Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Is it time to worry about JJ McCarthy's contract situation?

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about the fact that JJ McCarthy and Dallas Turner are two of three players taken in the first round who haven't signed their rookie contracts yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here with you, and I am back inside my nice and cool studio. The AC is fixed, and now I won't be sweating like crazy about five minutes into the podcast. So unless you guys ask some really good questions, then I suppose it's possible. So a couple of things that I want to dive into tonight, first of all, being the thing that I think is on most Vikings fans' minds at the moment, which is where is J.J. McCarthy's contract? That is one.

And then also I want to jump into previewing the cornerback group for training camp. I did put this one off and move it back because of Kyrie Jackson, because I felt it was pretty inappropriate to just start talking about the starting lineup in the battle and everything else after Kyrie Jackson and the tragedy that happened with him dying in a car crash. But alas, training camp is upon us. Cornerbacks will compete for spots. So I want to take a look at that position as well. So I have been looking around and trying to talk to as many people as I could

about J.J. McCarthy's contract and why it has not been signed. And all I can come up with, folks, is that it's time to panic. Freak out. Run outside right now. Light your hair on fire and scream up at the sky. No, I'm just kidding. I think it'll probably be fine. The best that I can ascertain from talking to people and looking around the internet

like everybody else for previous examples of this is that the holdup is likely and I say likely because this has not been said by anyone Adam Schefter hasn't reported it or anything like that the Vikings haven't put it out there no agent has put it out there but there are only so many potential sticking points that could happen when it comes to a first round pick and a contract dispute. And the first thing that it could always be is something like the offsetting language. Now, that's unlikely because that means if the player gets cut, then the team still pays or another team pays that signs him or something like that. that's probably not likely what this has to do with that usually comes i think from later first round draft picks with uh the offsetting language

because they're more likely to get cut than say a first round quarterback that's taken 10th overall and we haven't seen too many holdouts that have to do with that so if we put that aside say all right it's probably not the offsetting language then the other thing that it could be is when the guarantees are paid. Now there's been a few examples throughout history of draft picks since they put in the rookie deals where the amount of money you get is locked in that the only dispute has really come down to when those guarantees actually get paid do they get paid over a couple of seasons throughout the rookie contract or do they get paid up front and right away and normally what ends up happening with the Vikings is they sign their first rounders and the guarantees are distributed over a couple of seasons. But what's been going on in the last few years, especially with quarterbacks,

is that the guarantees are paid up front right away. One big giant check. Here you are, Mr. Joe Burrow, for example. I believe the other quarterbacks this year have gotten this fully guaranteed money right up front. And it appears that J.J. McCarthy's agent is going to want that as well. And I was looking back trying to find examples of even holdouts that have happened. One example that was brought up by another writer, Mike Payton, who covers the Detroit Lions, was Zach Wilson.

A very, very brief holdout for Zach Wilson that none of us actually remember had to do with these guarantees. Roquan Smith missed three days of practice a few years ago. So recently there hasn't been a whole lot of these problems, which makes me think that you should turn the panic meter at this moment up from zero to maybe about one. Well, it does seem to be a bit of a staring contest between J.J. McCarthy. And of course, Dallas Turner hasn't signed either. But between J.J. McCarthy and the Vikings, for who's going to blink first, are the Vikings going to change the way that they have handed out their guarantees from the past? Or is JJ McCarthy just

going to say, okay, I agree with how you've normally done your structure. Let's get started for camp. And looking at the date here, we've got a couple of days before JJ McCarthy and the Vikings have to appear at TCO Performance Center and the rookies. So there really isn't any super concern as of this moment. And even if we went into a day of practice and so forth before it got done, okay, not exactly how you would draw it up, but also not the biggest deal in the world. I would not put any sort of panic meter on this until practices start getting missed. Because if he reports for

training camp and shows up and is there and is ready to go but potentially misses a single practice or something like that like Daniil Hunter did getting his contract worked out well we'll never remember that that even happened down the road again not exactly what you want to see but we won't you you know, even by three weeks into training camp, they'll be in the rhythm. They don't even put pads on for a handful of practices. So not, not the biggest deal in the world, but if we started to talk about getting into a week in two weeks in, okay, well that is normally a much bigger deal. But as of right now, I would suspect that the Vikings and J.J. McCarthy will get this worked out.

And more likely than not, the Vikings will probably just give J.J. McCarthy what he wants because they have to pay that amount regardless. You either pay it now or you pay it later but it's fully guaranteed so he's getting this money eventually it just depends on uh when they decide to give it out and of course from their perspective if you do set the precedent that all right now you've given your top draft pick his fully guaranteed money right up front then in the future agents are going to say hey well you did that last year for your two first round draft picks, assuming that that could also be potentially

an issue with Dallas Turner as well for the reason that he has not signed his contract either. But it is unusual. So let me say it this way. It's not time to freak out or panic or light your hair on fire or bark at the moon or anything like that. But when you look at the entirety of the NFL already having their deals done, it is worth sort of raising an eyebrow and going, can we just get this figured out? Because you want to start training camp with no other things hanging over this team. We're already at a point where we have seen a tragedy happen to this franchise and what went on with Jordan Addison, which is already a lot for this team to handle. And then on top of that,

if you're talking about the first round quarterback holding out, that's not what anybody wants. That's worth just giving the money up front to make sure that that is off the table, that there are no more issues. And I was looking at something that Andrew Brandt said, a former Green Bay Packers salary cap guy worked in their front office for quite some time. And then now he does content, does videos, does articles for SI and things like that. And I follow him on Twitter. And he's always got a level head about these types of things because he's been through it. He's been inside the NFL and understands how the operation works.

And he was commenting on the Caleb Williams contract situation where Caleb Williams, there was reporting about, well, is he going to try to own a portion of the team? Does he want to not put the franchise tag in there, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Does he want this? Does he want that? And it just turned out to be basically a normal rookie quarterback contract in the same way that it very likely will be for JJ McCarthy. And something that I have taken notice of over the last I don't know three years now of uh Kweisi Daffel-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell or I guess this is year three is that deadlines tend to make deals with this group and we often end up waiting and waiting I mean even think about some of the decisions that were made last off season.

When are they going to do something about Delvin cook? Remember that where it went on and on and on. It felt like for weeks we were talking about, well, are they actually going to keep Delvin cook? Well, he's not showing up for mini camp. Are they going to trade him? Is somebody going to give him something? There was odd reporting and everything about Delvin Cook. And then they determined can't really trade him, took it to kind of the last minute and made the decision to move on from him. And even with the Justin Jefferson contract, it wasn't the exact last minute. Then we'd be talking about it right now. But even then took it to minicamp, went all the way through last summer.

These decisions just don't seem to be made way out in advance way in front when we start talking about them but it shouldn't be super stunning that they are one of the last teams also Cincinnati another team to get their first round picks done both sides really want to get this taken care of I'm sure that Kevin O'Connell is going to be pressuring the powers that be to do what it takes to get J.J. McCarthy out on the field because he doesn't want him missing any type of practice. And I'm also sure that J.J. McCarthy, who stayed around, or at least according to him, during the summer

and worked himself out at TCO Performance center, trying to get better every single day. I doubt that he wants to miss any of this time as well. So they, they might just end up having a bit of a, uh, a standoff here until the beginning of training camp or the last day when he's supposed to report and then just get something worked out. But really just if everybody else is doing this, you probably just have to do it. If you're the Minnesota Vikings, if every other quarterback is getting all the guaranteed money upfront, you might just have to give him all the

guaranteed money upfront, despite the fact that you haven't really done this before. Also though, you haven't really drafted quarterbacks before, and you haven't really been drafting in the top 10 before most of the draft picks. We can look back and say, all right, that was 23rd. That was 18th. That was 29th. And the last high draft pick they had, they memorably traded out of all the way down to number 32 to where you wouldn't be having so much of a conversation in the same way that you are with a quarterback at the 10th overall pick get it done get it wrapped up and then we could all move on from this storyline as well but i would put it under the same category of some of

the things that we went over during the spring with justin jefferson of this is a story in part because it's unique that he hasn't signed yet, but it is in no reason, no way yet on the panic meter. But if it gets there, I will let you know. I will let you know if it gets there. Although you don't need me to tell you that because if he starts missing practices, then've gotten there then we've gotten to wtf vikings let's get this taken care of it's a rookie contract these should be pretty easy to figure out but they really didn't need to be in the news cycle anymore with this going on than they've already been over the last couple of days with jordan addison so there is your update on how i feel about what's going on with JJ McCarthy. I would not be terribly shocked if I publish this podcast and get finished and hit end stream. Uh,

and then JJ McCarthy signs his deal. So don't be shocked if that ends up happening. If it does, then fast forward in the podcast. Uh, if you're watching it on the replay where I'm talking about other stuff. So, uh, I'm happy to take all of your questions and comments. If you have Vikings questions, jump in, ask. We've got training camp coming up. Players are going to start checking into TCO Performance Center in a couple days. And next Wednesday is the first time that I and the rest of the gathered media will be able to watch a Minnesota Vikings

practice. So it is very much upon us folks. And just if you're new at all to the stream, the Purple Insider podcast will be doing live streams every day that the Vikings have practice and any other time that there are breaking news items and things like that to talk about. So Kevin O'Connell and Kweisi Daffel-Mensah are going to have their press conferences on Monday where we will find out exactly how they plan to address the Jordan Addison situation and what they have to say about what happened with Kyrie Jackson and how the team is going to work their way through that in what is going to be a very difficult start to training camp for everyone. So there is tons on the way here, battles across the roster, so much to get into as we go throughout the summer.

