Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jeremiah Sirles just needs to see JJ McCarthy back ASAP

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Former Viking Jeremiah Sirles joins the show to react to Sunday's loss to the Eagles and discuss why he needs to see J.J. McCarthy's return as soon as possible. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by Fandul. Matthew Collar here and a little bit early on Tuesday morning left guard as former Viking Jeremiah Surles joins me here. But with the short week, we needed to fire this up. You are actually out in Seattle getting ready for the Seattle Seahawks Monday night football game, which is very cool. but why don't we dive right into this, Jeremiah, what is one supposed to make of a game where the Vikings dominated in terms of times of possession, they had the ball longer, they had more successful plays,

but the Philadelphia Eagles converted three out of 10 third downs and all three were backbreaking to the Minnesota Vikings. I mean, how do you deal with the performance where on a play-to-play basis, the Vikings did their job a lot of times, but it was almost like a pitcher who, was great, except for the four home runs that they gave up. Like, that's what happened with the Vikings against the Philadelphia Eagles. Yeah, and then we get the bases loaded and strikeout swinging.

You know, it just, it was such a frustrating game to watch because you're watching it going, okay, this team is very serviceable. And this team has a lot of weapons. This team has a lot of options. Are there chinks in the armor? Yes. Are they a Super Bowl contender? Oh, man, I don't know.

After that game, you look at that going, I don't know from a play-by-play basis. if you can say that, but this should be a team that wins nine or ten or eleven games based off the talent they have around them, but there's critical situations in the game and the red zone is a critical situation, turnovers are critical situations, and third downs are critical situations. And I felt like as a whole, the team didn't execute on both sides of the football in all three of those phases. Well, that's the really frustrating part because when you look for explanations and I've been watching the tape back and you're going through and you go, well, what happened what happened what happened and really the simplest answer is the right one which is that

the opportunities were absolutely there right on the table for you to win this football game and you just didn't do it i mean think about like even the first drive they have jordan addison in the flat wide open it's at least 10 yards probably put him first down and goal and uh carson wence throws it five yards behind him just i don't know what happened there and then the next play the snap goes flying over his head and he's scrambling back to the 40 yard line. They get bailed out by a field goal. But, I mean, that's just super messy. And there were a lot of those things, maybe the strangest, intentional grounding that

I've ever seen. Like, normally when there's an intentional grounding, that means someone's chasing you and you're like, ah, throw the ball away. Not just, ah, throw the ball away with no one around you. So it wasn't- With CJ Ham wide open in the flat. Right. It wasn't even just that there were.

mistakes and lack of execution. It was breathtakingly awful mistakes. And that was on both sides where Isaiah Rogers is getting roasted at several different times. Josh Mattelis ends up one on one in the first drive for Philadelphia against AJ Brown, one of the greatest receivers of the last 10 years. And you're going, what is happening here? And I don't know if we can come up with an explanation other than this is what really flawed football teams do. Yeah, that's, that's the hard part is there's nothing you can point to and go ah that was it right it's just it's a combination of a bunch of different things going wrong and when you don't have a quarterback that can write the ship and you don't have someone on the sideline offensively besides Justin Jefferson that can say

hey everyone calm down we'll be fine in the red zone because it's everyone else it's the quarterback that was the issue in the red zone and when you get down in the red zone things happen quicker things happen faster, but then I started thinking about, like, this is who Carson Wentz is. This is not like, oh, my gosh, what's happening? Like, you look at the entirety of Carson Wentz's career, and you start looking at, like, he has about five or six games, five or six plays a game where it's just blue screen of death, full reboot, and it's a catastrophe. And so you're looking at that going, okay, well, that's exactly what happened yesterday.

He had five or six plays where you're just like, hey, turn back on. And then he turns back on and he's throwing to Addison. He's throwing to Hawkinson. He's like, oh, okay. But that's what non-winning football quarterbacks do in the NFL. And that's why he's bounced around as much as he is. And that's why he's not a starter in the NFL. You can't have those kind of plays when you're going up against the reigning Super Bowl champions

with all kinds of talent everywhere. And I think that's a trickle-down effect of when the things are happening bad at the quarterback, things start getting frustrated. People start trying to press, including coaches, trying to blitz, trying to get everything right and press and press and press. and then you find yourself in a vulnerable position and the other team takes advantage of that. Because there was nothing really Eagles did yesterday.

I'm like, oh, man, they're back, right? Like Super House, they're back. Like, it's not like the cheese. Where you're watching the cheese, like, oh, boy, everybody. Buckle in, here we go again. Like, you're looking at the Eagles going, they're still a very flawed football team too, but they just capitalized so much more on the mistakes

that the Vikings made instead of the Vikings beat themselves. The Eagles didn't beat the Vikings in my opinion. The issue that I had with this game, I wrote about it over a purple insider dot football was that at a press conference, conference, please subscribe. At a press conference before the season when we were talking with Quasi Adaflmenza about the roster and how it was built and the philosophy behind it, he said that they

wanted to build this roster to win a lot of different kinds of fights. And I thought yesterday's was the, we got to win a backup quarterback playing like a backup quarterback kind of fight. At the end of the day, you end up with 22 points. It's not the worst offensive performance that I've ever seen. I've seen teams with backup quarterbacks get into the red zone, not be able to finish. And the theory was that against an offense that was struggling, if not downright bad in Philadelphia through the first five weeks of the season, I'm guessing they won't end up that way.

