everything like what's the best team that we've seen in our lifetime from the Vikings? Oh, that 98 team that had a good offense and a good defense or Oh nine.

You know, right. So this is something to build on with what they have here. I don't think it's quite ready to dominate four games through the playoffs with the talent that they have. I think they're squeezing every ounce out of it in, in order to get there, but they could feel like, Hey, actually, we should extend Hunter.

We should bring back Kirk because we're going to have a great defense and we're going to bring back everybody on offense. Our luck will be better with fumbles and all of a sudden we'll be a championship team. And you can just feel that yesterday. You could feel it in the air. It was like there's this meme where it's a cowboy over the mountains and i don't even know where it came from or what it is but i see it sometimes and it was like kirk's head uh elevating like with with a sweater vest on or something or

maybe he's anti-sweater vest i don't remember but like uh this was some discussion with kirk at some point anyway but you could just see him like hovering over. Like I would have had 17 points by now. We could wait the ghost of Kirk cousins hovering over. That is what I am thinking about. Quite a bit though, over these last few games is when we get to the end of this and whether it's the playoffs or not,

like where will they stand on what they think their timeline is based on what they saw this year. And like, we've been talking about for weeks and well, really months, you know, even in off air texting conversations about, you know,

where this team is realistically right now and the opportunity that they have, you know, when we're talking about big picture and it's a great opportunity for them, but they do have to be careful and they have to play this right. And they can't really, you can't really make a hasty decision based on what you think you might be at. and you think you might be a little bit ahead on your timeline. If you do that, then you're going to put yourself potentially in a situation where you get stuck in the middle, like we have seen this team be for a long time, because you kind of overestimated how good your roster actually is. And I think there's an opportunity to, you know,

if you want to try and identify a young quarterback in the draft next spring, there's an opportunity to do that. I think that's a good route to go. Like I talked about last week, I think any thought of bringing back Kirk Cousins as well as he played before he got hurt, I just think it's incredibly misguided. And it's not me ripping Kirk. I'm not anti-Kirk or anything like that. I think you just have to realistically think about where this roster is at financially, what is feasible, what makes the most sense. You've got a superstar wide receiver that you

need to resign. You've got an elite left tackle that you need to resign. You've got a superstar wide receiver that you need to resign. You've got an elite left tackle that you need to resign. You've got a decision to make on Daniel Hunter. Like if you want to keep him around, okay, that's going to cost you a chunk of change. So you, you have to really be careful here and not sort of fumble this opportunity. No pun intended there. But you've got to be really careful, and you've got to make the right decision.

The things that they've done this offseason, this past offseason, moving on from some of the older veteran players, the older expensive veteran players, was really sound. It really made a lot of sense, and we're seeing that despite letting Eric Kendr you know, letting Eric Kendricks go, letting Adam Thielen go, you know, it didn't really make this team a lot. It didn't make this team worse. I mean, record wise, yeah, they have a worse record than they did last year, but I don't know how much worse this team is overall than what they were last year. I think

a lot of things just kind of went their way, considering how awful that defense was. So you've made some really sound decisions and you've identified some young players who could be a part of this future. You don't want to do anything to screw this up, to try and accelerate this process, because I think you're if you're crazy and KOC, you're going to be putting yourself in a position where you're going to be hovering around 9-8, 10-7 if you sort of handcuff yourself financially to a point where you're not going to be able to do the Vikings didn't fumble 7,000 times to start the season, and if Kirk Cousins didn't get hurt, this could have been a 12-win team. And what a start to the O'Connell-Quasey era that would have been, is competitively rebuilding with 13 and 12-win seasons. But also not say, if we do everything the same, they'll win 12 games next year. Right.