So Q&As live with me all the time throughout training camp. And then of course the beat writers, everything else, the only Vikings daily podcast that is out there. So anyway okay. So let's let's get into some, some stuff here in a moment. I also want to, I do want to go over the cornerbacks, the cornerback situation, but I'll answer a few of your guys' comments as well. From AS, a weird start to training camp, Jackson tragedy,

top two picks unsigned, people mad at JJ's Instagram activity. Yeah, I didn't think that there was much to that. I looked into why people were talking about it. I wouldn't look too much into that with JJ McCarthy. People mad at Turner for trading with Aaron Rodgers. That's another thing that there's nothing to. And deservedly mad at Jordan Addison, KOC, being called soft. Now, I don't think soft is quite right.

I mean, I think there's way more nuance to the discussion about Kevin O'Connell that the first time with Jordan Addison, when he went 140 miles an hour and he got cited for that, especially in a place where if you've driven that road, I have no idea how you could go 140 miles an hour. This wasn't just whoops, he broke the law. Kids will be kids. This was, if you do that enough times, you will kill yourself or someone else and also so there's that there's the gravity of that of driving 140 miles an hour that i'm not sure was fully captured especially when o'connell made a crack about it later in the year but the other thing was that it's a perfect opportunity to send a message when someone is a rookie and they've done nothing yet

to send the message you have to get this cleaned up or it's going to be a problem and there was no message sent it's you'll never have an easier opportunity to send a message to a player than when they do something before they've even stepped on the field and proven anything and he elected not to, and then there was no message sent later for Wes Phillips. And I don't know, do, do these messages prevent future events? I'm not sure, but I certainly know that doing nothing does not prevent it in the future. And here we are again with another incident with Jordan Addison. I think it's pretty easy and right to connect it to what happened last year and say, I mean, there was a chance right there to let Jordan Addison know that this is not going to be acceptable.

And it seemed to be treated as pretty acceptable outside of whatever harsh words and maybe a fine behind the scenes. So that's not exactly calling him soft. It's more to say a less experienced head coach who has maybe not been through some of these things as the man in charge might now better understand why some older coaches act the way that they do when it comes to players and off the field stuff and things like that. And we'll see if he decides to take a different tact with it. And I don't know what they're going to say,

if they're going to suspend him for conduct detrimental to the team, which they could do, or if they're going to say, we're going to leave it up to the league and we're going to leave it up to the legal system, which could mean a fairly quick suspension for Jordan Addison, or it could mean we're waiting a long time for that suspension. And it happens at any time because the NFL tends to move fairly slowly on these things. And I'm sure the California penal

system has more pressing things on its plate than a guy who fell asleep at the wheel in a Rolls Royce, which probably happens numerous times a day in the state of California. So I don't know. I don't know. Jaw Vision says his agent always gets deals done right before camp, not worried at all. Yeah, I read into that a bit myself about the Zach Wilson thing. I think he represents him too. And it was something very similar and they called it a brief holdout, but it wasn't really anything that would have set him back. And that's one of the reasons since this seems to be that particular agent's kind of way of doing things that it wouldn't be the biggest surprise ever if they got it done right before camp. And that's why i didn't move the panic meter really at all maybe from zero to one

it's at full huh that's the most panic just huh okay so this is a little weird but uh it won't get really uncomfortable until we're a couple of days down the road from right now and uh i've never done an emergency podcast for a rookie signing a contract i'm probably gonna stick with that i when then when this gets done of course it should get done because there's a rookie wage scale and they all have to get done but if it becomes a holdout then we got to talk about it a little more and then it becomes all right what is going on even a single day uh raises up the red flags a little bit more but at shouldn't be too concerned at this moment Stewart says not worried at all either he signs or he doesn't

whatever if he wants to hold out and re-enter the draft next year that's okay I only want players who want to be here okay Stewart a little much little much there a little much there is no chance that he's holding out or the whole year and reentering the draft. Zero chance, not happening, never going to happen. We haven't even gotten to the report date yet, so we don't need to be talking like that. That kind of sounds like the Trey Justin Jefferson stuff that just seems like being a little defensive when we're not even to the deadline yet where they have to get this done before he shows up at training camp um horn fan too says except for hurt feelings i

don't see how jj has a leg to stand on since the vikings might sit him for the entire year well it and it's not even really about that anyway it's not even about like how much they're paying him everyone knows the price it's really just the structure of when you get the money um it's not so much a leg to stand on from the perspective of performance or when he's going to play it's really about how things are done for other teams and other quarterbacks who have been drafted the fact that other quarterbacks have gotten their money up front, that changes things. That means that if you're McCarthy and you're his agent, you're looking around saying, okay, well, the other quarterbacks got this. So you need to do this for us as well. And since it's not an actual difference in the money, this may come down to

the ownership doesn't want to write that check right away and would rather spread it out than pulling that much money out of their bank account. That might be part of it for just the way that they want to do their accounting. But everyone knows that it's X number of dollars over X number of years, and there's no real choice. And the reason they all did this was to avoid in part, of course, giving Sam Bradford one of the biggest contracts, if not the biggest contract ever before he stepped on the field was part of it because the veterans were saying, we want that money, not rookies who haven't done anything.

And the teams were like, great. We don't want to give rookies that much money either. But also the holdouts used to be a nightmare with the rookies. When is the guy going to come to camp? When is he going to come to camp? And now we've largely eliminated that. And I expect that to continue since Caleb Williams appeared to be poised to make it way more complicated on Chicago than JJ McCarthy with the Vikings. And they got their deal done even before McCarthy. Uh, what about Bob? I'm only concerned about starters not being signed, even if it takes, uh, till game one. Well, uh, I think it is a big deal. I think it's a huge deal. If he sits out any significant amount of time over this, it would be pretty ridiculous. Actually.

This is a huge training camp for him. To develop over this training camp is a massive deal. Your first training camp, there's a lot going on for a rookie, but that's when you forge the beginning of your career, the reps that you get early on versus real NFL players, learning the offense, learning to work in timing and rhythm and all those things. I mean, you want him out there for every single rep that he can, working with Josh McCown, working with his teammates, learning how to be an NFL quarterback. It would be terrible if he was sitting out a long period of time

in training camp for his development, because even if veterans sit out camp, a lot of times there is an impact on that player over the long run of their season if they miss a portion of time in camp i mean this is when they're preparing for the entire season here and he's starting his career so yeah a day or two where he's not out there and they're not in pads okay don't want it but if that's how it goes then not that big of a deal if it was weeks then you are talking about legitimately putting him behind where his career is at because this is when he can actually get reps once you get to the season

he's not going to get reps outside of you know maybe emulating the other team's quarterback in practice for the defense. But actually with this offense and these players and this coach, this is the time where he can get in and actually play. And the same thing with preseason, where I would expect him to play a lot in the preseason. That's why I'm saying that if it gets to that point, then yeah, turn up the panic meter and start asking what the heck is going on. But not until then. We've already got the word diva in the comments. Congratulations guys. Now you've checked most of the boxes of being kind of, kind of, oh, are you referring to someone else? Okay. You're referring, oh, I'm sorry. You're referring to Jordan Addison. This isn't diva behavior. This is dumb ass behavior by Jordan Addison. I think there's a

pretty big difference there. Uh, from horn fan too. What do you think Brandon Iuke's trade value is? Iuke is a tough one to spell horn fan. I will give you that it's a I Y U K for you for the future. I think his trade value should be extremely high I think it should be not quite Tyreek Hill but at least the first round draft pick for next year and change and more maybe a first and second or seconds in the future Brandon Ayuk is being I think under appreciated by San Francisco because they know that they can't pay everyone and they've already paid a lot of people they've already paid Nick Bosa they've already paid Christian McCaffrey Trent Williams Javon Hargrave I mean they've got a lot of guys

making a lot of money and their their window is pretty short here uh I think that when you're talking about a player like that, they've already paid Debo Samuel as well, that if they could, they would absolutely pay Brandon Ayuk. And they're low-balling him by acting like he's not a number one wide receiver. He is a number one wide receiver. Everyone is better when they're playing for Kyle Shanahan. That is true. But when you talk about route running hands, yards after catch playmaking, all those things that Brandon