But just saying, like, it had not been a very good offense in Philadelphia yet so far, you needed the defense to shut them down in order to win that game because you know that your backup quarterback is not going to be playing very well. This is very much like when they're playing Josh Dobbs or Nick Mullins a couple years ago. I mean, what is Carson Wentz above those guys? 5% better, 10% better. It's not that much of a difference. What you need, just like maybe go back to the Cincinnati game in 2023.

You need to not give up a T. Higgins massive touchdown. In this game, you need to not give up massive touchdowns. You need to not fail on those key third downs. You need somebody to be covering AJ Brown that isn't Jeff Okuda on the. outside on a third down where Jalen Hertz rolls out and there's Brown very easily wide open, the number of times that he had mismatches was far too much. To me, it just speaks to on the defensive side how flawed they also are, that it's a good defense. There's no doubt about it. If they had great quarterback play, they win this game. But when you're supposed to have a roster so

strong that you can make up for middling quarterback play or even poor quarterback play at times, yesterday was sort of the day to show that you could do it. And now it looks like when you faced Rogers or Jalen Hertz, they're giving up like a 90% completion percentage against those two good quarterbacks. But hey, Dylan Gabriel didn't light them up or Jake Browning. Now it seems like one of those week to week based on who you're playing, whether you have a really good defense or not.

Yeah, that's a part that's troublesome. And also I don't really understand it. Like I really don't get it because the players, are good. It's not like we're just got a bunch of, I mean, I watched the 49ers last night and it was like, who is back there? Like, I don't even know who these people are. And I mean, you look at its household names that are back there, Harrison Smith, Isaiah, like, and so you're going, okay, where's the disconnect, right? When something like that happens, there's a disconnect. And it's either a disconnect from players are trying to do too much because they understand their offense is

struggling. So it's like, hey, I got to force the turnover. And so they're trying to go for the pick or they're trying to go for the TFL and then they're getting out of position. And then it's leaving Mattelis one-on-one with A.J. Brown, or maybe it's Brian Flores pressing a little bit and calling that blitz that he doesn't want to call, but he's watching Dallas Turner not be able to get home and Gernard not be able to get home and guys will be able to get home. So he's starting to press a little bit. And then you come off the field and maybe when you do get a stop and they're like, okay, and also the offense just does nothing. Okay, here we go again. I'll say this. I think Redmond has been amazing. He has been a fantastic focal point of this defense. I think

Eric Wilson has come in and done a really nice job, obviously with Ivan Pace getting the pine ride and looking on that piece there, but I still don't know if I know the identity of this defense, right? I still don't know if you can just like, you pull up a Ravens defense from old and you're like, oh, they're just bruisers, they're punishers, or you watch Cleveland, like, they're just going to get after you with their front four. And then you watch like a wink martindale in the day and like, all these are going to crazy exotic blitzes. I don't know what Brian Flores wants this defense to be. Is it a coverage? Is it a blitz? Is it a four-man pass rush?

Is it some combination? It just feels like it's a week-to-week thing, which I know is his deal, but it hasn't been successful against the good quarterbacks. And so I don't really know what to make of that. Yeah, I also think that that is a bit of a trend of the Flores defense of the last couple of years. As good as it's been, I can remember Justin Herbert going something like 40 for 47. We've seen Jared Gough pick them apart. We've seen Matthew Stafford pick them apart. And, of course, like shocking, right?

the better quarterbacks play better, but oftentimes the better quarterbacks don't just play better. They play phenomenally well against this defense. And looking at Jalen Hertz against the blitz yesterday, here's a, what does that stat mean for you? They, after the big play early where they didn't send anybody and Mattelis got beat for the touchdown, they started blitzing like crazy. So they blitzed on 20 of 26 dropbacks for Jalen Hertz. And he shredded them 14 for 17. 246 yards, two touchdowns, and a, your favorite, 94.1 PFF grade on that, which is pretty, pretty easy to give a high grade when you go 14 for 17 with 246, but the, I can grade that one. The blitz is we're not working. They were not getting home. They were not taking him down

in the backfield. And I think that's when we talk about that trend against good quarterbacks, it's like the guys who have seen all sorts of different approaches against them for five years or whatever Jalen Hertz has been starting, it just doesn't seem to throw them off the way that it does Jake Browning or Dylan Gabriel. Folks, are you overwhelmed by the number of different options for hair loss? Are you exhausted by looking around the internet for answers and watching late night television commercials, seeing if any of the options will work for you? Well, getting your hair back doesn't have to be that complicated. If you want to be happy with your hair when you look in the mirror, then Hymns can help you get that confidence back.

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Don't miss off on this limit. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon goods, we're all out of the ordinary. Yeah, because those dudes have answers. When you have the answer to the test because you've seen it all and you've been through it all, have to get home because you're not going to confuse those dudes right the whole point of a blitz and the whole point of disguise is you want to give one pre-snap read so they're going oh okay it's coming

off the left and then all of a sudden then they go to throw it to the left it's covered and then by time they get back to the right then the blitz gets home when you're playing against the veteran quarterbacks that have seen that stuff they're going okay it might come to the left but if it doesn't come I know that I have an answer over here to the right so then they boom okay doesn't come and they're immediate to the answer so that half a second or that one second that it takes of Jake Browning or Dylan Gabriel. The process takes Matthew Stafford a blink. It takes Jared Gop a blink.

