Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - JJ McCarthy has a 'procedure' and power rankers still like the Vikings

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about JJ McCarthy's 'procedure' and answers fan questions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and this evening, like we do on every regular Wednesday in the season, I'm going to be chatting football with all of you. So welcome in. We got some things, some news and notes to go over and a couple of thoughts that I have, but for the most part, it is your show all about whatever Vikings fans have on their minds. So jump in the chat, ask questions, comments, thoughts, feelings about Vikings and Tennessee Titans and what is to come for the Minnesota Vikings. Anything about the roster, the schedule, matchups, things around the league, it is all open to you on this Wednesday.

And I would say that we have reached the point in the season where it is exactly the midway point, which we can talk about and reflect a little bit on what has happened so far and then what we've got to go here into the future. I think I would love to know just where you guys would power rank this team halfway through the season, because I was going to talk about an aggregate of different analytic power rankings, just as you were hoping for this evening, but it caught my eye today, something that was posted out there. And I wanted to discuss where I think the Vikings

should be in that conversation, but I'd love to hear that from you. Would you put them all the way at the top with the best of the best top 10 outside the top 10 mid some of you after the Jaguars game, I thought you guys might rank them as one of the worst teams in the league and I guess if we only saw the red zone that would be actually true from the other day in Jacksonville but going into a very winnable game and what a strange looking team the Tennessee Titans are I just started I kind of move on from Tuesday to Wednesday onto the next opponent with my preparation and questions in the locker room and things like that. And just started looking at the Titans and just kind of scratching the noggin here about how they have a defense that

ranks 29th in points against and first in yardage against. It's one of the weirdest things that I feel like I've ever seen. They have a defensive line that is filled with talent, but they don't really pressure the quarterback. They're in the bottom third when it comes to pressuring the quarterback. They have huge guys, Jeffrey Simmons, Devondre Sweat, but they don't really stop the run. It's just a odd thing for that team. And their quarterback situation is probably played into how much the defense has given up points wise. If you're turning the ball over all the time, it's not just the defense

giving up points. If you are turning it over in your own zone and the other team only has to go 20 yards to score, or in Will Levis's case, sometimes just heaves the zone and the other team only has to go 20 yards to score, or in Will Levis' case, sometimes just heaves the ball to the other team, then it's going to make your defensive stats look bad. I remember this happened in 2018 to the Vikings where they had a bunch of pick sixes. It was maybe four or five pick sixes or fumbles that went for touchdown against them. And the Vikings defense didn't have good scoring numbers, even though they actually had good numbers overall. So maybe that's the case with the Titans, but it is a defensive line that's good enough

to cause some problems for the Vikings. And then on the offensive side, you just really struggle to see how Tennessee is going to do anything against this Vikings team. They can run a little bit. Tony Pollard is a pretty good player. Their offensive line is okay at pass blocking by PFF grades, not that great at run blocking. It's just not a good team that's in a really bad place. And the best that the players can do is just to say it's an NFL team, so we've got to take it

seriously. But you would definitely like to see them put on a more decided performance than they did against the Jaguars. So a bunch of people jumping in the room now, ask your questions, comments, thoughts, where would you power rank the Vikings and then anything else on your mind, throw it over this way. It's your show. Let's have a fun conversation. But I want to get to the maybe biggest news item of the day, which is about JJ McCarthy. And I have my friend, Kevin Seifert story up here to read directly from that about the quote procedure that JJ McCarthy had to undergo this week on his right knee. I'll just read you from Kevin's article. Sources described this week's procedure as a biologic injection intended to address swelling

in the knee that developed after an increase of activity during the rehabilitation process. And we asked Kevin O'Connell today, and he said the exact same thing that they noticed some swelling and they were dealing with that. And Ben Lieber jumped in former NFL player now works with the Vikings. He jumped in and had some good insight on that of what it might be. Let me pull up his tweet and I can read that to you as well. Um, so Lieber said, let me scroll here that, uh, a biologic injection probably means platelet rich plasma injection, which is standard for recovery from, uh, inflammation. No biggie Ben said. So there you go. Uh, panic is my mate. No, I'm just kidding.

When it comes to recovery from any surgery, there's always every player I've ever talked to about this says that there's always ups and downs and there are always days that your body is not responding the way you want it to. And I don't think that it's all that unusual for a meniscus surgery to have swelling. So I don't know if there's anything more to this, but what Ben Lieber said, what Kevin O'Connell said is that it is more or less something that's pretty standard when it comes to dealing with swelling in the recovery. I just know that I've never heard of a player who has a surgery and says, you know what? It was great recovering when fine, smooth and easy sailing, no swelling, no pain thumbs up for me. I mean, sometimes we act like that because, oh, the guy tore his ACL, he'll be back. And you don't see the physical, uh, and emotional toll that it takes to get back from what you're going through.

So I imagine for JJ McCarthy, it was frustrating when he started to get some more activity going and then had swelling in the knee. But as far as I understand about this surgery and what they have done here with him for a procedure is that it's not anything that would go outside of the norm for what you would expect but it is noteworthy because this is the future franchise quarterback so everything along the way that happens with his recovery and the timing of his recovery is going to be something worth paying very close attention to when he finally gets back on the side field, he can't practice at any point this year, but gets back on the side field, things like that will be notable. And what Wes Phillips and Kevin O'Connell have said about McCarthy is that he's been a sponge around the building.

He's in all the meetings. He's meeting with them. He's asking them questions. And I think after what we have seen with Caleb Williams, I don't want to say that it's a good thing that someone tore a meniscus. It's never good that someone got hurt and you would like JJ McCarthy to have been available to play, especially if Sam Darnold were to get hurt, then you would have a backup quarterback who's very talented.

But with Anthony Richardson being benched, then unbenched with Caleb Williams, offensive coordinator being fired, even Bryce Young, who was forced into play right away, he was benched and then unbenched. It is more than a trend around the NFL that teams that push their quarterbacks too quickly often end up paying for it, it seems. And there's no way to tell what would have happened if they didn't. Maybe Caleb Williams would have gotten his coach fired next year if he hadn't played right away. But if you're looking for silver linings for J.J. McCarthy having to go through this recovery. It's not hard to find around the NFL that he is going to spend this entire year just watching what Sam Darnold goes through on a weekly

basis. And the other thing is to watching how Sam Darnold handles this. And I have been in extremely impressed with Sam Darnold this year in the way that he's bounced back from making mistakes or even from tough games, where if you go to the Jets game, that was pretty rough on Sam Darnold. And then he comes back and plays very well against the Detroit Lions. Not quite good enough to win, but if they had gotten a couple of stops in that game, we'd be talking about an incredibly big win for Sam Darnold. He played well enough to win against the Rams as well. Maybe needed a face mask call or one more drive or one more stop by the defense. But even when Darnold has gone through these tough games, he's found

ways to bounce back. And McCarthy gets to stand on the sideline. He gets to go to the meetings and see how they break down a game that doesn't go their way, how they respond to it, how the quarterback responds to it and gets to learn and understand how the National Football League works. I think all of this is going to be in the long run. Very, very good for J.J. McCarthy to see Darnold deal with this because I know that it was a tough watch the other day, a very tough watch at times with Darnold. But this is something that almost every single quarterback in the NFL will deal with at some point.

I would say every quarterback, even Mahomes has had bad games. Josh Allen has had really bad games at times in his career. Those are the premier two quarterbacks in the entire league. Even CJ Stroud, his offensive line is horrible. He's having a really tough year. He had Nico Collins hurt. Then Stefan Diggs hurt. He loses a game where the other quarterback throws five interceptions.

I mean, this is a difficult league. And McCarthy getting this year will help him, I think, in the long run. So anyway, just long story short with this procedure, as far as I can understand, it's not something that we need to be concerned about at this moment, but we will be keeping an eye on any developments that happen as far as his progress to getting back on the field. So that's essentially where we're at. I know that every time knees come up and Minnesota sports, naturally people will be very concerned. And Nick says, how panicked should we be about the knee?

I would go right now. I mean, 0.1 out of 10 about the knee. This is just recovery. This is how it works sometimes. Inflammation, pain, ups and downs, these things happen. And until we hear anything that would direct you into a delay in his recovery or complications with his recovery, then I wouldn't have a whole lot of concern about it. And what Ben Lieber said and others have chimed in and said as well is that this has become a pretty standard procedure for this type of recovery. So how panicked should you be at this moment?

