Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Is the Vikings' offensive line... good?

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Matthew Coller and former Minnesota Viking Jeremiah Sirles deep dive into what's worked for the Vikings' offensive line. If they continue playing this well, what does it mean for Kirk Cousins? What worked for the O-line against Seattle that they can continue versus a more difficult Browns team? How are the Cleveland Browns going to attack the Vikings' questionable defense? Plus Cam Dantzler's foolish tweet and another Love to See it, Hate to see it that focuses on frustrating coaching. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to remind you before we get started, the Tick Pick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. Tick Pick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. What's that sound you hear coming from the trenches? It's former Minnesota Viking offensive lineman Jeremiah Searles. It's time for the Tuesday Morning Left Guard Show on Purple Insider. Get your strong, Goddard!

Hello, welcome to another Tuesday Morning Left Guard. Matthew Collar here with Jeremiah Searles, former Minnesota Viking. What is up, Jeremiah? How are you this morning? Oh, I'm doing just fine. It was good to have one of my teams win this weekend. Vikings looked good. Arguably one of the better games I've seen them play in a couple years all around. And other than getting my teeth kicked into Michigan State and punched in the balls, pretty good. Not a bad weekend. i was going to avoid the subject i was not going to bring up the corn huskers i just live it over and over again move right by it um but you know what you are doing sideline reporting right so you i mean you're having a great time right i am and it could be worse we could have lost to bowling green oh wow yes yeah you would be hard

pressed like that is appalachian state level s yes that they're in a bad the boat up there has some holes and it may be sinking faster than we think yeah so last year when pj pulled out a certain children's book to try and inspire his team that oops that that really happened he actually used that book to try and inspire his team i thought you know what maybe this is um a little questionable just gonna throw that out there um there is in in fact later on the show when we get to love to see it hate to see it my entire hate to see it might just be nfl coaching because uh this is why when people talk about mike zimmer gotta fire mike zimmer gotta get rid of him i just want you to take a look at Chicago at Philadelphia last night, how some of these teams are handling

their offenses. Uh, Philadelphia ran zero pre-snap motions last night in, in the year 2021 of the national football league. So anyway, I'm just, let's's let's talk about this seattle game and i want you to tell me from your eye watching the unfortunate tv tape still because the all 22 is still not out but um i i want you to tell me what you're seeing from clint kubiak i love his game plan i think he the last two weeks i mean really I really think the last two weeks, he's starting to put together a really good game plan from the word go. I think he understands that we really need to keep NFL defenses away from getting on tendencies.

And I think that, I mean, you see in the first drive, it's run, it's Conklin, it's Jefferson, it's Thielen, and back to the run and play action and drop backs and you can tell he's not going to be a tendency guy he's going to be someone that's going to have a bunch of different stuff open in the playbook he's going to get to all of it and you can just really see he's starting to really click with Kirk on what Kirk likes to do Kirk's not a guy that wants to drop back in the pocket at eight yards, stand there and rocket it down the field every time,

but he likes the three-step, four-step drop, tight end over the middle, crossing around to Jefferson. And what makes this Viking team so special, Jefferson and Thielen can both do yards after the catch like no one else in the NFL. I mean, they're not DK Metcalf. They're not DeAndre Hopkins, but they're very good with the ball in their hands of making a 10-yard slant into a 20-yard gain.

And so I think he understands that, and I've been really, really pleased with his play calling over the last couple weeks. I think the distribution to all the different playmakers that they have. So you've got screens going to Alexander Madison for big gains. In fact, after the penalty was called that sort of turned the game, they hit a 23 yard screen. If that doesn't happen. And this is sort of a point about if you want to be a good team, you take advantage of other teams' mistakes. You hit a 23 yard screen. Now in 2019, Delvin Cook out of the backfield average, almost 10 yards a catch. And Alexander Madison the other day averaged almost 10 yards a catch on the screen game. And I think that when you've got slants that are open all the time from Phelan and Jefferson,

which are high completion percentage passes, especially to those guys. And then you can throw screens out of the backfield. And every so often looking for the deep shot, as opposed to, it seemed like last year, their whole thing was early in the game. It was going to be run, run, run, run, run. Let's try to hit a 50 yard bomb. And you see this show up in the average depth of target. You see this show up in the, in the yards per completion, Kirk's yards per completion last year was one of the highest in the NFL this year. It only just over 10 yards which says to me that the quick game has really increased quite a bit and I think that has to be with Kubiak and we were talking before

the season like is you know Mike gonna let him do his thing is it gonna be Gary's offense is is Gary gonna be on his phone in the middle of the game all right call this Clint what is what you do here that's what I used to have a guy named Trellis he used to run this play clinton you go and do that um that has not been the case it looks it looks it looks like a different offense it does it looks like a completely different offense and it's an adaptable offense i mean the screen game when you run the screen game you run against an aggressive defense we all know seattle's an aggressive defense they've been an aggressive defense since the beginning of the pete carroll age age right they have Carlos Dunlap up there they got guys that want to get after the passer and so how do you slow those guys down the screen game but also I will give Garrett Bradbury and

