Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jeremiah Sirles breaks down the TRENCHES of Vikings-Lions

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Former Minnesota Viking Jeremiah Sirles goes hardcore on Vikings/Lions trenches and talks about how each team will handle each other's offensive and defensive lines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here, and it is time for Tuesday Morning Left Guard. Yes, we all understand it's a Wednesday, but sometimes Mr. Jeremiah Searles, former Minnesota Viking, has things going on, so we've made a little adjustment here. But you know what? This allows us to turn the page, to focus on the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings. And you know what I want to get into, Jeremiah? I want to get into some hardcore in the trenches football with you. I want to break down Vikings trenches, Lions trenches.

Are you prepared for this? Oh, I'm ready. I'm always ready. I mean, you talk about trenches. I mean, first of all, the first thing that comes to mind is Rip Aiden Hutchinson. Right? Like, that sucks. That's going to be a huge blow for them.

But then you flip it on the other side and you go, I wonder if they're going to throw a pass to an O-lineman this week. Right? Like, you're like, I wonder, is Dan Skipper going to be out there over Cam Bynum for the try and go run the post fade? But no, I mean, both mean both teams i think have excellent trenches i think you know the loss of aiden hudgenson is huge for them but yeah both teams you look at where the strength of their team is uh you know defensively for us it's up front

offensively for them it's up front so it's going to be it's gonna be a great game i cannot wait to watch this game it is hard to find mismatches but there is one that is very distinct on the lion's side elaine mcneil a recently very highly paid gentleman uh versus the interior of the vikings offensive line but there is a little bit of a twist here and we don't know as of our recording if when dalton riser will be bumped up to the 53 man Now, he talked the other day in the locker room, and he said he's in good shape. He's ready to go. He is in football shape to play. And I guess I don't know if it's going to happen this week,

but it wouldn't be the most shocking thing if they elevated him and just started him at right guard, because I think that the patience has run out for the right guard, especially in London. Ed Ingram has not developed. Last year took a little bit of a step forward. It's gone straight backward. It's the mental errors.

It's the quick losses. There shouldn't be three to five plays a game for a guard where your quarterback is instantly under pressure. Yet that is kind of the story of the Vikings for the last like six years uh but think about this Ed Ingram has a lower pass blocking efficiency than Dakota Dozier and Tom Compton and Mike Remmers it's actually been worse this year than it has ever been for the Vikings and I think that you just have to go to Dalton Reisner, even if you are sacrificing some of the run blocking ability of Ed Ingram. Yeah, and I don't think it's one of those things you just throw him out there and start him. You got to rotate him in to start.

I don't know. You can say that you're in football shape as much as you want, but to go out there and just start a football game. I mean, you saw the first time Trent Williams did it week one. He's needing an IV in the back, in the locker room. I mean, it's just hard to go in, especially middle of the year, and just think that you're in the same type of fighting shape that the rest of the guys on the field are. So I think that this week, if they do activate him, or whenever they do activate him, it's going to be hard for me to believe

they're just going to throw him out there and go, all right, 65 plays, man, go for it. But I do agree that it needs to be it needs to be done there's a reason he's on this team there's a reason they brought him back and with blake brandle playing as well as he is he's playing above expectations and ed ingram playing below expectations there's really only one answer here and you got to put dalton reisner in there or have them in there and last chance for ed hey we're going to rotate you guys and whoever plays the best in here is going to start next week, right? Just keep competing,

keep trying to find ways to go. And eventually the best five will find their way out there. Right. And maybe there's, I don't know, last year felt like there was a little bit of a kick in the rear for Ingram when they signed Reisner and they moved on from Ezra Cleveland and stuck with Ingram. But that has always felt like the only reason they've continued to do this is because he was a draft pick. It has not been based really on performance at all. And even when it comes to things like the screen game, there's two different touchdowns they could have had

if he just does the right thing in the screen game. It's really the details with him. And by year three, those details need to be right. With Reisner, He is a top half of the league pass blocking guard, but he is switching to the other side. And I don't know if they're going to activate him and play him this week. If it could be Thursday, if it could be not even until they play against the Indianapolis Colts. So as far as the trenches go, it is the mismatch on the favor of the Detroit lions lions but i am curious

from your opinion about switching from the left to the right side because yesterday i asked uh wes phillips about this and he was like oh you know if you're a pro you can do it and i think i don't know that wes phillips ever played offensive line because i don't think it's quite that easy no it's absolutely not that easy. And yes, if you are a pro, you usually have to do it at one point in your career unless you're the guy, right? Unless you're the guy and they drafted you. But even then, I think of guys like Olu Fushanu and Joe Alt

who got drafted in the top 10 this year and immediately they're like, oh, Joe, you've only played left tackle since you were in high school. That's cool. You started right tackle for us now, right? Oh, Olu, you played left tackle? Oh, well, our right tackles hurt. So you're going to go over there and play right tackle. It's