And when you blitz, it's a feast or famine thing. I always says you live or die by the sword when you're a blitzing defense. You're going to have negative plays and you're going to create TFLs. But you're also going to get burned because in the National Football League, if a quarterback can get the ball into one of these really good receivers' hands and they make one guy miss or break through an arm tackle, it's going to be a massive play. And when you're playing against Devante Smith and A.J. Brown, one runs four three. The other one is just a tank running four or five. Those dudes are really hard when you put in those one-on-one situations. And what you saw as the game progressed was the D.Bs were giving more and more space. They were getting worried about getting after that long shot to Devante Smith. They all started taking a step back. And that's when the short game of AJ Brown and Jalen Hertz of the basically pitch and catch really just came back to bite him there in the second half. But I will say they did a nice job. bottling up Saquan, right? You try and make that team one dimensional. The problem is our

DBs didn't have their best day and that's going to happen. But unfortunately, it happened against the receiving group that probably looked at this as a get right game. Yeah, there's even against, I mean, D.K. Metcalf lit them up as well. So you're talking about when this team has to face elite wide receivers, they also don't seem to have much of an answer for them. And look, Isaiah Rogers has been a good story for this team, but also was, not a starter before this. And Jeff Okuda gets beat on, I thought was maybe the biggest play of the game, that third down in 13, where Hertz rolls to the right, Brown comes back. And Akuta, that play was kind of right down in front of me where I'm at with the press box. And it could see it

develop all the way. Like, oh, that's the matchup he's going to be looking for. They knew where number eight was on the field because that's a mismatch. And there's a little bit of me that's thinking about the number of players on this roster that in one way or another, it was we can fix him or we can get the most out of him. We're the ones that have the special sauce. And again, Isaiah Rogers, that Cincinnati game will never be forgotten. The rest of the season is pretty forgettable for Rogers. And that was one of the poorest games we've seen from a corner in terms of getting beat deep. Uh, ever since I've covered the team. I mean, we're talking 79 yard touchdown. We're talking a big place. And,

And so you went into the season with Theo Jackson's never really played before, but we are fine with replacing Cambinem with him. Mackay Blackman didn't show them enough in camp, just trade him away for kind of nothing. And Jeff Okuda will be fine in that spot. Turns out he's not. Rogers has never started before. And these are the bets that you make that have not really paid off for this defense. And in order for them to be elite, which again, they're good enough to win a lot of games,

but in order to be elite, in order to be the top five, they would have needed every one of these, including Javon Hargrave, by the way, who played 18 snaps yesterday. These bets have just not really clicked the way that I think they thought. Yeah, and also, I mean, I don't think anyone anticipated the defense needing to hold teams to under 20 points. True.

But I think that, you know, when you look at how this roster was built, it was built that we're going to score points, we're going to rush the passer, right? we're going to get in a track meet type mentality, not this. We have to rely on you to get stops, like constantly stops. You know, this is a defense like, hey, we need four stops, right? We need four stops. We're going to score with Jefferson.

We're going to score with Addison and Hawkinson. And our young gun, JJ is going to light this thing up. Quick turnaround there. The personnel that this thing was built with was built more on the side of, hey, we're just going to play that shell, keep everything in front of us. And now with us having to press to get stops, that's leaving those things. exposed but that's leaving those corners that we wanted to develop and grow and fix now it's time to show up against a j brown devonte smith and we've got plenty more amon ross st brown's coming to town

we've got golden we've got like pick your poison every week it's going to be a dude that's going to have to get fixed and that's going to be on brian florence from a schematic standpoint because there's not just corners growing on trees that you can just go pluck off the street and go yeah you'll work right you just have to schematically try and figure things out to go here and that's what i talk about with I still don't know like identity wise how are you going to fix that you're going to say okay we're zone right we're zone and then we'll do matchup zone or whatever might be because the man the man thing is not going to work and the eagles put that on tape and so if we continue to go back to the blitz man thing really good quarterbacks are going to find ways to expose us so this sort

of circles back we're talking about with the defense and how good they have to be to when you built the team and you decided to move on from sam darnald and not bring in you know Aaron Rogers or not tell Daniel Jones that he was going to be QB1 or whatever. And hey, wow, congratulations to actually all of them because they're all playing really well. But I think the idea was that even if you had rocky quarterback play, regardless who was in there, that your defense was going to keep you in every game. And they just didn't do that in this game against Philadelphia,

which diverts from what you thought it was going to be with the amount of money that you spent on this defense to be this good, which I guess leads to a question and then we'll get to the quarterback thing and everything else. But are we at the point right now through six games at three and three where, and by the way,

I added this up yesterday. They've played what, 24 total quarters and six games at right, 24, six times four, right? And they've been trailing in 18 of them. So like that's not a very good sign. That means, I mean, the two games that they won, last second victories where they were losing the entire game. I mean, if not for the Cincinnati game, I mean, this team is just looking very ugly.

They could easily be one in five. I mean, that's how they've played. They've played probably do a one in five record and had a couple of comeback wins at the end. At what point do we start looking around and saying, hey, some of these bets that you made, they just were not good. Like the process behind that was not good and the results have been not good and it's time to start getting heavier on the criticism because a season is very long. There's still way more games to go than have been played twice as many to go than have been played. But I think that yesterday for me turned the corner to say, so what exactly did you see with, you know, Jvon Hargrave that made you think he could play this much? or what exactly did you see with Cambinem that made you not want to pay him?

Or, well, you know, J.J. McCarthy and and so forth in the backup quarterback situation, all those things. Like, are we there now or not? I think we're, we've opened the door. I mean, I think we opened the door. And a lot of that because you have to look at the teams that we beat. Our most quality win is the Chicago Bears. Right. I mean, that's our most quality win. And you look at the Bengals. And yes, they didn't have Joe Burrow. Yes, they didn't even have Joe Flacco. They had Jake Browning. But, and then, I mean, Dylan Gabriel and those crew wasn't ready first start. And so the criticism is very fair to start asking the questions as to, okay, why did we do the things we do?