Uta and Ezra Cleveland some major props in the fact that they got out there and they made blocks in space the screen game doesn't work if your offensive linemen run out to space and just run down the field and don't block anyone. I thought they were really good job of understanding if it was man or zone. If it was man, you saw Garrett or Garrett. You see Bradbury running out there and getting on the man linebacker. And then you see the guard cleaning up for the rat guy, like very well coached, very well executed screen game by the offensive line, which I think is a huge come up because, like you said, in 2019, that's what happened with Dalvin.

Last year, not so much, and we all know why. The Winnebagos were playing guard. So now as you go and you see the guard play, and I think Udo's playing much better than I anticipated. Ezra Cleveland's playing much better than I anticipated, and that's really a part of the reason why Madison was able to have as much rushing yards as he did too, and I think that that's why Zimmer's not losing his mind at the quick game because last

yesterday everything was working the whole playbook was working yesterday because I thought everyone was executing at such a high level on the offensive line the tight ends everyone that it was really fun to watch and uh this is something that we really were unsure about is how does only Udo just transition from tackle to guard? Yeah. Yeah. Udo. We'll work on that.

You can call Udo if you want to. I mean, he's a guard. You don't have to, you don't have to get those people's names, right? Right. Sireless.

Sireless. But I mean, this is something that I feel like comes down to when you have a play caller who has a really good sort of sense for what needs to happen at what time. And a really good game plan is when you can have those screen passes hit, because you see like how much is a quarterback's great play? How much is the scheme? How much is whatever? And you sort of divvy those up into its own little pie chart, right? And I think what you want with Kirk Cousins as your quarterback is a little more on the scheme than you would say if it's like Patrick Mahomes. And then you're saying, okay, go make some special plays

and we're going to need 10 special plays out of you per game. In this case, we need to be able to scheme a hundred yards per game where Kirk doesn't have to do anything where you or I could throw the screen pass and I think we saw that from Kevin Stefanski two years ago and not as much last year and now we're seeing it here well yeah and the other piece of that too is how often even us as fans when we sit back it's like oh third and eight screen or draw right and I mean there was first down screens there was second down screens there was second and short screens when you're thinking oh they're going to take a shot so they kind of back up a little bit and if you can have the screen

game effectively be a base play call for you it really keeps the defense going man I don't know do we press coverage these guys do we how do we stop this as a man is his own and I thought that was a really good wrinkle and then the other thing too is the tight end play I mean Conklin played out of his mind he was blocking guys all over the place he was catching the football he was I mean decisive with the ball in his hands of running and getting up and down and talk about a guy that we we were all sitting there after Irv gets here going, man, what do we do? Who do we turn to? Where do we go?

And talk about a guy that's rose to the occasion, especially this week. My big thing is can he stack a couple weeks together? Kind of like we were last year at Jefferson, right? Like how high is the chart? And I was like light blue. Well, it might even be lighter blue for Conklin because he's only done it really one time for me. But seeing that and seeing how well he played and how much Kirk and him

are developing that rapport too is something to keep an eye on as we progress through the season as well and I think as we talk about Clint here also the fact that they were able to only three weeks into the season adapt to losing Irv Smith because that happened right after the third preseason game so it's so late in the process that now all of a sudden you're sort of having to wave the magic wand but you found a wide receiver three in kj osborne and these are the things that i wrote about a little bit uh at purpleinsider.substack.com i wrote about how you got you know you got to promote it a little uh but uh the uh i wrote about the regression and and you know okay kirk cousins is not going to have 120 quarterback rating for the entire season it's pretty unlikely but when we think about which things will fade and which

things can carry on i think that kj osborne having a number three wide receiver option tyler conklin uh being at least competent to potentially even decent at that role i think these are things that can carry on and if the play caller and the scheme is strong that's something that can sustain through an entire season as well yeah I mean if you can have a guys that it's the same thing we talked about last year right like when we're talking about with the guard play and even the tackle play at times like we're not asking for a Tyron Smith we're not asking for the best guards in football. We're asking for people that are serviceable, that can do their jobs at a high level. They're not all pros. They're not maybe

even pro bowlers, but if they are just competent at doing their job, then we'll be okay because we have enough of those pro bowlers. We have enough of those guys that are around them that can pick it up. So you look at a guy like KJ Osborne, you look at a guy like Conklin at our boys inside there. I mean, I mean, they're starting to get into the role of they're no longer a deficit to this team, but they're now moving into the role players of they're helping this team win football games. And you're really seeing how the margin of error is so small from that jump, right? The margin of error from you're hurting this football team to you're an asset to this football team is razor thin.

