Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Is it time to have some tough Vikings conversations? Reacting to the Indy loss from a big picture perspective

Episode Date: September 20, 2020

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Download TE1 today, wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, welcome to the Post-Minnesota Vikings Disaster in Indianapolis podcast. Matthew Collar along with ESPN's Courtney Cronin. And Courtney, do you just want to take the floor here for a second and just say whatever is on your mind? Because they lost 28-11 in the worst quarterback performance since Josh Freeman. And honestly, if you match those two up, Josh Freeman versus Kirk Cousins today, I think Cousins was probably worse. All of the quarterbacks that you could go back through in Vikings' fairly recent history,

your Matt Castle was here very briefly, Christian Ponder. i don't remember anybody playing like her cousins did today 11 for 26 they net 95 passing yards three interceptions for cousins so uh reaction i mean did you expect anything else this is a team yes yes i did i completely was wrong about this. I expected this to be a shootout. I expected the offense to show back up, Gary to call up the old school plays from the yard and start throwing all over the place. I didn't expect the Colts, especially down Rakia Sin, their starting corner, that they would be able to hold the Vikings to essentially three points until a garbage time touchdown. I did not see that coming.

I didn't expect the score to be this. I did not see that coming. I didn't expect the score to be this. I picked Indianapolis to win. I thought they were going to still have the issues that they had last week with their past defense, but big picture wise, this is exactly what you expect for a team that does not have an identity, and Mike Zimmer is completely out of his element because for the last six seasons, it has been a defense that has controlled this team. It has been a defense that's been able to bail out the offense time and time and time again when they have been atrocious. Well, now that responsibility, the baton has been passed to the offense in a year where there is a complete rebuild on the defensive side of the ball and injuries, what what have you are affecting that side to the point

where you have to expect they're going to be really really bad at points and they were today but now it's a matter of pick your poison what's worse the run defense or the pass protection the fact that your corners don't know how to cover and they and they are getting illegal contact penalties left and right or the fact that Dalvin Cook is an afterthought yet again the fact that Kirk Cousins can't find anybody open allegedly outside of Adam Thielen even when Adam Thielen isn't open he's throwing the ball his way into double coverage or the fact that your run defense is now an even bigger problem than it was in week one so I mean it's like nothing is going right so I'm looking at this right now. And I'm

not overreacting. I promise. I love to hit the panic button. And I was kind of like, all right, quasi hitting it for week one. But now it's like full blown. This team is starting 0-5. You can't convince me otherwise at this point right now, because you couldn't stop Jonathan Taylor, a rookie running back today. Well, you've got Derrick Henry next week. And then you go down and you have Deshaun Watson, who will probably end up beating you because he's Deshaun Watson in spite of everything else that goes wrong with that Houston team. And then you have Russell Wilson and the Seahawks.

There's no way in my mind that this team, unless you have legitimate personnel changes, which I don't think is going to happen because of the way this roster is constructed, I don't see how this team can go anything other than 0-5 to start the season that's where I'm at with this my immediate reaction after this loss okay nothing that you could say or anyone could say in terms of being hyperbolic about this team in the state of them right now is over the top if you said this is about the worst start to any season I've ever seen in my entire

life for any team you probably got a case for that for having an all-time bad defensive performance against the Packers and then today showing up and having your quarterback register a 15.9 quarterback rating which was zero in the third at. At one point. Going into their first drive in the fourth quarter, it was 0.0. Right. Yeah. So you actually can't come up with a team that has started a season 0-2 any worse than this. The way that I want to kind of begin looking at through this game is sort of

is it time to talk about blank now? And looking backward as much as we're looking forward because I don't know if they'll go oh and five but I certainly can't say that they'll beat the Titans I thought that they would win today they obviously didn't come anywhere close to that so now it's hey yeah you could lose pretty much any game here going forward unless there's a big change but I don't know what that change is. Here's where I want to begin. Is it time to start talking about Stephon Diggs,

who had 158 yards receiving today in Josh Allen's best career game, not even close. Have we seen this script before where a quarterback has his best career year while throwing the football to Stephon Diggs? And remember when they traded him away, everyone said, well, it's fine. They've got Justin Jefferson now. No big deal. They can make up for Stefan Diggs' absence. Turns out, no, you can't. And you mentioned it with Kirk Cousins looking into Adam Thielen to throw into double coverage

where he gets an interception. Justin Jefferson ends up with three catches late in the game, kind of how he did last week. We've seen very little of Herb Smith. Kyle Rudolph has struggled. He hasn't done anything yet. Really, no one has done anything yet, except for Thielen in the fourth quarter against Green Bay. But Adam Thielen hasn't done anything yet when it has mattered. And we saw in the end zone this time, Cousins, the safety is on him, but he's looking around. He doesn't see anybody open. He's hesitating. He's taking sacks. And I guess I just wonder, not so much is Stephon Diggs good? Does he make quarterbacks way better than they are? Of course, all of that's true. But when you trade Stephon Diggs, but then also make other moves to be successful in the now, that's where I get really confused. So is it start, is it time to start talking about the fact that they traded Stephon Diggs? Yeah, I mean,

it's been that way. Like, I think even after week one, you could look at that. And my analysis that I wrote immediately was that they ran out of time to see what a Diggs-less offense was. But there were some troubling trends that you're like, hmm, even if they had more time, you'd probably get a glimpse of how bad this offense looks without Stephon Diggs. Well, we saw that in full today. There's no more excuses, and it's not just a matter of, you know, having a young core of playmakers. Look, I understand that B.C. Johnson is unproven. I understand that Justin Jefferson is a rookie and that anybody with common sense knew that if you trade Stephon Diggs away, no matter how you use that pick that

you got number 22 overall to upgrade your roster, even picking a wide receiver as good as Justin Jefferson was in college, it was going to take a while for him to come on. Why? Because playing receiver in the NFL is hard. On top of that, you have a quarterback who does not trust playmakers that he has not played with for years and years and years and years and have proven themselves. As we saw on the interception to B.C. Johnson, on the interception by – it tipped off his hands. He couldn't catch it.