something you have to be able to learn and do in the NFL in order to stick around until you become that solidified starter. But it's not as easy as everyone thinks it is from, from a number of perspectives. And the first thing I always tell people when they're like, well, you just switched from your right to your left, right? It's all the same. Like next time you go to the bathroom, wipe your ass with your other hand and tell me how easy it is. Just tell me how simple when you're like, oh, I can't even hold the toilet paper, right? It's not as simple as you think. And not just from a physical standpoint, from a mental standpoint, if you're on the left side and you're used to your left hand back and your right hand forward and all that stuff, and all of a sudden

things start happening chaotically, the body kind of switches back to default mode, fall back on what you've done forever. And your feet can get all jacked up and all of a sudden things start happening chaotically the body kind of switches back to default mode fall back on what you've done forever and your feet can get all jacked up and all that and then the play call sometimes you're used to hearing a certain play call and okay i'm on the front side because i'm on the left side now you're on the back side and it changes the footwork changes the points there's a lot that goes into it but my hope would be that he's been practicing right for since he got back, pulled up and say, Hey, this is the trajectory in which we see you come on because a veteran like that needs probably three, four weeks to get combed in and get everything picked back over there

because the skillset yes, the same, but if you start flip-flopping back and forth, it's really hard to get in a groove on one single side of the ball. And he has been there since the beginning of training camp. They had him right over there competing with Ed Ingram until he got hurt. And that's why he's been out since then. So we'll see if something happens there. Also, you could have gone with, you could have gone with anything.

You could have gone with eat your cereal with your left hand. You could have gone with literally anything except for that. So let's talk about though, the Lions and how they look without Aiden Hutchinson, because the Vikings tackles have just been flat out unbelievable. They each have allowed fewer than 10 pressures this year. And when you think about the guys that they have faced, Daniil Hunter, Will Anderson, Nick Bosa, Brian Burns. These are the highest paid and the best players in the world. But I think that Hutchinson was playing at even another level where they actually would have had to give some help to him. Now it feels like a major, major advantage for the Vikings that,

yeah, they still have some guys who could get after the passer, but in no way close to Hutchinson. So does this mean more blitzes from the Detroit Lions, or are they going to kind of stick with it and hope that their interior pressure comes through? How do they make up for losing him? Yeah, it's going to be really curious. I think we're lucky that we're hitting them. Lucky, I say that the week right after Aiden's gone,

because they're still going to try and figure out, can we get to the rusher, can we get to the passer without blitzing? And we need to take advantage of that early in the game if we're stifling their front four and sam's got all the time back there to throw yay us because if that's the case then the next coming weeks they're probably going to see more pressures on first and second down you're going to see on third down instead of just saying oh hayden go get him right you're gonna have to create and more i think we'll see more line games I think we'll see a lot more line games trying to get guys on different levels, trying to get guys moving around and seeing if you can't squeeze through a gap. But if I'm Detroit, I'm just

going to stick with my original game plan that I've had, trust on the guys in my room, and then have to make adjustments as we go. But I agree with you. When you talk about the elite of the elite rushers in the NFL right now, Aiden was or two I think TJ Watts still probably one and then you know Miles is always flirting with that but the level at which Aiden was playing at was unblockable at times I mean I watched him run right through guys run right around guys he had every move in the bag he was really feeling the groove of a pass rusher and to watch him take that gruesome injury is going to be really tough for them to overcome I wouldn't be surprised if they try and make a trade for a big time edge rusher if it doesn't work out in the next couple weeks being able to get pressure without blitzing yeah I don't know if the Raiders will trade Max Crosby but that makes the most

sense I probably wouldn't either and you know we're talking a lot over here about hey could you get Dexter Lawrence or Jeffrey Simmons? Usually teams just don't trade those guys, but we can talk about it anyway. Josh Paschal and James Houston are not bad players. I think they could still put some pressure on, but the really the McNeil and reader and even on was Zerky at times. I mean, both, all three of these guys can get after the passer and reader is a real beast

in there. I'm very curious about the Vikings run game against this defensive line and this front seven. If Aaron Jones plays, if Aaron Jones doesn't play after seeing him out there a little bit Monday, and as we record this, haven't seen Wednesday's practice. So I'm very curious about how much he's able to do in Wednesday's practice. He did have the bye week to able to do in Wednesday's practice. He did have the bye week to try to get a little bit better.

Or is it the Ty Chandler and Cam Akers show against this interior that's really good? But I think the Vikings do need a run game here because they have to stay on the field. This is a main goal and objective for the Vikings. Stay on the field. Do not allow the Detroit Lions to control the time of possession in this game. Yeah, and you nailed it. It has to be through the run game. And you can say, well, we'll do the quick pass game and all that stuff. But you fall second and 10, third and 10 behind this team.