And that was a whole thing that we talked about going into this, which was things might not go the way that they did last year. And you can't expect the same results. And the, the luck has really slapped them in the mouth this year with Kirk, Kirk getting hurt and all the fumbles and everything else. And I would even throw drop passes. It's been a very long time since the Vikings dropped a lot of passes

because it was always Jefferson, Thielen. Thielen doesn't drop the ball. Kyle Rudolph before that, he never drops the ball. Stephon Diggs. And then, you know, this year they've had a lot of those drops and some of them were in the end zone when they should have won the game against the Chargers. It has been a horrendous luck year. And even if your luck improves though, the, the track is going to be different for next year. It's always with the schedule you face,

the quarterbacks you face, the leagues had half of their quarterbacks get hurt this year. I mean, again, like we said, if Jimmy Garoppolo plays, you probably don't win the game, but that team is tanking. They fired everybody. So you kind of run into that and that plays in your favor. So not everything has gone. I mean, you play Carolina. That's the worst team in the league.

They were on your schedule. The NFC South, like the worst division in football is on your schedule. That might not be the case for next year. So you, I think, need to remain level-headed on the track that you started on, on the plan that you started on, on the plan that you started on, and carry it out. But convincing the Wilfs might be a little more difficult. Let me run through some quick comments here. And then you've got your list as well of the ugliest wins for the Vikings that you can remember.

Purple Pain Forum says, if you're not going to go all in on 2023 why even do anything why not just tank at that point uh that's you know the tanking thing has gotten very uncomfortable uh for some fans and i'm now at the point of daily emails uh chastising me for bringing it up the whole hey look if they had gone one and four and then done some things to make sure that they didn't get to seven and six, that they would be in a better position to pick a quarterback. And that's just a fact of life. I mean, so on Sunday before the game, I was keeping track of the WNBA draft lottery. Everyone knows who Caitlin Clark is, right? The Indiana Fever did not get Caitlin

Clark by being spectacular. Uh, assuming that she comes out in the draft, but they got a Leah Boston last year and guess what? They're going to be pretty good. And then inside the stadium, what the aces were there, the Vegas aces who have two championships behind Asia Wilson, the greatest player on earth, who was the number one overall draft pick. Like this doesn't this, this stuff doesn't just happen. Uh, Miami's playing tonight. They're a Superbowl contender. Remember tank for Tua. Remember how Brian Forrest got here because they were clearly tanking. Uh, I mean this historically, it's like, if someone tells you that historically a strategy is effective, but for some reason there's like a moral element to this that doesn't really strike me much that to me, it's a strategy

in the same way that you could let a team score and that can actually help you. Right. As opposed to a team running down the clock at the two yard line, if you let them score, well, I'd never let them score. Well, then you just lose instantly. So there are situations where you have to take a tactical route that they did not take. And when we look back at this draft class and how they perform, I will be thinking about the tactical route that could have potentially been taken as opposed to how it ended up playing out and no matter how many ways i

explain it though manny there there's just something about that whole deal and i think it's the reality of the truth in it uh that it's like well you didn't do it but it's true that it would have been better for you and the gm even said that earlier this year, I think that's the frustrating part of it for people. Like if this team right now had two wins, there would be Jersey people on Twitter putting Drake May in a Vikings jersey and it'd get 10,000 retweets and everyone would be jacked about it,

but that's not actually where you are. So it's easier to like push back against that and say, no, I'd rather make the playoffs at nine and eight well i go back to and i brought this up with you uh last week we were talking we were texting about you know tanking tico because we were we were talking about i think we were texting about the texans and how fun the texans are with oh that's another team that's tank that tanked the last couple of years and look at what they have now, although that was pretty awful yesterday against the Jets. But I go back to 2011, and I know somebody in the comments is going to say, well, they drafted Ponder already.

But 2011, the Vikings are having an awful season, and they win. They go into Washington and beat them on Christmas Eve. It was the same day that Adrian Peterson tore his ACL. And the Vikings still found a way to win that game. They finished 3-13 with the third pick in a draft that had Andrew Luck and RG3 go 1-2 at the quarterback position. Now, I know RG3's career got cut short with injury, but he was fantastic before he got hurt.