IU can do, he's a number one wide receiver. Is he on the same level as Justin Jefferson? No, he's not because nobody is. Is he as explosive as Tyree kill? No, because no one is. So he doesn't have some insane superpower, but he is up there with most teams where he would be their number one wide receiver, which means that a team that doesn't have one should be making that phone call. And a team that I would look at is someone like the Buffalo Bills who lost Stefan Diggs and now have question marks, Curtis Samuel, et cetera, at the wide receiver position. Keon Coleman is a rookie. We don't know what he's going to be. They should be a team that is always looking for someone to give to Josh Allen that can be a superstar. And I think Brandon and I, you can be, but a lot of teams around the league.

I mean, if he's your number two, then you are gold. If he's your number two, and if you're a team that maybe has a number one wide receiver on a rookie contract or something like that, then you should definitely be looking his way. I don't know if San Francisco would trade him to Green Bay, probably not. But if I was Green Bay, I'd be making the phone call checking in and we can all laugh at how they said, oh, no, actually, it's better that we have a bunch of number three wide receivers. No, it's actually better if you have Brandon Ayuk.

But whoever trades for him also has to give him the huge extension. And that makes it a little more complicated, similar to what happened with Tyreek Hill. But it's at least the first, probably more than that, I would say for Brandon Ayuk. And a few people have asked about, hey, you know, could the Vikings trade Addison for Ayuk or something? And I just, I don't see it because, well, the salary cap exists and you can't pay $35 million a year to Jefferson and then 30 to Iuke. The reason that Jefferson was so affordable is that the number two wide receiver is on his rookie contract. But now we can't be sure that the number two wide receiver can go to Los Angeles and drive around

without having the police involved. So that's got to be pretty concerning to the Vikings because that was part of the equation. Part of the cheat code is to have Jordan Addison, who is very, very good at football, don't make any mistake there, alongside of Justin Jefferson. The actual worth of Jordan Addison, if he were to become a free agent, is probably $25 million a year. And having that for a rookie contract, which he might be making four or five, that's a hack right there. Of course, Iuke is better. So you would trade for Iuke in a second if you could, but he costs a lot of money. And if the Vikings were in this win now mode, this is the last dance kind of thing. Well, yeah, you might just do it to take a shot and then

let iuk hit free agency or something but that's not where they're at so they would have to pay him 30 plus million dollars they've already paid tj hawkinson there's no way you can make this work they have to pay christian derisaw but for another team especially in the afc if they're looking for a wide receiver brandon iuk makes a lot of sense hey everybody I know it's summer but might I suggest a quick trip to Las Vegas to stop into Circa Sportsbook in Nevada because guess what the Circa Million and Circa Survivor Contest are back for the Circa Million you pick five teams against the spread every week and the winner takes home one million dollars and their survivor contest is legendary you pick one team straight up to win each week if you go 20 and 0 or you are the last person standing to win then you bring in

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Stuart says, you've got me wrong. I truly don't care. I'm 68 and have been a fan since 67. I don't care. I lack the energy to get heated up over it. No, I got you, Stuart. But I also think that there's always this tendency when a player has a contract dispute for people to get angry and say, bleep you, I don't care about you, as opposed to just

saying, this will probably get worked out. And the same thing was happening with Justin Jefferson, where the longer it went on where he didn't sign, the more apt people were to get impatient and frustrated and just yell, they should trade him, which is totally irrational and didn't make a bit of sense. And the same thing with JJ McCarthy. Yes, you do care. You absolutely care because you want JJ McCarthy in camp and you want him to be the first round quarterback that you've never seen since 1967 outside of Fran Tarkenton, a franchise quarterback. That's what you want JJ McCarthy to be for this team. And you

want him to take them after this season to a very good place, which he has the potential to do, especially the way that they've built their team around the rookie contract. So yeah, you do care. You want this to work. Everyone who grew up watching the Vikings in your era has been through a lot and would love to see this guy be the guy who is different from all the other guys along the way that were the journeyman, the fourth rounder free agent from another team. You'd love to see this team land the next Fran Tarkenton. And you might have to wait a single or two days

for him to get his contract signed. That would be my expectation at most that they'll get it worked out and we'll all go forward. But there is a tendency when people get frustrated for them to say, we don't need him anyway. Just go away. Shut up. I don't care about you.

Stop making noise about your contract. But the world we live in, players have representation and they negotiate contracts and they try to get the best for their players. And again, I'm looking over here at the calendar on my computer. Yep. It's not time yet. He hasn't missed any practice. So we don't need to go there. We do not need not, we do not need to go there just yet. Uh, what about Bob? Any chance we get the defector guy on the show soon? You mean Drew McGarry? Sure. Yeah. Uh, Drew's got, he reaches out to me. Usually it tells me when he wants to come on and talk biking. So I imagine, I imagine we'll probably be into camp a little ways before Drew comes on so we can have new information to talk about that's probably it um freedom thinker 1984 says iuk over debo they're different yeah they're different i think iuk is less of a guy who requires a certain type of offense where debo samuel probably needs

to be in kyle shanahan's offense That's not a knock on Debo Samuel. Iuke has been healthier as well. Debo is really, really good. It's just that he's in a perfect offense for him. Whereas Iuke is such a good route runner that I think he could play for just about anybody. Koo Dot Video says, assuming he is healthy, what percentage of defensive snaps do you think Dallas Turner will get skull? Uh, I think that he will probably end up with,

I don't know what percentage this would be around 450 snaps is where I would go 450 to 500 snaps because they have two other players at his position that are very good and quite expensive that they spent on this off season in Andrew Van Ginkle and Jonathan Grenard. So those guys are going to play a lot. They've also had some injury issues along the way, and I imagine they want to keep those guys with a fairly limited amount of snaps. They don't want them playing a thousand snaps because they don't want to get them banged up, which means that they likely, if they love what they see from Dallas Turner, will be rotating those guys. So at first it might be Dallas Turner, third downs, second and longs, a little more passing situations until he gets used to the NFL. But when you look at rookie

pass rushers, they normally don't play Daniil Hunter snap loads. And this is what you guys have been used to for quite some time is a defensive end or two defensive ends that play every single snap. You saw that from Everson Griffin. You saw that from Daniil Hunter for years. There's 800, 900 snaps. This isn't going to be this way there's going to be much more rotating so that's where i would guess if he's healthy that he's playing 400 to 500 snaps and that he gets if he gets six seven sacks and a good amount of pressures in those situations it will be a very good year for him and uh then i think they'll feel very good about where he's going to stand. You can't always just expect immediate superstardom out of somebody, but a high level

contributor at first, a serious upgrade at first, that is a fair expectation for Dallas Turner. Anthony says, with this garbage from the OC and Addison, I'm getting flashbacks of the Vikings and the Mike Tice here. Yeah. That's something that I thought of as well about once upon a time, I believe that one of the reasons and, and OG Vikings fans can help me out with this, that they wanted someone like Brad Childress was, he was more of a disciplinarian and with Mike Tice, there were a lot, a lot of off-field issues and things like that, including a certain boat incident and so forth. We don't have to go through them, but even Brad Childress's time had some different issues with players off

the field. You're never going to avoid it entirely. You have so many players and so many human beings that have a lot of different lifestyles and things like that, that sometimes things are going to happen off the field with Addison in particular. The reason it's so concerning is that in year one, he did something that we've seen people actually die doing or kill someone else in the case of Henry Ruggs. And that right there should be enough for some serious action. And it wasn't. And then it happens again with another thing where we've seen people die with DUIs. Now, I mean, falling asleep at the wheel, I guess while you're stopped on the freeway is unlikely to cause death, but what about falling asleep at the wheel while