And the fact that they're finally able to get on that other side of it is huge because I do think we have good coaches in our scheme fit on offense. I do think we have good ideas on how we want to attack defenses. Now it's just a matter of execution, and you're starting to see the execution level get way more increased across the board to where we're not sitting here talking about, well, it's one guy here, it's one guy there. And, yeah, there's still a few plays that are like that,

but in the most part you're seeing 11 guys execute their job each and every time, and I think a lot of that's because they trust Clint in his scheme and how he wants to do things and when you have a bunch of guys trusting the coach it's really easy for everyone to execute their own individual jobs not feel like they have to do too much right and last year when they played seattle the right and left guard play were oh wow yeah you did that noise on purpose that wasn't uh i did that on purpose because i don't want to relive it it makes me scared it makes me scared inside that was halloween-ish for sure and that's and that's what it looked like it was a nightmare uh and this year it was the exact opposite so are you willing

to say that the vikings have a good offensive line are you willing to say that yeah i think we have a good at good to average offensive line which across the NFL right now I think every team would take because there is some bad offensive line play going on in the NFL I mean look at the Philadelphia Eagles last night they couldn't do it I mean I watched Fletcher Cox eject Connor Williams not knock him over eject him into the backfield many times I mean I watched the Cincinnati Bengals at times look awful. And so you turn on the tape and, yeah, we're going to be like, man, that's the dominant, most dominant offensive line I've ever seen

from Rashad Hill and Ezra Cleveland and Brian. It's like, no, that's a good offensive line. There was time to throw the pocket. There was seams and there was creases in the run game. They got out on guys on screens. That's all you want. You don't need to have an all pro offensive line like the the indiana indianapolis colts right you need to have a serviceable efficient offensive line i would say i would classify the vikings offensive line as an efficient unit right now which is good because you can always improve from

that so let me give you a stat that I think you will like. Yeah, I like stats. All right. So pro football focus has a stat called true pass sets. All right. So true pass sets are when you take out the stuff where the offensive line doesn't need to do anything. So like a quick screen or something like that. Kirk takes the snap, throws it right to Jefferson.

You didn't do nothing. And other things like even screens to running backs like they get out but it's not like truly standing there and blocking the defensive end um things like that so remove that stuff the vikings in the last two weeks have only had 22 true pass sets. And that's out of dropbacks of 35 against Arizona and 40 against Seattle. So very few out of 75 potential passes, you only have two out of every seven that are asking the offensive line to do everything. My question is whether, well, I would love for you to explain how that matters to offensive line play right and also i just wonder if that's a sustainably low number that game script or how the game plays out is going to matter to that and when they have to have more true pass sets if

they're going to really be tested you know so in order to look at that stat the stat that i would then want to take a peek at and look at is what our efficiency rating is on first and second down. Because that stat usually is when you're sitting in third and seven plus, that drop back number goes way up, right? Which we found ourselves a lot in last year. We found ourselves a lot in second and 11 or third and nines or third and fifteens because of those type of negative plays. So first thing, I think that the offensive line is doing a good job not allowing negative plays on first and second down on a run-heavy offense. You're getting four or five on first. You're getting two or three.

Now you're in third and three where the true pass protection, as PFF wants to call it, isn't necessary. Now you can do it because if you have to, but it's not necessary. You can full slide. You can run a screen. You can run a quick slant, like all those things where the ball's like out, out because it's only four yards to the first down is really impressive. And so as I've watched the last two games, I have noticed we've stayed what I call ahead of the sticks where we've stayed on schedule. If you want to call you here, you hear commentators all the time, all this offense is

staying on schedule, positive plays, positive plays positive plays positive plays and the only time I really see us get off schedule is in the red zone a little bit so I think that the biggest thing for offensive linemen is if you can put yourself in good positions on first and second down you kind of eliminate the need for bad position on third down because now defensive coordinators aren't going to be able to just say hey here's the dial-up by special blitz package here's where i'm gonna put in three defensive ends inside and have them all rush like crazy people and and that's not how we're built but again that goes back to how we open the show and clint's doing a good job and understanding what this offense is and where its deficits and where its strengths are and so i

really think that as an offensive lineman, if you can say, hey, we only threw the ball 22 times truly over the last, that's exactly what we want. And every offensive line wants that, no matter if you're a great offensive line or not, because let's be honest, the werewolves and the pass rushers in this league are scary. They're good.