It's really hard to get yourself back in that manageable third down or even convert on those long downs. So early first down successful runs is going to be critical because then you can really open up the playbook but man I just it's hard for me to have a lot of confidence after watching that game without Aaron Jones in it and watching the run game basically go to nothing and going okay I get Cam Akers was here last year he had pretty good success when Joe Mixon wasn't playing down in Houston and now he's up there but at least he's familiar with the playbook so he should be able to jump right in have an immediate impact but it's got to be a point of emphasis it has to be something we can't

shy away from if it doesn't work early in the game so many offensive coordinators if early successful run plays don't happen they get so nervous they get so scared all the run game's not going to work today. It's like there's 12 minutes left in the first quarter, dude. Just stay with it a little bit. Like, give me a couple more series. But that's why it's going to be so critical. And Coach Cooper and this whole line has to find a way to have early success running the ball,

to give KOC the confidence to stay with it, stay after it, and not put all of it on Sam Darnold to complete an intermediate passing game to try and stay on the field. Just as an overall performance this year from the offensive line, how would you grade it if you were doing like an A through F? You know, I think I would probably give it an A-, if I'm being honest. You know, you talk about the number one thing being your tackle play. I mean, the tackle play in the league right now, you're watching quarterbacks get murdered. I mean mean Jacoby Brissett's almost dead I mean Caleb

Williams has been killed multiple times I mean these guys are getting just crushed and then you turn on the Vikings tape and Sam for the most part staying pretty clean staying pretty upright and so everything is predicated on that and then even early in the year really you take out this last game I felt like our double teams inside have been really well between Garrett and Ed and Garrett and Brandel. And then obviously when you go Brandel and Derisaw, two massive humans doubling on a three technique. You know, I feel like our inside double teams have done a really nice job. It's more the single blocks where everyone kind of takes their turn sometimes. Right. Where it's Ed overreaching a three or garrett's not getting the

nose reach or brandle's not getting a backside cut off or even o'neill or derisaw's getting creased and not pressing it on the edge you know so it's really more the single blocks which is going to happen everyone gets paid a lot of money in this league but you know overall i feel like they've been a top 10 unit so far when we factor in degree of difficulty in the players that they've gone against i would have to agree that if you only have one weak link, that you're usually able to work around that. Blake Brandel has given up five pressures so far this year, which is just remarkably good for him.

And he hasn't been the next Zach Martin or something, but he's been a very high-quality starting left guard, just solid week in and week out. I thought he struggled at times a little bit against the jets, but some of that is personnel and just who you're going against as well. And you just can't talk enough about the value of the tackles. And when you look at the average time to throw, I mean, Sam Darnold's had a lot of time back there, sometimes a little too much.

And I saw a stat today that he was one of the lower quarterbacks the league for throwing to his first read which you want that ball to go to the first read a little bit more from sam darnold as we go forward here but i would give them pretty high marks i believe pff has them as 15th in pass blocking and third and run blocking which is a nice boost from where they were in the run blocking last year, which was just not all that particularly great. Let's go to the other side. This Detroit Lions offensive line is art.

It is really, really something beautiful. How do you counteract a team that has conduciveness, high IQ, versatility, great tackles, great guards, tremendous center from the state of Minnesota. I mean, they just, they've got everything on the offensive line. How do you deal with that? I don't know if I'm being honest

because I've watched Detroit a ton. I broke them down a ton on our other podcasts because they're just O-line porn. And you just watch it and you're going, it doesn't matter who they play. They don't change. They do not change their scheme. They do not change who they are. They truly line up and go, you know what we're doing.

Stop it. And no one's really been able to do that to them yet. I mean, you talk about two great backs in Montgomery and Gibbs, and you're just sitting there going, do you blitz? Do you not blitz? Do you just put five guys on the line, and then you do all that, and you stack the box, and then here comes Jamison Williams over the top. It is just such a complete offense, and it starts up front. They've invested heavily into that offensive line, first-round tackles, first-round center. They upgraded the guard positions in the offseason

and even when guys like Glasgow have to come in at center and spot start they don't skip a beat and I we got to give a shout out I mean people in Minnesota remember Hank Fraley's the head O-line coach he was the assistant O-line coach with me in Minnesota he's done a tremendous job and so it's really going to come down to you can scheme all you want against this team but guys up front got to win their matchups that's the only way you beat this team is you physically have to just go out and beat the guy across from you and find ways to get disruption find ways to not let them climb on linebackers and it's an easier said task than done but I haven't seen a team really stop their run game once this year see I was thinking along the lines of you have to trick them

because, I mean, that's what Brian Flores has been doing. It's actually interesting to look at the PFF grades for the Vikings pass rushing versus the actual production. The grades have not been super high because they don't have an Aiden Hutchinson or a Miles Garrett that's just winning and winning and winning and winning. But yet they're the second highest pressure rate team in the NFL. And I think a lot of that is, all right, who's coming at me for the quarterback and the U S bank stadium noise is a massive factor in this. And that's where the trickery

is the only way to get them off of their game because the one-on-one matchups, you're probably not winning. I mean, when it, when it comes to penne sewell versus jonathan grenard penne i mean grenard's been great he's second in the league in pressures going into last week before the bye week but penne sewell's like all world at what he does but not if he doesn't know where the rush is coming from explain to me what that's like u like us bank stadium level noise team that throws all sorts of different human beings up there it seems like it's got to be a nightmare for offensive line oh absolutely it's a nightmare for the entire offense you know to get up and try and get lined up and there's so much communication that needs to take place because of the exotic looks that

you're getting and usually it's very specific of, Hey, in this look, we have to make sure we point that guy. So we're sliding the proper way. And then not only do we have to know the running back behind us has to make sure that he knows where the point is, right? It's so much communication that needs to happen at the line of scrimmage when you're at us bank and that place is rocking and rolling and popping. It's really hard to communicate verbally. You're going to have to create hand signals. You're going to see a lot of guys pointing right over there trying to show where they're at.