Here's what happened on that play because I remember I tweeted something about that as it happened. I said, that's on Cousins. Because the series before was when Cousins threw the ball into double coverage, attempting to find Adam Thielen. B.C. Johnson was wide open over the middle of the field. We've seen this story play out where he leaves guys open and goes with his pre-snap read or goes with the guy he trusts the most. And it just gets him in a lot of trouble. And then on that throw to Johnson, Johnson's breaking inside on his route.

Cousins is throwing outside. That needs to be a better thrown ball. Should BC Johnson probably make that catch? Yes. Is he a second-year receiver and I can understand why he didn't? Yes. Both of them deserve the blame. But this is the issue with Kirk Cousins. You're paying this guy $33 million a year to throw to more than just one receiver for real. Like I am tired of the excuse that it's like,

well, this guy didn't get open or this, you know, you can't just have one playmaker. It has to be more than Adam Thielen. His eight target threeget, three-catch, 31-yard line from today's game is very, very telling to me. And you do too much too late in this offense. Justin Jefferson didn't get involved until late in the second half when the game was already out of reach. Dalvin Cook, the guy that you just paid a ton of money to, was a complete afterthought today. Play calling is probably a very big part of this. I am not letting Gary Kubiak off the hook. It's been a rough two outings for him. This time they actually had the time of

possession to be able to make something happen, and they didn't. But at the end of the day, this boils down to your quarterback play. Like you said, the safety, as bad as the pass protection was, and Drew Samia, I think it's very clear why he has not played um and it's blatantly obvious about how bad the interior is and the pass protection that they have there and truly the fact that that's on the front office they have not upgraded that position they've not spent the resources to upgrade that position the way that they needed to and I know people are going to be like well they drafted Garrett Bradbury it's not enough it's not enough um but a lot of this know, I look back at the

quarterback play, and I don't see how you cannot point the finger there, because the fingers are being pointed in very Minnesota Nice style at the quarterback play by a lot of people on this team right now. And it's very, very telling. And I think the wheels have already come off. I don't know how you fix it. Because even as Mike Zimmer said, are they correctable mistakes? And he said, I don't know. I don't know how you can correct this, right now at least. As it pertains to the Diggs issue, you touched on it when talking about the contract extension for Kirk Cousins.

And that's where I go with it too. Because if you're going to trade Stephon Diggs for a first-round draft pick, knowing that Diggs is such a massive part of why Kirk Cousins was successful last year. Diggs, one of the top in the NFL in terms of yards per reception. Cousins quarterback rating in two years when throwing to Stephon Diggs is around 110. I mean, he basically is a kingmaker for quarterbacks and he's already doing that with Josh Allen and Buffalo. No surprise to anyone in Minnesota who watched him play here at any time. But, okay, fine, you're going to trade Stephon Diggs.

He's not happy. He costs a lot of money. I get it. But then you extend, and I know that it happened before this, but you must have known that there was the possibility of trading Stephon Diggs. You extend Kirk Cousins on the first day of free agency. Boom. Like there was no question, yeah, we're doing this.

We're going forward with Kirk Cousins but what we've seen in these first two weeks is a quarterback who is so desperately reliant on his supporting cast and that means offense and defense because I can think of several games last year where the defense gave him extra opportunities and he ended up winning a game that maybe if he doesn't have a good defensive performance, he does not win that game. That's happened in both seasons. I mean, even going back to his first game as a Viking against San Francisco, where he, I believe, completed zero passes in the fourth quarter and they won the game. Those long stretches of him

not playing well are a feature and not a bug with Kirk Cousins. You see it all the time throughout his career. And when he had a great supporting cast around him, they're a competitive team. You take away even a little from the supporting cast, and this is the Kirk Cousins that you get. So I guess I look at this from not just a today perspective, because you could break down, as you did,

all the different ways that it went wrong for Cousins. It's more of the, on the big picture, you extended him without seeing what he would do without Stefan Diggs. And also, I mean, also just extended a quarterback who we realized over the last two years was so reliant on the people around him. I mean, you could find quarterbacks reliant on the people around him in the form of Nick Foles, right? So I guess that's where I start thinking about today. Like, is it also time to start talking about that extension? Is it too

early in week two? Or should we be saying, hey guys, that right now is looking a little bit questionable that you decided so quickly, not at the end of the training camp, not right before the season, you decided to pull the trigger. But from the very first end of the training camp, not right before the season you decide to pull the trigger, but from the very first day of the offseason, got to make that cap space, got to keep adding players like Michael Pierce, got to try to win, got to extend Kirk Cousins, and now you go, boy, he can't really carry you anywhere without a lot, a lot, a lot of good around him. We knew that, though. We knew that before the extension, which is why I think that that's the frustrating part. And truth be told, Matt, like they set themselves up for

failures three years ago when they signed him to that contract because of the cap hit. And because of what that would, what that at that time in 2018, what that pointed to down the road, the reason they extended him, they needed the cap space to be able to do something in free agency. That's the only reason, in my opinion, you can, you know, screw talking about, I'm sorry to be angry about it, but like forget talking about continuity and blah, blah, blah. And you know, all this stuff of keeping the unit together, they needed that $10 million in cap space. That's why they did it.

It's not about, this is the missing piece. And eventually we're going to get there. Think realistically. You know who this guy is. You have far too big of a sample size throughout his entire career to know that until everything is literally perfect, cloud nine around him, that he's not going to be who you need him to be in the big moments to win you games, the road in hostile environments which obviously we are seeing this year but like you get what i'm saying everything has to be status quo for him like playing against bad mediocre teams like when he all of a sudden became an mvp candidate last october why because they played the giants and the lions and other bad teams like washington

like that's what this whole thing is. So I think that, yeah, we're not wrong to look back at this in hindsight and say, okay, you know, you didn't really need to extend him. That $10 million in cap space, what did you go do? You franchised Anthony Harris and you weren't able to trade him the way that you wanted to. That whole thing fell through. You're going to let him walk next season. So it was literally all for naught.