And the more bats you give them, the more chance you give for negative plays to happen. Sack fumbles, miss on a screen game, something as we saw our team, Everson and Daniil and Dalvin, all those guys, do to Russell Wilson. And so I think that being in control and dictating the tempo of the game is something that we haven't really seen from Minnesota in a while. I mean, Stefanski likes to do it. You see him do it up in Cleveland all the time.

But I think Zimmer's philosophy mixed with Clint's of controlling the game, understanding the tempo, understanding how to do things falls a lot on the offensive line, but it also falls a lot on the coaching and the game plans. And I thought there's been excellent coaching on both sides of the ball the last couple of weeks and how we want to control things too. Fans are going back to stadium. So you have to be ready with the best Minnesota football gear. That's why you have to check out soda stick.

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for our soda stick giveaways. I think so too. The one area where I'm a little hesitant is just who they've played on offense and oftentimes in the past with this team their offensive production is pretty much dictated on how good is the defense that you're playing and when this team plays bad defenses I mean they just pound the heck out of them and they did that that against Seattle. And I don't think Arizona is a good defense either. I think they have two really good defensive players, but that does not a good defense make. So as they play Cleveland, a defense that looks much stronger and Jeremiah Owusu-Koromoa has been very good to start their season. And Miles Garrett is the freakiest of the freaky freaks. And so,

so I guess this week to me is a better test because I think the last two weeks, what we've seen is a little bit antiquated defense. Hey, let's load the box, play single high safety, leave just a Jefferson and one-on-one. And for some reason play off coverage on them.

So just running 15 yards wide open in the middle of the field. Like there were a lot of times where I was watching the game going, this looks like a Matt Patricia, Detroit lions defense where the Vikings know everything that's coming beforehand. There's no, I don't know if you felt this way. I just didn't feel like there was any deception from the defense. It was just like, we're standing here. Oh, someone's in motion. Hey Kirk, we're in zone just so you know we're playing a single high safety hopefully you've seen that and now do everything that's designed i don't know that cleveland's gonna make it that easy for them no and nothing against nothing to take away from the

vikings offense their performance but seattle's defense is a mess yeah i mean they they got guys i mean i think you were the one who maybe tweeted out like someone was like we don't know what we're gonna do with Jamal Adams. It's like he traded like a second or right pick for this dude. It's insane. I remember when we played against the Jets. He was the entire defense. He blitzed.

He did. He did everything right. So, I mean, you get a guy like that that comes with defense. You ask him to be a role player. Not really sure how that works. I didn't notice him. Did you? I mean, he had one good play where Thielen tried to come crack in on him and he made a play for a two-yard run he stood

up and he did his little no no no thing to the sideline which he drives me nuts but i mean they're a mess they have a lot of issues on defense so i think you're right i don't think that they have the full playbook available to them i think they kind of just line up in base and hope that their playmakers can make some plays but But Cleveland is a different story. Cleveland doesn't have to blitz because we talk about the freaky freaks. And so they're a little bit aggressive. But at the same time, the screen game works when you got blitzers running at you, which Seattle did with Wagner and those guys. But I don't see Cleveland.

I see Cleveland sitting in this defense going, OK, we're going to run our base defense. We're going to run our base coverages. We're a mixed man in zone, but we're only going to rush four and see if you can stop it. And I'll be very curious to see what the game plan is going into this week because I mean, Cleveland, the big thing Cleveland wants to do is they want to get a lead. They want to get a lead and then just hand it to hunt job,

hunt job, hunt job, hunt job, and just, and just kill you. Right. I mean, that's all they want to do. And so it'll be interesting to see how they react to this because this Vikings defense is good as they played at times. The run defense was not awesome at times as well. I was going to ask you about that. Like what, what is your assessment there? I mean, I thought that Seattle was very clever in the way that they did no huddle to keep the Vikings third down defensive line on the field. So then all of a sudden you have Everson Griffin playing three technique on a first down, which is just, you know, Everson said yesterday, Oh no, I can do that. And like,

yeah, but you can't really, I mean, Everson goes at about maybe two 50 these days and you need somebody who's like three 20 in there for that. I thought that was a really clever strategy. I wouldn't be surprised if we see it again, but I also think even when Tomlinson and Pierce have been in there the run defense has just not been all that strong is that is that a product of missing bar or is there something else that is uh happening here you know it's a few things one the defensive line is getting pushed around a little bit um I think that Seattle did a really nice job like you said of scheming up some stuff but at the same time seattle had a few plays that you look at it on paper and you're like oh that shouldn't work like schematically the defense should have had that sniffed out and again if the nfl network can get their crap together and i can watch the all 22 i could