And if you can get them up on the ball quickly and get that done, great. But if you start trying to do some trickery with 10 seconds left, eight seconds left, you look like it's an overload right, and then once there's eight seconds on the shot clock, oh my gosh, it's an overload left, and then once there's eight seconds on the shot clock, oh my gosh, it's an overload left, and then down set hut. That's the kind of stuff where having the veteran offensive line helps, but it's still hard to make sure that all five, six, seven guys that are involved in the protection scheme have to be on the same page

or else that's where you see the free runners, that's where you see guys coming clean, and that's where those big-time sack, sack fumbles type stuff happens. So what do you see with your offensive lineman brain when you watch what brian floris is doing at the line of scrimmage you know i when i broke it down with my center from the giants and we're watching it and just talking through it so much of it is identifying who the downs are you know that's the number one thing is hey who's the down rushers right because that's where everything starts you never never want to put, even if he's walking around, like say, Grenard's out walking around, I'd say he's moving around. You never

want to be like, Oh yeah, he's a linebacker. So maybe he potentially ends up on the running back. Right. So first thing is identifying, okay, is it a three down front? Is it a four down front? Okay. So let's say it's a four down front. Okay. That's my down guy. Who's my Mike. Who's my Sam. Who's my will. And then my Sam? Who's my Will? And then by then, you just have to start trusting the layers of the protection, right? Some protections are Mike-based, some are Will-based, some are Sam-based. And understand, okay, just play within the rules. Let things happen in front of you.

And if five is wrong, we're right. If all five of us are wrong, but we pick up five guys, and that's the best thing we can do, and we got to let the back pick up the rest, it's three are right and two are wrong it's when things really start going as a disaster so you just have to really make sure that you get up there's no alignment and just go hey that's the point here's the call roll with it and not try and get too cute and trying to fix things late i have just seen a lot of offensive linemen looking around like what who was why did and one of the things that Flores does is guys come forward and then go backwards so it's not just hey all right this guy drops out immediately and you could sort of shuffle and identify at first it looks like everybody is coming on the rush and there was

that game that was super memorable the last uh not the last time goff played florist but when goff was with la and florist just completely mind bleeped him into a bunch of interceptions and sacks and all that in 2020 and then everyone went this brian florist dude might be a psycho he knows what he's doing uh but i just remember some of those pressures throwing him off because they would start with everyone looks their first movement is forward and then certain guys drop back and it just seems like everyone is looking around going what is going on here getting on the same page with the cadence the late checks i want you to explain where we are so deep into football right now that i want you to explain

because the way brian flores has laid this out is that Blake Cashman and Harrison Smith can be the last check so the you know they go up they set the protection all right there's some movement are we going to make a change but the shot clock as you said runs out and it seems like the defense has this opportunity but what does that mean when we're talking about like the late check from the defense yeah so majority of the times it's not as much as people think we're smart. We pretty much have pretty universal calls, right? Like, hey, Rocco to the right, Loco to the left, right? Lily, Rose, right?

You can't dummy call yourself too much because then you end up tricking yourself. And I've been parts of teams where we've done that. And all of a sudden, you're like, wait, is this the dummy call? Or are we on the right call here? And especially with noise. So majority of the time, an old lineman is going to come up. He's going to look at it. The center is going to come up and look and say, okay,

Mike base protection, Mike's left. Hey, let's go lawn over here to the left. Well, smart defenders and Eric Hendricks was great at this. Luke Keekly, right? Like those really good guys that all come up and go, okay, they're going to the right. Let's check and blitz to the left, right? So let's call and blitz to the left.

And so you'll see the defense checking and then people move and then the offensive line tries to check and get back over to the other side now. And then if they do that and there's five seconds left on the shot clock and all of a sudden they hear, hey, Rocco, Rocco, Rocco, they can just look over at Harry and just look and give him the thing and say, hey, you're going and bounce. And so the defense, at home especially, definitely has the upper hand of having the last check.

