Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - JJ McCarthy out for the year, Jordan Addison banged up in joint practices

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani of the Pioneer Press are live from Cleveland, where they talk about JJ McCarthy's crushing news and Jordan Addison getting banged up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome inside the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Cleveland. Matthew Collar here along with Dane Mizutani, the Pioneer Press, where we have just returned from the Cleveland Browns facility where we watched the Minnesota Vikings and Cleveland Browns practice, which is completely secondary to where we need to begin this conversation, which is with J.J. McCarthy. We also have an update on Jordan Addison, who left the practice as well. We were able to talk with Kevin O'Connell as he was coming off the field. So why don't I give you that real quick, because probably you saw on social media that he got hurt. He did. Kevin O'Connell says that he won't practice on Thursday,

but it looks like he's going to be okay. It doesn't seem, at least from Kevin O'Connell's body language, the way he talked to us, like they're expecting a long-term injury, but tests will have to happen. I think he said they want to get a picture of it was the way he described it to us. So at least as of this moment does not sound serious with Jordan Addison and his ankle, but something we'll be monitoring going forward. But the big news of the day, Kevin O'Connell gets off the bus here in Cleveland. And the first thing he says to us is J.J. McCarthy has had his surgery and now he is

out for the rest of the season. And I cannot imagine more of a gut punch than that for the entire organization, for Kevin O'Connell, for Vikings fans, for us who wanted to watch J.J. McCarthy continue to ascend and cover his growth into the NFL. This is a real hit for everyone. And the only silver lining that Kevin O'Connell had, which I think is fair, is that he said he had a big enough sample size to learn this is our franchise quarterback and everything that he was hoping for when they drafted McCarthy had been confirmed and I don't think that that's just trying to spin it positive I believe that he is telling the absolute truth when he says that because that's what we saw in front of our faces but now Dane you're gonna have to wait until 2025 to watch JJ McCarthy

play football your reaction your thoughts it sucks like that's the only reaction that you can have like this really sucks because not only had he performed really well throughout the summer really shown growth from the spring to the summer, like we've talked about. But the lasting memory we're going to have of J.J. McCarthy before he goes down with this season-ending injury is just how good he looked in that preseason game. And, you know, we all talk about the Minnesota sports curse, and sometimes I like to say, it doesn't exist. And it's really hard to argue with it right now because for Vikings fans everywhere, fans of Minnesota sports, just even casual observers of the NFL at large to watch JJ McCarthy go out there

on Saturday night at US Bank Stadium, totally looked the part. 48 hours that followed that was just, man, how good could this guy really be? Everyone's super jacked up and excited. The night practice is there. Cleveland Browns joint practices are to follow after that. And the momentum was just rolling down the track. Maybe not for him to start week one, but certainly to feel good about just where this thing could be headed for a franchise that really hasn't had a franchise quarterback in

40 years so to have the balloon just kind of popped right here it sucks because this whole season i think was supposed to be like no matter what what, if Sam Darnold's good, you can live with that, obviously, because the Vikings are winning football games. But the failsafe was always, if Sam D of snapshot, I guess, of the NFL to have the head coach walk off the bus, talk to the media, be like, yep, JJ McCarthy is going to be out for the year, sound genuinely sad about it. And then they just go practice for two and a half hours in the heat. So it's the whiplash of the NFL. but man, this is just, it just sucks. It's a total gum punch all the way around. And I was holding out some hope and I'm sure most people were for, oh, it's just a little thing and it's the cleanup and the trim or whatever.