But I think it's going to be an easy deflection for KOC and be like, ah, everyone's hurt. We're just trying to figure it out. We've had everyone banged up. We've had this, that, and the other thing, we're trying to get there. But I think the longer that this continues the trend of, okay, why didn't this work, the more it's going to be, okay, just throw JJ out there and let's see what we got. The longer that Kevin O'Connell, Quazzy, can look at each other and go, hey, the bets we made didn't work out, we're going to have to redraw here, why play Carson Went to throw JJ in? And that's where we talked about last week. If you can get through this game and you get to four and two, and now you're looking, okay, playoffs are still hopes and alive.

But sitting here at three and three with the most quality win over the Chicago Bears and staring down a fairly good stretch of games here. You got the chargers who, yes, they're beat up, but they're going to be physical at the point of attack. and then you keep going down the stretch. I think at this point, you're going, okay, we still have a sliver of hope that we want to make the playoffs. But I think the bigger thing here is we got to get some of these guys playtime and we got to get some of these young guys to see if they're going to be the answer for us in the long run after putting a full season together.

Or are they going to sink or swim? And if they sink, then we've got to get them out here and find you guys to play. It just feels like, and you're right that the very beginning of the season, the number of injuries added up. I mean, yesterday they're missing Andrew Van Ginkle. and their starting quarterback, but had their starting quarterback showed you a lot in the first two games, then you would really be pointing toward that and just saying, well, gosh, they don't have their starter. And that's why all of this is happening.

And maybe it is, by the way. I don't want to totally throw that out. That's that that is possible that McCoy, J.J. Lores, that's building by the day. Well, I mean, it is two games. It's not like, right? I mean, I love, I love Bo Nix's arc this year. where in the first half of every game, the internet says Bo Nix is the worst quarterback ever,

and Denver blew it with that draft pick. And then he comes back and wins. And then it's like, oh, let's just not talk about Bo Nix there. You know, right? I mean, this is even week to week. Like, we were texting about Michael Pennix looking great early in the game. And then, you know, he falls apart in the second half.

And like, this is how it goes even within a game. We're changing our opinions on quarterback. So it would not be surprising if McCarthy came back and it clicked for him. and he was good and they started to win and so forth. And my gosh, do they need that so badly? But when you're looking across the roster and the overall performance of the players that they invested a lot of money in through the off season or in Dallas Turner's case, a lot of draft capital, he gets a sack yesterday, but it's overall a pretty ghostly day

for Dallas Turner, of which there have been far too many, that's where you start to look around and go, okay, which bets actually did work for this. team because even when McCarthy comes back, even if he plays really well, are you going to be good enough unless some of these guys take a big step forward from where they've been in the first six games? Yeah, I think the most fair criticism is to look at the big free agent signings and go, okay, where those worth it? Right. Because with draft picks and that type of thing, like the book is still out, right? I mean, when you got a guy that he drafted in the fourth and he's out there playing a little bit and you're going, okay, we'll see, right? Like, we'll see with those guys.

I think the bigger criticism, you look at guys like, hey, has Will Fries lived up to being the biggest guard payment in, granted, he's been healthy the whole time and stability of the position, right? Okay, what about Hargrave? What about Allen? Right. Those are the things that you have to really look at and go, what did we miss? Were these guys on the age cliff? What did the analytics say about the age of what they at versus the percentage of snaps that we were going to ask them to play? How big of a drop-off is it from last year? What do we need to look at from our internal scouting perspective? Like, those are the questions that you're going to have to start asking yourself.

because if those dudes don't play well and you've got a lot of money tied up in them for years to come, that's when you're really going to start going, I don't know how we fix this. Because you can't just basically with those guys that you paid multi-year deals to, you can't go after this year. Be like, hey, you're old and we're going to move on to

because then you're looking at dead cap and dead caps exactly how you ruin and kill a team. So they have to start managing those players or looking at those players and go, what did we miss and how do we try and get the best out of those dudes because 18 snaps, I didn't realize that 18 snaps for Hargrave yesterday. That's an embarrassment.

I mean, you paying that dude way too much money to play 18 snaps. It was shocking. And I will say part of it is that Levi Drake and Jalen Redmond have played really well. And when you knew they were going to run the ball, you get it. I'm more in favor of a rotational role. But I totally agree that if you're talking about he's barely playing in a rotational role with the amount of money you paid for him, what did you miss there? And a lot of this is, hey, this guy didn't play all of last.

year because of an injury. And this goes for, you could say, which guy are you talking about? Which one? And well, it's true that you can get good deals on those guys in the off season. There is a reason why you can get good deals. And medical reports may matter in the future because you don't have a magic wand when it comes to age. So I think that they maybe, when it came to the bets, they had to know that maybe there was only a 40% or 30% chance it worked out the way that you thought it was going to work out. So here's a thought because every single, you know, post-game show is a complete wreckage in the comment section and everything else.