Really not at all. Even if I factor in Minnesota sports coefficient or whatever, maybe that would only move it up to 0.5 or something. But it's nowhere near a panic button over his recovery. It's going to take time for him to get back to where he can do dropbacks and start throwing on a side field. But he should be recovered and doing those things before the end of the season. This is another reason not to push him back. By the way, they

could have put him on short-term IR and tried to push him back. They decided, no, this is a better idea to put them on the long-term IR and give him the entire next off season. But this is a reason why, because you don't want JJ McCarthy pushing through and trying to give himself a chance to get on the field when you want that knee recovered, a hundred percent fully ready to go full and complete off season of working on the things that he started to make progress on, uh, in, in the beginning of this year. Dennis, you guys are funny. Should the Vikings draft a quarterback with their first round pick? There are people who will argue that you should draft a quarterback every single year and maybe the Vikings will with their fifth round pick.

No, probably not. No, I don't think they'll be doing that. But I did see back and forth with fans on social media today. There were some people saying, you guys are making too much of this. And then there were other people saying, we're screwed. So it wouldn't be something in Minnesota sports if it wasn't for that. But I understand when you hear knee and procedure that there's going to be concerns. So far as I know, shouldn't be something that there is to worry about. Uh, Devin says, I feel like Will Levis will throw a pick to bind him just to see what kind of celebration he does. Now we should talk about Will Levis.

The Tennessee Titans are so far off of my radar that I was talking to Andrew Kramer star tribune today. And I said, Andrew, who plays for the Titans? I mean, who plays for the Titans? They have just been so irrelevant for so long. They won the AFC a couple of years ago when they had leave still AJ Brown that year, they may have had Julio Jones weirdly, uh, at of those times. Derrick Henry, they built a good defense, a tough offensive line. And Ryan Tannehill played well for a couple years there. And then everything just came apart when they traded A.J. Brown. And then he went to Philadelphia and helped them go to a Super Bowl. It seemed like they just never got over that or figured out how to replace them.

They drafted Traylon Burks. That did not work out very well for them, which is, you know, go back to those people who wanted to trade Justin Jefferson. You know, it's okay if you thought that, but you could see why with the trading of AJ Brown at ruining this franchise in Tennessee, that maybe that wouldn't be a good idea. And then they draft Malik Willis, which to me seemed like a good idea because he had some upside and arm strength and good athleticism. They essentially never played him and they drafted Will Levis the following season. I guess for those folks who want to draft a quarterback every year, this would be a

good strategy. It made sense to me again, to draft Will Levis. And he had a moment last year and it lined up exactly with a moment in Minnesota sports as well, which was Kirk Cousins tearing his Achilles. So on the same day, you had a quarterback that the Vikings passed up on throwing, I think it was four touchdowns and then Kirk cousins tearing his Achilles. And that day I certainly had it run through my mind. I'm sure that other people did too. Like it wasn't that the dude they could have drafted, but what we have seen from Will Levis is essentially what he was in college. That sometimes there is maybe an over-obsession with tools and not enough focus on some of the important things about playing the quarterback position

that may determine whether someone turns out to be good or not. Just being able to throw it over the mountains isn't always a determining factor for a quarterback. And Will Levis. Well, he is pretty fast in college is not an impact type of speed. You have to be Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson to have impact type of speed in the NFL. As a runner consistently, you can do the Sam Darnold where you run for a first down and that's good, but in terms of making a true rushing impact, or you have to be Josh Allen, who's six, six to 40 and still runs. I think that he ran a four, seven or something like that. I mean, that's a bus coming at you. So, and there's a mentality

for him, but Levis really struggled. It seemed in college to avoid sacks, to get rid of the football. He was not very accurate and he was put at the top of that draft by a lot of analysts because of those tools, because he could throw the ball really hard and because he liked mayo in his coffee or whatever. But I really think it was just, this is a big, strong guy who had a really good junior season and maybe he'll be the next, or maybe it was a sophomore season, whichever was second to last season in college. And maybe he'll be the next Jordan love or something, but as bad franchises do, they put him in pretty quickly last year and he has not seemingly developed. Uh, they got him Kelvin Ridley, not a whole lot else other than

that. And he has struggled so much and it really, he's got all the turnovers of Sam Darnold that frustrates you, but none of the upside so far from him. And I'll be curious to see if the Titans have to keep going back to Will Levis and hope he develops over the next year or so because this upcoming draft doesn't have many options for them. Shadur Sanders and then who? Definitely not Carson Beck or the kid from LSU is not that impressive. So teams that are desperate for a quarterback are in a little tough and Tennessee could be in that position. But the Vikings deciding to pass on Will Levis and eventually pick JJ McCarthy is the reason you hire Kevin O'Connell. Because if Kevin O'Connell wanted Will Levis, they would have drafted Will Levis. The opportunity was right there for them.

And reportedly they wanted either Richardson or maybe Stroud. There's been different reports about who they wanted from that draft. I think we got a window into O'Connell believing in Anthony Richardson when they talked after the game the other day, but he clearly was not sold on Levis. Otherwise, they would have picked him, and he would have been the guy right now. Instead, they pushed that ball down the field a little bit or kicked the can down the road a little bit and decide to go with J.J. McCarthy.

And we are really early in the J.J. McCarthy returns. But from what we saw in OTA's training camp, the development to minicamp, the preseason, his maturity, leadership, understanding of the offense, chemistry with the rest of the team. McCarthy is in a really good spot to be this team's long-term quarterback. And I still expect that to be the result, even if Sam Darnold continues to play really well. But I still expect eventually as of this moment, that can definitely change JJ McCarthy to be that guy. So it's just an interesting thing as they go to play him. This is a guy that the Vikings went out of their way not to draft, and now he is playing for the Titans and struggling. Drew says that he would rank the Vikings fifth best team in the NFL. So that's a good, and Nick says fourth to sixth. Okay. So essentially fifth.

So let me pull up here. I saw on Twitter today about the aggregates of power rankings from analytics sites. Just what you always dreamed of, right? You told everybody growing up, I hope someday I'm watching a live stream and a guy is telling me about the composite power rankings from analytics people, but it actually is pretty insightful. So I've got it right here. This was Sam Hoppin who tweeted this out and his top teams in the NFL. And this is from ESPN's FPI, a couple of other sites, one, I believe gambling site, unexpected points, which is Kevin Cole's metric and a DVO a, which I'm going to have Aaron shots on the show actually to talk about this, where he thinks the Vikings rank, but the accumulation of all those analytics

sites has the Vikings. Well, I'll read it down for, I'll build some drama and you guys can keep asking questions and comments for me to get to. Baltimore is the number one team. That's interesting because they have a couple of losses. Detroit, Buffalo, Kansas City, San Francisco, still getting a lot of credit. I don't, I get it. I get it. They're San Francisco. They win. They have always won over the last how many years, as long as they've had a healthy quarterback. But it's a little odd to me to have San Francisco over Minnesota when the head-to-head result was so strongly in the side of the Vikings, bit stronger than they do in their record. The Eagles are now ahead of the Vikings. And then the Vikings are at seventh, the Packers and commanders behind them. And the Bengals come in at 10th, which is funny because they're, they have lost games in the dumbest ways this year to be where they're at,

but their overall numbers look pretty good. I mean, just losing on the final play where they didn't get the call and everything. Maybe you've seen seasons like that before in Minnesota, but seventh and the only NFC teams ahead in the analytic power rankings are Detroit, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and then the Vikings again ahead of the Packers ahead of the commanders. The next NFC team after that, after eight is actually 15. And that is the Arizona Cardinals 15 and 16 Cardinals Falcons 17 is the bucks. So there is, I talked about this a little bit, how I feel like there are tiers in the NFC and the tier one is one team.

And then the second tier are the teams that I just mentioned. And it seems like the numbers bear that out, that if you're trying to find a huge difference between the Vikings and Eagles or the Vikings, I would say they're a little bit better than the Packers, but are they monstrously crazy better than the Packers? The Packers also played Jacksonville closer than they should have. So there's maybe not that huge of a gap between them, the commanders, for example, but they are firmly right in that group. So Drew saying fifth, Nick saying fourth to sixth. I'm curious where you think they belong on that list. Mike says, hopefully they can take care of business the next two weeks.

How then they play against the Falcons and Cardinals will shape my opinion. Top 10 though. I think that's very fair. I think that's very fair, Mike. They have to now sometimes, sometimes things happen in the NFL. I kind of think last week against the Jags was the things happen, and they escaped that, and they should just win these next two games. There will be heavy critiques from this seat if they don't win these next two games because of where the Titans and where the Bears stand right now. These are two down-bad franchises that any contending team should go in and beat. The Bears are the one that always gives you a little bit of the hesitation because Soldier Field.