And we all know how great Andrew Luck was. And ultimately, you know, all the injuries and everything that he sustained in Indianapolis because they could never build an offensive line in front of him, you know, ultimately cut his career short. But, you know, if the Vikings lose that game in Washington, they're picking number one overall. Or if they're picking number two, they get one of those two guys,

and who knows what direction the franchise would have been in at that point. So tanking works, man. If you do it right and you take the right guy, you make the right decisions. It can absolutely work and you can got a lot better chance if you're picking super high than you do if you're picking 20th. And look, I mean, Justin Jefferson was not picked number one. Neither was Christian Derrissaw. And the Buffalo Bills made the playoffs at, I think, nine and seven. And then they drafted Josh Allen and the Kansas City Chiefs. They made the playoffs. They lost to Marcus Mariota in the playoffs when he threw a touchdown to himself. And they still were able to draft Patrick Malmes.

So it's not that there's no other way. Jalen Hurts was a second rounder. Dak Prescott was a fourth rounder. But it's all about an odds game that we talk about here. And sometimes it's just like a wall that you can't penetrate with people. Like you just put up this, if you say we shouldn't have a better season, I'm just done with the conversation.

And you know, this, when we talk about second guessing, that's going to be the thing that will be the second guest. The most is not trading away someone like Daniel Hunter. If you're not going to extend him and maybe not playing Jaron Hall and just letting it play out and trying to squeeze whatever out of a veteran and do you ultimately end up regretting the two wins

with Josh Dobbs because it hurts your draft stock and all of that stuff is just frustrating I think for people to hear about more than anything I'm going to speed run through these comments and then we'll get to your hilarious list of ugly games. And if yesterday is not number one, I you're going to have to come up with something really special. Miles asks, what's the percentage likelihood that they keep Brian Flores another season

guessing 0%. I would not guess 0%. I would guess more like 60% that the Vikings keep Brian Flores. That's what I think. Because of the lawsuit, because of when he was a head coach in Miami, there were a lot of people that did not like the way some of the things were handled, including what happened with Tua, as Ryan Fitzpatrick mentioned on TV last week. And I think there's a lot in the air there

about Brian Flores and whether he is a good defensive, brilliant mind, or if he's someone you want running your franchise, which, of course, you know, we went through that with Mike Zimmer as well. Let's see. Purple Pain asks, if Hall isn't ready, is KOC really a quarterback whisperer? The reality is no one is a quarterback whisperer.

There you have it. There's no one has the answers for a fifth round draft pick who doesn't have a great physical skill and isn't ready to play in the offense. Just with the same thing with Dobbs, like Thor says, why couldn't KOC see that Dobbs wasn't the guy? It made complete sense to start dobbs again because of the potential upside that he would return to a couple weeks ago and it didn't happen didn't happen yeah it didn't it didn't happen but if it is but i was giving free reign

to second guess though so that might be that might be what what is going on there. So let me, let me scroll here. Here we go. Dobbs can get his guy, Matthew Stafford in 2025. Don't make me make that a YouTube headline. Cause I will. I have loved the way Matthew Stafford is playing. Nobody was more skeptical on Matthew Stafford than me when he was with the lions. Cause he turned the ball over and took a ton of sacks. And he was always talked about as like an elite quarterback. I was like, I think he's a little more mid and I think he's just played great. And they should have, they should have won, but they gave up a punt return for touchdown. So that was, that was a big game for the Vikings. It's so funny to me that the Vikings had a great day from a playoff race like what a day for them in

the postseason race caller I tweeted it out yesterday if the Vikings went out they'll win the NFC North like we all know we're not stupid we know it's not going to happen but like the fact that we saw that clown show yesterday and everything that kind of went around them that sort of helped their cause. And now you just look at the Lions losing yesterday and everything. If the Vikings win their last four games, they're going to win the division. It makes no sense. It's so weird. Miles says, why does everyone think KOC likes a running quarterback?

He's never worked with one. Well, I mean, I don't know if he does or not. Kevin O'Connell himself was one of the best running quarterbacks in college football history. He's never worked with one. Well, I mean, I don't know if he does or not. Kevin O'Connell himself was one of the best running quarterbacks in college football history. So I don't think he is anti-running quarterback unless he's anti him. But what I don't think it's, it's not the running with Dobbs. The running is not the problem. It's that he wants precision in his quarterback.