You know, when you're an offense and you're at home, you can usually kind of trick them into that using cadence, right, going on a double, going on even a triple cadence, and trying to get them just to see that safety ego. Oh, oh, he's rotating. Okay, let's move back here. Delta set hut, right? We can usually get the quick cadence on them when you see that safety ego oh oh he's rotating okay let's move back here delta set hut right we can usually get the quick cadence on them when you see that but when you're on the road you want to make sure everything's buttoned up and going there the defense absolutely has the second

hand to just say hey i think they're going this way let's send it that way or hey they're coming this way so let's try and get them to fool that way so we can create the matchup of the running back on this linebacker instead of the running back on the safety and this game in particular what a magical matchup between the defense and offense here especially with jared goff he's played in minnesota a number of times it does not seem to bother him very much this is a more talented vikings defense than he has faced in quite some time though as he's been shredding them up and down for what feels like years now last year though the the crowd noise was going it was a close game and he just doesn't really flinch he's been doing it for so long and he's also very good at if the offensive line does allow a quick pressure he doesn't take very

many sacks and this is where I feel like if you let Goff especially get ahead of the sticks, get to second and three, get to third and short, that he just is very hard to stop because they have all these things that are in there with play actions, which he's awesome at and deserves a lot of credit for that. Sometimes it's like, well, it was a play action. So, like, well, the guy executes the heck out of everything that they possibly call I think him and the chess game with Flores's defense his experience at US Bank Stadium his experience running this offense is just going

to be really fascinating to watch it does start with whether they could slow down the running game at all it's a really good running game and the first true fantastic run game that they're going to face, I think. But I just like to watch it with golf and how he operates and how he reads the defense. I think something, just a real quick golf rant is we don't give quarterbacks credit for throwing to wide open people because you're like, what the thing is wide open. I could have made that throw, but the decision, the read, the choice, it matters. And I think he's so good at that. I can't wait to watch the coverages shift and for him to process where he's

going with the football. It's just going to be like high level national football league stuff from him. Yeah. And the one thing I've been really impressed with him this year is his anticipation on some throws right guys are wide open but he's letting the ball go before they're wide open right and then that's where people oh man he was wide open it's like but if you go back and watch the release of when he threw

that football the guy's still five ten yards away from where he catches the football and that's the game that I think he's really taken to a next level this year, especially is just the anticipation. And again, that goes back to the decision-making of, Hey, this is cover two. There's my window. I know my receiver is going to be there. Bang. Oh, this is cover three, or this is man, or whatever it is.

And understanding the coverage and knowing where he wants to go with the ball before the receiver is even there. That's the type of stuff that takes the quarterbacks from good and great to elite. And I'm not saying that Jared Goff is elite, but he's playing at an elite level the last two weeks. He really is. And the other piece, he hasn't thrown the ball over 30 times in three games. I believe it was last I looked. That's a recipe for success, man. If you're throwing the football 28 and I think you went 18 of 18 against Seattle or success, man. If you're throwing the football 28 and you're, I think you went 18 of 18 against Seattle or whatever it was. If you're throwing the ball

under 30 times, it's hard to make bad decisions because you're usually setting yourself up and you're picking the chances and picking the times you want to throw the ball, not throwing the ball because you have to. And that's where things start to get really messy. If you have to throw the ball because you're behind or you're behind the sticks or whatever it is you're playing in the defensive hands but if the defense is continually looking going are they running or are they passing i'm not sure then there's a ton of opportunity for you to have high percentage high level throws now let's go to samson darnold samuel i don't know i assume it's samuel i'm assuming Samuel. Yeah. So Sam Darnold, there has been maybe a seed of doubt planted over the last six quarters in Sam Darnold.

But when we look at the overall production of the first five weeks, the Vikings could not have asked for anything better from him. I assumed there was going to be some turnovers. I assume there was going to be some ups and downs with him, but five and oh, a very good offense. I would not say that the Vikings through five games have an elite offense. I think it has been good and solid.

And when Andrew Van Ginkle has two pick sixes, that makes your scoring numbers look a little bit better. But I don't think that it's been quite as consistent as you would want it to be as in four quarters of solid play, churning out first downs, moving the sticks. It's been a lot more boomer bust from Sam Darnold through the first five weeks. And again, the best form of that, the booms have been outstanding, but against this defense, the Vikings have had a lot of that boom over the last few years. Should we just expect Sam Darnold to do the same thing that Nick Mullins did last year or

that Kirk cousins did for years, or is this a very different defense that he's facing in Detroit? Yeah. You know, I think this is a very defense that he's facing. I'm on a call, buddy. Okay. I got, I got, I got to work. Um, I think this is a very different defense than he's ever faced. And maybe not ever, but this year especially, because we're not going to blow this team out. And so much of saying, oh, the boom or the bust, is because we've been scoring at will early in the games, and we haven't really had to see the four-quarter grinded out.