It's also easy to overlook maybe a little bit the Tennessee Titans because they're so awful. And look forward to that Soldier Field game. Look forward to Arizona on December 1st. I'm not saying this group of professional players does that but it happens sometimes where you think this should be a fairly easy win maybe after keeping it so close with jacksonville they will not take for granted the tennessee titans and will take care of business but you right. In order to stay as this, I say second tier, maybe it's like a one B type of tier in the NFC. They need to win the next

two games and then at least split with Arizona and Atlanta. But think about, I mean, the teams that they're going to play that, that also stood out to me too. The teams that they're going to play, let me pull this back up here. The rest of the schedule. So Detroit, yeah, they got them at the end of the season and Green Bay. So two top 10 teams at the end of the season. But aside from that, the teams, the Vikings are going to play on the analytic power rankings, 15th, 16th, 21st is the Seattle Seahawks. Not an impressive team there. Tennessee is 27th. I mean, and Chicago is 24th. The red carpet has been laid out to get to 12 wins.

So I agree with your point, though. I want to see them against Arizona. That is a tricky quarterback. That's a team with weapons. They appear to be pretty well coached. And then everyone, of course, is going to be looking forward to Vikings and Falcons, but another really good test. How can they handle a team with weapons? Because the Jacksonville Jaguars were not a team with weapons. Their best one was actually hurt. Christian Kirk. I mean uh adam says i believe uh this was a prp or stem cell injection not a

surgery do we have clarity about that uh no there was no clarity about exactly what type of procedure it was uh but just an injection and i think people as you mentioned uh have surmised that those are the options and that no option that is a procedure would mean anything to be overly concerned about but you know surgery procedure it just i don't know uh i mean it feels like a little bit of nitpicking there but i understand there's a connotation with surgery that sounds like get out the scalpel, cut the man's knee open again and redo the surgery. That's what it sounds like when you hear that he had a surgery. So, yeah, I guess procedure would be the proper way to put it either way. I think the main takeaway is that this is something that's done relatively often when there's a little bit of swelling and that's it.

And if it becomes more than that, then it would be potentially something to be concerned about, but not right now. That's my feeling. I know that we actually do have doctors who watch the show. So, uh, and listen to the show.

So maybe you guys have more feelings on that than I do. That's just what I have taken away from the day's reporting. First name, last name. I feel the Vikings are one of the best teams in the NFC, and that's probably enough to have a shot, but they'll need a string of great games to really make a push. Yeah, I mean, as far as what's going to determine, I was really thinking about this today.

What was going to determine how everybody feels about the Minnesota Vikings is the final two weeks of the season. And maybe only one of those two, depending on where Detroit is and where the Vikings are in playoff position, they might not have anything to play for in the final week of the season.

That game against Green Bay, it's hard to see any chance that that's not something, right? That game will likely be important in Week 17 against the Packers for one reason or another, whether it's playoff position, trying to keep the Packers out of the playoffs, trying to keep the Vikings in the playoffs and solidify their spot, whatever it is. But these next group of games, there's only really one way you can go. This is maybe the curse of starting out five and O is once you set the bar that high and you play that well, the expectation is that you're going to keep playing that well every week. And so far as I can find over the last 20 years of Vikings football, that's pretty rare. That hasn't happened too many times. Even in the NFL, that

doesn't happen too many times where you just win, win, and win by pretty wide margins. So any NFL season, even for competing teams, San Francisco lost three games in a row last year, made the Super Bowl, and the same thing happened to the 2021 Rams. Ups and downs are part of the journey for even good teams, but it does feel like someone deflated the balloon when you go 5-0, and then you come back on the other side of that and go two and two losing to two good teams. Rams are kind of good ish. And then, uh, beating two bad teams in uninspiring fashion on the scoreboard, even if it was inspiring on the yardage marker and the first downs and the time of possession, but it was not enough points for what you would think it should be in terms of beating Indianapolis and beating

Jacksonville. So now you feel like the door is open for one of those games. If it's played the same way to not go the Vikings way to have two interceptions. How about that? How about this for a crazy stat? Sam Darnold in his career has had 16 games where he threw two or more interceptions. He, before this season, lost all but one of them. He's had two this season, and he's won both of them. So they got away with it, and if you're the person thinking he won't get away with it again or in a playoff game, you're exactly right.

You're exactly right. The numbers go strong against anybody who throws two to three interceptions. It is an outlier to find a way to win two of those games where you've thrown two or more picks, but especially three in the red zone, the way that the Vikings did. So if you're thinking that you're absolutely correct. But the other thing is that there isn't a win here or around the corner that you would say, wow, what an inspiring, big prove it wins. We talked about prove it games early in the season.

Hey, go to green Bay, prove it. And then they did. And we're like, wow. Okay. This team's pretty legit. When's their next prove it game? Uh, December. I mean, I think really this schedule, which you should celebrate because it gives the Vikings a chance to be really good.

But the schedule lines up in a way where you're more of thinking survive in advance for these games, just win them. I don't want to hear how it happened. Just get to the games that are going to be important at the end of the season. And when you're playing bad teams, you expect to blow them out. But in the NFL, there's just not that many blowouts. So you could play again, a close game with the Titans. And then we'll talk about that. But after that, you're, I say, I think spot on when it comes to the two games that are, they're not prove it. They're prove it adjacent. Uh, the, the, the Cardinals, the Falcons, even if you split those

two games, the Vikings are in very good shape to go toward the end of the season, but you can't lose those two games to two teams that you feel like are inferior. And both of them are at us bank stadium. Uh, I think that's a great point, Mike, that both of those games are the closest thing that we have. Like I was thinking about when's the next time the Vikings fans will, instead of just being relieved at a win would actually be energized by a win, maybe Arizona, but it's probably Atlanta. If the Vikings beat Atlanta, then I think we'll see maybe a re-ener it's probably atlanta if the vikings beat atlanta then i think uh we'll see maybe a re-energizing if they're in good shape of the fan base going into those final games but

if they lose to kirk cousins lose to green bay uh we've seen that movie before actually i mean not losing the cousins but we've seen that movie in 2019 of a team that could, you know, eke by bad teams or even puddle bad teams at times. But when they got to the end of the year and they needed a few wins to stay neck and neck with the Packers for the division, it just didn't happen. They weren't as strong of a team. That's kind of where we're at. We're going to have to wait for these games to really tell us how they match up to other opponents as they head and march toward the playoffs. And it's a weird thing. Finally, we have crossed the line where there are more games that are finished than games that have to go. But still, a lot of football to be played. K-Mac says no temptation to push McCarthy into soon and Darnold doesn't have to look over his shoulder week after week. Right.

Again, I would not ever say it's good that JJ McCarthy got hurt, but if he was ever going to get hurt, now would be the time. And it does save everybody from themselves. I guarantee you right now, we have a great crowd of people watching and participating. Hi everyone. Love you guys. But if JJ McCarthy was healthy, this number would be quadrupled. And I know what we'd be talking about. Is it time to bench Darnold for JJ McCarthy? And everybody would want to see JJ McCarthy after what we just saw from Sam Darnold, even if it would be more rational to keep playing Darnold and keep McCarthy on the sideline in his first year.

It's saving us all from ourselves, including Kevin O'Connell, including JJ McCarthy. So that's the silver lining, the good luck of a bad injury. Drew says that Darnold needs to stop forcing passes to jet and start looking for open receivers. So I want to talk about that a little bit. One thing that Darnold said today, I asked him specifically what his biggest takeaway was

from those interceptions, and he specifically what his biggest takeaway was and from those interceptions. And he said that the biggest takeaway he had was that he has to understand the situation that he has to understand that, especially on the third one, if he just protects the football, they will kick a field goal. They're going to be fine. The game is probably over or very, very close to over. Just don't throw it to the other team there and you're fine. And you're controlling the ball. You're controlling the game. Your defense is playing great. Just end this with a score and you're fine and not try to force it there. I do think that it is part of the DNA of Sam Darnall to force it. It's hard to get into his head and do a freeze frame.