actually driving? That could potentially do it. So yes, it does feel like these are adding up a little bit when you have a couple instances and how they handle that will be something that we're watching. But with Addison in particular, to have multiple problems in two off seasons of this magnitude, especially with the timing after Kyrie Jackson is very disturbing about Jordan Addison for his future. This needs to be cleaned up pretty fast with Jordan Addison and the message needs to be sent much stronger than it was before. And I'll be curious to see what we hear about that on Monday, because that will be a major line of questioning without a doubt. Mike,

either Thole or Thole. Sorry if I'm pronouncing your name wrong. Matthew, are you going to be doing a breakdown or give opinions of the receiver series on Netflix? Would love to get your feedback, maybe a conversation with Dane on your porch. I am recording another porch podcast with Will Raggetts actually tomorrow. So make sure you keep an eye out for that. That'll be out tomorrow night if everything goes to plan. So I've only seen a little bit. I haven't watched the entire series. So you can tell me

what you think of receivers. The way that I kind of looked at it was, you know, I mean, it's really cool. It's behind the scenes. Look, the one thing that I don't think any of us fully realized was how injured he was against the Raiders when Josh Dobbs threw it up and he took that hit and so forth. And what he went through there, they really didn't dive deep into the thing we were all kind of curious about, which is the contract situation. And beyond that, I mean, Justin Jefferson is a pretty straightforward person who loves football. And I didn't think that there was too much revolutionary stuff with Kirk cousins. Maybe people learned a lot more about him and about what he went through in

2022 health wise, and a little more about him off the field for a guy that didn't really show himself a lot in public before that outside of, you know, his press conferences and so forth. But to see Cousins behind the scenes, how hard he had to work to learn the playbook and all those things were opening new eyes to what it takes to be a quarterback in the NFL. I'm not sure that this did that for me, the parts that I've watched so far, but if it did for you, let me know in the comments, uh, what you thought, but I mean, they picked all stars too. I was kind of hoping that they would not pick all stars because I liked what it added to have a quarterback that was

struggling. I would have actually liked a little more of that from Marcus Mariota. Let's see. T-Bass says, no big deal about the contract. What's everybody so worried about? He's not going to be starting. He's the third string. We don't know about what string or whether he's going to start or not. It doesn't appear that way right now. If he misses camp at all, even a couple of practices, it's not great. If he misses a lot of practices, it's a huge problem because this is where you start off the whole thing of your career, learning the offense, getting on, you know, well, yeah, I guess under center, they play some under center, getting under center or in the shotgun, getting those reps there's only so many to go around in a training camp and the way that the rules work there's even less than there's ever been

and this is when you get started at understanding how this all works you don't want that guy missing any part of that when he is a quarterback that needs to develop and at least as far as my thought is uh i think that there is a competition at this moment we'll see if that's proven wrong throughout training camp but i think that jj mccarthy will be given the opportunity to potentially outplay sam darnold over the next how many ever weeks is it five weeks four or six whatever number of weeks uh joint practices pre-season there's a lot in front of him here and he has to get it signed and get to practicing and get to competing for this spot you really want that to happen uh so i wouldn't dismiss it and go yeah well you know he's not even the second quarterback well i don't know about that i think he is probably going to be the

second quarterback we'll see depending on how training camp goes. But there's no way to rationalize it's fine if he misses training camp. I just think it's too early to start talking about that when we still have a couple days to go before reporting happens, and then a couple days until they're supposed to get out and actually start practicing. Billy says, any live play- play by play for training camp. That would be great rather than refreshing Twitter every minute. That is not really possible.

So the way that it's going to work is that I will be at every practice and I will be taking copious notes throughout the practice. Maybe tweeting some of that, depending on how it's going. And then after practice, I will take those notes and I will bring them back here and talk to you about them for the storylines of the day, things that people said, things that I learned, the reps that are being divvied up out there, how the quarterbacks, believe it or not,

how the quarterbacks are performing or not how the quarterbacks are performing in fact you can pretty much guess that almost every headline for the live chats is going to have something to do with the quarterback so give you all the updates on that and that's kind of how we'll do it answer questions and so forth and then uh have conversations with other reporters and so forth i'm gonna create a little bit of a setup out there as well. So I can interview people out there. Also come back here and do the live shows. Luckily, I only live about 10 minutes from the facility. So anything that happens, we can jump on live. It'll be great. I'm really looking forward to it. That's why these last

week and a half, two days have been, uh or whatever 12 days have been difficult because it's something that i think all of us have been looking forward to what's going to happen with this team going forward because there are so many interesting things to watch that even if i'm doing two shows a day which is probably going to be somewhere in that ballpark maybe like 10 a week overall there's going to be a lot uh that we're still gonna end up not covering at all because there's so many things going on throughout this summer it's gonna be really fun i i'm planning to go to cleveland uh and cover the joint practices there and and there will be one home preseason game we'll be at that so there's a lot there's a lot going on the

approach to mccarthy during preseason is he he going to play? How much is he going to play? Personally, I think it should probably be a lot, but we'll see. Rob says the Vikings need to have Chris Carter have a scared straight on the young man, Addison. Yeah, I think that I don't know what the solution is, right? Does that help? Does that do something? Maybe it does. Maybe it does.

I just feel like Addison needs to understand the potential consequences to his actions, which can be more difficult for some people than others. It's kind of weird when you see J.J. McCarthy and Jordan Addison are almost the same age and J.J. McCarthy comes Jordan Addison are almost the same age, and J.J. McCarthy comes across like he's 32 years old, and the other guy is acting about as immature as you possibly can behind the wheel of a vehicle. Everybody's different, and I don't know what the right message is. I don't know well enough, what the right message is to get across or how you can say, whether it's with suspension or fine or people in his life or whatever it is to be able to say, this can't go on. You can't keep doing this or eventually it is going to do

harm to yourself or someone else. And then this very nice career and these very nice cars that you have is going to go down the drain because we've seen that enough times we really have to say for sure for sure if you keep behaving this way that it will be a huge problem uh kudat video says last year there were games when the defense led the way with TJ out quarterback learning a new offense, possible Addison suspension. Could the Vikes start the season defense first and offense as a compliment? Well, if they're going to make the playoffs, the defense has to be really good. We can't set an expectation any higher with Sam Darnold or a rookie starting than a middle of the pack offense. Now, does that change the way that Kevin O'Connell is going to actually play?

Because you can try to assist your defense by protecting the football, trying not to turn it over, handing off a lot. You have Aaron Jones now playing more conservative more conservative punting things like that to try to assist your defense if you think about the way that the vikings played with case keenum every so often he kind of threw up one of those we're just gonna fling it up in the air and see if stefan biggs or adam thielen can catch it but most of the time they were handing off they were running screens they were running screens, they were running play actions. They were playing pretty conservatively and safe. A lot of McKinnon, a lot of Murray, a lot of Kyle Rudolph underneath stuff. And then every once in a while letting it fly

deep. But for the most part, it was a very safe offense, which helped the number one defense in the NFL. I don't know that Kevin O'Connell can really play that way. I don't think this offense is set up to play that way. I also think that what happened when they played safe and when they had a coach in 2019, try to do the same thing with Kirk cousins, that it made one of the receivers pretty mad. And that was Stefan digs. And well, I don't think Justin Jefferson and Stefan Diggs are exactly cut from the same cloth. All wide receivers want to be the centerpiece of an offense. And Justin Jefferson has to be

the centerpiece of the offense. So you can't just play super safe and try to rely on your defense. Also, when you look at the teams that they're going to play, maybe you could do that against the giants. Can you do that against San Francisco? Probably not. You have to outscore San Francisco. Can you do that against the Packers, the Texans, the lions? Not likely, right? You're going to have to outscore them. So they will have to have a exciting passing attack with whoever the quarterback is to win a lot of those games. I don't think that they have any other plans than to continue with the offense that they have. Kevin O'Connell believes in his offense. He

believes that it works. And I do too. If the quarterback plays well, I believe it works that receivers are open and they can pass the football and they can create explosive plays down the field with his offense. We've seen a very similar offense go and win the Superbowl with Matthew Stafford. Kirk Cousins put up big numbers. Even Nick Mullins put up some big numbers and Josh Dobbs had his moments with this team. That's how they're going to play. If they weren't going to dial it back when Josh Dobbs was the quarterback, then they're not going to dial back when anybody else is the quarterback. That's how I look at it.