That's what frustrates me when I look at this whole situation. All the moves that they thought would pan out never did. So they're stuck. They are stuck. How are you going to justify having another, let's say three years of this, if you include the 2020 season, 2021 and 2022, when he's under contract, nobody's going to trade you for that contract he is essentially locked into this team for the next three years and I don't know how you fix it because and it's like if you would have just bet on yourself in that sense that this was going to be a year where you had to rebuild because you knew before you extended Kirk Cousins I'm pretty sure the Friday before they extended him on that Monday before free agency they cut Xavier Rhodes they cut Linville Joseph

we knew they weren't gonna you know Everson Griffin had opted out of his contract because he was going to get cut anyways about a month before then all the writing was on the wall it was going to be a defensive rebuild this year but you opted anyways to try to say hey we can try to work our way through this by extending Kirk Cousins and allegedly trying to keep this whatever offensive continuity that you guys thought you had um all the signs were there too let's just rebuild this year and be built for 2021 and they opted not to do that they opted to try to keep going and that's biting them right now and that's the thing that we're going to be constantly going back to and looking

at as this season continues to play out is some of the decisions that were made this offseason that did not point to rebuilding including extending Kirk Cousins when they didn't have to they could have not tried to sign Michael Pierce, and then that's, you know, a big cap hit there. They trade for Yannick Ngakwe, which I think is a long-term move, but now that's a long-term move that will cost you a lot of money down the road, that you're going to have to pay him as one of the premier pass rushers, and Daniil Hunter too, so that's going to cost you a lot of space eventually. So that's not exactly a long-term play. That looks like it was

in part because it happened at the last minute because Daniil Hunter was hurt. And everything says about this team that they thought they were going to continue to be good this year. Like you mentioned about Anthony Harris, that they wouldn't take a third round pick for him. They would only take a second round pick and nobody was willing to give that up. I think that most of the fan base would have been totally okay after last year with just taking down the walls of this roster and saying, look, we're going to be young. There's going to be a lot of bumps along the way and that's how it's going to go. And we're going to evaluate Cousins in the final year of his contract. And instead they did a lot of things, including spending all the way up to the salary cap,

including signing a running back to a long-term contract and a very expensive deal. Nothing that they did really, outside of trading an unhappy player in digs for a first-round pick, says, oh, we thought that we were just going to completely rebuild this thing. They seemed to believe that they had the parts to be good, and now, at least through two weeks, they are the exact opposite of that. The only thing that I would say is just being that it is two weeks, that's the only break pumping that I could offer is as bad as it's

looked. There are some teams over the last X number of years who have come back from being 0-2. I just don't have any answers for how you get there. It's not like, oh man, two last second field goals, bad breaks. It's no. You got your face pounded in, and the problems are going to keep being the problems. They're not going to stop the run. Not with Jaleel Johnson. The guy's not even an NFL player, and he's playing every play. I mean, it's like, I just don't know how you're going to fix the issues that are going to continue here, especially if Kirk Cousins isn't going to carry you. And if you don't have a quarterback who can carry you through some tough times on defense, then what are we doing here with a giant cap hit? And I think that's the question they could have answered if they let him go into the

final year and rebuilt the defense is, can Cousins carry you on offense if everything's not perfect on defense? And the answer so far is not even close. Well, here's my issue with it big picture-wise. All these extensions and moves that they made before week one, so dating back to when they extend Cousins and then Mike Zimmer, then Rick Spielman, and then Dalvin Cook. Did one playoff win in New Orleans that you won because of a coin toss,

did that really warrant all of that like why why do we go into this is this is basically in sports period this always frustrates me because there's such a stigma against being a lame duck coach and a lame duck this and that what the hell ever happened to proving your freaking worth sorry but like what what's so wrong with being like, yeah, he played really well this year. He deserved the contract extension. We didn't give it to him until he showed us that he's worth it. Like, I don't get it. Is it just that like billionaires don't want to like be paying more? Like they already have the money. Why not wait? Why not actually make people earn the money that you're paying them? That's

what I get frustrated about because we see this happen across sports where it's like, okay, they're going into their final year. We have to extend them because of the optics of not extending somebody apparently makes it look like, well, we really don't trust them. Why can't it just be that we want to see them earn it? Like, I just don't understand that. What has Kirk Cousins done to make you think that he's going to be the guy that leads you to the Super Bowl? He's won one playoff game. Rick Spielman has constructed good rosters before, but look at this. They have not been able to solve the quarterback conundrum that they've had on this team forever. I mean, the fact that Kirk Cousins, from where he was at today, his worst completion percentage

and most interceptions in a game in his Vikings career that he's the first Vikings player to complete below 50 percent with zero touchdowns and three interceptions in a game since Brad Johnson that was in 2006 that was a while ago so this is the historically awful performance for Cousins based on where this franchise has been. I just don't understand it. It's such a knee-jerk reaction of, like, keeping up with the Joneses in the NFL, of, like, oh, we've got to have fake stability in place. You really didn't believe this.

You didn't believe that this was your core because you had people in the building who wanted Kevin Stefanski. There were certain people in that building who were really confident that if they lost that Saints game, Kevin Stefanski is the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, and this offense and this team is going in a different direction, but you extend them anyways. I just don't understand why we can't, you know, force people in a way to earn it, because, I mean, any other career field, you have to, I mean, I know that I'm putting apples and watermelons here right now, but I'm just trying to make it make sense.