When we did have to see that, that's where the question marks started coming up going, can he consistently do this week in and week out? Because the NFL, I mean, just watching even this week and last week, yeah, there's always one or two blowouts, but man, every game comes down to one score in the fourth quarter, gotta have it moments. And you're saying, can Sam do that when it's not a blowout

or when he doesn't have a 28 point lead against Green Bay? And the one sample size that we have of that this year raised a lot of red flags. And so this is a game where if you give this team a turnover, you give this team a short field off, something like that, they're going to make you pay for it. So the operation has to be even that much more crucial. The converting first downs is that much more crucial when you're playing against a complete football team. And Sam's going to have to play his best game yet. And he's played some

really good games up to this point, but in order to beat the Detroit lions, you have to have all 11 guys and your quarterback, especially operating at the highest level possible, or else this team's going to make you pay for it in a big way. What I want to see is Kevin O'Connell having gone into the buy and maybe looked himself in the mirror a little bit and said how can I get some easy passes for this guy it feels like when there's a lot of home run throws and and some of this is Darnold of course when you watch back the tape you see some underneath guys that he's just like should i no i shouldn't i should go down the field like sam the little nailer underneath just or he just is almost allergic to josh oliver the number of times oliver has kind of been open

like dude this guy is six foot six he's got huge hands just kind of boop it to him and he'll catch the ball but um i think that that should be a main goal of this game. Jordan Addison needs eight catches. He needs, even if it's only for 60 or 70 yards, he doesn't need three catches and all of them are for 20 yards and you complete three out of eight or whatever it was against the New York Jets. I think that he needs to be really a lot more involved and the tight ends need to be more involved. I think that he needs to be really a lot more involved and the tight ends need to be more involved. I know Hogginson is not going to play in this game, but it's okay to use your Johnny Muntz and your Josh Oliver and just move the sticks. It's okay to

throw a swing pass or a check down to your running back. I don't know if there's been a single check down all year to a running back and it's kind of like okay you don't have to swing for the fences every single time and I think they're especially going to need that mentality against this Detroit team yeah I'd love to see the screen game continuing to get back into it too you know the the screens have been okay this year they haven't been awesome they've been okay but you know screens some draws some wide receiver screens you know just those type of things of getting the ball out of his hand quickly and then just trying to throw it into him as getting it into your playmakers because like you said yeah

addison on a slant for eight yards would be awesome because he does have that catch and run ability right also having the jefferson on some too. You know, all that stuff is, it's there, but I just don't know why he's not comfortable with it. And that's the question. I just, I don't know. Is it a, I want to push the ball down the field because that's what Kevin wants me to do. Or is it just, I don't have the confidence of the tempo type throws of rolling out kind of on the run and just that touch pass for a nine yard completion instead of being able to unload it down the field accurately for 30 yards which he's very good at but sometimes those in intermediate balls really just it's a confidence thing for a

quarterback to be able to put it up over the linebackers drop it in before the safety there's so much room for error if it's a little bit not where it needs to be I just don't know I watching Sam I just don't know if it's a confidence thing that he doesn't feel confident doing or if it's more just hey this is what coach O'Connell wants me to do so I'm gonna do it I wonder about what he sees like when it comes to I thought Kirk Cousins was really good at this when all of this nonsense is happening in the middle of the field with linebackers, safeties, or here comes a robber, or here comes a Tampa 2 linebacker, whatever. He was very good at identifying it quickly on those short passes and then anticipating and throwing.

I just don't know that Darnold sees the middle of the field all that well. I felt that way in training camp. All of his best plays were outside the numbers, and a lot of them were absolutely spectacular, as they have been. And when it comes to the deep crossers, okay, the guy's 25 yards down the field. I think he could see it there. But in a little bit of the mud, when it's not very clear, I just don't think that I see the ball coming out on time a lot. There have been several plays where he pulls the ball coming out on time a lot. There have been several plays where it's,

he pulls the ball back, like, I think I've got it. And then he just doesn't throw and maybe not trusting his eyes and things like that. So if you're O'Connell, you do have to work around it. But if it's short outs, if it's swings, if it's even a bubble screen mixed in, and you mentioned the screen game is huge here. They were good in the screen game in a couple of games, but then against the jets, they threw two screens for one yard, which I think I had had a lot to do with them playing man coverage, but you got to find a way because it's such a big weapon. Uh, I want to know from you kind of a, what if they win? What if they lose here? So I think if they win, you start playing in the parade route. And if they lose, I don't know.

How much do we react to that? For me, it'll depend how they lose. Is it a close game? Is it all the way to the wire? And Detroit makes a play at the end, or we just fail to make a play right there at the end? Because then that tells me we can go toe-to-toe with these type of teams, and eventually the ball bounces your way.