Scott says, Addison is highly unlikely to get the bag. How soon would you begin shopping him for something in return? The Hawkinson trade would be about the best I could imagine them getting. Well, you wouldn't do that right now because if, unless you, unless they made that decision already, unless they made that decision and said, look, we're just done with this guy. We're just finished. He's a problem. We're out. Then you're shopping him. But for what, who is going to call up and say, yeah, let's get you a guy set up with a second round draft pick for the player who has some serious off the field issues now with driving.

That sounds like a great idea. That's not likely. If I'm another team i'm saying how about a third how about a fourth i don't want to invest too much on a player that i might have to cut as well depending on how he acts off the field if you're the vikings you're thinking about that maybe potentially down the road because even though it's early you're already starting to think fifth year option contract extension down the road are those things that are are going to happen could we trust him it's a ways from now and he has an opportunity

here to learn from this and to never ever do it again or it will be a situation like that where they do have to consider moving on i said it the other day but the way that i still feel about it is i don't have any expectation that they'll do that i don't even know if he's going to get penalized by this team but if they were infuriated at what happened and just said we're moving on i i would defend it i wouldn't criticize it because oftentimes it's hard to turn someone around like this and get through to them. And if they decided this was too much and we can never trust this player, then move on.

Well, it's not Justin Jefferson and you could survive it. But I don't think that's likely. It's probably not very logical at all for them to do. I think they're going to try to get through to him first, and then we'll see where we are in a couple of years. And if we get to that spot where you're having the extension conversation and they ultimately do feel like they can't trust him, then yeah, we'd be talking about a trade at that point. But that's pretty far down the road, I think. Anthony says, call me crazy, but I really believe that if JJ McCarthy reaches his

full potential, he will be better than CJ Stroud, Jordan Love and Caleb Williams. Uh, well, CJ Stroud is probably a tough one. And so is Jordan Love to say, if he reaches his full potential, he'll be better than them. Because I think if you were doing all of the quarterbacks and you were drafting all of them in a pool, you're taking number one at just at this moment, number one is Patrick Mahomes. Number two is either Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen. And right after that is CJ Stroud.

Jordan Love might be a little farther down the list, but not too much farther. If he becomes as good as what Jordan Love was last year, well, you have a chance to compete for the Super Bowl if that happens. His ceiling, I think, is pretty high because he has a lot of arm strength and he has work ethic and he has leadership capabilities and he seems to be very inclined to pick up things as a quarterback with an offense and learn and want to learn. And he's got athleticism and all that Jordan love. It plays in a different style than I think JJ McCarthy does, but there are some similarities. Love is very good at throwing off

of platform and on the move. think jj mccarthy is too jordan love sometimes has a little bit of trouble controlling the fastball and jj mccarthy at this moment does too mccarthy is going to have to learn how to throw a deep ball a little bit better that's not a massive concern because only about 10 to 12 percent of passes in the nfl somewhere in that range 10 to 14% are actually more than 20 yards down the field. So he has his strengths. He's going to have to work on some of his weaknesses. Stroud strikes me as of this moment could change as one of the clear cut best alien freaks that we've seen in a long time in the NFL. Again, it could change. It's only one season, but he

strikes me as being pretty special. So I'm not sure that that's quite the NFL. Again, it could change. It's only one season, but he strikes me as being pretty special. So I'm not sure that that's quite the ceiling. And with Caleb Williams, Williams has a higher ceiling as he could be the best quarterback in the NFL in three years. His percentage chance to get there, I don't know, is super, super high. But I mean, he has that level of talent. He has more talent than JJ McCarthy. If he didn't, he wouldn't have been drafted. Number one, J.J. McCarthy would have. They drafted Williams because he has more potential than McCarthy. But if we look at the situation, the coaching, his talent,

you could talk to me about him being potentially a top quarterback, but that's a long way to go. Horn fan, how's the new AC? Did you crank it up to make up for all those sweaty days? Yeah, that was pretty tough. And then, well, so here's what happens in classic fashion, almost in the same way that when I post the podcast, then news breaks, Well, the days that were in the nineties, I had no AC. So I went to Home Depot and I bought one of those little tiny $40 AC things that you pour water into. And then it blows cold air on you. And I set it right next to me where I do my work and just blew some cold air on my face. And it was okay. It didn't lower the temperature really of the house,

but it blew some cold air on me. And I had a fan going as well for three days where it was 90 degrees and we get the AC guy. He fixes it in a few hours. We're all good to go. I walk outside to take a look at it. I look around. I'm like, wait a minute. It's like 76 degrees out here. What the heck is going on? And then we're now in a bunch of days that are low eighties, high seventies. The AC is barely needed. Unreal. You know what? I I'm guessing that I will need it later on in the summer, but isn't that just typical as soon as I get the AC installed, then the heat streak breaks and we go down to actually, I think below average temperatures for right now, low 80s, high 70s. So Wes says we're in a world of instant gratification.

Relax, Vikings fans. I've been a fan since 1970. Things, I believe, are headed in the right direction. Yes, Jordan might be a major hiccup. It might be. Hopefully, we never have to talk about it again for his personal sake, really. Not even just for the team, for what it means for a receiver, but I'll tell you what I don't really want to have happen again is to wake up and see similar news like I did with Kyrie Jackson because Jordan Addison is foolish behind the wheel and couldn't grow up and understand how dangerous his actions are. So I really, really, for his sake, hope that he gets that figured out. But as far as the overall

direction, yeah, I mean, everybody has been put on edge over the last two weeks because of the things that have happened. And then the fact that McCarthy hasn't signed his contract, I think if it weren't for the other events, we might be going, oh, I don't know. I guess we'll see. I guess it should be fine, right? But this is what happens when you have traumatic things go on, is it puts everyone on edge.

And it's one of the things that makes it so difficult for a team when they go through something like this is that it rests over the entire organization for the entire year, this, this tension. And that's going to be something that Kevin O'Connell has to guide them through when you go through what happened with Kyrie Jackson. And then of course with Jordan Addison. So it's not, it it's not that easy and I think Vikings fans in general are probably also anxious to just get this going we've been talking about it for so long the draft all the changes to the roster cousins going to Atlanta like let's get this started already don't you know for JJ McCarthy don't hold everybody back from having this quarterback competition

conversation because you want your money now, as opposed to spread out over a couple of years of your career. Come on, buddy. Are you going to buy a Rolls Royce? Maybe not, maybe not after this, but you're right. That's some R E L A X is probably required here for the JJ McCarthy situation. And I do think that this roster is in a good place going into this season for the longterm for this year. I've talked about this a little bit in the past about how midway through two thirds of the way through you start to get a feeling about the team. Is it going to be one of those years where there is a lot of tension, where things just don't quite click? There's some sort of problems that are getting in the way like 2021, or is everything going to seem like it's just

smooth sailing and this team is maybe better than we think by the end of training camp and players emerge um you know like last year with Ivan Pace Jr. or I go back to 2017 is maybe the best camp I've seen this team have the last time they were in Mankato because Sam Bradford looks so much in control of that offense doesn't guarantee what's going to happen but that defense looked so good in training camp Delvin Cook looked great and crazy things ensued after that but you just came out of there going this is a really good roster how am i going to feel two-thirds of the way through this is what i want to see but for the long term we can look at it on paper and go they're in the right spot they've made a lot of the right moves so far. So how that all plays out, we're going to find out. Mike says, on receivers, I'm through number three.

The takeaway is receivers take a lot of abuse. I'm learning a lot about Adams' personality. Yikes. We should be thankful. Something that seems to happen through the years with a receiver like Devante Adams and it's not quite like Antonio Brown because Antonio Brown really went off the deep end but there's a a ticking clock with somebody like Devontae Adams. He knows he's one of the best,

if not the best wide receiver in football. And he goes to the Raiders because he probably thinks that what happened in Green Bay, they missed their chance with Aaron Rodgers. So I'm going to go to another team, going to play with Derek Carr, a guy that I believe in. And this is a team on the rise. We could compete for a championship and let's go. Right. And then he gets there and it doesn't work. Carr doesn't have a good year. They bench him at the end of the season. And then their answer is Jimmy Garoppolo, who has washed and has had a bunch of injuries since San Francisco.