Nothing they did last year outside of a couple wins here and there warranted three-year extensions for everybody. I really don't believe that. I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. They just launched their official collaboration with Bud Grant. Yes, Bud Grant. You can now get your official Bud Grant shirt and Man Cave art print. If you haven't seen it yet, you have to check it out, and we're going

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local businesses need our support. So now it's time for us to return the favor. The next time you go shopping, make the choice to shop at local businesses and look for the contactless symbol and tap to pay with a contactless visa to help support your community because where and how you shop matters visa everywhere you want to be official partner of the nfl right i think you can ask why is it better that you extended these three than if you didn't as where we feel right now and the answer is that you're wasting money you're wasting money i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you you're wasting money by doing that well and the answer is that you're wasting money you're wasting money i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you but you're wasting money by doing that well and the thing is that why would it be different i mean does kirk cousins not show up without a contract no that's a lot of money he

would have made on the final year of his deal does mike zimmer decide he's not going to coach and he just walks away if he doesn't get that extension. I mean, maybe after this year, he would have done that. But I don't, I guess where I get to is you had a lot of people that needed to prove it after last year, despite the one playoff loss, but it was a lot of the same when they went out to San Francisco. And it looked just like this. Cousins scores on the first drive and then never does anything again. This felt very much like San Francisco. Maybe, well, even it did have the interceptions mixed in. His last three games have looked exactly the same from the way it ended to Green Bay to today.

Exactly the same. Where you start out where it doesn't look too bad in the first scripted drive, and then everything else just goes to heck and you lose because of quarterback play. The defense was bad against Green Bay, but quarterback play also played into that. And now the next one on the list is, is it time to talk about Mike Zimmer in that contract extension too?

And what would it take? Like how bad does it have to be? Is he because of the extension all set or would the Wilfs eat this if they had to, if they decided if the Vikings are two and nine at some point this season which looking at the schedule not impossible the way they've played these first two weeks if they're two and nine is Zimmer still the coach like this is why it looks so odd knowing that the circumstances were going to offer a situation where Cousins, Spielman, and Zimmer could all kind of prove the worth. That's why you can go back and go, hmm, but you extended and locked yourself into all of them.

So now would they break that and move away from Zimmer? Or is that kind of pointless right now because you've extended him for three years? I don't see it happening because that's just so fiscally irresponsible if they did it that way. That would be such a knee-jerk reaction to the moves that they made, and truly it would be their own fault. If this team goes 2-9, the Wilfs and ownership, they don't have anybody to blame but themselves for extending the people that they extended. Now, I'm not blaming Mike Zimmer completely for this yet. This is a personnel thing, in my opinion. It's a personnel and blaming Mike Zimmer completely for this yet. Like, this is a personnel thing, in my opinion. It's a personnel and it's a decision-making thing of the front office where

point out the issues that you have here. Your defense is brand new. In the secondary, you have new cornerbacks. You have, you know, you ran out of linebackers today. That's what Mike Zimmer said because Anthony Barr got hurt. And, you know, that's the one place that you had depth and you looked really good. And that's not, that is susceptible just as much as any other position is to injuries. Your defensive line is not going to be able to do what it wants to do this year, because you don't have Daniil Hunter right now. And frankly, if I'm Daniil Hunter, I'm sitting out until after the bye. I hope he's listening and I hope he heeds that advice, because there is no reason to risk coming back when you already have a pretty bad contract as it

is and you're underpaid to a defense that even if you come back, it's over. Like, I mean, I'm not, sorry, don't mean to like go like crazy like that. It's not over, over, but it's like you're not going to win games with the defense in the state that it's in right now. Not with that secondary, not, it's going to take a couple months. Like this is not like, Oh, three, four weeks. Got it. You know, everything's great. No that it's in right now not with that secondary not it's gonna take a couple months like this is not like oh three four weeks got it you know everything's great no it's not like that's not gonna happen this way so I look at the situation and I honestly think it's the personnel that you have but what can you do that's the scary part this team has like 2.25

million dollars in salary cap space it's not like you can go first off who's out there second off it's not like you can trade right now to really improve any unit of your of your defense or even with your offense it's like bringing in you know different offensive linemen whatever you don't have the cap space and honestly I just don't see how that would happen so to me you're kind of stuck with what you have. And I just don't think it's going to get better anytime soon. I'm not trying to be as complete downer about it. But like, what can you realistically say with these cornerbacks? They're young, and it takes time to develop. This is supposed to be a developmental year for the defense. But the offense can't bail

you out. They can't pull the weight for you as they have exhibited while you're letting the defense focus on player development. You just can't. You're playing replacement players on the defensive line. That is what it is. So I just don't see how it's going to get any better this year. And so when it comes to like Mike Zimmer and a contract extension saying, okay, well, if it's so bad, should they fire him? I don't see that happening either because, you know, I think the big picture is they went into this knowing.

Like I've said a million times, this is supposed to be the year where we take our lumps in certain areas, and if we win, it's gravy, but we're set up for 2021. I just don't think that people thought it would start out this badly. No, no, no i saw that seven and nine could still get you in the playoffs but it wouldn't be losing your first uh five games potentially before you get there right i saw them going into the season i think you did too as a fringe nfc north competitor for the division i know that i I was listening to our friend Robert Mays and his

podcast when they were previewing the divisions, and they picked the Vikings to win the NFC North. So I think a lot of people around the NFL thought, well, you know, you got most of the offensive pieces coming back, save for Stephon Diggs, but you draft a receiver in the first round, you have Irv Smith emerging, you have Delvin Cook still there's no contract drama and that's the part that I come back to and it's really incredible how poor the offense has been in the first two weeks because even Zimmer said look yeah we do have young people on the defensive side but it wasn't supposed to be like this on the offensive side like what who gets the he's young excuse I we're done with that for Irv Smith because he's in his second year.