This is why when we watch Pennix play and go like that kind of looks like what you're going for. Somebody who pushes the ball downfield, accuracy, anticipation. It just requires it requires a really high level of accuracy to run it. Now, if you have a high level of accuracy and you run really super fast, that seems like that would be great. That sounds like a superstar to me. Uh, FFS, I know what that means. 46 year old Tom Brady is not leaving his yacht and mansion in South Florida to come play for a mediocre team in Minnesota with four games left in the season. All right. How about this? How about this? Let's what if though, what if they win two more games and they get in the playoffs and then Brady shows up like they grind their way.

They're scoring six points a game, but they're winning six to three the rest of the way. Then what do you do it? You're already in the playoffs. Tom, you just got to play the playoff games. You didn't even have to go through the season. You can spend all the time on your yacht.

Come on. Come on. Let's do it. Come on, Tom. What are we doing here? Oh, man. This is funny. Chris says he's more likely to join the Timberwolves.

Chris is informing us that this is unlikely. I wish I had known that before. I did the whole show thinking it was going to happen. And I hate when that happens. I just, you know, uh, okay. Anyway, well, I'll check the rest of the comments, but I want to make sure you get your list and everybody wants to go back to watch whatever is happening on Monday night football, including you.

So it was an ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly game. I would say that it's, it wasn't in first place by a lot, actually, over the win in Carolina, which was almost as ugly as what we saw, except for it had an amazing Justin Jefferson touchdown as opposed to no touchdowns. So that is way up there. But you racked your brain, you went through old seasons, and you made a list of the five ugliest wins that you could remember for the Minnesota Vikings.

So let us hear it, Manny. Well, if I had decided to include yesterday's game on this list, which I ultimately didn't, it would be number one. I think that'd be pretty obvious. So I'll just kind of throw that out there. But I'm going to start with number five. And you might even remember. How old are you, Collar? I am 37.

Okay. So, yeah, you would probably remember this. This is from, I think, a season that you and I both hold very near and dear to our hearts, the 1994 season. I'm going to go to December 11, 1994. You'll probably remember this. Vikings at Bills. The Vikings win 21-17 at Richs, and they held the Bills to 17. They held Jim Kelly and that offense to 17 points, right? Nope. Vikings scored one offensive touchdown in the game. It was a one-yard touchdown rush by Terry Allen.

And otherwise, Fuad Ravez kicked five field goals in the game. And the Vikings won the game 21-17 in Buffalo to improve to 9-5 on the season. Just as the Bills were starting to kind of run out of gas with those legends, like that was the year, I remember 94, that was the year, because they had gone to the Super Bowl in 93, and that was the year where you went like,

hmm, some guys look like they are showing a bit of signs of aging, and back then, a 32, 33-year-old quarterback had been murdered over and over and over again and had nothing left of his body. And I don't remember exactly how old Jim was, but when he got to his 30s, I do recall that discussion of, well, you know, he's in his 30s now, so it's starting to look like it was going to fade um but yeah fwad revays was the master of if you need like a 34 year yard field goal this guy is your guy

i wouldn't push it too much farther back than that but man if you need 34 yards you will boot it right in and teams used to kick field goals when it was fourth and one at the one let's just take the three let's get the points and uh flod revest kicked a lot of field goals that year 94 as well um all right number four on the list uh from that very same season this was september 11th 1994 it was week two the vikings are hosting the detroit lions and uh the vikings Vikings win just a barn burner, 10-3 at the Metrodome. Yeah, this was not a very good game either. Both teams turned the ball over three times. Barry Sanders, I think, was held to 12 carries for 16 yards in the game. Scott Mitchell went 18 out of 40 passing. Warren Moon didn't

really have a great game. The Vikings couldn't run the ball very much either. So the Vikings went 10 to three to even their record at one and one for that 94 season. Scott Mitchell still very salty about the Barry Sanders documentary. Very upset. The 95 season was great though for that offense, but not 94 94 was was pretty miserable so was warren the quarterback at that time he was yeah that was his first first year with the vikings and they had signed him as a free agent from houston okay so they they must have gotten going a little bit later in that season that after that but one of the funny things about watching old games is the turnovers where now if you turn the ball over twice the