Like he drops back and he thinks he's got to throw there. And you just go, hey, Sam, remember your checkdowns right there. You just need a field goal. Like that's not how sports work. it's kind of like a chucker if you ever play pick up basketball there are certain people that you could have a long conversation with about why it makes sense to move the basketball and pass it and cut off the ball and then they get it they go just throw it up you go what happened there like i don't know I just shot it like that's what I do so that's a little bit of Sam Darnold but I think there's going to be more focus on that he really

did play game manager type football and then let it rip from time to time early in the season and they're just occasions where he's gotten away from that a little bit but just to talk a little more about the interceptions, because I went back and watched all three and I know you don't really want to relive them, but there are, I felt better about them after I watched them on tape because I understood what happened. The first one is really on the referees and Justin Jefferson. So he throws to Jefferson where he, when he should, because your, your point is about forcing it to Jefferson. He, when I looked at the rest of the options on that play, Jefferson had man coverage. He was running an underneath slant. I mean,

that's a ball you want to get to Jefferson all the time. He had space. He had a man-to-man matchup, but the corner wrapped his arm around Jefferson's shoulder just as Darnold was winding up to throw. So he couldn't really escape. And I think it's probably a holding penalty there, but not called, just kind of listed under physical play that allowed the corner to slow him down enough to get a hand in. There's really nothing wrong with what Darnold did there. The interception was a miscommunication. The first one to where it was going to Jefferson was a miscommunication where he thought Jefferson was going to come back toward him, but Jefferson thought he was going to

go keep going on his route. And this is something that can happen from guys not playing together enough or just not reading where his receiver was going to go, not understanding where to go when the play breaks down, which I think has been a darn old issue. But so he's hanging in the pocket and you see exactly when he realizes Jefferson was open, but he has to come back toward Darnold to make that catch. And he said, he keeps going. It ends up getting picked off. Of course, it's one you can't throw. It's too risky for that situation when you're in a position to score, but I got it. I understood what happened and I don't know who's right or wrong there. And then the other, the third one, it felt like

Darnold did not throw it on time, that he may have hitched one extra time. And this is the detail of the NFL. He may have hitched one extra time or not gotten the ball out with the right timing and where it's supposed to go, and it ends up being underthrown. That's one where that is too risky for him. But forcing it to Jefferson, I don't know if it was because it was forced.

It looked like the plays were supposed to go to Justin Jefferson. Maybe that's Kevin O'Connell forcing it to Jefferson with some of the play calls. Maybe it's also running 15, 20-yard routes when you should be running underneath and playing a little safer in the red zone. But it was fascinating to go back and to take a look at what actually happened on those picks. And I actually think that none of those were the worst throw of the day for Darnold. Early in the game, he got tricked by a Jaguars deep coverage and he threw it to Hockinson and it should have been a pick, maybe even a pick six.

And TJ Hockinson was able to break it up so we never think of it again but that was one where that's a great example of it's not just Jefferson he'll force the ball to a lot of times he'll just force it down the field or not see something down the field and that's how these interceptions happen I don't have a huge problem with an interception or two in a game. The problem is if it's not countered with big plays, finishing drives, if he's being aggressive and he throws a pick, well, okay, that's the offense they play. That's Sam Darnold. But the whole game was really not all that sharp for him. He missed Addison wide open. He had that play that I mentioned.

He also, for whatever reason, missed Naylor. I mean, they were just not on the same page with the receivers either with this game and the timing and everything. So this is a week to come back and get way sharper. I don't think it's the end of the season or that he's going to just keep throwing three picks, but there was a lot more to sharpen up after that. I don't think the answer is just, well, he's going to just keep throwing three picks. But there was a lot more to sharpen up after that. I don't think the answer is just while he's throwing it to Jefferson too much. We didn't say that against the Colts when he Jefferson at 130 yards, it was amazing, right?

Or when he against the lions roast the guy and makes the diving catch. It's kind of like when it doesn't work, we'll always say that, but there should always be the football going to Jefferson, no matter what the coverage is. So that was a very long answer to that question. So sorry. Uh, Zoomer Kev says Calvin Ridley is a good receiver. Yep. He is.

Uh, I don't know how much it's going to matter. I, did he sign there? I don't, I'm not sure what he was thinking. Maybe they gave him more money than everybody else. Nick says, the Panic First fans are going nuts, and it's killing the we are playing with house money enjoyment of the season. It is the biggest topic that I feel like I've talked about on the show and with other people this week with other

reporters and other people outside the building that asked me about what's going on is like, why are a lot of fans like losing their minds over winning the game against the Jaguars? And what I came up with is a cornucopia of reasons that no matter what kind of fan you are, you came out of that game, really not super thrilled. If you are the extremely analytical Superbowl or nothing type of fan, then you probably looked at that game and said, well, onto next year, you know, the, the armchair GM type of fan onto next year, because they're not going to win it this year, not with this. If you're the casual fan who just tunes in on Sunday and doesn't necessarily listen to

Purple Insider all the time, but you probably thought, what a boring and terrible game that I just watched. I'm not happy with that either. If you're into coaching, you did not enjoy the double reverse or the aggressive routes downfield that turned into interceptions. It had a little, the only person who was having a great time was someone who was a defensive coach. If you are a high school defensive line coach and you're watching that game, you're probably like, attaboy, that's how we win football.

But it just was unsatisfying in a lot of ways. So I think that days later, when you can take a deep breath, you go, okay, well, they're seven and two. And the first responses are somewhere between the fourth and sixth best team in football. And the numbers don't even disagree with that. Like, okay, we can all, we can all sort of move on. But I see why people would have been so upset, especially when the quarterback's reputation is that he throws a ton of picks. And he's throwing a ton of picks.

And that's not what he is supposed to be doing. He's supposed to be different now. And, I mean, he is not entirely different, I think is probably the thing. Hamza says, it seems like JJ will be fully cleared for football activities around the Super Bowl based on his original timeline, should still have the whole offseason. Yep, that's what it sounds like to me as well, is that he should have a complete offseason.

That will be really good for him. Last year in the off season, imagine what JJ McCarthy was dealing with last year and how exhausted the dude must have been. He had to go on all these visits with teams that might draft him. He had to go to the combine. He had to do a pro day. He had to come in knowing nothing about the Vikings offense and learn it from scratch. This is why, this is why you sit them. I mean, you just can't say it enough, but this is why you sit them because now he's got a whole off season to work on his throwing, work on the details of the different routes he's going to be throwing. Assuming he takes over a quarterback next year, he's got all this time to learn the verbiage and lock it in and progress as a player. Look at the film,

have all the knowledge of what it's like to be in that seat without having done it. I mean, if somebody is a pilot, let me know. But my brother flies planes and he also did flight simulator. Isn't there a similarity there to flight? Like you do the flight simulator and then you go up in the plane. This is his flight simulator season. And I think it will be good for JJ McCarthy long-term. Dennis is will Jeffrey Simmons dominate the Vikings interior offensive line? Dennis, you and I know the answer to that question. And it is yes.

However, people have been able to run okay against the Titans and they have a very low pressure rate. If you go to a pro football reference, go to where it says team defense, they've got a pressure percentage. I think the Vikings are top three in the league. The Titans are something like 26th. I don't know why they have good players harold landry arden key to vandre sweat has been good for them as a big dude in the middle they're giving up

rushing yards they got rain all over last week they're not pressuring quarterbacks um and and you know this is funny uh you know jorge says the titans defense is good watch the vikings struggle i don't see much evidence that they're good other than they have given up low yardage totals, but really high scoring totals. Quarterbacks are not struggling that much against them. They've played a lot of bad quarterbacks. They've played Caleb Williams. They played the jets. They put, I mean, they just have not played a lot of tough teams. That's how bad they are. They have not played a lot of tough teams. That's how bad they are. They have not played a lot of tough teams and they're two and seven. Uh, I don't think that their defense is good. They just have this kind of weird number. Uh, remember this is why this is the, this is why they have so few

yards allowed. I think is the game against Detroit. They didn't allow many passing yards. It was maybe 60 passing yards because they got blown out and Detroit didn't have to pass at all because they gave up like three punt returns. Maybe this is the time the punt return gets going. I don't think the Titans are good at anything. And that's why if they do struggle, we'll be having this same sort of conversation again about was it a good enough win

and what's it going to mean for the rest of the season? Ron says they can't come back next year with Mullins and Rippon behind whoever the starter is. Well, I'm not too concerned about next year with just about anything at the moment, but when it comes to Nick Mullins, I think what you have to accept, think about the Titans. Their quarterback got hurt. They played Mason Rudolph. They lost a bunch of games. There are not good backup quarterbacks. There's not enough good starting quarterbacks.

The Carolina Panthers, they benched their guy. I mean, look what happened to Indianapolis. They benched their guy for Joe Flacco. He comes in two games. They're like, this is unplayable. We got to go back to the other guy. It's unplayable. There are no good backups. Nick Mullins is fine. You're not going to win with them, of course, but he was close in games and threw for a lot of yards. It's the best you can hope for. Nick Mullins can be a Viking for life as far as I care.