Rudolph's not young. Thielen's not young. Nobody on the offensive line is a rookie. Drew Samia even is a guy that they drafted and tried to develop and just doesn't look any good at all. But I wouldn't pin this loss on the right guard, though. I mean, this goes squarely on the shoulders of the quarterback, and that's what's so hard about this when we talk about where they're going and what situation they're going and what

situation they're in because do you need to have Justin Jefferson to turn out as good as Stephon Diggs in order for Kirk Cousins to justify his contract and is it too much to ask because none of us thought the defense was going to be great Jeremiah Searles he predicted it would be 16th in the NFL and I thought that was fair. None of us said this is going to be a top five defense, even with Yannick Ngakwe, but when we were projecting this out, we were saying, okay, well, perform similarly on offense. Be the 10th, the 12th, the 14th best offense, and you've got a chance for the playoffs. Not throw for 113 yards no touchdowns and three picks I mean I that's where you really go okay this is not just a bad Kirk type of day this is a holy cow Josh Freeman showed up to play

quarterback Christian Ponder is looking at this going I could do better than that and he's right I mean that that is what is so concerning that if Cousins, without the benefit of a defense getting stops all the time, getting him a bunch of possessions, which he's had the last two years, without Diggs running 30 yards wide open all the time, I mean, can you even make your team halfway competitive at the quarterback position? And then, like you said, I keep getting tank for Trevor, tank for Trevor, tank for Trevor. Okay, I get where you're coming from with that. But at the same time, like you locked in your quarterback, and how exactly are you going to move on from him if you do draft someone like Trevor Lawrence, or if

you end up in that position? So let's just pull it back for a second and talk a little bit more about this game on the micro level because we started on the macro um they start off with a decent drive but then they kick a field a 21 yard field goal knowing that their defense is bad and right away right away i can feel the air go out of like whatever you want to call it all the vik fans, just really, you know, your defense is bad. You're kicking a field goal from here. Oh, hey, look, Zimmer from the nineties again. And that's, that's another part of it where I really felt the frustration this week with Vikings fans feeling that sort of stuck with the same coach and the same quarterback and being kind of

mid pack in the last couple of years that that field goal really says yeah things aren't aren't going to change in terms of the overall philosophy of how they do stuff under Mike Zimmer. I mean I think that Zimmer said it specifically that the identity of this team has not been what it's been the last six seasons and what does that mean that was a defensive team the last six seasons when they were like really good a lot of it was because they didn't have stability at the quarterback position so they had to be really good on defense they'd been built on controlling time of possession playing great in the red zone mostly on defense um and on third downs they're not doing that this year and it's exposing not only the defense

it's exposing that the offense doesn't have uh the the power to carry you to carry this team and what I think frustrates fans the most is that sometimes it feels like this team is just kind of conceding and settling for mediocrity, settling for 10 and six, settling for a wild card win, but a loss in the divisional playoff, settling for being good, but not great. And I think if you invest your, you know, if you invest in this team and want to see them do well, it's like, what moves did they really make that make you think, wow, this is a Super Bowl team? I know that we've talked about the fact that on paper, they should be top 10 in defensive efficiency when you add Yannick Ngakwe, but that's at a time where

you anticipate that Daniil Hunter is going to be playing, that you actually buy this team at its word, that it's, you know, not that big of a deal. He's not going to miss significant time. Well, look at the way things are now. Why would he come back right now? What's the point? Like, you're clearly in a point where, here's where I get frustrated. Rip it down to the studs. Don't do this half-assed rebuild. I think that that's kind of what we're at here, where it just feels like, yeah, we're still going to try to win, but we're also conceding that we're not going to be very good in certain parts. Like, do a complete rebuild or don't do one at all. because I just don't think when teams are this

good in the NFL and you have you're in the NFC and the NFC is stacked this year as it is many years um but you're just you're relying on a shaky unit at best the unit that has kind of been a mirage at times to carry the strength of your team while it undergoes it's it takes its lumps and it undergoes this rebuild like I just don't think that that's a very fair way to do things. So I understand the frustrations. I think that it's like more of the same. The Vikings paid for more of the same when they extended Kirk Cousins, when they extended Mike Zimmer, when they extended Rick Spielman, because that's all they've had the last seven years so but but what in the last seven years has shown you outside of getting close to the Super Bowl in 2017 based on very healthy defense a lot of luck with Case Keenum

and two really good receivers like you had a situation there that was an anomaly yet you tried from that point on you made all these panic type moves thinking, okay, our window's still open, but we got to do X, Y, Z to make it happen and push our agenda forward. A lot of those just felt like knee jerk type moves. And, you know, everybody can play revisionist history. Everybody can go back and say, well, if they would have done this, this would have happened. They would have done this. They wouldn't have brought Kirk Cousins in.

They would have stayed with Teddy Bridgewater. This would have happened. Like you can play that game all you want and it's going to exhaust you what they have right now though is very they're they're the same team that they were in 2018 except that their defense is worse and i don't think this is going to get any better than an eight seven and one season not at least the way that i look at it right now well there, there's no Sheldon Richardson. The difference between Sheldon Richardson and Jaleel Johnson is so gargantuan. You know, the difference between Jalen Holmes and Everson Griffin

or Daniil Hunter is so massive. So you touch on exactly the point of the 21-yard field goal to me is emblematic of them still trying to play the same way that they played before, but being different. And if we're going to talk about, because there's two ways to talk about this team is like going forward and how are they going to rebuild it? How are we looking long-term? Is it tank for Trevor? All that stuff. And then from the, well, what happened in these first two games? And if you're going to change it how can that possibly change kicking 21 yard field goals on fourth down and let me check what it was like fourth and three

is not gonna play like how do you not realize that on the defensive side you're awful like you you have nobody you get after the quarterback you're having to and Zimmer admitted this having to do a lot to help in the coverage but I thought overall the defense did a fine job for most of that game. They got an interception. They kind of did the bend, don't break thing. They have a terrible punt that turns into a 35-yard drive for a touchdown. But aside from that, you had interception, that touchdown, punt, field goal, field goal, punt, field goal for the Colts. If I'm the Vikings defense, I'm really happy with the way that I played there. And all you're saying is be aggressive or open things up or something on the offensive side to get you going here. But it seemed like

they're still trying to play the same way. And I thought last week against the Packers, it really said they're trying to play this Zimmer type of ball that they won with with Case Keenum. And at times they've won with with Kirk Cousins when they had 17 runs and 13 passes going into the fourth quarter against the Packers. And even in this game, they were down, I think it was 18 to three. And they're still you're not completely out of it at that point, as we saw from the Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys, you're not completely out of it at that point. As we saw from the Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys, you're not completely out of it at that point. And what do they do? Hand off on first down.