And I get that. And people are enraged. A lot of fingers being pointed at the head man here. And I did have a thought last night watching San Francisco, Christian McCaffrey after the game, said something like, yeah, I see other teams who have injuries and stuff and they fall off the map. We keep going because, you know, we have great coaching in Kyle Shanahan, Robert Sala, who maybe the Jets should not have ever let go back to San Francisco just for the sake of the NFC. But I, you've played, you've actually really played for NFL head coaches. How are we

supposed to assess this? You're playing a backup quarterback, but you're, I mean, your quarterback was a risk that you also took with someone who was coming off an injury. I mean, what, what do we do with all of this like because I think that's just football when anything goes wrong it's like coach coach did it it's all his fault but at the same time I don't want to be like oh no guys it's not it's cool because it's not cool no yeah it's a great question you know because you look at and you go okay where do we where do we lay the blame because you can't just be blameless right for a loss like that yesterday it can't just chalk it up as unlucky and we'll get the next one and just think you're going to move on in the national football league but when you look at this team as a

okay, there was mistakes that were made and let's reverse engineer. And if I'm Kevin O'Connell, I tied my fate to J.J. McCarthy when we let Kirk walk and we said, okay, we're going in with the kid. Like, that's what we're doing. And when you do that, you intertwine your fate with that first round quarterback. That's just the way it goes with this piece of it. So you can look at that from the first side of the mistake. But I also, you know, I look at him and I look at Kevin and I go, okay, you're young still in your head coaching career.

like Kyle Shanahan's long in the tooth as a head coach. And he's been through this roller coaster many a times. I mean, last year was the healthiest football team I've ever seen in my entire life. Yeah, anyone could have driven that car and had Sam Darnold and Fort Wins with no injuries. But you really see your ability as a coach from not just the X's and O's, but from keeping a roster together and keeping a team together when the sky seems like it's falling like this. And I think he's doing a pretty good job of that. you're starting to see some frustrations boil over with some of the, like, I mean,

Hawkinson was ready to kill a referee yesterday. And Justin Jefferson's looking around going, why is Jordan Addison getting more catches than I am? And you know, you're starting to see a little bit out in the offensive lines going, we have Carson Wentz and we're throwing the football 44 times when Jordan Mason and we run the football out of eye formation, we get all the way down to the red zone and we throw the football three times. There's going to be some of that stuff that starts going around. But it is truly the head ball coach's job to settle the ship, write the ship, guide the ship. And I think he is still trying to figure out how to do that without all of his pieces in play while he's trying to go.

So I'm going to give him the benefit for the doubt, but he definitely has some decision making that's going to come down here that will be long-term career-type deciding stuff. I don't think his job's in jeopardy by any stretch of the imagination. But the criticism will come and how he handles that criticism also will be a reputation of peace. It's just a lot of him being a young head coach. And I think because he won't coach the year, we kind of assume the why is beyond their years things. but he's never been through something like this as a head football coach. Well, also if we do the quick math, Kirk Cousins was 17 and 8 as a starter for the Vikings under KOC.

Sam Darnold was 14 and 3. J.J. McCarthy is one and one. So I'm just going to let everybody else add those things up together, but that's a pretty darn good record when your starting quarterback is playing. When you're starting quarterback is not playing, they're not that good in terms of their record. They lost a bunch of games with Dobbs and Mullins and now with Carson Wentz. And the reality is when they signed Carson Wentz, I'm sure if you go back and listen to my

reaction, I said, hey, he's a guy who could win two out of four games when your starter wasn't out. That's exactly what he's done. And it's been not bad at times. It's been absolutely horrific at times. It's been fun or it's been frustrating. But that's the life of playing with a backup quarterback. So I want to keep perspective on that without just saying free pass because with,

with KOC it's tied deeper than just, hey, did you win this year and what numbers did you put up and so forth? It's also tied to the decision that you made. And I think it was put well by Dan Graziano of ESPN who said, like, we're not to the point yet where we can say for sure, wow, you guys really messed up. But man, we are walking up to that line when it comes to like Sam Darnold and, you know, he's going to play, we're recording this before he plays this game. But, you know, he's played extremely, extremely well. They had other options and they put their eggs in the JJ basket. And as of right now, they've gotten two games out of J.J. McCarthy. And that's where I think, Jeremiah, that this season can turn. It's not going to turn in a direction, in my opinion,

where they just go, oh, wow, we're actually amazing now. And we're winning every single game and we're going, you know, winning the division and so forth. I just checked to win the division. They are plus 1,700 on Fandul, and the Chicago Bears are plus a thousand. So Fandul has the Chicago Bears at much better odds to win the division than the Minnesota Vikings right now. That shows you where the belief level is of this franchise. But if you get McCarthy back and he plays well and you compete for a playoff spot still, I think we can say that at least there was something to take away from this thing. And it wasn't a total epic meltdown disaster of a season like ones that we've seen before in 2018 or, you know, other years that have followed really great

seasons. My biggest concern with that, though, Matt, is, you know, just take the quarterback class from last year in full spectrum of example, right? Bo Nix, first half the year, awful last year as a rookie, right? Turns the corner, clicks, rolls. Drake May really struggled through almost the entirety until the last like six games last year you started going okay there's something in there now then this year you're going okay that dude's going to be an MVP at one point in his career right pennix is still only nine games into his starting career and you're going okay there's something there but he still has some things to work out and move through and then Caleb williams obviously like he still shows flashes the longer jj doesn't come back the more of that oh my gosh

factor of what we watched with nicks and penics and drake may and all those dudes is just going to still be there. That's not magically just going to go away. The growing pains of a young quarterback is not just going to be because he was, oh, well, he was practicing or, oh, he was in the meetings. Like, that doesn't solve the issues that could rise on Sunday from having a young quarterback. We're still going to run to those bumps in the road. And so we're going to play better and teams are going to be more advanced because they're going to have their midseason form. And we're still going to have a rookie quarterback making his third start that's not going to be pretty. And that's what I worry about. And I think that's where after this performance by Carson Wentz, Kevin O'Connell has to look at and go, we just have to get through the rookie bumps and bruises with J.J. McCarthy. And I don't care what it looks like. I don't care how it goes. We are not the caliber team. We thought we were on paper in August. We have to get through this bump in the road with J.J. So we can truly see what he is because you can't truly see what a young quarterback is until after about a full half season or three quarters of a season of starting.