And then he'll be back in six weeks and then we can all stay on the same track that we thought we were on. And I think that the most likely scenario from the start of this thing when they got sam darnold and they draft jj mccarthy always seemed like they'll get through a part of the season they'll get to a point where they just say you know what jj's ready to go and it's time and now they can't do that and i never thought that mccarthy was ever going to be called upon to save the season but instead just to give some energy to the franchise and come in and get experience that always seemed like the most likely scenario we were talking about when he was drafted like what week is he

going to play and all those things and uh well kevin o'connell won't be asked quarterback controversy questions but at the same time uh he will have to just ride out hell or high water with Sam Darnold. And there could be a lot of hell involved if they play like they did today at practice, which we will discuss in a few minutes. But it was not a good debut practice as locked in QB1 for Sam Darnold against one of the NFL's best defenses. And based on Darnold's history, there's all the evidence there that would tell you he's capable and he's talented and with Justin Jefferson, that there's always a chance that he could be very good. And we've

seen that before, but the odds are always going to point to with a quarterback that started this many games that eventually, even if he gets off to a good start, the wheels will come off or based on their schedule, it could just not off, get off to a good start. And that was always the, all right, well, you've got McCarthy. And then throughout mini camp OTAs, we were like, ah, I don't know if he's going to play when he's going to play and all those things. But the development that you saw from him in such a short period of time was really mind-blowing. I don't think that just because he's hurt, like we're exaggerating this,

or O'Connell is exaggerating this. This was a day-by-day thing that we saw him get better and better and better. And even when he had a bad day, the next day was really good. And even when he threw an interception, the next day was really good. And even when he threw an interception, the next play was really good. And what you were seeing was every player start to comment on this. Like, yeah, he looks like I was talking to Tristan Jackson today. He's like, we saw the dog in him, you know, and Garrett Bradbury talked about how confident he looked going out there with the offense. And that's now something that has to be put on the shelf. And they talked about, well, he's still going to be around the team and that's now something that has to be put on the shelf and they talked

about well he's still going to be around the team and it's not like he's completely gone so he could still learn and he could still get better but there's a lot of reps a lot of practice a lot of preparation that's all going to be left on the table along with probably what was going to be opportunities to start it is a significant setback for someone who was developing in a great path the way that McCarthy was yeah and I think when Kevin O'Connell talked about it today you're right when you say that he wasn't trying to spin anything positive by saying like we have our franchise quarterback we truly believe that we have our franchise quarterback and everyone else should believe that the Vikings have their franchise quarterback I think he believes that that was not a spin zone PR, you know, parroted

thing that he was saying out loud. What I do think was the PR spin zone was when he said, there's still a lot of work that you can get from this season. I agree there is. But that's something that you you are just trying to find the silver lining. Because while I do think there is some benefit to him just watching Sam Darnold play the position, I think even Kevin O'Connell knows deep down that these are irreplaceable reps that a guy can get in practice at really any given moment throughout this developmental curve before he was going to be called upon, perhaps at some point this season. So to listen to him kind of talk about, well, he can still get this done and this done. And, you know, mental reps here are

important and film sessions, they're important, like, that's all true. But that's where like the spin zone of like, we're just searching for a silver lining kind of stood out to me. Because to your point, this was all, it felt like going to add up or end in at some point J.J. McCarthy taking over for Sam Darnold and and just now that we don't have that that possibility anymore it puts a lot of pressure on on Darnold on O'Connell just and just the whole vibes of the situation just feel wholly different after after that announcement today but I believe that the Vikings believe that they have their franchise quarterback I think I believe that they have their franchise quarterback based on everything they've seen but there's actually no good way to say like this might still be like an okay like no it it just sucks all the way around and I'm going to keep using that word because there's there's no

other way to describe it it's you just can't make it up really like the way that all of this has has transpired from the spring when we're talking and saying he looks pretty inaccurate like are we sure he's gonna be that good to him just busting his ass and putting in the work in that one month gap and then turning from may to june to july and looking like a completely different player and like you were saying the momentum was growing with each practice and then the game was so good and then no it's over so it you just can't make it up and and it's it's just frustrating all the way around well if we're trying to come up with silver linings uh number one would be that the season is over the career is not over he will come back at 22 years old which is uh still younger than most of the quarterbacks that were drafted this year that's still a

positive part of it that he made such an impression that now they can approach next offseason like they don't have to go get a bridge quarterback it could be jj mccarthy show everything can be built to him next year he can pick up once he's recovered because i was surprised to hear out for the entire season because sometimes in that full repair I mean Adrian Peterson came back after I think about a 12-week break with that full repair sometimes you can come back and maybe that's setting up for something like that like hey I'm gonna prove that I can come back a little bit earlier and have a chance at the end of the season but saying he was out for the entire year definitively made me think, well, okay, this must've been a very serious surgery.