really figure out what was going on but from what i could see there was just times we got creased guys got reached when they shouldn't have gotten reached guys got pinned inside the wrong gap I mean the one long touchdown that Carson had off the left side there Weatherly gets reached and he gets the guard pushed into him so they're getting some vertical push which then makes Kendrick's get lost a little bit so he can't bounce over and make us right and that's how the big plays are happening and Tomlinson those guys are eating up double teams but they're not stoning double teams they're not stopping double teams at the line of scrimmage which allows our linebackers free run which I mean Linville was great at it I mean even our bar our boy Shamar was really good at that and

these two just don't seem to be just stonewalling double teams, which allows for Kendricks and that bar when he's in there, but Vigil right now to go in there and do their thing. And so we're seeing holes in the defense and we're seeing holes. And the other piece of it too, that I think is we don't have Harrison lurking around down the box near as much as we used to when we felt like we had really good corners, we could rely on and didn't have to throw help out to their sides the safeties aren't sitting at 10 they're sitting at 13 they're sitting

at 14 because they feel like they have to get back there and help in the pass game which does allow for some creases to get made in the run game if you don't have the eraser of Harrison Smith down there to make you right and that's an interesting point because I remember seeing in the athletic and I, and all of our predictions are wrong all the time. So this is not like to call anybody out, but there was an article about how they thought the Vikings would have the number one defense in the NFL this year. And where that never added up to me was when the Vikings had the number one defense in the NFL, Xavier Rhodes, one-on-one on an Island against Antonio Brown, Mike Evans, Julio Jones, just go

out and you play over there. They don't have that. They don't remotely have that. They don't even have like in the stratosphere of have that this year. I think it's more of your corners have to kind of survive and you've got to give them help. It's, it's more similar to last year than it is anything that's happened in the past 2016. I thought was maybe the strongest, even secondary with roads playing great captain Munderland at the nickel. Um, I don't, I think those years are long, long gone with the way that the secondary is set up right now. And so I think that they have to try to get themselves in favorable situations, but it's harder to do that to stuff all the first down runs when you can't have harrison standing there as a linebacker

he needs to be able to help these corners because as we've seen uh peterson has not been garbage but he's definitely not like 2016 patrick peterson right and brashad breland has had a really tough go of it yeah and i mean we got our boy, our tweeter. We got our tweeter who can't necessarily. Don't worry, I was going to get to that. Can't necessarily make it out there, but he's going to let us all know about that situation for real. But I mean, you just look at it across the board,

and you're absolutely right. When you have all pros at key positions, and when we talk about having the number one defense in the league, Anthony Barr, all pro, Everson Griffin, Pro Bowl, Linville, Pro Bowl, Harrison. Like, we don't have the multiple Pro Bowl, multiple all pro guys on defense. We have some guys that can or are capable to playing to that level. But, again, you can't help everyone. You nailed it, right? You have to almost kind of, okay, pick my poison.

Do I sell out here to stop the run on first and second, or do I risk getting one thrown over my head? And I think right now we're more along the side of, hey, our better players in Kendricks and Tomlinson and Daniil and those guys are up front, so let's give a little bit of help to the back end. And I think we've embraced more of the bend, don't break mentality than we used to.

It used to be the stuff and we give no inch. And I think we're down more to the bend, don't break mentality because when people don't understand, when you get into the red zone, everything shrinks so much that now Harrison can do both. Now Harry can play both the middle field of the eraser for the run game and help to the corners. And that's where you see where our red zone defense has been fairly effective when we get down there.

It's because everything shrinks and now we can have help in more places. I think in the long run, this feels like it's going to have to be 2019-ish for the way they play defense because Rhodes fell off. Trey Waynes had some injuries. They were kind of mixing people in. Like last year the corners had no idea what to do at football for the most part so that was just a mess uh and these guys i think know what they're doing in general but are just not of the level of a team that's going to

every week try to win with defense uh now we might as well talk about it so cam dansler tweets out that uh whatever it was i saved it on my phone. Hold on. I'm going to pull it up so I can read it verbatim. Let's see here. It was not a great choice by Cam Dantzler. He says, I'm tired of biting my tongue about this whole situation for real, dot, dot, dot. And Mike Zimmer said yesterday that we you're gonna have a a discussion with