I think that Garoppolo once upon a time was a pretty darn good quarterback, but after a number of injuries was not good at all last year. And then they go to Aiden O'Connell who they were terrified to throw the ball with. And if you're a wide receiver thinking about your mortality at that point in his career, there is a deep level of frustration because you see how it goes. I mean, in the NFL, once you get past 30, your career could end at pretty much any time. You could have one injury that you can't come back from. And if you're Adams, this is a wasted year of your life. You put so much effort into it. Someone like Justin Jefferson sees himself as being so

young. He's going to play forever. He's got a lot of time for this and he still gets frustrated at times, but it's different. It's seeing the years click off of your career, knowing you'll never get that one back. And if you played for a different team, if it had been Kansas city that acquired, I mean, to have a ring right now. And I'm sure that that's really upsetting to Devante Adams. So there are two different people in two different places. But I have seen those parts with Adams being very frustrated on the sidelines and all that. Freedom thinker, could the team require that Addison has a chauffeur everywhere? I don't think that's possible. I mean, I don't think you could just

start dictating people's lives and they have a contract. That's how this works. Uh, and if he violates the contract, then they can do whatever, uh, to the extent of their power within that contract. But you can't just suddenly say, we got you a driver. Now, if he agreed to that, I guess then you could, if he agreed and the team agreed, we're going to pay for a driver to take you around everywhere, then maybe that would be okay. But as far as requiring, no, you can't just like wherever you work, your employer can't just come to you and say, yeah, you know, when you're not here at work, you actually have to do this. You have to wear this hat when you're not at work because we say so. And that just, it's not something that is very possible. Maybe if they

agreed to it, it's really, it really comes down to him taking responsibility for his own behavior because it's not just in the car. It's not as if the car is really the problem. The car is where this keeps happening. But if these are the decisions that you're making, that goes beyond just, oh, man, if we get him a chauffeur, we're good. It goes beyond that, right? And we don't know all the details of exactly what happened, but any sort of DUI and falling

asleep at the wheel makes you concerned about what was being ingested, if you will, and how you're carrying yourself off the field. So no, I don't think they could do that. Anthony says, I think people are sleeping on the addition of Blake Cashman to our defense. No disrespect to Jordan Hicks, but I think that Cashman has more juice in the tank at this point in their careers. The biggest thing about Blake Cashman to our defense, no disrespect to Jordan Hicks, but I think that Cashman has more juice in the tank at this point in their careers. The biggest thing about Blake Cashman is the health because he has not been all that healthy throughout his career, even banged up a little bit last year when he was healthy last year, he was one of the best overall linebackers in the NFL,

good at run stuffing, good at coverage. When they asked him to blitz, he was fairly successful. It wasn't a lot, probably more here, but I completely agree with you that because so much happened at other parts of the roster, it was, oh yeah, they brought the Minnesota boy home. That's cool. But when you actually look into his numbers and his performance and what he did last year, he was at the top of the list for PFF grades last year. I think he was maybe sixth in the entire NFL. And Jordan Hicks, this is where you have to give Brian Flores credit. Because after 2022, I thought Hicks can't really play anymore. They should just move on.

We're good here. Go find somebody else. And Brian Flores gave him, it seemed very specific things to do that he was still good at stopping the run. He was excellent at tackling a blitzing. He had a lot of success blitzing and he was limited in what he was doing as far as coverage goes. They protected Jordan Hicks from having to spend too much time in man-to-man coverage, which Blake Cashman could probably do a lot better. And he does have some juice when it comes to his quickness, his speed, his athleticism. Those are all very high coming out of college. So assuming that the injuries haven't knocked that down a peg,

he is in much better shape overall as an athlete, as a younger athlete than Jordan Hicks, and can probably do a lot of the same things as an experienced player as well. Him and then Ivan Pace Jr. going into year two, it is one of the strongest pairs of linebackers in the entire NFL. I think, uh, Wes says, let's take a moment and not completely focus on the past game. Could Jones and company be electric Jones at his best is a beast. I think so. And based on what he did last year at the end of the season, does he still have the quickness?

Does he still have the power? We could see that the answer is yes. During the playoffs, he can catch the football. He could pass protect if you ask him to, which they had AJ Dillon do a little bit more than him in Green Bay, but he's good at it when he's asked to do it. He is one of the best running backs of the last 10 years and one of the best ever when it comes to yards per attempt. I'm not even sure that people realize this because that franchise has been so dominated by conversations about their quarterback. But Aaron Jones at 5.0 yards per carry for his career is legitimately up there with the all time greatest running backs in yards per carry.

He doesn't carry it as much as backs in yards per carry he doesn't carry it as much as Jim Brown did per carry or per game still though an extremely efficient player who finds ways to get extra yards he's got great vision and quickness he demolished the Minnesota Vikings over the years and he is somebody that isn't pure speed so if he loses a little he can still be effective into his age what it comes down to with the running game is two things one how much can aaron jones actually play because you don't want him carrying the ball 250 times how good is ty chandler who showed big playability last year? Very, very impressive big playability at times, but can he be part of a duo where they're swapping back and forth?

If he can, then their backfield can go from one of the worst in the NFL to one of the best in the NFL. But there's a lot of caveats there. Jones has to stay healthy, which he did not do last year and was banged up quite a bit. I also wondered about why the Green Bay Packers would let him go. If the Packers thought that he was worth it and healthy and could play the whole season, would they have picked up somebody else that they had to pay a lot of money for and then spent a draft pick on the running back position when they are in win now mode? If they fully believe that Aaron Jones was going to be great as he was at the end of last year and then Ty Chandler, can he be the complete player?

Chandler had so much trouble with pass protection. That's a big part of Kevin O'Connell's offense. He likes to keep the running back in. And if Chandler can't do that and then still struggles with some of the details of running the ball at the right gap or which way he's supposed to go, things like that, then you are going to still have some flaws in that backfield. But the upside of it is extremely good. The downside of it is basically the same as last year if Jones isn't particularly healthy.

All right, let me continue to scroll here. FreedomThinker says, Williams might have the raw talent, but he doesn't have the mental strength. I always think of him crying after the Washington game and it will only get worse in the NFL. We just don't really know when it comes to something like that

because the person is so young that I thought a little bit of the same thing with the adversity in the NFL. It's not so much crying. It was really at the end of the game against Washington. He seemed to kind of give up, and that was what was concerning to me. And then, yeah, they show them in the stands and so forth. When you talk about the adversity of the NFL and how often you lose and how hard it is and how often you play injured and all those things, it is 10 times, 20 times more difficult than colleges. But also you build up scar tissue

when you have things like that happen. And then it's not the same level of emotions. The next time I think everybody, when they're a kid is going to be more emotional or more susceptible to that than when we're talking about someone who becomes an adult as he goes forward over these next few years. And with JJ McCarthy, you might talk about the mental strength, but we have no idea what it's like to see him lose at all because he never did in college.

And then in the NFL, I guarantee you that he will lose a lot of games. I mean, even Peyton Manning or John Elway lost a lot of games, and they're the best of the best. Tom Brady won a lot more than he lost, but he still lost. J.J. McCarthy's never been through that. We have no sample size, no scar tissue of how he's going to handle a two-game losing streak or something like that. It was always impressive to me with Kirk Cousins that he could have the worst loss and play the worst game, and you go, Kirk, what in the heck was that? And then the next week puts up 300 yards

and they win the game and he has a comeback or something. I don't know. He was very good at putting it in the past and moving on to the next week. How any of these guys respond to that is very unclear. Williams, Bo Nix, any of them, very, very unclear how that you're going to react to the NFL because it's so much different. What about Bob says, are you going to play NCAA 25? Lots of fun. Although I'm not sure SUNY Brockport has a team. Well, shout out to my Golden Eagles that they should.