And then they throw a swing pass on second down. And all of a sudden, you're looking at third and nine. And then I think Cousins gets sacked and you have to punt it away. That this philosophy, if you're going to have any chance, this philosophy of ball control, running ball handing off and then trying to get play action shots down the field well guess what Adam Thielen is not the same as Stephon Diggs when it comes to those deep play action shots and everyone on earth no a knows it's coming and b knows who it's going to so it's not going to work exactly the same and also just to tack on to that

you're playing against a decent team here, a decent roster in the Colts. This isn't last year's Washington football team. It's not last year's Denver. It's not last year's Detroit. If you play two decent teams and you play the same way but you don't have the defense to bail you out anymore, this is what you end up with.

And that's why I just – that's when I say like bringing it back to the point I made at the start of the podcast like did you expect anything different this is who they are this is a style of ball that they want to play but they're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole here because they just can't they don't have the personnel to do it the way that they used to they're not as good on defense as they used to be. And you're expecting an offense that has been carried by the defense for multiple points throughout the six years that Mike Zimmer's been here to all of a sudden flip the switch and become the identity of this team when it truly doesn't have the personnel it needs to be there. Like,

we talked with people till we were blue in the face all summer long, all off season long about offensive continuity. Have you seen any offensive continuity in the first two weeks? Cause I sure haven't. That's not, that's not a selling point for this team anymore. This team doesn't have what it needs offensively to be able to bail out the team when the defense is going to be going through a period of transition there's just no way for me to believe that that's going to happen um you know to your point on the

defense I mean did it not feel like there in the third quarter after Ngakwe gets that sack that it's like okay they finally showed up they finally decided that they wanted to play like is that an indictment on something because to me that kind of felt like that they got gashed up the middle but it threw out the first half like there is no denying that they have a very poor run defense and that you're missing Linville Joseph you're missing Michael Pierce and that your replacement players at both three technique and nose tackle are just not going to cut it this year but it did kind of feel like okay and maybe that was the you know just the Colts collapsing there a little bit, because they didn't look great in the second half, but like, maybe that's

a product of that, or maybe the Colts taking their foot off the gas a little bit, that you're able to get the interception, you're able to sack Phillip Rivers twice. It felt like the defense showed that it could show life. It didn't show life for very long. I still think this defense has colossal problems but this is what you expect in a year where it's going to be up and down for that unit so I say all that to say that it's just like this is what if you understood how that if you understand how the pieces of this team were formed and what they you know the intentions of what they

were trying to do with the extensions and the moves that they did and did not make in free agency and throughout the rest of the year that this is exactly what you should expect from this team so um they punt away with five minutes and 25 seconds left in the third quarter and had allowed 18 points to that point now i mean the interception uh down by the goal line certainly helps they get a couple other stops and it results in field goals. But considering how the offense was playing, I thought, okay, yes, you are getting gashed by Jonathan Taylor, and yes, you are struggling and you're giving up.

T.Y. Hilton could have made this game much worse for them had he held on to that deep ball and walked in the end zone. So that's their best defensive plays of the last two weeks are two guys dropping the balls. However, if that's what your defense gives you, you should be in the game against a Colts defense that allowed a 95% completion percentage. And I guess this is where I end up getting stuck because you knew what you had on defense after that week one performance. You knew that this was going to have to be a shootout in order to win.

And I even had it run through my mind after the Packers game. You know what? Looking at the quarterback schedule, this might be actually pretty fun this year. If the offense plays like it did last year and you end up with all these shootouts, Rivers, Cousins going back and forth, and then Wilson, Cousins, and Vikings defense can't stop anybody, so every game is in the 30s and 40s. That might have been actually a really entertaining season, but if they don't find answers on offense quick, and Kirk Cousins doesn't figure it out. I mean, after the game, he had zero answers for what happened.

It was just, I don't know, got to go watch the tape and so forth, and I know that his answers get him in trouble sometimes, but also having no answers looks like you have no way to improve. And it also kind of looks like you're just kind of passing the buck a little bit when you say, I got to look at the tape. It's like a blow off answer. And I think people would love to know, or at least have some hint at where this can go to improve so I guess I want to ask you that is is there a chance that we do get the shootouts that I think at least would make this season halfway fun or do you think that the offense is also because the defense is a lost

cause it's not going to be good but do you think that the offense is also a complete lost cause it shouldn't have to be. You have enough weapons around Kirk Cousins. You have two really good tight ends. And Irv Smith, how many times have we bought the line that this is going to be his year? They're going to be able to be a different looking offense with him as an F tight end, this move tight end that they've never had before. And he could really truly emerge as a serious playmaker for Kirk Cousins well that hasn't happened through two games um he had four targets go his way today only caught one ball for three yards you know Justin Jefferson they don't run a lot of 11 personnel so like he didn't come

on until they started using three receiver sets so that didn't happen until much later is that a play calling thing probably but Kirk Cousins probably wouldn't have trusted him anyways I just think that like given kind of what you saw with BC Johnson early on that it's like okay unless it's Adam Thielen you're going to get a really hard time or have a really hard time with Kirk Cousins and allowing him to open things up for other playmakers but beyond that I think it's inexcusable. Dalvin Cook was essentially an afterthought until he scored that touchdown late in the game. 14 carries for 63 yards. Outside of that one 16-yard run on the first drive in the first quarter, he was an

afterthought. He didn't do anything that spectacular. And I think that's a problem because it's like, where are your priorities? You just paid this guy. You're not using him like you paid him. So that's kind of frustrating when you look at it. Can this offense get any better? And can we see a shootout between Ryan Tannehill and Kirk Cousins next week? Maybe.