The backup quarterback position is just never something I'm interested in talking about because everyone's is bad. You hope that the guy could come in and give you a chance to win, but there's just not, there's just not many, uh, guys who can come in and get in and give a chance to win. Uh, Wes says we all thought the Vikings were a seven to nine win team. So season's looking good. I would say there, there are different ways to look at that. The way that I've looked at it as I never thought that they were a seven win team to begin with or less. I had them at nine at the beginning of the season, and it looks like they're even going to blow out my expectation, but I had them as a wildcard team at the beginning of the

season. Based on the roster, you can go back and listen to it. You know how many, when I picked the schedule, then we did another schedule pick right before the season. I think I came up with nine and eight each time and nothing moved me off that from the beginning of the year. So they are going to very likely exceed expectations at the same time. I think you're okay. And, and a lot of Vikings fans did this. I think it's fine if you decided after 5-0, I'm going to hold them to a different standard.

I'm not going to take this as all gravy. They should freaking win now. And I think you're fine in doing that. I mean, I don't think they've ever been a team that you would say is number one and a Super Bowl favorite or anything like that. But should you expect your team to, after starting five and oh, go into the playoffs with a 50, 50 or better chance to win that game, whatever game they're playing. That's the, that's the standard. Now, after they go five

and oh, you can still say, Hey man, this has been way better than I expected. But I also think that if you go five and O and then you fall apart, that we're all going to say you collapse, not, Hey, no, it's all good. So it is a movement. Expectations are a moving target based on what we see. I mean, that's why we pick the schedule and everything and do the standings and project who's going to be what in the off season. And then a few weeks into the year, it's all blown out. Uh, Zoomer Kev says, who are the bottom teams in the analytic power ranking? Let me look. Oh, I just had that up. Oh, now I got to find it again.

Give me a second. I'll look certainly, uh, certainly Tennessee is in that list of those bottom teams. Let me see. Okay. I got it. Carolina, naturally Dallas, Dallas talk about not knowing what's going to happen. Dallas last year is one of the strongest teams in the league and they are 31st. New England is after that at 30th Jacksonville 29th, then the Raiders and the Titans so the quality of competition this week not a whole lot different than it was last week in facing Jacksonville David says uh Bengals previous quarterback coach was a reason for the blueprint changing at halftime of that game as I witnessed it live oh yes last. Last year's Bengals game. We'll be there again. So I'll get a good live all 22. Look, it is great to be upstairs and see it all play out in front of you. But

yeah, I mean, there, no team is so bad that they could never win ever, no matter what, like this is the NFL and all the players are good. And the quarterback is drafted at the top and they've got a star receiver and a good running back and good defensive players. Every team has a handful of players that could beat you in some way. Um, and you're right that last year that did happen. It also was when Byron Murphy got hurt. And I think recently maybe, and he it's got to come along with turnovers for sure, we're maybe appreciating Byron Murphy a little bit more than we did even last year. When he got hurt, the fall off was enormous, enormous last year when he got hurt.

And that was during that Bengals game. And then this year he you know, this year he's been a really excellent corner for them. I'm curious about what they think about keeping Murphy for the future. It seems like Kevin O'Connell really likes him. The price tag might make a big difference there, uh, with him, but he's been a big difference maker. Those deep inside routes behind the linebackers were the ones that Cincinnati started doing. Those are still a weak point for the Vikings. The question I would have, and remember too, that T. Higgins had to make one of the most ludicrous catches,

and they had to, Vikings, do a ridiculous tush push with their wide receiver to lose that game against the Bengals that they were winning through most of it. But yeah, in the second half of that game, they did a good job and Callahan was a part of that. So this is not an all to say that the Tennessee Titans have no chance to win against the Vikings. They've got a coach who got his job for a reason too. It's just that their results have been mostly really putrid, but they do have to watch out for that. That's for sure. And that's what Mark says. No easy games in the NFL, especially on the road. Good teams find a way to win when they're not clicking on all cylinders. Yeah, that's right. I mean, that could be a takeaway from last week. It seemed like

the extreme minority opinion was a win is a win for what happened with the Vikings. But we always try to take a lot out of every single game. There's only so many of them. We have a week to talk about it. We all want to react instantly and make every single game about a lot of other things. And when the biggest fear was that Sam Darnold was going to throw interceptions this year and be bad, and then you see it happen, you go, oh boy, is that what's coming? Is more of these? And I'm not criticizing you for that. That's, that's a fair opinion is to see that play out and go, is that going to happen again? Is that going to happen in the biggest

game? And the answer is we don't, we don't know. He's thrown a lot of interceptions. He hasn't thrown so many interceptions that you think this is the worst quarterback at turning the ball over. He's not even at the top of the league in turnover worthy plays. He's in the top five, but he's not. There are other quarterbacks who do this, including you saw Jared Goff. Jalen Hurts has a high rate of turnover worthy plays. There is a lot of quarterbacks who put the ball in harm's way, just the way that he did it. I think if it was at midfield, maybe it wouldn't have been as memorable, but right there at the goal line, it was a perfect storm to be unhappy with a win. Zumer Kev, how will Caleb Williams respond? I don't think it's going to get better soon. He was warned about

the bears and it's all happening. Yeah. And it seemed today that they threw the players really through Shane Waldron under the bus. Normally, what ends up happening is when a coach gets let go in the middle of the season, the players will say, regardless of what they really think, they will say, we let him down. That's on us. We're the ones to blame here. And we're going to do our best for the next guy. And we're going to try to fix A, B, and C. But it seemed like the Bears were saying that Shane Waldron was too nice of a guy, that he wasn't making adjustments, that et cetera, et cetera, showing a lot of frustration with the coaching in Chicago, which is not what Caleb Williams needed.

I don't know. I have not thought of Caleb Williams as a guy who battles through the adversity. That was Michael Penix for me in the draft. I was amazed at the things that Michael Penix overcame to be at the position that he was at. Every time Caleb Williams ran into trouble, he seemed to make it worse. And he seemed to get down on himself and he seemed to get frustrated. And yeah, I just, that was my biggest concern about Caleb Williams. So it will be a huge test to see how he comes back from this. And Oh,

by the way, part of the test is going to happen against Brian Flores next week. Uh, I don't know if it's good timing or not, but they just don't see on the seam on the same page as a franchise at all. And maybe that's, and maybe that's, maybe that's him. And I keep coming back to that too, is that maybe they overlooked some of the things that they should have been thinking about developing slowly with Caleb Williams in favor of we got to get them out there. Everybody's excited. He has like the second highest selling Jersey, the hype for him, but we never want to let players develop. The Patriots did it. Well, the Falcons are doing it.

Well, the Vikings are doing it well. Uh, and with Daniels and Knicks, those guys are 24. Those two did it. Well, they didn't come out to the NFL before they were ready. And I would implore all these other quarterbacks just because, and Anthony Richardson, dude should have stayed in college. Like just because you are projected as a top draft pick doesn't mean you have to do it. And I get it. I get it.

They'll always say, well, it's easier to develop in the pros. It's easier to develop while you're playing in college where it's not as intense. There's never going to be a perfect way of going about this, but it is clear that more time away from the NFL developing in playing in college, which can be like the minor leagues or sitting in the NFL is the best chance. Unless you are like CJ Stroud was a freak right away. We see it every once in a while or an older player. Stroud also played a ton of football in college or Nick's played a ton of football or Daniel's

played a ton of football. Um, some of these guys that it's a case by case basis, but I think Williams probably needed a lot more development than we gave it credit for. Uh, Randall says offense has 16 turnovers, but defense has been even more insane getting 20. Both numbers are freaky. I know, and this is where the concern is from a numbers perspective, is you can't count on the defense just taking the ball away all the time at this level. Right now, the Vikings, as far as takeaways takeaways go have a takeaway one every five drives that's nuts that is completely nuts to be taking the ball away one every five drives you're it's unlikely to be able to do that to do that in the playoffs which means that you have to protect the ball

better uh will sam darnold actually do that? That's what I don't know. Maybe if they make adjustments to the short passing game because teams are dropping back so deep, that could potentially help, but it didn't help him avoid it in this game where he threw the interceptions in the red zone. Before I get to more of your questions, let me mix in. We got some sponsors for the show,

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Kind of the perfect sponsor for the show. Teaching people about football. First name, last name says there could have been a minor procedure prior to the injection. Knee swells up a bit. They drain it for immediate relief and then inject it with the anti-inflammatories to reduce the swelling. And then continues by saying draining the fluid buildup is more likely to be considered a surgery. Oh, okay. I mean, from my seat, the bottom line is the important line,

which is, is this a problem or no? Whether it's a procedure or a surgery doesn't really make that big of a difference, but it's a good point. If they had to drain the knee, that would be more surgical, whatever. Something had to be done with his knee. Sounds like it was swelling. Doesn't sound like it's going to be something that's anything more than a

typical event for someone recovering. Mike says the teams that have weapons, especially the ability to run the football will be the test Philly, Detroit, San Francisco. They only have to play one of those teams the rest of the way, and Green Bay can run the ball as well. Atlanta can run. Actually, Arizona. Arizona's a really good running team.