and they figure it out a little bit, then you can start to see it. And you're starting to see it with that group of class. But he's only had like two game weeks of preparation in 18 months. And that's just hard. That's just hard to look at a guy and go, yeah, maybe, maybe not. But the longer this goes, the more we're just going to have those same questions. And you just almost have to get to the point and go, just throw them out there and see what happens. So what's a reasonable good outcome for, I mean, I guess we could even say the 2025 Minnesota Vikings.

I know three and three things can go in many, many different directions, but there's a lot of tea leaves that we can read at this moment. And then with the upcoming schedule and we know Lamar is going to play for Baltimore, so that's not going to be easy either if you can't stop scrambling quarterbacks. But what would be and include J.J. McCarthy in this because really there's nothing more important than just his performance overall. So within obviously the best would be he comes back against Detroit, wins every single game, wins a playoff, game and then is I don't know named MVP but right just don't think that that's the most plausible so what what is a reason within reason within the world of you know normal NFL that you could walk out of 2025 saying yeah it wasn't that bad I still think you have to finish about 500 right this roster you aren't in a rebuild phase this isn't a competitive

rebuild, which I know will trigger a lot of Vikings fans. But, you know, this is, this was a contender type team. And so if you don't go into a double-digit win type of season, I think a lot of people will view that season as a wasted opportunity and a wasted loss. And if you start talking about a double-digit-type win season, well, you should be on the wildcard fringe. And I think, you know, J.J. McCarthy needs to come back and show that he can drive the car to that point.

And with where missing these few games, he's going to have to play leaps and bounds better than he was against Chicago and Atlanta. And so I think that is best case scenario. I think most likely scenario here is we're looking at a 500 football team. I think we're looking at a team that's going to have to win dirty every single week. I don't think there's a team that's going to be able to run away with wins as much as we would like to anymore. I think we're going to have to find ways to out scheme certain opponents. to find ways to go out of our comfort zone and play some keep away from certain opponents and run the football with Jordan Mason, right, and continue to move on that route. That looks like

a 500-type football team, and that is in watching what the Vikings are. We have struggled in the red zone with Carson Wentz. I'm not sure J.J. McCarthy fixes all of our red zone woes. I think there's just still a lot of question marks there, and teams are going to continue to pressure him and continue to come after him and force him to make mistakes like Jackson Dart did yesterday as our young quarterback with the Broncos throwing a bad pick at the end, we're going to see those things from J.J. McCarthy coming down the stretch. We're going to lose some football games that we should win, and we're probably going to win some football games that we should lose.

I think we're probably looking at a 500 football team here. So right now on Fandul, minus 120 to even win eight games, which is not that great. The Cincinnati Bengals, by the way, are right next to them in those odds at plus 115. So, I mean, that just kind of tells you, although maybe they're buying Joe Flacco, just kind of tells you, like, what the outlook is for the rest of the way. I'll give it a shot for with J.J. McCarthy.

If he ends up starting, let's say, eight games the rest of the way, like how many are left? 11. If he gets the, if he starts eight, let's even toss in one for a potential injury along the way. If he starts eight games, so he ends up with 10 total starts, throws 15 touchdowns, seven picks, they win four of them. I think you could still at least feel pretty good about where you're going into with next year. But there is a very high bar to not have a quarterback competition with somebody for next year already. Like we've already gotten to that point. So I think he would have to be above that.

But even if you get to that, then you can at least say, all right, well, that was his preseason. That was his rookie season. And we've just had to move. We have a, we've had to move the goalposts because I thought it was going to be a lot different than it was going to be. And that's also been hard for me, Jared. of analyzing this team is a lot of the things that they did, I thought going into this added up to me. And other teams have done load up a veteran roster around a rookie contract. I mean, Carson freaking Wentz in 2017, that team has Elshon Jeffrey and Tori Smith and Patrick Robinson

gets that interception that you may unfortunately remember. And the Eagles had to tweet that out the other day. Anyway, it was super right in the face. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, you can't change the past. But the point just being like that that team did that, they loaded up with a bunch of free agents. They did the same thing, that those things just clicked for them that haven't entirely clicked for this Vikings team yet.

So let me ask you before we move to a quick, love to see it, hate to see it. just when does JJ play can how many games do you think they win the rest of the way I wouldn't put them out of I wouldn't put them out here this week just strictly off the short week I mean it's not I get the the call and the feeling of wanting to do it and being like hey you just got to go man you got to go but if you want him to be his first back week back at the helm don't do it on a short week yeah short week coming off a loss you're not going to practice this week. The Thursday games, you don't practice. You just walk through all

week. It's all walk through. So he'll take zero real speed reps, but you don't want his first thing back when the whole world's watching on Thursday night football, putting him in a position to fail, in my opinion. If Kevin O'Connell trots him out there this week, and again, we're saying that Carson's healthy. But if Carson's not healthy, then I don't know, you go Max Brosmer on Thursday night football. Maybe it'd be classic Thursday night football stuff. And he'll go out there and have a career game and rip his shirt off of Fitzmagic. But I think that for the plan is, okay, let's get through the short week, get through the mini by, and then let's see JJ the rest of the way.