But I think it has the potential to get so bad. If they don't start turning it around quickly, that the finger pointing is going to be be there because we saw what happened in 2018 when things got really bad and the finger-pointing got to a place where it divided the team between offense and defense. I also think that you're at a place now, too, where, you know, what more can you expect from Kirk Cousins that he hasn't already shown you like do you truly think that a zebra can change its stripes at 32 years old or however old he is I

mean I've I've been really skeptical of that the entire time that I've covered this team and the entire time that Kirk has played here that you can play call yourself until you're blue in the face of things that play to Kirk's strengths but But you're going to get what you get with him because he is a game manager. In a lot of respects, that is who he is. And you can't ask him to be the guy that's going to carry the defense and carry unless it's against a mediocre team. And even then, the score is probably going to reflect that. So I don't know.

I'm not trying to be completely like you know downtrodden about it and I'm looking at this and just like not trying to be like negative about it but I have a hard time believing that this is more than who they are because you're facing really good quarterbacks and do you expect Kirk to win a shootout with Russell Wilson with Deshaun Watson maybe with Ryan Tannehill I don don't know. Get back to the conversation just a second. But even though sports took a break, your business didn't. You have to keep moving. And that makes hiring more important than ever. Indeed is here to help. Indeed.com is the number one job site in the world because Indeed gets you the best people fast. Unlike other sites, Indeed gives you full control and payment flexibility over your hiring.

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available anywhere. Go right now to Indeed.com slash BlueWire. Terms and conditions apply. Offer valid through September 30th. So this reminds me a lot of the end of 2017. So you go back and the games against New England and Seattle, if you remember in 2018, were as bad as it gets. That's basically what got John D. Filippo fired. And in those games, they produced under 200 yards of passing, under 300 yards of total offense against New England, and then at Seattle, and lost both of those games, and only put together had 17 total points. So we've seen this before. This is very much how it's felt these first two weeks for the offense. And then they come back and they win a couple games against bad teams, and then do it again against Chicago.

That's what kind of year I think this is going to be, only without the bad teams really on the schedule, and when you look at the end result of 2018's offense, they were 20th in yards and 19th in points, but the defense was top 10 in both of those categories. This year, the defense won't be, and if you finish 20th in yards and 19th in points, or worse than that, and you finish 20th in defense, what you're talking about is a terrible team. And that's where everything kind of came together the opposite way from how it did last year. Last year, the schedule's easy.

They're very healthy. Kirk no-shows ended up turning into wins. He had a no-show against the Lions and David Blau, but they won easily because it was David Blau and the Lions, and they didn't care about that game. And their quarterback, I don't even think he has a team now, and so that's who you were playing against. They beat Brandon Allen. They faced just kind of a lot of situations where they were going to win just based on being more talented. That's not going to be the case this year, and that's why it's so hard to see a light switch going on where, yes, you might have some

of those games where they turn into shootouts, but if you're where, yes, you might have some of those games where they turn into shootouts. But if you're saying, well, you need the defense to bail you out from time to time for Kirk Cousins to win, well, that's not going to happen this year. So I do think when we talk about, you know, is it time to talk about blank, Cousins, trading digs, the direction, the coaching, all those things? I think the answer is yes, because it doesn't seem like an immediate change is right around the corner.

No, and that's why I know that, you know, in seeing what my Twitter mentions look like after this game, and I know that I didn't get it as bad as you did last week with the tank for Trevor and all of that, and now I'm starting to see it. I get the frustration of this fan base because it feels like this team signed up for more of the same yet more of the same is not going to get you to 10 and 6 and a wild card round um birth this year it's more of the same probably going to get you to 7 and 9 and if you're I mean if you're lucky because it you know I know people talk about sample size and not to react too much but the trends that we saw they lost that game in

very similar fashion that they did in week one like tell me that's not correct because yep they have a great they have a great first drive and no a solid first drive let me walk my own words back should have scored on it though I mean that's what it scored you know well I mean I don't know you know why you're going I don't know why you're going empty set there on third down and that I mean just some of the is that Gary yeah probably um but you know they should have scored there but then beyond that it's like you have the safety and you start collapsing in the exact same fashion. And Kirk, you know, beyond that, throws three interceptions on back-to-back-to-back drives.

And they're never able to recover. We didn't even see the Kirk stat padding that we typically do. I had a friend text me saying that, like, he got the minus six points in fantasy today. I was like, wow. Yeah, it wasn't the typical Kirk Cousins fourth quarter. And so I think it's hard to believe that this team is anything other than what we've seen in these first two games, because where do you find the improvement? Truly, where do you find the improvement? Because, you know, I believe in sample size, but I also believe in trends,

in the trends that we've seen of how they lost these first two games and how the offense did not recover when given a window to more time of possession mind you uh is very yeah there's another part of it too with cousins and watching this game where you go can you at least fight you know can you can you at least do you know do something when your team is down and still kind of hang around in the game to give you any chance? And the answer has always been no. I mean, in every game, I don't even count the Denver game so much because Denver was horrible in playing their third quarterback

and having to come down from 20 against them was embarrassing to begin with. Like, you should never have been down 20. Very rarely do we see fight out of him. He's kind of a front running quarterback. And if your team is in front running, then why do you have a front running quarterback signed to a big extension? And that's what I think every throughout this year, every conversation is going to circle back to.

Now here's the one issue I get to though, with the tank for Trevor thing is the only tanking that they could really do is just putting guys on IR who are kind of dinged up. That would be the only thing they could do, and they're already dinged up enough. It's not like, and this is my issue with it, it's not like you can bench Cousins. You sign him to an extension. You can't do that. It's not like you can bench Delvin.