Though I think you can make custom teams. So if I do get it, then I will have to make my alma mater. However, I've seen everybody online playing the game. Everybody seems excited. Everybody seems to love it. I don't have the most recent system. Over to my right here, I have the N64, the Dreamcast,

the PlayStation 2, and super nintendo all set up got a couple of tvs i got a cabinet over here with all the video games but none of them came out past about 2004 so i don't think i'm likely to end up getting a whole new system to play the NCAA game. Maybe I will at some point, but it's hard to invest that much time when I'm always here with you guys. And with training camp coming up, video game seasons are pretty much out the window. I will be lucky if I can squeeze in some golf in the morning before we go out to training camp, but unlikely that anytime soon I get into NCAA 25. I will say though, I loved NCAA 14. That was when I had more time on my hands. I have over here on PS2, a copy of, I think, 06, which I had been playing recently. So I love the game. Everything about it is great. I'm glad it's

back. There's so many big fans of it, but I just don't think I'm going to have the time to get into it too much. Anthony says, Matthew, you said you were impressed by what you saw from Will Riker during practice. I think the kid has the goods. You see the potential of a top five kicker someday. Kickers are very, very hard to figure. We talk about the mental part for quarterbacks, the mental part for kickers are very very hard to figure the we talk about the mental part for quarterbacks the mental part for kickers what i see from will reichard is the way he strikes the ball the sound of it

the look of it the height the distance is not like any other kicker that i've seen in practices it's better his talent is better than any kicker the Vikings have had before. And the new age kickers, the kids that are coming along now that started when they were six years old kicking or something, that go to kicking camps

and have kicking coaches when they're little kids and everything, they're better. They've grown up in a world where 60 yards is good, but 65 is where you're aiming for right the the justin tucker you're you're trying to go 60 plus if you're growing up now whereas before the previous era of kickers if you could kick 50 you were a beast but now 50 is routine for the new age kicker and will reichardt is part of. By the time he was in junior high, he was already competing at these high end kicking

camps and winning or performing really well. And then as soon as he got a little older, he was winning, beating everybody in the country. So this is somebody, because I talked to his kicking coach that runs kicking camps and things like that for a story earlier in the off season. That's what he told me is like, this is a prodigy kid who's been doing this for such a long time. You can see where it's different. Does that guarantee anything? Absolutely not because kickers are weird, but going to Bama playing for Saban on the biggest stage and kicking the way he did, it does bode well. That's the best I can do.

Top five? No idea. But he has the potential. He has the talent to be a top kicker. I don't know if he will become that because it all depends on the consistency. Think about it this way. If you make eight out of ten kicks, you stink, and you're probably getting cut. If you make nine out of 10 kicks, you stink and you're probably getting cut. If you make

nine out of 10 kicks, you're a superstar. It's just like baseball only in such smaller sample sizes. Is he going to make eight out of not eight out of 10 or nine out of 10? Well, I can't, I can't tell you. I can only tell you he boomed the absolute hell out of the ball when we were watching him at practice. Like I've not seen before. That's the best I can do. So I'm very interested to see more of him because they try to recreate these pressure situations and preseason kicking. There is a lot of pressure on those guys. They really feel it in the preseason kicking because they're often competing for jobs at that point. And technically speaking, he is competing with John Parker Romo for a job and John Parker Romo can kick too, by the way. Uh, they,

Reichard was better, but John Parker Romo can really kick the ball. I wouldn't be shocked if he ends up with another team. Uh, horse feathers says there is more going on with Addison than just driving issues needs help managing his life choices at this young age. That's right. You got to want to be helped though. That would be the concern. You got to want to be helped. Does he want to be helped? We're going to find out. I sure hope so. Uh, Jacob says, I want number 19 back. Adam Thielen would be a good wide receiver three on this team, but I don't see any reason why Carolina would get rid of him. Carolina is a team that is looking to enhance its quarterback as much as they possibly can, and Thielen can still catch the ball, can still run underneath routes. He's kind of having an Anquan Bolden late-type career where he can run underneath, and he's got great hands and great knowledge of the game,

good leader for that team. They should want him. Carolina's got expectations of having Bryce Young take a huge step from where he was last year. They got a bunch of linemen. They drafted receiver. They drafted running back. They're trying to load up everything around him. So I would be very surprised if they decided to make a move with Adam Thielen. But if he was to come back, I mean, that would be better for them than not being sure about Jordan Addison. Although obviously it was the right move to move on and draft Addison. They could not have known that as soon as he got some money, he was going to buy the fastest car ever and drive it as fast as it possibly goes, et cetera. Uh, Freddie, what is

your best guess on what the discipline for Addison will be? It ranges anything from the team saying he'll be suspended for conduct detrimental to the team, which we've seen happen throughout the league a handful of times or nothing. They might say that they are taking it seriously, but also it's a legal matter that they're going to let play out. That's kind of how they approached it last time. Personally, I think it needs to be a lot more than that. Whether it's starting on the third team, suspended from practice for two weeks. I don't know. I don't know what they're going to say. As far as the legality goes, I read somebody on Twitter who is familiar with the law,

laid it out, and we might not even find out from the California system what the punishment is going to be for some time. And that might be the way that they approach it is we're just going to wait until that happens and then we'll see if the nfl suspends them and until then we're just going to go forward my guess is that everybody inside the building and the people who own the building want more than that and that will be something i'm curious about to hear on monday if we get answers about that but the way that they've approached these things so far has been hey just going to kind of leave it

to the legal system suspend west phillips in the off season for a couple weeks and that's just how how it's going to go i really i really don't know what they're going to say but there needs to be a stronger message than oh let's just let the legal part take going to say, but there needs to be a stronger message than, Oh, let's just let, let the legal part take its course. That in my opinion needs to be a stronger message than that. Kudot video says, do you hold out any hope Jerry Tillery or Jaqueline Roy will step up this

year? Intrigued by Jaqueline Roy guy is a lot of strength, a lot of power in his hands. Saw occasional flashes from him when he was in last year. Couple of games. Good in the Atlanta game, if I recall. I had a couple times where he got into the backfield. Didn't see much from him other than that.

I think he got banged up a little bit. And as far as Jerry Tillery goes, a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Because when I looked at Jerry Tillery last year, he was used so much. Yes, Preston, he is from LSU. Yep. Tillery was used so much in just a situational type pass rush role. And per the amount of snaps and situation that he was in there and what he was asked to do, he actually did okay. He actually did pretty well uh racked up a number of pressures from the inside and he could be somebody that they rotate in roy i don't think has the upside of being a star but maybe could be more of an impact player what they want largely i believe from the defensive tackles

is they want these guys to take up gaps and they want to push people in the right direction so they can rush blitzers in. And that's Harrison Phillips. That's Jonathan Bullard. They're doing kind of the dirty work that you don't always give a lot of credit to. And Jaqueline Roy might have the strength to be able to do that and occasionally get into the backfield, but he might also be a guy that takes a big step up. He was talked about coming out as someone that's supposed to have a fairly high ceiling. I definitely saw it when he would get hands on somebody, there was power there. Like he could move somebody with his hands. It just didn't quite come together last year. And then there was some injury issues there. So

Jacob says, Carolina should want him. You're're correct but he was working out with jj well yeah i mean guys get together in the off season you know that they they do that if okay a bunch of guys are getting together who's down in florida or who's taking vacations here or let's you know fly somewhere and all work out where they get a place and it happens all the time where there's a lot of different situations. Some guys go on vacation or have different things going on. And so they can't get together. I don't think it was an indicator that Adam Thielen is coming here more than just that's kind of how it goes in the off season. So what is it? Tennessee where

tight ends get together with a couple of quarterbacks and so forth. That's what they do. Freedom Thinker says, could Jihad Ward play any type of specialty role? His size alone makes me think there's something there. Thus far in his career, there hasn't been a whole lot there. When he was in a more pared down role, I believe it was Baltimore, he had more success as a situational rusher. The way I've looked at that is if there's anything there, then they're lucky because he was a second round pick. He's gotten a ton of opportunity, bounced around to a bunch of different teams, hasn't graded well, hasn't gotten a ton of pressure, kind of shrugs a little bit with Jihad Ward so far, hasn't really lived up to his draft status but there was

some points in his career where he racked up some pressures it's it's a veteran that i think they would prefer if udfas beat him out someone like gabriel murphy they've got a handful of players that are behind the veterans patrick jones and j Ward, that they would likely prefer that the younger players just win those jobs. But if they don't, then they have someone who's actually been in the NFL before and Jihad Ward kind of just the guy throughout his career might be someone that Brian Flores likes for a particular reason and could fit into a particular role. We have to factor that in now with almost every situation we ever talk about. We have to factor that in now with almost every situation we ever talk about. We have to factor in, Hey, well, it might be a florist guy who they get more

out of than we expect. Uh, but the career track record is not particularly exciting. Uh, let me get to Freddie's question and then I'm going to roll through the cornerback group. Like I promised at the beginning of the show real quick. And then we'll probably call it a night. It's been a really fun chat with you guys, by the way. Anyone's beside Powell viable for wide receiver three. One of the best situations to watch in training camp, because the answer might be yes.