So, yeah, maybe I'm not giving enough credit to how much of a test Atlanta and Arizona will be because their offenses do run the ball, uh, very well. And that can be tough for this defense in the last few weeks, they have toughened up against the run. And I mean, look, I think there's still the number one running defense in the league. So, uh, Detroit is a special type of run game that you don't run into that often. The Rams were okay. I think they averaged something like four yards a carry against the Vikings in that game.

They did it a lot, but it wasn't like they blew them away on the ground. Overall, they're about as good of a running defense as you could find. Those two teams though, they will for sure push this defense to see if they could keep doing it. Derek says for similar costs, assuming both around 20 million, give or take a few either direction, would you rather extend Bynum or sign free agent to be a DJ Reed? Um, so well, number one, this, this right here, this is a free agency guy. This is a, this is your, uh, armchair GM guy. This is what I mean.

I I've seen, um, over the years, there's, there's coach guy that wants to be the play caller. There's armchair GM guy. There's casual fan guy that just helps they win. And outside of casual fan guy, I'm kind of like all of them, like the, the coach analyst, the GM analyst. And so I, I can't keep i can't back off gm guy from asking off-season questions so i'll answer this one uh cam bynum's not going to require 20 million dollars no way no that's that position of safety has been driven down in terms of its cost uh over recent years i mean jesse bates is playing for for the Falcons and there's been kind of battles with players and organizations over how much that position is really worth.

But Bynum is a very good player, no doubt about it. Not a $20 million per year player. That would not be, I would be looking about half of that. As far as DJ Reed, he might be, he might be one of the five or six best in the entire league. So I would, if you're giving me one or the other player, I'm definitely giving it to DJ Reed, but my answer would be why not both with the amount of money that they have to spend. I think they should extend combine them and they should go chase as much as they can cornerbacks in free agency next year. But I'm also thinking about this year since they're seven and two, uh, Wade says, given floor is common and wanting to be a head coach again, can you make a pie chart for probability of him staying here one more year or two or based on the nfl lawsuit

impact so it's not really a um with a pie chart i think i would need more potential options i would need three or four potential options when there's really only two there's stays here or not. I guess I could try to make it into a pie chart. If I said stays here, uh, for zero more years, one or two or three or more, I think the answer is three or more. I think that Brian floor is as much as he wants to be a head coach. And I know that there was a writer out today, uh, from Anscape. Great, great writer. Jason Reed was in the building. He wrote a great book on black quarterbacks and something to check out if you like quarterback history and stuff. He's going to be writing about it. I'm sure about what Flores has brought to the table. I wrote a piece myself where I talked to Scott. Yeah. Scott Pioli, who was somebody who involved in his hiring way

back in New England. And Scott thought that he would get a lot of interest. But the fact that he didn't last year just makes me think that the NFL is not going to move on after that lawsuit and after what was said about Tua. Now, it is possible that there could be a team that does have a quarterback in place that Brian Flores would not have to be in charge of necessarily. And yet they need a defense. And maybe there's a team that has a bad culture that has a coach that has been too lackadaisical and they want somebody who's going to be more hard-nosed. So they go looking at Brian Flores,

but he didn't get a single interview last year. I mean, that just tells the story. He did a great job last year and he did not get a single interview. Maybe he will this year if they finish top five, but I look at him being a lot like Steve Spagnuolo, where he didn't sue the league, but Steve Spagnuolo was a really, really good defensive coordinator. He won the Super Bowl with the Giants.

Then he got a head coaching job. It didn't work. The NFL moved on. And think about Matt Eberflus. Matt Eberflus hurts everybody who's on the defensive side, even though D'Amico Ryans is doing a good job in Houston. But someone like Matt Eberflus, there's a guy who's a defensive mind and a defensive mind only, can't deal with a young quarterback. And most teams that are going to be firing coaches are going to be looking for young quarterbacks. I just don't

see it. He is deserving. He's a great coach. He is a great coach, not a good coach. He's a great coach. He connects with his players. He makes it a collaborative effort to build this defense. And they have been as good as you ever could have hoped for and have maximized their talent. But there's so much more to the head coaching position than that. I think it's just more complicated with him than, Hey, he's great at his job. And you know, we should give him a, we should give him a head coaching position. And he did a good job in Miami. It's not like they were terrible. I think he's got a better win percentage than Mike McDaniel. Uh, Mike says my Vikings fandom is a

loveless marriage at this point. I'm 54, but a fan since the 70s. I'm used to the abuse. See, Mike, you're the type of guy, as I'm talking about this potpourri of different Vikings fans who were ticked off about that Jaguars game and the different reasons that each person was unhappy with it. I think that people who watch them lose early on in life were so deeply disappointed

by those Superbowl losses. And then 98 was really your big chance. 98. And those seventies teams are, you look at a team today and go, they're not anywhere close to Carl Eller, Ellen page, or Randy Moss, Chris Carter, Jake Reed, John Randall. They're not even close to the team that went 15-1. How the heck is this team going to win? I can understand that psychology, but it doesn't really work that way.

And you know what? What it doesn't do any good is constantly leaning on the fact that you saw them lose other stuff. I know. What I'm asking here is for people to kind of take off the suit of armor that you have built around yourself to try to protect yourself from ever enjoying Vikings football until they win a Super Bowl. But I think you could just take it off and watch football. I don't think that every single weekend we need to reiterate that the Vikings have had a lot of bad things happen to them in their history, or that you have to go back over

and over. I know it becomes part of your identity, but I think we can separate. It is of course, part of the identity of the franchise what's happened, but it was just a 12 to seven win over the Jaguars. We don't have to do this. We don't have to do this over and over again. Uh, Joel says, uh, the refs use replay assists last week on a few catches that were either confirmed or overturned without a coach's challenge that I missed something. Or has that always been a thing? They, uh, it's is only recently been a thing and they expanded it. It was a very specific couple of things, uh, last year and they expanded it. It was a very specific couple of things last year and they expanded it this year. And I don't know if it was part of the expansion or the original plan to have

the inbounds out of bounds. It is supposed to only be used when it is super obvious. It has come up recently in the last two games. And I don't think it came up a single time earlier in the year but a couple of them were so obvious that you didn't need to have the challenge flag thrown it was the guy caught it and his foot was way out of bounds okay well they can fix that i would just like to see the expansion of the replay assist beyond anything else beyond just the, uh, like, you know, just is his foot in or out of bounds. You actually can use replay assist if there is a personal foul on a hit to the head. But the reason it wasn't used against, uh, the Colts was that they picked up the flag and they also were calling a face mask. And then it wasn't just why can't you just use it on anything? I don't know.

It's because it's the NFL. You're going to need future fans more to explain to you the referees. Maybe it's in that book. It is baffling sometimes, guys. It is baffling. Why the NFL couldn't just implement what has been done in other side leagues where the referees can just ask what happened. Jared says, if you had to bet $10,000 on how the Viking season would end, what would you put it on? First round exit, second round exit, NFC championship, or Super Bowl? Well, I guess if I had to put all $10,000 on the same thing, or do I get to distribute my $10,000?

So let's do it both ways. If I had to put all $10,000 on one thing, I would go second round exit. This team does remind me of 2019, where there's a lot of really good players. And if they're going on the road, just think about how it sets up. They're going to go on the road to Atlanta or Tampa or Arizona. They can beat those teams. They'll be favored in those games.