Other silver lining. Usually when you have the full repair, it has a better long-term prognosis than the shaving, the cleanup, the removal, whatever it is, all the different things that can happen there, uh, that usually those are shorter term solutions. So when you have the longer term solution, then you assume that this will not be something that he's going to be dealing with for a long period of time. And if you were going to tell me that the guy was going to have a season ending surgery in one of his first rookie contract years, please make it the rookie year because that's

when you have another quarterback who's already here. That's always a developmental year for almost everyone. That's why rookie quarterbacks, no matter how good they are, don't make the Super Bowl. And did you know that Patrick Mahomes didn't play right away? I mean, if you're just looking for, is it the end of the franchise? No. And you learned enough and you had enough time. It is ironic that he got hurt in the moment that he was most

showing everyone what he's been doing behind the scenes uh in front of us every day in training camp practices but to be able to show everyone this is something that you can buy into long term was important he can still learn about the game he could still watch sam darnold he could still engage in that room it's just that he's going to have to relearn a lot of stuff he's got the work ethic to do it but there's no question that it's much harder now than it would have been and for kevin o'connell i didn't really want to go too deep down this road with o'connell and the extension and all those things but when you watch sam darnold in practice today against Cleveland, it certainly goes through your mind.

What if it looks like this? And what if the offense struggles? By the way, the defense was very good today. So we should mention that. We'll get into that. But the defense was good. The offense really struggled. What if it looks like this and they can't win a lot of games?

Not everyone is Cleveland's defense, but if they don't win a lot of games, then is there suddenly pressure on O'Connell? Because we've heard this from Mark Wilf. We've heard a there's no excuses, even if you have quarterback injuries, which they had last year. Now, by the way, really paying the karma gods for 2022, like selling your soul for that. But this is two years in a row with quarterback injuries that Kevin O'Connell has nothing to do with and neither does Kwesi Adafo-Mensa. I think with the Wilfs, they have to factor that in.

They can't just say, oh, well, you know, if you didn't have a great season, then that's your fault and you're not a good coach i i don't want to see them react that way when everything that was done here was very good i think from the time that they searched for him what they bought into when they drafted him not trading up for someone else uh in the draft and then building starting the process of building around him, building his abilities, his understanding of the offense, getting Josh McCown here. All of that stuff is right and needs to get a chance to be seen through. So now we're in a situation where you have to implore not overreacting to the ownership of this team if it doesn't go very well. That was not in my mind as much before this injury because

I thought, well well if they start off tough they'll just go to mccarthy and then people will get excited about mccarthy and it will be fine from there then expectations will happen next year but now you don't even have this go-to thing that can ramp up the excitement for the fan base and for the ownership yeah and i i just hope it doesn't end in the scenario where they are bad this year and next year because they're bad this year it's just both kevin o'connell and quesadilla have to operate in a lame duck year those are always just the most awkward situations and i understand like the nfl is a what have you done for me lately, league? And it's a prove-it league, and guys are constantly coaching or playing for their jobs.

But this just doesn't seem fair. This is also the road that they've taken, the road the Vikings have taken over the past three years is the road that the ownership wanted to take, that they wanted this competitive rebuild, which makes things harder rather than just maybe just tanking a year the vikings are never going to tank with the will zoning the team and that's very very obvious but this whole competitive rebuild 2022 when you're

winning games that you probably shouldn't and you finish 13 and 4 only to kind of fall flat last year and obviously injuries played a role in that this moment in time was the the vision of of quesadilla famenza and kevin o'connell finally coming to fruition after giving the wilfs what they wanted and trying to be competitive for those two years rather than just throw it in the can and try and get a you know a top tier quarterback and and they've executed that vision and then when you see J.J. McCarthy play on Saturday you can see like the long view of that vision so I hope that they just get to a chance to fully play out the string rather than have to go into next year coaching and GMing for their jobs. Now, I don't know how that this is what we talked about two weeks ago at at the facility where you not giving them extensions right now opens the door for all of this.