And I think, like you said, so if he doesn't start this week, he has nine games to start, you need to see him go at least 500. He's got to go at least 500, and he has to have a two to one interception to touchdown ratio. If it's a one-to-one thing, we're in trouble or, God forbid, it's the other way around, and it's a higher interception than touchdown ratio or turn-o. I'll just say turnover ratio in general, right? Sack fumbles, holding on the ball too long, running with. the ball not taking care of it just he has to have a better touchdown to turnover ratio

throughout the rest of the year else i think you're right we have to start evaluating the quarterback position going into next year because now you're going into year three a half the rookie contracts wasted you're probably not going to use the fifth year what are we going to do do we do a tray lance thing where we go okay we're going to bring in someone else and see what happens and then we'll move if we have to but it's too early for that conversation but he does have to show that he can go at least 500 in this football league as a as a rookie in the NFL yeah just tying that into what we were talking about before, I'm not ready to start swinging the big hammer of criticism yet until we see the team how it was supposed to look, which is with

J.J. McCarthy's the quarterback. When we see a big sample size of that in the second half, if we're still having the same conversation about all the money they spent failed, J.J. McCarthy wasn't ready or good enough to take them anywhere. And yet they evaluated him and said that he was. but we need to see that first. And that's why this whole last few weeks has just felt like purgatory of the, yes, the Minnesota Vikings still exist, but we can't move forward with our lives until McCarthy is actually back under center.

I would also be very surprised if it happens this Thursday. Love to see it, hate to see it, the Minnesota Golden Gophers. You had to. You should have. PJ Fleck, what a performance. Drake Lindsay, a 98-yard drive. controlling the football, make it throws left and right. Hey, maybe Drake Lindsay can put on number 13 and beat Dan Marino.

He can pretend to be him. He'd get a big old face mask like Marino used to have and he can whip it like that because that's the arm he's got. Hey, if we're, if we're playing Halloween with quarterbacks, he can pick ones with big arms that execute NFL style offenses. What a game for the golfs. Yeah, that was, uh, that was about a bad of a game. I couldn't remember.

PJ Fleck, I saw a tweet. I was like, not everyone gets to pick your dad. And unfortunately for Nebraska, it's PJ Fleck. So, you know, he has beaten us, I think he's seven and six and one in the last seven outings against us. I don't know what it is about Minnesota. I don't know what it is about this football team, but it just seems like they have the Cornhuskers number.

We went from, I'll tell you this, you think the sky's falling in many. You should be in Lincoln. I mean, we went from playoff hopes to, I don't know if this team's going bowling. Right. So, you know, it's just one of those full. swings you lose a game like that and you're like oh man we're at five wins i don't know if we're going to get to six the powerhouse northwesterns rolling into town next week and they just beat peru and penn state i mean it's not a good time to be honest man it's just it's a it's a tough time

and the cosplay thing is when it's on full effect like that on a friday night it really seems to get people upset the um the best moment of that was somebody fell on his ankle a little bit and he did the exact the homes I'm injured. And I was like, okay, he has practiced this thing. Like, there's a, there's a show here in Minneapolis where it's about Prince. So someone has to play Prince. I mean, what a hard gig, right?

Like, they should get this guy. He's got every part of it down, the left-handed throw the, oh, except for scoring in the red zone. He does not have that part down yet. Okay, where do you want to go with that? I'll do a hate to see it. my New York football giants, my friends. Crazy.

33 points in the second, in the fourth quarter. What, I mean, what are we doing? And Jackson Dart, you play so well. And then to just throw, I mean, if there's a spear, it would have killed the Broncos linebacker in the chest, man. I mean, it just, he threw it right to him. I was like, I'm at the sports bar screaming. Just throw it in the dirt.

Like, I don't know, just Carson Wentzit. Take it to take everything else and just pun it and figure it out from there. but to give that up there and then that kicker I mean I read a report and I don't know if it's true that he went up and tried to apologize to dable and dable was like I can't even look at you get out of my face and it's like oh you know not good you can't miss two extra points in the football

it's just that's just not a great look for anyone including all the crap talking that was going back and forth between the Broncos and the Giants all week long and you just hate it as a Giants you just hate to see it if they had just kneeled down every play they win right they just win the game because it was the huge catastrophic mistakes that ended up costing them uh the NFL man like that was that was some action stuff right there of some team just fine to get in the fourth quarter i i didn't see it live obviously

because i was covering the game and uh my wife texted me and she was just like did you see what happened i was like oh you know i don't know we'll see and then i go home and watch the highlights and i'm like what like every single highlight is is what are you doing doing giants, missing extra points, crazy. I'm going to say hate to see it any coach over the age of 70 at the moment. I mean, Bill Belichick's is getting hammered even more. Yeah, like the kale trolling him with putting up like a web mock website of like Bill Bellacheek.com or whatever that his girlfriend created.

This is like a deep internet thing, but it's super funny where she created a website for Bill Belichick. It is like 2001 level. And so then the kale, they put together the same one with their mascot and put it up on the big board. Just insanely funny. And then, of course, they lose to kale. And, uh, you know, horrendous fashion. And just bad. And then Pete Carroll, man, RIP. It's a, it's, it's, it just has not gone very well. And, and I thought, you know, with Pete and Bill, both of them at the end of their 10 years previously, it was going pretty bad. And it looked like the things had kind of passed them by,

as happens at 70 years old, just getting boat raced by the chiefs. They haven't really been all that competitive. Gino Smith is having a horrific year. It's not a great time to be over 70 in coaching. I think it's why Nick Saban was like, hey, I'll see you later. And I don't ever want to go back.