him and then i think dancer tweeted out later and this is where it looks sub tweets you gotta own them because no there's no plausible deniability really with sub tweets anymore it's 2021 you can't say oh i was talking about this uh post-game food situation for real like sub sandwiches i should get state no i mean come on man we know what you're talking about he played no defensive snaps and breland has had a bit of a tough time uh so you know mike zimmer you played for mike zimmer well how is he going to respond to a young player deciding to subtweet him well i'm seeing all kinds of things today actually i was kind of doing a little research of it before the pod of that he's like pinning a bunch of stuff about getting traded to the 49ers and like

reposting a bunch of stuff i was like dude they're not going to trade you they're just going to bury you in the depth chart and say oh well you wanted a career but that's unfortunate sit your butt here you'll be inactive each week and you can just show up and practice and guess what no one's going to want you if you don't play so i think that they're gonna have a bit of a come to jesus meeting and if i'm him you just gotta come clean hey this is what i was feeling i'm frustrated about this or i'm not feeling about this and then if you don't like the response okay well you gotta own up to it there's a reason you're not playing i i don't think that anyone that was watching was like,

man, this guy's playing at an all-pro level, and they benched him. He was struggling. Young players struggle. It happens all the time. But it's about how you respond to the struggle more than how you respond to the off-the-field issues of you think because then you just have the wrong people in your circle, the wrong people telling you the wrong things,

which, I mean, I've seen plenty of dudes be out of the league longer or way quicker than they should be because they had the wrong people tell them the wrong things. And so for me, for the young man's chance, I really hope that he accepts the criticism because if you look at the history of the Vikings defense, they develop corners. They understand how to make good corners. You've got one of the best corners of our generation and Patrick Peterson there to mentor you he might not be physically where he was but mentally the dude has so many tools that he could teach you if you're just willing to learn that I hope for the young man's perspective and the young man's chance he gets a chance to kind of regroup and get back to himself now if he goes in there and he's just kind of blowing everything up you can't really

help him and Zimmer ain't gonna put up that, and you could see him get buried, and we could never see him on the field again this year. Yeah, so I think about someone like Anthony Harris for this. For how many years Anthony Harris grinded it out as a special teamer, did a tremendous job. There were no tweets from Anthony Harris about not playing over Andrew Sandejo when at one time he was clearly better, I think, and then that proved out when he finally got a chance to start.

But we never heard a word from Anthony Harris. He did his job. And I think that there's a lesson to be taken from a lot of players who come out as stars and people think, oh, well, I'm a high draft pick. Third round isn't super high, but in his mind, it might be. I'm a draft pick. I played last year that there's sort of an entitlement to this that comes along with pick i mean third round isn't super high but uh in his mind it might be i'm a draft pick i played last year that there's sort of an entitlement to this that comes along with the college culture as

well of like you you're our you're our whole team man you're everything to us they pump guys out pump guys up but when you get to the nfl they're paying you an amount of money to be on the team and it's a contract between you and and that's how this works man you have a contract and you have to fulfill it whether you like your role or not like you don't get to just play because you're you he was bad in preseason he was bad in training camp chris boyd outplayed him clearly throughout training camp like what would you like them to do man just play him because you're you're pretty like i don't know i mean it's just i i think that that's part of it is when people just hype you up and hype you up and hype you up through

college you have certain expectations when you get to the nfl that everyone's going to pat you on the back and be your best friend and give you all the chances in the world and then it's a real slap in the face of reality that no no no and then when guys say i realized it's a business yeah it is it is usually too late when people say that too right yeah yeah i mean and not to be an old man on my soapbox here but we've had a ton of discussions of this since i am in the college realm of everything that's going on of how the nil stuff and all that stuff is going to have a trickle effect into the nfl which is going to be very similar to kind of what we're seeing now. Because even when you come out of college, the recruiting game is so insane, right? Of like,

oh, you're the best or you're just, you're just, oh, I can't help it. Everything for you. And then you get there. And now with the transfer portal, if you get there and you're like, oh man, this sucks. I just want out, send me somewhere else. Boom. You can hit the exit button. Right. Or you're going to have the NIL deal of like man i might be just a running back here but guess what it's nebraska or it's ohio state or it's minnesota it's clemson and this deal they want to give me 10 grand to do this tweet deal blah blah blah whatever so then you get to the nfl and whether you're a draft pick you're not a draft pick nobody cares anymore right it is a performance-based business you perform or you don't and if you don't you're

out and i do think this is going to have some bit of a trickle of the attitudes that get pushed in the nfl what you just said well i should play because i did all this stuff at xyz school or i did all this stuff before i got here i was a draft pick none of that matters anymore and the more people that can understand that the one ones going to have the careers, the more people that just have this inflatedness coming from college to the NFL that don't understand that are going to really struggle. And it's going to be really interesting how the NFL navigates it for the next few years, because I do think it's going to be,

especially as NIL is a wild, wild West right now, how that happens and how that works is going to be up to vets in the NFL to really take a handle and help those young guys out. So I was talking to a player's mom last year, who's a rookie. And she said, well, you know, you've covered the league for a while. Do you have any sort of advice for my young tyke? And I said, special teams, learn to love special teams, give every single ounce of your soul to those special teams, because you're not going to get a playing time over Patrick Peterson or whoever, you know, the guy that they signed in free agency, who's going to go to the hall of fame.