coach comes out goes can't turn the ball over it's just terrible i can't believe it twice what are we doing and uh you know back then people used to just fumble and throw picks all the time i mean it just gives a bit back and forth like a pinball sometimes yeah warren moon through 19 interceptions i believe in 1994 it wasn't even that bad. It was like, okay, well, you know, whatever. It's about average. Yeah, it's like whoever the quarterback for the Bengals at that time probably threw like 27 picks, so whatever, you know, no big deal. Number three on the list, you might remember this,

although it was the year before you got to Minnesota to cover the Vikings, but it was a Mike Zimmer team. Vikings fans will remember this, the Vikings and the St. Louis Rams at then TCF Bank Stadium, the Vikings win in overtime, 21-18, an overtime period where Mike Zimmer actually won the, the Vikings won the coin toss and Mike Zimmer actually elected to take the wind because it was a very windy day that day in Minneapolis. And they eventually kicked a field goal, won the game 21-18 in overtime. But that was a game that Teddy Bridgewater was knocked out cold by LaMarcus Joyner.

And that was also the press conference in which Mike Zimmer proclaimed that he basically wanted to fight Greg Williams, who was the defensive coordinator of the Rams at the time. And the very cold handshake between Zimmer and Jeff Fisher, too, was quite entertaining as well. I mean, you talk about a guy that – talk about winning over the fan base with the exact right person to try to fight. That was exactly what that called for I do recall that game and yeah it was hit it was it Sean Hill had to come in after that was the

backup yeah yeah and you're just holding your breath because Sean Hill wasn't moving the football if that game if the Vikings would have had to go like on a long drive to win that game it probably was not going to happen with Sean Hill there was a lot of games in that 15 season that were not exactly sexy. I mean, even the win in green Bay at the end of the year, I think Bridgewater throws for like 90 yards at the end of the season to get that. That's right.

He was trying to be my homes and it didn't work. All right. What else you got? It's like, don't do that, Teddy. All right. Number two on my list november 13th 2005 the vikings beat the new york giants 24 to 21 the vikings did not score a single

offensive touchdown in this game there was a pick six in this game. I'm not going to name who made the pick six because that person is an awful human being. That's all I'll say about that. There was a kickoff return for a touchdown by Corrin Robinson, and there was a punt return for a touchdown by Meweldy Moore. Those were the three touchdowns that the Vikings scored in the game. It was actually a pretty good Giants team in 2005 that won the division, made made the playoffs eli manning was starting to kind of play really well uh but uh eli was not good in that that particular game 23 out of 48 291 yards a touchdown and four interceptions and the uh vikings went on to beat the Giants 24-21 at the Meadowlands. I mean, what a magical, magical list. And yesterday falls right into all of that beauty.

But yesterday, I think, was the ugliest win that I've covered for the team that I was covering. Probably the second ugliest game that I have ever witnessed, which number one was the bills lost to the Browns six to three in a game where it was 50 mile an hour winds at what is Ralph Wilson stadium, new airfield, whatever it is now. But in Buffalo, when that wind is going, it is insane. No one could throw the ball. And I believe Derek Anderson completed one pass on the day. He was something like one for 13 and they won the game six to three because Roscoe parish, their

punt returner fumbled in field goal position for them to kick a field goal and win the game. It was, uh, it was, it was yucky. It was gross, but Oh, you got one more. Okay. I do have the one more number one on the list. I'll go through it pretty quickly. October 12th, 2008 Vikings 12, the eventual Owen 16 Detroit Lions 10. That was the game. Of course, that Dan Orlovsky ran out of the back of the end zone running from the game winning score. Yes.

And it ended up the, the Lions led theings 10 to 2 at one point in the third quarter so it was looking pretty bad i know our our guy gus ferrat remembers that game very well because he was playing quarterback for the vikings that day it was uh it was very very ugly but uh we found a way to win yeah talk about how they used to throw a lot of interceptions. Like Gus that year was just grinding it out, somehow finding ways to win. I thought you were going to have yesterday as your, as your number one, but there's.