And it's these guys that can't and haven't been, I think if you miss the. shift while coaching and you were out of coaching while the shift of the new generational player and the NIL and everything that's coming in and then you try and come back in and do the 2015 my way or the highway and I mean you see reports about like Jackson powers Johnson's like I got drafted here to play center he's like you'll never play center here ever repeat carroll and you're like down boy it's okay like those type of like hard line in the sand type stuff it doesn't work right and that's just not the way that football is and the old

Old heads are going to say, well, that's how it was, and that's how I won championships and I won Super Bowls. And these kids are going to go, yeah, I wasn't even born when you did that. So, like, cool, but I'm not doing that. And so it's just, it is sad to see legends kind of fade because it does tarnish reputations. It tarnished some of the great stuff that both those coaches were able to accomplish. And yeah, it's just not, you just don't like it, man. You just kind of hate to see it. I'll do another hate to see it. How the hell do we let the Kansas City Chiefs be back? this i mean it's just we're sitting there going all right giant sunday night football put the canail in the coffin right just bury these dudes and they find a way to fight back from there now

they get one of more of a dynamic receivers back in rishi rice they shut out the freaking raiders i mean we're looking at a kansas city team that in my opinion now that they're back to full strength minus their first round left tackle probably better than last year's kansas city team if i'm being honest and nobody nobody wants to see that and it's super unfortunate for the entire AFC. Well, it's not the first time we've been through it. Tom Brady, who everyone prayed for his downfall, a year after year after year, and it never happened.

I'll throw one more out there is something that I love to see consistently is when quarterbacks that I think are really, really good, but they don't have a Super Bowl or they haven't been considered Mahomes or Josh Allen level when they play well and kind of shut people up. I love to see it. So in a way, Jalen hurts, sorry, everyone, but that guy's really freaking good. And also, I would say Dak Prescott, that Dak Prescott has been hammered on more than any other quarterback probably over the last 10 years. And look, I don't feel bad for the Dallas Cowboys.

They get 50 times more attention than they're worth a lot of times. But that guy is playing insane football and getting him George Pickens. And this is another point about, you know, when they hired Brian Schottenheimer, it was like, oh, This is the dumbest hire of all time. They, the Cowboys should just sell the team. It's like, I get why you're saying that because it was unceremonious, but we are very bad at picking who is going to be good at coaching. Very, very bad.

And that guy's been around. He's been on a lot of successful teams. And I guess I'm not that shocked that their offense is great. So I've enjoyed seeing some quarterbacks who get constantly overly scrutinized, sort of turning the tables this year. And Dallas, 44 points. And I guess I could throw a hate. to see it with jaden daniels can't stay healthy this year that's just uh that hasn't been any fun

at all yeah i mean the quarterback injuries this year have been a bummer big time but it's what we always kind of talk about with these running quarterbacks mean lamar's always been kind of dinged i mean it's hard to be a running quarterback in the NFL it's just it's so hard because these dudes are so big so fast so strong they just try and murder you every time you run the ball and i mean my last hate to see i don't have many loves to see this wow my last hate to see it here is Glenn's probably out at the Giants, at the Jets. I don't know. I like the guy.

I think he has a lot going there. But when you went all in on Justin Fields as your quarterback and a backup in Tyra Taylor and you can't run the football with Breeze Hall, I think you're going to see maybe a fire sale out there. And I think that they might fire Glenn before the years even up. And I don't, I hate to see that for the Jets. It feels very David Cully like, very Gerard Mayo like, even though I, would say that he was more qualified than those guys, but you have to at least reach a level of competency or you're going to get fired. It's like when Brian Callahan got fired and I follow

some Tennessee media people and they are, where is the owner? What is going on? Which I respect in a press conference and all that. But also that guy, I think covered the spread like four out of 23 times, which the spread is meant to get close to 50-50. So what? Like that would they were so and that's what we're seeing from the Jets. It's not that it's just bad. Your team was expected to be bad. But when Justin Fields is twice as good with the Steelers as he is with you, and then you look like you can't even really compete on a week-to-week basis,

that's where it falls apart. And Miami, too. I mean, I think Mike McDaniel, I think he's done a lot of great things there. And, you know, he's a little different. He wears his pants different, all that sort of thing. But, you know, when it comes to the NFLPA surveys, he's done. extremely, extremely well. I think he's a likable coach with some great ideas who has just watched this roster corrode into dust and a quarterback really come apart at the seams at the same

time. So I expect that we will in the coming week see some coaches not having their jobs anymore. But we will still have our jobs as podcasters. That's for sure. Thick and thin. We've been through it all. You know, we jinxed it at the beginning of the year. We did. We finally made it. This is the season we've been waiting for silly us anyway from seattle sitting next to a very interesting lamp in the corner of a hotel is that is that a world map on the lamp i think so what that's supposed to be i think it's some type of topography i you know i would follow an instagram that just uh did hotels trying to be classier than they are like that would be we got on peninsula the prince of wales island alaska a topography map so yeah i mean i was wondering about the topography of the

alaska a lot of looks like a lot of hills anyway not a lot of football up there though matt not a lot of football probably not um anyway so enjoy your trip to the pacific northwest hope it works out well for you and we will talk next week presumably on an actual tuesday football Thank you.