Like you have to fight your way from the very bottom all the way through. And if you want to complain about it, go to mom and complain about it after practice yeah don't tweet about it and i think that this is something for younger people and i i know me i probably would have too i mean all right like if i was mad about the situation i probably would have fired off some subtweet too but guys have to understand that that's not how this is going to work and it's especially not going to get any favor with mike zimmer a guy who just can't stand this. J. Ron Curse did this, and Curse was a decent player, but he tweeted himself right out of here. Diggs did it too. Diggs did it too.

The NFL hates that stuff. No one wants to keep things in-house more than the NFL, and Zimmer especially, right? Keep everything in these doors inside here because it's a distraction. And as we talk about distractions in the NFL lead to losses we talk about the margin with the end of with the offensive line of being a detriment or an asset distractions can be the difference between a win and a loss and you can even go as simple back to and I'm not saying I'm just using this as an example the Kansas City

Chiefs in the Super Bowl last year how many more questions did they have to field about the linebackers coach having the incident off the field versus getting ready for the super bowl like Tampa Bay did when the margin of error in the NFL to win or lose is razor. I mean, as small as you can possibly think, then think smaller is the margin every single week, every little outside instance counts. And I don't think people coming from college to the nfl

understand like hey it's literally the details that make the difference and so that kind of stuff people just don't deal with it well in the nfl guys just do not put up with it at all and as long as your play can kind of outweigh some of that stuff you're all right but the second your play is detrimental and you're off the field is detrimental, you usually don't hear from you for a while. Folks, Minnesota football is back, and there's no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the Internet for Minnesota football tickets anymore because TickPick, that's T-I-C-K, P-I-C-K,

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when they return to Minnesota and plenty more. Visit TickPick.com slash Insider today and use the promo code Insider to save $10 on your first order for Minnesota football tickets. Right. And, uh, with that's what I was gonna say about Stefan Diggs is that the guy is so good that in 2019, the whole truth to all rumors, they came out and won, I think six of their next seven games. It didn't matter because Stefan Diggs is really unbelievably good at football. Cam Dantzler, uh, not so much. So, uh, love to see it. Hate to see it. As we wrap up the show here today,

I'm just going to start with hate to see it. And like I said, to start just coaching in the NFL, Joe judge is tremendously bad. What I saw from Philadelphia last night was shameful. Matt Nagy, Sage Rosenfels and I are going to do a whole episode on what is going on with Chicago and the way they're handling Justin Fields.

It is truly remarkable. Don't forget urban Meyer. At any given time, there are 10 to 15 coaches in the NFL who are so far in over their head. And you can spot it in like two seconds. And Pete Carroll, a legend, but also washed.

I mean, just after watching that sorry man you're not going for it on fourth and three like you're beating down the Vikings defense it's fourth and three in your territory or in their territory if you get this first down you can put a nail in their coffin and you're like now let's kick a field goal let's kick a field goal and and miss like what are you doing it is the year 2021 again so nfl coaching aside from about 10 dudes who know what they're doing is a hate to see it my hate to see it and i know it's only tuesday is the lazy storyline of belichick let brady walk and now we got the sunday game versus Tampa versus the Patriots.

And everyone's just talking about how the Patriots made this huge mistake and let the greatest of all time walk into the, it's like, dude, the cast of characters that Brady went down there and surrounded himself with. I feel like a lot of quarterbacks could have some pretty good success with. Let's not pretend that when you lose a good quarterback which people do on the NFL all the time it's not just the head coach's fault to try and fix it all

I think it's a lazy take I'm already tired of hearing about it and it's just going to be something we have to hear about the entire rest of the week until we get to the game and then eventually we'll see what happens but I just I'm so tired of hearing the Belichick Brady argument already. Well, and even people painting the narrative of like the Patriots ran Brady out of town or Belichick mismanaged Brady or whatever. Like, I don't know, man, you got a lot of rings that says otherwise. And I, and I don't care what Brady's trainer says. I think that guy is the snake oil salesman of all snake oil salesman okay uh so you know whatever it's just yeah i'm totally with you that that that storyline those two are the greatest

coach uh quarterback combination in nfl history okay so like any anything spinning it the other way also if brady doesn't leave they go like what eight and eight i. I mean, it's terrible. It's terrible. Not a good football team last year. Not even close. Not even close. Love to see it. A 66 yard field goal. I mean, what? When, when the thing is crazy is when Justin Tucker lined up to kick it, it's like, I think

he can do it. A hundred percent. Right. Indoors. This guy's the greatest kicker maybe ever. I think you can do it. And then it doinks. You're like, I think he can do it. 100%. Right? Indoors, this guy's the greatest kicker maybe ever. I think he can do it. And then it doinks. You're like, what?