And this is before obviously the rookie quarterback needed season-ending knee surgery. But I'm with you. I hope that this whole regime gets a chance, like a real chance, to see where this thing was going. Because if you just operate in a vacuum, like right now, at this snapshot moment in time, we could see that even 72 hours ago, it was like, this thing looks like it could be good. So I hope that it's not an overreactive, well, this season wasn't very good. They only won six

games. They're going to have to prove themselves because like the goalposts keeps getting moved. And I feel bad for them. Like, I feel bad that we're not going to get to kind of see what this thing could have looked like with their vision and that we're going to have to delay this, you know, another year. I just hope it doesn't have like delaying this another year doesn't cost them, you know, the ability to see it through. Folks, U.S. Cellular noticed that the way we use our phones has gotten ironic. We try to put our phones down for dinner, but the menu is on a QR code. That's ironic. We hit like on social media posts

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Visit uscellular.com slash built for us to get started. Oh, I agree. Yeah, I think delaying it another year still stays on the timeline. And that's what I wrote today is the timeline was always 2025 is when you plan to really compete and year two of a rookie quarterback who's good i mean that's where cj stroud is that's where anthony richardson is they get to year two year three that's where the window really starts to open and you know someone like josh allen who was considered a raw prospect it's by year, he's in the playoffs.

Year three, they're really competing. I mean, that's my expectation for this team still. And it doesn't change it, but it may change the feeling of how we go through this season, which leads me to, well, let's talk about Jordan Addison, because this is the biggest takeaway from today's practice is that Jordan Addison went down along the sideline, kind of got up and then immediately realized that something was wrong, then went down and then the trainers picked him up and then the cart came out. And once the cart comes out and we tweet that the cart is out, oh boy, then the freak out is at 10 out of 10. And we were able to talk to Kevin O'Connell after and he said that he thinks he's going to be all right, but he's not going to practice tomorrow.

And all right can mean a lot of things in Kevin O'Connell's world, and I appreciate very much him giving us the update after practice. He wasn't scheduled to talk with us, but we hung around after, and he gave us that update. It's just a little bit difficult to interpret what that means exactly because Shaq Griffin was okay which means you know Shaq Griffin was out there kind of running around today starting to get better but Shaq Griffin is not back I mean does okay mean a few days a few weeks that we don't really know and I think they don't maybe know at this moment

until they get x-rays and then Kevin O'Connell's going to talk with us again tomorrow and we'll try to get more of an update at that point but what we saw was without Jordan Addison they hit a deep ball to Justin Jefferson a couple of passes to Brandon Powell and basically nothing else there was an interception along the sideline that was pretty rough from Sam Darnold a good number of checkdowns the Browns defensive line is freakish and disturbing it is so good so they were causing all sorts of problems they were heckling the Vikings by the end of it they just beat them up in this practice today the run games was not going anywhere against this Browns defense and Delvin Tomlinson wasn't

even practicing and neither was Jordan Hicks those are two guys that are good run stuffers. And even though I have bought into the idea that Kevin O'Connell scheme combined with these receivers can be pretty good, pretty good with Sam Darnold. I don't think that that's crazy. I think it could be fun and maybe entertaining and put up a lot of points at the same time if it looks like it did today and if Addison is hurt if anyone is is out if Aaron Jones gets banged up he's fine right now but if he gets banged up then it's it might be a pretty tough go out there for this team offensively yeah the margin of error does appear to be pretty slim with this offense and and i'm with you where i look at all the pieces in place and i look at the arm talent of sam darnold and i can theorize and project like

it could look pretty good like this is the most he's ever had around him and i think with the talent he has and the talent sam you know that the vikings have across the offense, maybe it could look good with Sam Darnold. But today is a good example that the margin of error is slim because Jordan Addison went down early in practice and the offense basically didn't exist the rest of the day. And then us talking to Kevin O'Connell afterwards, he said, like, to your point earlier about he thinks he's going to be all right, that could be a sliding