But second round, that sounds lion's eat to me. And I believe I saw somebody had the bracket the other day and the Lions would be the second round matchup. Ford Field, Detroit, that offensive line might be tough. So if I had to go all 10,000, I'd go second round exit. If I could distribute it, then I would probably put 3000 on first round exit, 5,000 on second round exit and a thousand each on NFC championship and Superbowl. But the path is just, the path is just not that crazy. It really isn't. That's why everything needs to be considered when we analyze this season, including the environment in the NFC. The environment in the NFC is there's just not a lot of great teams. San Francisco is being considered one of the best teams in the NFL by a lot of the numbers,

and they don't even have a great record. And they've had a lot of their players hurt. I mean, that's just where we're at this year. There's not, there's a lot of parody, but there isn't a lot of crazy good teams. It might remind you of maybe the early 2000s when we saw some really weird results in the NFL, where you had your Baltimore Ravens win the Super Bowl or, you know, Chicago ends up going to the Super Bowl. I kind of, I know Philadelphia was great a couple of years ago, but I also thought, have you ever seen anything easier in your life

than Philadelphia getting to the super bowl? They had to play one game against a terrible team. And then the next game, Brock Purdy tears his UCL and they're in the super bowl. That's how it goes. Sometimes I'm not trying to talk you into Vikings are going to the super bowl. It's just, that's why I want a little more patience with this. When you have a bad week because of the rest of the schedule and how the playoffs might shape up could be favorable to the Vikings. Randall says, Jonathan Granard has been even better than I thought. Brandon Thorne at Trench Warfare, big fan of Brandon,

has him second to only Nick Bosa in true pressure rate ahead of Garrett, Jones, Hunter, et cetera. Yeah, I got to tell you. I mean, so I watched Jonathan Grenard play for the Texans, and I watched some of his tape just when they signed him. I went back and took a look at it, a handful of plays, a couple of games. And I thought, okay, all right, this guy can rush the passer. But what you saw against the Jaguars was physically imposing himself on the Jaguars.

He was taking down people in the backfield. He was throwing linemen sideways. He put on a move. I put this on Twitter. He put on a move where they were bringing around a puller and he got low and dodged that guy in such a flexible and athletic move and then made a tackle. So, whoa, he is a technician. This is something I realized right away in training camp. He has a bunch of different moves. There's all sorts of things he could do. And I just don't know if there's a good way to measure twitchiness off the ball. He just has this lightning speed to him.

He's been great. He has been great. That is an incredible, this whole off season. This is the other thing when we talk about where this team is at and all that. Cashman, my goodness. I'm writing about Cashman for later this week. My goodness. What a game he played

andrew van ginkle's been great grenard's been great gilmore had two tough games but has been good and solidified that position for them aaron jones has been great uh they really worked free agency to its maximum and then next year they have even more money uh ty says you make me feel bad about forming opinions about football. I know I have no business questioning our OC and GM, but it's fun to form faulty opinions about the game I've watched for four years. Uh, that's not the way that I meant it to be taken. Uh, what I meant is that we all watch, uh, football for different reasons. There are different reasons why it's interesting. I'm not

making fun of coach guy. I'm not making fun of GM armchair, GM guy. I'm saying that there are different reasons that people like the Vikings and all of them were tweaked last week when watching that game, that what I try to appeal to all sorts of different types of listener. Uh, the person who wants to talk about the coaching, I try, that's why I go talk to the coach is because, and by the way, tomorrow, everybody do this purple insider.com or purple insider.football. You'll be able to find either way. My sit down conversation with Kevin O'Connell. Tomorrow. It's an article.

It's going to be posted. Okay. We all doing that. Go put it in your browser right now or in your phone. Purpleinsider.com. You'll be able to see it. Purpleinsider.football. Take you right to it.

So let's all promise to do that. Anyway. So the point is that the reason I go out and ask the coaches questions is so I can get information for you guys to understand what the coaches are thinking. And I love the general manager part too. If you were to have given me a job when I was 18 years old, coming out of high school, if you said you could have any job in the world, I probably would have said NFL GM. So I love that part. My point is that if you were a fan of coaching last week, you did not love what happened with Kevin O'Connell and the play calls, the interceptions, the strategy against the deep zones. If you are a GM guy, you're probably looking at it through the Superbowl or bus type of lens and saying,

I just don't know if this team is there yet. So I guess you got to wait till next year. You see what I'm saying? I didn't mean to make it sound. And then there's a lot of people who just like to show up at the couch on Sunday and watch the game and get mad at the TV or not, and then go about their day. And I try to appeal to everybody. That's, that's the point.

I'm not making fun of different types of fans. I'm making an observation about last week, why so many were ticked. That's why. Yeah, this, this was weird. Drew putting the Vikings on the one yard line on Cam Bynum's interception. Make it make sense. Make it make sense. I i there's a rule for that the rule is the continuation you catch it you fall in the end zone you can't be giving him a safety

but you can put him down at the one no one touched him make it make sense make it make sense uh hunter says the purpose of replay assist is to quickly uh uh correct obvious mistakes let's not just let's not limit that yeah i agree the refs have to what is hard is if they don't see the face mask then they can't throw a flag. It would be really frustrating if calls weren't being made on the field. And then someone was big brothering in to say, I saw a face mask because you might see so many penalties in a game that we're never going to watch the sport again. So you do have to have that delicate dance. But you know,

also, geez, I mean, you need referees who are going to see it. Mike says, love watching. I get excited, still involved, but understand teams losing great players on other teams make great plays.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, I mean, when it comes to the overall, like, bad things are going to happen to the Vikings type of thing, that's where it's hard for me. Not because I don't understand. Remember, I grew up in Buffalo. I understand.

This is not my first time. And I have been here since 2016. And I've seen kind of it all at this point when it comes to the Vikings. But what I know is there's other teams who have this same complex and sometimes they win Kansas city, man. If you were a Kansas city fan for how long, how long were you a Kansas city fan? Okay. Uh, you know, Jan Stenner rude and Len Dawson led you to a championship once upon a time against the Vikings. But how many after that? So many years they had Joe Montana. They came close the year with Trent green, the year with rich Gannon, where they benched him and went back to Elvis Gerbach in the playoffs. I mean, so many legendary players, Derek Thomas and Tony Gonzalez, and then all those years. And eventually you just land the right guy, the right collection.

And there you go. You end up with, so it's, I never, I never think, oh, it's impossible. I've said this before about the Saints. The Saints were the biggest joke of my life growing up. The New Orleans Saints, when I was growing up, they signed Jim Everett. It was laughable. They had a moment where Aaron Brooks was pretty good, and then that faded away quickly. Just don't even talk about the Saints.

And then all of a sudden, Drew Brees arrives, and it works. And they're there all the saints. And then all of a sudden drew breeze arrives and it works and they're there all the time. Um, so I never count out, uh, the fact that, uh, it can happen for the Vikings. I mean, I I'll always go into every season thinking maybe I, I was sitting there in Philadelphia, 2017, when case Keenum threw the ball to Kyle Rudolph for a touchdown to go up seven, nothing thinking I'm going to cover a Superbowl. This is amazing. It didn't work out that way, but you're, you're that close someday. It will maybe happen. Maybe. Uh, okay. So this show has more than one sponsor. So I got to remind you guys about

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really? You got Catan is advertising on this show. He texted me, really? You got Catan is advertising on your show? I was like, Jonathan, I like chess and we all like football X's and O's and strategy. We're all like that. We're all problem solvers. Anyway, US Cellular, also a great sponsor of this show. It's, you know, gifting this time of year is pretty hard, but you can give the gift of US Cellular. Not sure what that means. Here's a hint. You can choose four free phone lines and

get four, uh, four free phones for $90 a month from us cellular. Your family wants new phones. How does us cellular know they told them? Uh, then the good news is that compared to wrapping presents, you are great at taking hints. So take the hint and get four free phones for and four lines for ninety dollars a month us cellular built for us uh let's see hunter says uh second round exits to the one seed lion seem most likely to me but uh anything as kevin garnett said anything is possible and and that's a little bit of the point when I talk about the potential scenarios and this is why they have to get it done they they have to get it done they have to get to the point where they can be going on the road and be a

favorite where they can go on the road to Arizona or Tampa or Atlanta and be the favorite then the second round you just never know like how that's going to play out. If it's a division opponent, you can beat a division opponent. They're tough, but they're also, uh, you know, a team that is beatable. As we saw, they played beatable football the other night and familiarity closes the gap, even when it comes to talent because the Vikings know how they play they know how the Vikings play that's why every single game no matter who's starting quarterback seems to be very close with them Jason says would you pay Cam Bynum 16 million a year that is what ESPN says he will get this offseason I don't know my friend friend. That is a lot. That's a lot. They paying safeties is dicey.