If you put yourself in position in the fourth quarter to win the game whether it's on the offense or the defensive side of the ball and it just doesn't roll your way that time and you lose by three or you lose by six or seven or whatever it is i'm not going to hit the panic button like oh well we can't do it but if we lose this team by 14 or more that's when the question marks are really going to start to come up okay are we as good as good as we think we are? Where are the holes that this team exposed us on? Because that's a Superbowl level team. It's where we're aspiring to be. How do we try and catch up to that? So yeah, we win this game. I mean, the North is right there for us. I mean, the North is we're in the driver's seat. It's we're going to have the target on our back every single week. We're going to still,

every game gets more and more important, but if we lose this game, it's really time to go, OK, how did we lose it? And what do we need to do to find a way to beat teams like Detroit? I think it has more to do with the path to winning the entire NFC and winning the division than it does how I feel about them. Like, I feel like they're really good. The numbers back up that they're really good so if you lose to detroit i'm not gonna go oh what frauds but it's not the 2022 type of situation where all the wins were kind of random and everything else it's much more about if you

win this and go to six and oh and then you go to play the r who you could lose to, but you should be. And then it's AFC South, AFC South, AFC South. And you're running. And the whole rest of the year, the toughest team out of the division that you play is probably Atlanta, which I think in US Bank Stadium, they're a better team then. We'll see what Kirk looks like at that point. And then you've got the division games at the end. You could be talking about getting on a roll that puts you in 13 win type of territory if you lose you could still win that many games but it gives detroit that leg up and it just becomes like that much harder

to win the entire conference so that's kind of what we're talking about here uh when you get to five and oh it's crazy it's not it's nuts to think about in five weeks how we we've changed our tone but that's what's so great about the nfl is you can just look at it and go a week to week basic things change right and every week you stack good wins the more notoriety you get and if you go to six and oh yeah it's more i always it was funny you know as a player you would always talk about, yeah, we want to win the conference, but everything was about winning the division. That's where my mind always goes immediately first.

It's like, yeah, first place in the NFC would be great, but you got to win the division. Always the first thought in your brain is you got to win those division games, and then the rest takes care of itself. You go win this one against Detroit, and you put yourself in the driver's seat. You give yourself a little bit of breathing room for a hiccup later in the year because it's bound to happen. A hiccup, run into a team that's playing really streaky and something happens or you lose a guy,

lose one or two guys for a week or two in weeks 10 and 11. And, you know, you're just kind of trying to battle through there. If you have that one or two game buffers between you and the next team, it just allows you to kind of, okay, take a second here. Versus if you're playing catch, playing catch up and chasing a team like that, you can't afford any of those hiccups later in the year. You can't afford the, it doesn't matter. Guys are, we have to win this game. Every game becomes almost a must win.

And that's a really hard place to live in as a player and as an organization on a weekend to week out basis. Yeah. Thinking about a two game lead on Detroit versus tied with Detroit feels very different. Two games up feels like they're going to have to do a lot to get back with you. And tied is neck and neck to the best teams. And then they have a quarterback with a much bigger sample size of success than the Vikings do. And all of a sudden you go, well, okay, it's not quite the same now. It doesn't mean they're not going to make the playoffs

or it's going to be a collapse or anything, but it does kind of change the mindset a little bit. What was your favorite matchup with Detroit? What was your favorite game against Detroit? I've got a nomination. I mean, the most hilarious was 2016. That game was preposterous uh it's just is that the blocked field goal uh we had a blocked field goal in that game i think um could be i was

that uh well there was a blocked field goal on thanksgiving 2017 that would have won detroit the game but the guy was offside yes so that i remember yeah i remember 2017 um was a very memorable one uh for me it's funny the most memorable one for me and for all the wrong reasons was the thanksgiving game with the aretha franklin eight minute long national anthem yes because i have a very distinct memory of like i had a very i have a routine for the anthem right you pray through the first half and then you kind of get yourself ready for the second half i remember i got done praying and i was like we're like on the oh say can you see part still like what is going on like i remember going from like double hands on the shoulder pads to hands below kind of looking around like what

what is happening are we being punked right now um but i remember that one then the other one that stings me the most is i think it was 16 as well we go down and we score with like 17 21 seconds something like that i remember the reverse to red i remember the play we fusco pulled give it to ret he scores we come on the sideline everyone's celebrating and then i was like i don't feel good about this. And they went back down and Matt Prater hit a 50 something, 59, I think 59 yarder to lose the game. That, that one probably is the one I remember the most that eats at me. So that was to tie the game. And then losing the game was even worse because golden Tate did his flip into the end zone to walk it off. Yeah. one of the yep one of the craziest games uh that uh i mean 16 had all crazy games but that one was pretty wild and also um mike didn't understand

that he needed to run the clock down and have the red ellison reverse be the last play so he just ran the play and left all that time left for Andre Roberts. To be fair, we weren't a guaranteed score inside the five in 2016. What else were you? No, that's true. But what else were you going to do? Like,

I think it was fourth down. So it was just what, what are you saving this extra 17 seconds for? They're going to get the ball anyway. So if you don't get this, the game's over, you lose. Yeah,

that was a, that was a wild one. I love i love to see it hate to see it i'll just say um just continue the trend boy you hate to see what's happened in cleveland it's so tough for me to watch uh them now trading off parts you know it just it hurts me deep in my soul that um yeah that's hilarious you get exactly what you deserve and now amari cooper's gonna go play probably with a team that could go to the super bowl in buffalo congratulations to him that's the shawshank redemption through miles of crap to come out and be like i'm free and now he gets to go to the beach in buffalo and play with the best quarterback other than mahomes in the league congrats to him i love to see it for him he's a great player and he was stuck in a garbage