Where did it go? I don't know how you felt watching in the moment. I was like, did it go down? Did it go up? What happened? You see it hit the net. And then it hits the net. I can't believe it.

The greatest kick in NFL history we were able to witness. So great job, Justin Tucker. I mean, how about Prater trying to hit the 68-yarder earlier? And like, I kind of had the same thought with him too, though. Like I kind of, when he went out there to kick it, I was like, if anyone's going to do this, it's going to be Booze and Matt Prater. Like this dude's going to hammer this thing

and then just go shock on a beer on the sideline too. But okay, so my love to see it is the Kansas City Chiefs look human I think that it's fun when those who we anoint king always because we rightfully probably should look human and I think Justin Herbert and the Chargers have a really good football team I think the AFC West has actually gone from one of the worst football-like divisions the last few years to a very good football division when you go from top to bottom between the Raiders, the Chiefs, the Chargers, and the Broncos. So I like to see Tampa, Kansas City, and all the elites of the NFL look a little human because it makes for a little bit more of a fun season. It makes for a little bit more than just the idea of, well, we could start the playoffs tomorrow, and we all know who would be there.

And I just like more competitive play versus what we saw last year of, there was the Elites last year, and then there was the Knots. And I think that that gap is closing a little bit more for the middle part of the NFL. But like you said, the bottom 10 of the NFL are just atrocious right now.

So bad. And I forgot to mention the New York Jets and their coaching as well. That I was given. That's just, everyone just knows that. I mean, I think they had higher expectations, but wow. Their offensive line is so bad. Yeah. I mean, poor Zach Wilson, that guy, that guy's career is going to get,

he's going to get hurt. He's going to get Joe burrowed, which sucks. This was, this was going to be my last hate to see it. Stop playing rookie quarterbacks if you can't give them a decent team. That's it. Just get Ryan Fitzpatrick or get Amakown or whatever. Some veteran, Jacoby Brissett, looked like he could play NFL quarterback. Somebody, because you're not winning the Super Bowl and it's not helping anyone when Zach Wilson has an offense that doesn't work, an offensive line that doesn't work, weapons that aren't good enough.

Like you're just getting guys confidence destroyed from the very outset. I still wonder if that's what happened with Josh Rosen because he played for just a horror show of an offense. They fired their offensive coordinator in Arizona in like his fifth week or something. I i mean it's just like these teams are a disaster they drafted high for a reason and if you can't if you're gonna put out the bears offensive line for justin feels like i get i actually agreed with that like don't don't play justin fields if you can't protect him or you can't give him an offense that's gonna help i think it's I think he's way better than Andy Dalton but I I think that we're really seeing why it's smart to sit rookie quarterbacks for a year I I agree I think it's I think you have to sit them if you can't put things around them the problem is the pressure to play them could cost you your job I mean if you draft Trevor Lawrence or Justin

Fields in the top 10 or whatever it is and you you don't play them, and you go, what, you lose 10 games, 11 games? I mean, the fans are going to be like, well, why'd you even draft him? What's the point? Fire him. Find me someone else. And they'll start all over, right? And it's just not – no one in the NFL has long-term vision anymore. Okay, I'll say that for my last hate to see it.

I hate that you can't plan for two years from now yeah you you can't say hey we're drafting this guy second overall we're going to develop him we're going to teach him what it means to be a pro we're going to teach him nfl schemes and nfl defenses and nfl blitz packages and show him how it means week in and week out to be an nfl quarterback and then we're going to put a better team around him next year. Cause guess what? I got hired in January. So then I had to put a free agency class together in three months.

Then I put a draft class, like give me a year, allow me to rebuild this thing the way that I want to rebuild it. And don't Pat Shermer me and fire me after a year. Right. And I just think that the no long-term vision in the NFL is ruining a lot of franchises. It's certainly making the road a lot harder for rookie quarterbacks so uh jeremiah great stuff let me ask you real

quick just give me the just give me the real quick answer by the bye week after six football games what's the vikings record you think three and three okay i think so too yeah and 500 that's 500 yep that's what that's where my poll had them and i agree so all right we will do this next week and next week the nfl best have its all 22 out and red has to it has to football football