Yeah. If I was including it, it would have been number one by far. The last shutout that they had was, was pretty gross. It was down at Lambeau in 2017, where it was minus five degrees and Brett Hundley was starting. And one of the key plays I remember was case Keenum dumping it off to David Morgan.

And then David Morgan had to do long snapping that night because the long snapper got hurt and, you know, crazy stuff, uh, real quick before we wrap up. Great, great list. All just nasty games. But every year you gotta have one, I guess, that you end up coming away with a win. I am amazed that this still comes up, Manny. Chris says, tanking's a horrible plan. How do you go into a locker room and tell a guy like Ivan Pace

that we're gonna try to intentionally lose? You don't. That's not how it works. And I don't mean to be critical of the commenter here, cause you're joining us for the show. And I appreciate that, but, and I don't expect people to always completely know the entire landscape of sports, but you're here commenting. So I assume like you like know what's going on in sports.

I mean, in 2023, we, no one actually thinks that you tell the players to lose on purpose, right? Like that's why I try to present it in a different way. I mean, it is, it is a, it is a strategy. Uh, it, it is a, it is a clear strategy of what you do with your roster. No one tells the players not to play hard. Uh, when they were tanking for Tua, they took the roster apart and then they rebuilt it and they rebuilt it quickly. And that's the thing is like a couple of years later, they're a Superbowl contender. Bradley says tanking works in the NBA, but in the NFL, not sure about that. I mean, if we go through the number one quarterbacks who have been taken,

you're going to find a lot of really good ones. And it's not just number one. Tanking can't just be number one. Tanking also has to be when teams intentionally choose a rebuilding path in order to improve their draft status. So it's not just, oh, let's look at the number ones and whatever. But boy, Cincinnati, they're going to play Cincinnati. How do you feel about them? You look at them as a premier franchise now, right? A couple of years ago, they're the worst franchise in the league.

Like you don't have to look all that far to find a lot of examples. I would say it actually works better in the NFL. I would argue it works better in the NFL than it does in the NBA, because if you miss on one or two draft picks while you're tanking in the NBA, it's going to put you behind the eight ball for a long time. And it's really hard to climb out of that hole. Whereas in the NFL, if you tank, you nail the quarterback and you make a couple of good, smart decisions over the course of a two-year period, you can turn things around really quickly. I mean, that's, it's, it's really all about, and when it comes to this, it's really all about understanding where you are as a franchise in your timeline to try to win because there are 32 teams and it's really hard to keep teams together,

even when you're great. So, and gosh, Kansas city is such a good example of this, where even as unbelievable as Patrick Mahomes is at football, they are finally starting to feel what it's like for some players there to get older, some guys that had to leave because they're too expensive, and you don't have Tyreek Hill anymore because there's a salary cap. So you're always rising and falling as franchises, right?

And when you need to reset things, it's like everyone is okay now that it worked out with moving on from all those players we've talked about a million times in the off season what was that exactly you know it's not tanking but it's also not not tanking it's like it's it's rebuilding so how should i just not use the word I probably just shouldn't use the word because it's like, well, at one in four or whatever, maybe they should have rebuilded themselves. Do we want a more special word? I'm not like that. I like to be straightforward with people like, yeah, if you trade away to Neil Hunter and get a second round pick, it helps your odds of getting a quarterback in the future. That's just reality. And by now I feel like everybody understands that it's like Ivan pace

would have been good either way, no matter what you did, but you might've just not won games that you shouldn't have won and hurt your long-term situation. That's the whole point. So anyway, well, we've we've gone on,

but we've had a good audience for tonight. A lot of great questions and comments and so forth. And, uh, another great Manny list. So, um, feel free to email or check in with your Dobbsian stories of where were you

in Dobbs? And then where were you when Dobbs ended? Um, cause that's what we'll talk about for the rest of the week and we'll go forward. Jeremiah Searles coming up. It's a Saturday game. So I got to fly out on Friday, going to Cincinnati and we'll see what happens from there.

So thanks for your time as always, Manny and everybody for watching. We'll catch you next time.