scale like all right might mean under the prism of it's not season ending like it was jj mccarthy all right could mean also he's back at practice next week um that won't be fully materialized until you know things play out but what he also said was it was unfortunate that he went down so early in practice in a really competitive environment the most competitive they've had through training camp and while I think he meant it was unfortunate for Jordan that he didn't get these reps I think he also meant it was unfortunate for us because the offense looked like that after he went down. And it would just give me a little bit of pause or concern me a little bit that if Jordan Addison goes down and it looks like that, and I guess what I should say is that these joint practices oftentimes,

as we've talked about with training camp practices, the offense is generally going to look a little worse than the defense. The defense can kind of just go. It's an awkward dynamic when you're not going to the ground and you're not hitting the quarterback, but like you can just, there's more leeway for the defense to go a hundred percent where it feels like the offense is kind of dialed back a little bit to make sure, you know, either they're not getting hit or the quarterback's not getting taken to the ground. It does feel like, generally speaking, these practices are geared for the defense to look better. But they're not geared for the defense to look that much

better. And I think seeing Jordan Addison go down and seeing the offense really be unable to move the ball too much, seeing deep throws downfield broken up and even Justin Jefferson who always seems to be open I don't I don't know I have to go back and watch the practice film which we can't do maybe he was open if he was Sam Darnold didn't have time to see him if he wasn't Sam Darnold had to move on to his next progression which was generally a check down all encompassing like the offense didn't look very good today which would concern me if Jordan Addison has to miss any sort of time heading into the season like like we said all right could mean he's back next week he's all good it was just a little ankle tweak all right could

also mean his season wasn't over but it's a high ankle sprain and he's out for for a month and a half and if he's out for a month and a half. And if he's out for a month and a half, then the first three or four games of the year just suddenly got a lot harder. So I'm excited, I guess, to look at practice tomorrow and see how everything looks. I don't think Jordan Addison is going to practice, but maybe the offense can show a little bit more life and we can feel a little bit better about the operation as a whole. But walking away from the first competitive environment

that wasn't against each other, returns were not good. Yeah, and I think that when you go into a practice like this, you plan a lot of things for Jefferson and Addison because, well, fans are not here, so it's just us, and we have limitations on filming, which means that these two coaches are planning things against each other that they want to see and that they want to work on, and they're talking beforehand,

we want your defense to do this, we want our offense to do that, and they're running their real stuff. And then all of a sudden, you don't have one of the key guys to your real stuff, and they're already missing TJ Hawkinson. So you've got TJ Hawkinson recovering from his injury. He's here. I don't know what a sign that is, but he seems to be maybe getting closer, at least traveling with the team to be a part of this. Maybe a good sign for him. I don't really know, but it seems like he's coming along and unlikely still to start week one and then Jordan Addison gets banged up and then all of a sudden you're saying all right now Tristan Jackson is taking first team reps now Brandon Powell and Jalen Naylor are having to take on roles that they normally wouldn't that Naylor is someone who has some flexibility but

he's not Jordan Addison he's not a first round draft pick wide receiver who caught 10 touchdowns last year and was an immediate beast and this thing it was just a bit of a reminder of how delicate it feels with Sam Darnold where with Kirk Cousins Jefferson went down but Cousins has just done this for many years and so he starts throwing to brandon powell and then it works kind of then he's throwing to jordan addison who's a star and it works but if you only have jefferson then teams can key in on this and they're not even game planning it just was obvious that that was the place he wanted to go pretty often and then they also have really good dbs here's a reminder of why it would be nice to get good defensive backs watch that practice and uh i'm not even sure if everybody was practicing for them was denzel

ward even out there i think he may not have been and it was it was just a really tough day uh for because i saw one of their corners was in street clothes but it was a very tough day for even jefferson to get open outside of one deep ball where he had a catch and there was some heckling from the browns after jefferson had his deep catch which was spectacular one of the browns players yelled you guys are one for 12 now and i don't think that that statistic was completely accurate but it felt like that and that's where addison if he's here you believe that the number two wide receiver can take advantage of Jefferson and the attention that's there and that that guy can be the safety valve for your quarterback and have a big year. But this this is this is walking on eggshells at this point. This is not a quarterback who's just going to plow through all the ups and downs like Kirk Cousins did in the offensive line. I just, you know, in the game and then today, we didn't see much from them as far as run