situation there and now he gets to be free and and speak of like serendipity for the Buffaloes his cap hits like 1.9 million like it's it's like nothing right because they restructured all that and paid him all that money up front so So Cleveland paid him to then trade him. And Buffalo's like, I'll take one of the fastest and maybe more complete receivers of the decade. Yeah. For 1.9. Yeah. We'll, we'll sign that up and take him right there. Hey, I'm sure that third round pick will solve all their problems that they got back. Good for you, Cleveland. Good job, Cleveland. Good job, everybody job everybody uh my love to see it is the fact that within like hours of trading for davante adams him and aaron rogers are hanging out together sitting sitting

on the mcafee show he just pops his head and i'm like did you just like crash stay the night like aaron i'm here i could live with you now right very fast flights these days very quick flights to orchard to not orchard park newark to new newark newark new jersey but i've said it before i've said this to my buddies having trading davante adams to the jets is the equivalent of the jets having a baby to save the marriage right like like we all kind of hate each other no we don't really love each other anymore but if we just have a baby maybe that'll solve all our problems right and that's what this is this is a let's see if we can do it bring him in and i i think garrett

wilson's gonna start having some cryptic tweets and instagram posts soon oh yeah right i think that one's gonna start to be the the drama that can fill because everyone's like oh this is so great from an outsider's perspective yes but if you're Garrett Wilson and you're going I'm wide receiver one and Devontae Adams walks in and goes you were wide receiver one that's going to cause some issues and I think that's going to cause some problems Lazard knows his role and he's not worried about anything he's like I've seen this movie a million times before but it's just going to be very curious to see what the Jets organization does now with Devante there.

They looked better against New York the other night I was at that game, right? They looked better. They looked like they got Brees Hall more involved and all that stuff, but it's still not a very high functioning football team at times. My other love to see it is college football. You know, they said the NILs would ruin college football you know they said the nils would ruin college football well it's just gonna

be one team just divvies up all the money and then just dominates and everything else and while the player are there players you're gonna try to play football if you give them any money what will they even do oh they're trying and it's great the the parody in college football may be the best that i've ever seen the oregon ohio state game was just hair on fire for 60 straight minutes of football it was absolutely tremendous you never know what's going to happen in a game uh the the entire day of college football last saturday was great the colorado game came down to the end even the old gulfs had to pull it off against ucla and pj flex said if these people are ever i don't know facing the toughest moment of their lives they'll remember the time we beat ucla and i was like yeah well all right sure sure fine uh he got

he got he got my favorite part though was he sl slid in the, well, I guess those confidence capsules work, but he almost lost to a one 14. What the frick are you talking about? Confidence capsules, baby. Gotta have them. Gotta have them. I just, I love all of that. And I actually have started to love how comical the PJ Fleck thing is. And I actually do love their safety. Yes. Koi, whatever his name is.

He's very, he's very, he's very fun name is. He's very fun to watch. He's very good at football. To just piggyback off the NIL stuff, I agree with you. I think it's making college football more competitive. So many, even just two, three years ago, everyone said the same thing. We might as well just let Bama and Georgia play

right now for the national title. Every week, they're rolling dudes by 40 and 50 and it just was okay. But what NIL has done is it's created this chasm that if I'm a five-star recruit coming out of high school and I've got offers from Georgia and Bama and Oregon, Ohio state, Oregon, do I want to go there and sit for two and a half years? And then behind the other 10, five stars that were recruited in front of me, or do I want to go to an Illinois or a Purdue or a Vanderbilt? And they're going to pay me equally the same amount of money as that other place,

but I'm going to play and I'm going to play early. And then guess what? If it doesn't work out there, I can just hit the transfer portal in two years and my price is even going to be higher because I played. And that is what has made everything so great is you're seeing the five stars start to disperse, the four stars start to disperse more across the country, which is creating higher and higher talent levels,

which is creating for more and more quality games. So I love it. I think the NCAA is going to have to figure out what they're going to do next year with the revenue share model. That's going to be interesting how they manage all that. But college football from a fan's perspective could not be in a better spot. It's been entertaining every single week.

Last thing, just real quick. Did you have any other love to see it? Hey, see it. Are you good? Okay. You think the Vikings win the football game?

Unfortunately, I do not. Oh, I, I, I want to say yes, but what detroit has done the last two weeks i think it'd be a fool to bet against them i think the vikings keep it close i think it's a great football game all the way around but i just think that run game for detroit you get into the

second half they control the clock a little bit more it's going to be really tough uphill sledding but i don't think this is a blow by any means. I think it's gonna be a great football game, but it's hard for me to look at that Detroit team and things that they don't come out with a win. I'm going to cop out and wait till Aaron Jones's status is clear. I think that's a huge factor, right?

Yeah, that's the game. Jeremiah Searles, can't wait to break this one down with you. Next week's going to be really fun for Tuesday morning left guard because we just go out of one game into the next one so uh it'll be a good time well thank you so much as always for your time and uh we'll talk to you next week absolutely football football