I remember being on the side ish of paying Anthony Harris, not franchise tagging. That was insane. That's when we overlook with Rick Spielman. Well, what the heck was that? That was weird. He must've thought he could trade him. Uh, anyway, uh, paying safeties, look where they got Metellus. Look where they got Bynum. You have Theo Jackson, who's a really good football player, sitting on the side because there's too many good safeties. 16 a mil is, that's a lot. If it's 12, 10, and also we have to consider this. 16 mil a year is not 16 mil on the cap. Always. It might be 16 mil a year, but it's a cap hit of seven and then 12 and then 18. And then you're playing the game of pushing money down the road, which you actually want to start playing that game

after next year with JJ McCarthy at quarterback. And you're starting to open up that window where you want to do everything you can salary cap wise to make it work. It might be a difficult negotiation. He is a very popular player and he's a very good player. Is he a totally game changing safety as in a Harrison Smith in his prime? No, I don't think there's many guys who reach that mark. That will be difficult because chemistry is going to be important. If they keep buying him and Metellus, Grenard, Cashman, Harrison Phillips, Andrew Van Ginkle, that's a lot of the parts that are really key to this. And probably at this moment, it looks like Byron Murphy and Makai Blackman was part of this before.

That's a lot of key parts to keep building on what they've started. They lose Bynum. That's just another player to replace. You got to go get somebody else maybe, or hope that Theo Jackson is the same. So I don't know. I don't know. It's that it's a tough call, but if it's 16 a year, but that's not really the cap hit, that's fine. Jared says a flag can't be created on a play where a flag wasn't thrown because there's penalties on every play. If we start reviewing every play, it will destroy the NFL. Oh yeah, no, that's true. And that's, that is my point. That is my point is what they should air on the side of. If somebody say throws a forearm into a, another person's helmet, they should air on the side of throwing the flag, calling the penalty and getting the replay assist to find out if it was right. I'd like the referees to maybe start thinking about

what they can use some of this replay assist on, but I don't know. It's just still messy. It's never going to not be messy. David said, this is the game where the offense all comes together and then we can use that as our variable blueprint for whatever different defense approach we encountered the path is there with this defense the path is definitely there with the defense the schedule the players that they have and this is feeling a sense of having no control over a situation is what causes some panic for people. And when your team plays as well as it did the other day, and then you feel like you have no control over whether Darnold is just going to throw three interceptions and ruin a really good performance.

That's where it is maybe more frustrating than ever. And it's frustrating for me to break down the game because I'm thinking, well, they ran the ball well, which we've been asking them to do. They threw to Hockinson, which we've talked about how valuable that is. They held onto the ball for a long time. The defense was absolutely phenomenal. They've resolved some of their issues. They made a quick adjustment in the game and started having Blake Cashman, Ivan Pace blitz, and they caused all sorts of issues for the Jaguars. I mean, what a good

performance. Oh, they got to the red zone three times and threw three picks. Uh, well maybe it wasn't as good of a performance, right? So, uh, feeling like your team could play that well and still come that close to losing is not, not a good feeling for anybody, but it's not like Darnold's throwing three picks every week. He has an above average turnover worthy play rate, but it's not astronomical. And he has to keep it from becoming astronomical because if he does those other things well, and he controls the football and hits on some explosives and plays better than he did the other day, then you can compete with anybody.

But I agree with everyone who says if he's throwing three picks, they're not going to compete with anyone. Mike says, I don't believe the Vikings have bad mojo. It's just how things have played out. I feel like we're top to bottom headed in the right direction. Yeah. I mean, mojo wise, when was the last time that the Vikings franchise had this much of a good, good mojo, a locker room like this. And I think this was part of, uh, Randall speaking my language. If O'Connell never calls another trick play, uh, they'll be happy.

Uh, yeah. Uh, Pamela says, am I the only person who thinks the Vikings would have beat the lions? If Cashman was healthy, we will see. But I feel like the talking heads overrated the lions.

I don't, I don't think that, uh, the talking heads necessarily overrate the Lions. You guys know I lean on the numbers. The numbers are very, very good for the Lions. And they just won a game where they threw five picks, which is crazy. The Lions, by their standings, by what they've done the last two years,

by the quarterback they have has been to the Super Bowl. The line they have is terrific. If you guys had that line, it's all you'd ever talk about is how great it was. Their defense is vastly improved. They're a great team, but your first statement, if Cashman plays, they beat the lions. I agree with you. Missing Cashman is the number one biggest thing. His health is the biggest thing in that defense because you started to see it all come together. And I talked with Cashman today for, I don't know, 10 minutes about his blitzing and the different things that they can do when he's in there and how Ivan Pace kind of

becomes a fellow blitzer and they can play off each other and how they do what they call games where he's going to rush toward the tackle and Jonathan Grenard's going to swing inside. He is such a good player. I, that's like, I know he's a gopher. I know he's good. I saw him with the gophers. This, this guy's phenomenal. I mean, he's one of the best linebackers in the entire NFL. I definitely agree with you. The communication at home is difficult to do. Oh, yeah. No, I think you're right. I mean, as close as that game was, get one or two stops,

one or two adjustments that are so much harder to make without him. His health is the biggest thing that is going to determine how that defense goes. KFT says McCarthy having a procedure after three months not a good thing this may become chronic maybe they were pushing him too early uh so i'll just tell you this kft this is coming from the folks who have more knowledge about this than i do that have talked about this particular situation is that it is not uncommon for this surgery to have to have something like this. Maybe it's swelling. There's a platelet thing.

I'm not a doctor, but an injection, not an unusual thing. The other part of it too is that him having the full surgery to completely repair the meniscus is the best thing he could have done for his long-term health. Uh, like to avoid it being chronic, it might be a chronic issue. If he had only done the shave repair that gets done sometimes by players. I think even Carl Anthony towns had his, uh, the, the short-term type of surgery. But the reason they had the long-term is because they want McCarthy to be good for a long time. Um, so I, I think that trying to speculate about where this is at is probably irresponsible. I mean, all I understand from

the reporting and from people who've talked about it is this is common and doesn't change his timeline for full recovery. That's where we're at right now. I'm not going to talk about it in a different way until we have to. Wade said there's a Vikings video where they focus on Cashman swiped Rogers arm and his speed and tenacity the entire place. Unbelievable. I watched him back on tape. I even, I just chatted with him a little bit about this today and with Metellus as well for my article and Metellus. Cause I said to Metellus, I was like, well, he's a pretty big linebacker

for today's standards. And Metellus goes, have you looked at his height and weight? Because I think it's just the way he plays. I don't think, and I asked him, I said, are you above average for a linebacker and like height, weight? And he said, I don't think so. I think it's closer to average. He plays like it. He plays like an old school linebacker. He plays with a specific brand of intensity, violence, speed. Kevin O'Connell, I asked him about it today again for my my story

and that's what all of them said like the the intensity that he plays with it's probably why he's been banged up at times but this is if you built a modern linebacker in a lab someone who can cover someone who can blitz sideline to sideline, good tackle. They got an elite player. This was maybe the second most notable signing, maybe just because he was a gopher. It may have been the third biggest one behind Van Ginkle at money-wise. It may have been the third biggest one, but this is the biggest signing. I mean, both him, all of them, all of them have have been huge but the way that he directs the whole defense i was not aware that he was this good to be a complete game changer on the defense so that's been a big one for them and somebody that they're going to have for for years to come

and build on as a building block and that's sometimes we talk about the draft and well, they missed on that draft pick or this draft pick. And it goes back to my thing of, I don't care where they came from. They just need to be there. And that's Blake Cashman. Anyway, great chat guys.

As always, I want to throw this out there one more time before I go. Tomorrow, I am posting an article, my sit down with Kevin O'Connell. And, uh, we talked about a very specific subject that I'm not going to spoil right now, but one-on-one me head coach of the Minnesota Vikings article will go up purple insider.com and purple insider.football, which I bought specifically. Cause it sounds great. If you use either one of those,

it will take you to my newsletter. You could sign up, read the article would love the support there also. Oh, thank you, Matt for pointing out that Brian Murphy wrote today. So it might be worth going there right now about his trip to Jacksonville. It is a hilarious read. So make sure it's not trick. Stop it. It's not trick plays. See the

head coach still sat down with old purple insider here after criticizing his trick plays. You wouldn't believe it. Uh, but yes, we had a great conversation about a 15 minute discussion for a story and I've spent a few weeks working on this. So I would love you guys went over there, checked it out. You can sign up in a way that supports this financially, or you can sign up on the freestyle. You'll still get a good number of the articles sent your way.

So check that out. Purple insider.com or purple insider.football would be honored. If you go check that out. So I'm going to run and finish up that article for tomorrow. And tomorrow night, it will be Manny Hill, and we're going to talk about Vikings and Titans. And also keep an eye out for Aaron Schatz is going to be on the show as well, the analytics legend.

So it'll be great. Thanks, everybody, again again for dropping by. Really appreciate it. And we will talk to you tomorrow night. Football.