And someone, but I don't know which guy is going to be and we've seen it before in the past where a bc johnson surprises us and i fully believe that if bc johnson had stayed healthy throughout his career and hadn't torn the acls that he could have been a viable receiver for them or a kj osborne We went into training camp in 2021. KJ Osborne had zero catches the previous year, was a fifth round draft pick, and I guess we'll seeon Jones, Ty James. There's a bunch of people who are all fighting for this thing. If they had their way, Jalen Naylor would likely be that guy. That means staying healthy.

That means showing up and making plays and fitting into a role that he is good at, whether that's maybe deep, you know, deep passing or the outside wide receiver type. Ideally, it's probably Brandon Powell and Jalen Naylor mixing in and out, or realistically, I would say they could get Naylor and Powell mixing in and out depending on what they need on a particular play. But the fact that it's so wide open is what makes this camp interesting. There is a real battle going on on a daily basis for that wide receiver spot. But is there a chance?

Yeah, there's always a chance that somebody steps up in camp. I didn't see that so much when it came to minicamp. Normally we get at least a sense that someone's going to be that guy in minicamp, but we didn't really get that feeling just yet. Okay. Jacob says, help me get out and write that down Wednesday so I can get my prediction out that Sam Darnold wins six out of his first eight games. Okay. I don't know about that, Jacob. That might be asking a lot of Sam Darnold.

I'm not even sure if he's going to play eight games. We'll see about that. So let me run through the cornerback group and we'll just start out here with the starters. And I'll just say a couple of things about each player and then we'll take a look at the battle. And again, this group is going to be really challenged with the heavy heart. They show up at training camp and there is a big hole there with Kyrie Jackson, uh, not being here and not being able to come to camp. Um, and it's, it's very, it's still very sad and it always will be what happened with Kyrie Jackson, but we'll go forward and, uh, we're going to have a camp and we're going to talk about what's happening at the cornerback group because there are still storylines here and one of them starts with Byron Murphy and

whether Byron Murphy is going to play outside corner or inside it looked like he was playing more slot during mini camp and they were having Shaq Griffin play outside so his role in the past was better in the inside, at least when it came to the numbers. And last year, I thought he still was okay last year, maybe a little better than the PFF grades when you consider what he was asked to do. And after the first couple of weeks of the season, his numbers got a lot better. They were very poor. If you remember at the beginning of the season defensively, and he settled in and played better until he got hurt against Cincinnati and then when he was out we saw what a disaster the cornerback group became Murphy is still a very valuable piece of this and gives them even more flexibility if he can play in the slot so how

much is he there how much can they trust Shaq Griffin to be a starting outside corner? These two things are connected. Griffin signed for four and a half million bucks on a one-year deal. He's bounced around a little bit the last couple of years, played with two teams last year, Houston and Carolina. Didn't have bad numbers, but they might be asking a lot out of a guy that signed a one-year $4 million contract to be the full-time 17-game outside corner starter. He was good a couple years ago. This sort of has a little bit of a Marcus Davenport feel to it.

Griffin likely more motivated than Marcus Davenport was, and less injured than Davenport was through his career. But same sort of concept applies of someone who was good a few years ago and then hoping that he could kind of go back to that. So I'm not sure if Byron Murphy is going to end up fitting into the role that they want him to, or if this thing kind of comes apart, the idea of Shaq Griffin being an outside corner.

But they also might've found a steal in Shaq Griffin, depending on how their defense ends up playing. Uh, so that's kind of Byron Murphy, Shaq Griffin, Makai Blackman though, has very high expectations after last season. Uh, it was a quiet year for him. His most notable play was the touchdown in the back of the end zone uh against the the broncos that he gave up but he actually had a very good year he allowed only an 87 quarterback rating into his coverage he also graded as the third best rookie in football at the cornerback position which is really strong for him in 400 and something, 434 snaps. He's going to have to play a lot more than that this year to take a big step forward,

but very promising rookie season for Makai Blackman. And when we look at the backups, really going to need that. So as far as depth goes, Akayla Bevins appears to me to just be a backup corner for them. The funny thing I found though, about a Caleb Evans for last year is that through the first 15 weeks of the season. So the vast majority of the season, a Caleb Evans was rated 26th out of 70 by PFF. And through the last three weeks of the season, he was dead last dead last in the entire league in his PFF grade. In those last couple of weeks, they didn't have Byron Murphy and they had to ask him to play

a different role. So should we really be completely done on a Caleb Evans when he had a bigger sample size of playing pretty well? A good point. Freedom thinker that Blackman had no missed tackles graded as the NFL's highest tackling corner, maybe Antoine Winfield, the right, the undersized guy who could tackle. He, he is good at it. He was good at it coming out. I think he has a lot of natural football skill. If he was a little bigger, he'd be much more highly touted. He's kind of undersized. He also had a lot of, um, past breakups, things like that as well. Uh, the other guy I have listed as depth is Najee Thompson, who is a special teamer. And there was some evidence of him maybe switching to safety. It doesn't really matter. He's a special teamer, but he's going to

be out there for another year. He'll be battling for a spot. And for on the bubble, Andrew Booth Jr. did not play very much at all. Only about 150 snaps last year. Didn't play terribly in those 150 snaps, but this is, I don't know if I can quite say make or break because he was not bad when he was asked to play last year, which means that depth is where his most likely position is. But would anybody be terribly shocked if Booth Jr., who was drafted in the second round, emerged as we saw Trey Wayans do at one point? And we've seen that throughout the years with cornerbacks, sometimes a couple of years into their career. I'd be a little surprised, but based on his draft status and his raw talent, which we've seen on display during the last couple training camps, if he could stay healthy, if he can adjust to what Brian Flores wants defensively, maybe, maybe a possibility of Andrew Booth Jr. taking a step up and having more of a role on this team than we expected going into training camp. Again, not really a make or break because that insinuates that they'll cut him if he doesn't

make it. If he's just a guy, then he'll at least be depth and we'll probably see him from time to time with injuries. They still want more out of him than that because he's a former second round draft pick and he does have a lot of talent. Behindrew booth jr not a lot to speak of jaylen williams was a guy for them last year that made the practice squad played a little tiny bit at the end of the season when they had injuries good tackler that's maybe a special teamer at best if he takes a step forward aj green had a moment with cleveland a couple years ago he's been around a little bit i think he's 26 years old fighting for a spot trying to hang around in the league aj green the third that is and then uh somebody i'll keep a close eye on dwight mcglothern who played for a couple different colleges as everybody does i think arkansas was his last stop maybe it was lsu at first six foot two four four forty had a lot of plays on

the football in college um could be an interesting guy to watch that during mini camp he stood out a little bit and so i'm going to keep a close eye on him as the potential next Ivan Pace Jr. We're all talking about after what happened last year. So Dwight McClothern will go on my list that I'll probably put out Monday or something of most interesting players in training camp. I know that's what Will and I are going to talk about for the next porch podcast that we're recording tomorrow. And so the kind of main storylines here to put a bow on it for tonight of the cornerback position. Does Andrew Ruth Jr. get another chance or is this thing kind of set in stone? Will they add someone in free agency? Yes, this feels inappropriate to talk about with Kyrie Jackson passing away.

So I don't want to be, what's the right word, like disrespectful at all in saying this. But this cornerback position already there was a discussion about whether they should add another veteran there's a handful of guys that are out there including stefan gilmore that they could look to if they're not happy with what they see early on and then can dwight mcglothern be the next guy that we're talking about and what a name he would be to say over and over again dwight mcglothern sounds like a character from a sitcom so there you have it we are just days away days away from training camp and uh very exciting that we are going to get there first

we'll have a conversation with will Raggetts on the porch tomorrow, the press conferences on Monday. I imagine that Dane Mizutani and I will break those down from TCO performance center on Monday afternoon. And then on Wednesday, it is time to get out the sunscreen and lather it all over my body and go out there and roast in the sun, watching Vikings practice and bring it back to you.

Kind folks and talk about it every night that they have practice will be here, including, I think the biggest video from last year was after the night practice. And that's always an exciting one as well. I'm looking forward to it, looking forward to more discussions with all of you. So thanks everybody for joining, for chatting, lots of great questions and comments tonight.

Always appreciate that. Let's keep that going as we head finally into training camp. So once again, thanks everybody for watching slash listening, and we will talk to y'all soon. Football.