It's not like you can bench Adam Thielen. And as bad as this feels after the first two weeks, what we've seen from Cousins' bad stretches before is that around the corner, there's a 350-yard game that they win. And so I wouldn't be shocked if they beat the Titans next week. I wouldn't be shocked if they beat Houston because that's Cousins' career. He's 7-9, he's 8-7, like that's what he does. And so what are you supposed to do there? Because would it be advantageous for this franchise long-term to go 3-13 and draft Trevor Lawrence? I mean, yeah, absolutely, considering we've seen that the quarterback can only take you so far. I just don't know if we're talking about a team that has this much talent still on the offensive side that's going to get to being that bad. I think we're looking at much

more of a 2013 type of season where it's never close to being in the playoffs, but it's also not quite to the level where you get to draft. In that case, I think it was Andrew Luck or whoever it was at the top. So that's kind of where I feel like uh they end up being here it's their own fault because they're not they're too good to be terrible like it can be really really bad but they're never going to be atrocious they're not going to be like the Bengals potentially this year right in five games I do right I project that they can win uh win enough games to at least sort of be in an in-the-hunt graphic, but never, but never like quite close to that worst team in football. I think that the Jets have kind of wrapped that up already. Sure, and it's like, you know, they're

not going 0-16. Like, there's no way. If you call me in December, if I've somehow screwed that prediction up and they are like 0-15 going into last week of the season. It's not going to happen. Like they're too talented on the offensive side of the ball, but they don't have – they're too talented individually. It's like when you look at things on an isolated scale. Is Kirk Cousins very accurate? Yes.

But like being able to put all those pieces together, can he be the guy that like picks up your team by the bootstraps and wins you games? No. Is Adam Thielen a talented receiver yes is Kirk is um Herb Smith and Kyle Rudolph really really good at what they do as tight ends yes is Dalvin Cook a great running back yes you're looking at all those things in a bubble though um in trying to put those pieces together it's just not going to get you I don't think this year to the point where you're saying, okay, this unit itself, because of who the quarterback is, and what you've seen sample size over the course of his career, being able to lift all of these players with him to the next level, it just hasn't happened. So I

think that that's why you kind of concede like, it's frustrating, because there is so much talent, yet they just can't do anything with it, at least so far as we've seen. And that was my point about we've seen this stretch before from Cousins. After week four of last season, I thought Stefan Diggs was going to retire unless he was traded. He's going to pull a Carson Palmer. I'll quit unless you trade me. I mean, we've seen this movie before with Cousins, and he's done it every year of his

career, where he has two out of three games or two games back to back where you just can't win because he's so bad. And then he ultimately will come out of it and have some good games, which I expect. It's just that what's very clear is that if the defense is not good, you're not going to see Kirk Cousins win games by himself in these big, epic, exciting shootouts. And that is the disappointing part from covering games is that we've seen so many games like Atlanta last year under the Mike Zimmer era of just like, oh good, the quarterback has to throw 10 to 15 passes or 20 passes and they play defense. And I actually thought, hey, maybe this will be fun to cover

because it will be different. And through two weeks, not fun to cover at all. So, Courtney, any parting shots away from this one? You know that later this week you're going to pick the rest of the schedule. Oh, goodness. Do I have to do a pie chart with that? Oh, yeah. There will be a pie chart. We'll be picking the schedule.

All the classics. We'll play the hits later this week when we preview the game against the Titans in whatever way we want to do that. The Titans' defense has not looked all that great, by the way, through the first two games. No, they haven't. And I saw that they barely beat Jacksonville today. So maybe that's some sort of solace that you take going into the week three game

that the Vikings are back at home. Maybe they'll be able to bounce back, and it will be a shootout between Ryan Tannehill and Kirk Cousins, but I just don't know if the defense is going to be able to stop Derrick Henry. So, yeah, the way that I look at that is I don't know if I really have a whole ton of optimism, but I'll leave you with this parting word, this parting phrase from Mike Zimmer that, you know, they can't start. He told the team after the game, apparently,

that they can't start winning until they stop losing. You'll be able to say that? Yes, I'm sure he did. And that, you know, they're beating themselves right now. I believe that part for sure. But it's like, you know, what can you do here? Because I just, where do you fix it? We'll find out this week, truly.

Because Mike Zimmer said this after week one. And I think that you gave him license to do it because it's week one. It's a young group of cornerbacks, Aaron Rodgers, whatever, that the mistakes are correctable. Well, they really didn't look too correctable today. And, yes, I mean, even stuff that he said about the cornerbacks and the run defense was as bad as it was because Zimmer said that he was trying to do certain things in coverage to help the cornerbacks.

So it's kind of like you have to give a little and you lose a little elsewhere when you concede on certain things. So, but are the mistakes correctable on offense? Yeah, that's the question, right? That's the question. Like, maybe the mistakes are correctable on defense because they weren't as bad against the pass today, but they're also playing Phillip Rivers, who is a turnover machine. He's always due for like one or two wild interceptions. But I don't know if the mistakes

on offense are correctable we'll find that part out I think going over the next two weeks so in 2018 because I like your comparison they went over 400 total yards one two three four five times that season I still see that happening and then they had really close to it another time or two. I still see that happening where we get good offensive performances out of this team and maybe those fun shootouts, but just not on a regular basis to where you're talking about a team that's nine and seven and all nine wins, you scored 30 points and all seven losses you didn't. But I'll leave the door open. I'll say that 50% of me still thinks that it's possible they have these shootout games that end up being fun eventually.

That's where I would put it. Like right now, it doesn't feel that way. But with Kirk's worst performances, you never feel like he'll ever recover again and every time he eventually does. So I wonder, maybe I'll even pick a win next week because I'm just not seeing what I expected out of Tennessee. So, Courtney, this was something. What a day for the Vikings.

My gosh. Yeah. No, it's pretty terrible. Yeah. No way to polish this one. No, this was one of the worst games that I have ever seen the Minnesota Vikings play, and one of the worst games I've ever seen a quarterback play, and I was in Buffalo before this. J.P. Lossman and E.J. Manuel. I saw them play Trent Edwards, Kyle Orton, and this was one of

the worst performances by a quarterback I've ever covered. So anyway, well, we'll get together again very soon and we will ride the Kirk coaster as always with you next time on Purple Insider. So we'll catch you then. The wait is finally over. Football is back. You might not be at the game this year, but you can still be in on the action at BetOnline. BetOnline is going the extra mile to make sure that you can We'll be right back. on wins, divisions, championships, all day, every day. Head to BetOnline today and take advantage of the great sign-up bonuses. Don't forget to use the promo code BLUEWIRE at BetOnline.ag. That's BLUEWIRE, all one word, BetOnline, your online sportsbook experts.