blocking goes, which I still think could be problematic for this team. So when it looks this bad, it does fall under the category of it's never as bad as it looks at its worst. It's never as good as it looks at its best. It was just Jordan Edison has to be healthy this ankle has to be okay for us to go forward with this hey maybe Darnold but if Jordan Addison's out any amount of time then I'll have a much harder time saying hey maybe Darnold yeah I mean totally because that there's just it goes back to the margin of error like all of a sudden you're asking players to do things

that they shouldn't be asked to do and that's no disrespect to Jalen Naylor I thought he's had as good of a training camp as anybody but if you all of a sudden slide Jalen Naylor into Addison spot and then Brandon Powell or Tristan Jackson into what Naylor was going to do it just takes away everything for for an offense because then you can load up on Jefferson like you were saying and if people are loading up on Justin Jefferson and and you're relying on Jalen Naylor to to to kind of be your go-to guy if you're Sam Darnold it's a razor's edge and it's just like there's not going to be a lot of some games it could look okay and some games it could look like today it did at practice so you're probably right when you say it's probably not as bad as it

looked or as it you know it's never as bad as it looks because i remember first day of training camp back at tco performance center sam darnold didn't look very good the offense looked clunky and we were like either brian flores's defense is going to be really good this year, or the offense is going to be terrible, and things iron themselves out over time. But I think the bigger point here is what we've been talking about all along, is that the fact that the offense looked bad today is not concerning in the sense that the offense is just going to suck this year. It's concerning in the sense that one of your best players went down and it looked like that. It just shows fully that their margin of error, which we knew was going to be pretty thin. I think it's been confirmed totally now just by

watching the joint practice today. So two things. Well, since we're on the the matter the defense was good i i really thought so and a player who keeps standing out to me now that he's back and taking 11 on 11 reps is andrew van ginkle they started out and they got some push on deshaun watson andrew van ginkle came flying in there and got a sack finger quotes uh Blake Cashman had one he didn't blitz a whole lot as a Houston Texan I think he's going to blitz a lot more with this team as everyone does but Van Ginkle could be one of those swing men and we've seen some very interesting personnel packages where you've got Patrick Jones Dallas Turner was back at practice today we didn't get a reason why he missed the other day,

but I think what Kevin O'Connell was alluding to was they really wanted him to be able to participate in these practices. Van Ginkle was the one that popped the most to me out here today in making plays and getting after the quarterback. He's got a quickness and a fluidity to him in his pass rushing that doesn't look like a guy who was a fifth round draft pick once upon a time uh that is a very much flores type of player and so the defense is one on both sides of this thing uh james winston had a couple of throws where of course the vikings defense was

yelling sack sack sack that kind of thing was not much impressed with deshaun watson and what we saw from him uh did not just see the guy that was there a few years ago but it looked kind of like the guy who's been a Cleveland Brown but that also could be because the Vikings defense was good and their interior D line I thought was getting some push today against this offensive line of the Browns and I guess I'm intrigued if they're going to use the Tillery, Jonathan Bullard, and Harrison Phillips, because Tillery is a guy who stands out to me with his size and he's got some push to him. And if he's with two other guys who are kind of the meaty boys, if you will, I forget what was that? Michael Pearson and Delvin Tomlinson. But if they have somebody who can make

a difference there tillery uh i thought had some good reps there today against cleveland so their their defense was good and it made me think like is this going to be a defense first team that they have to run the ball and hope sam darnold hits a couple of plays down the field because if you were playing it the way it was today that's the type of team that I mean imagine how fast that would flip as a team that struggled with its defense for a couple years and is that an argument to try to convince Stephon Gilmore to come here because if you're going to win it may have to be a little more on the defensive side yeah it probably is and and that goes back to the point about cornerbacks and how we saw the impact that a good secondary can have on a good offense on the flip side of the ball with

the Vikings offense struggling against the Browns defense because of their talented secondary. I think you could say from a Viking standpoint on defense, our defense looked pretty good against that offense on the other side of the ball. And we't have stefan gilmore so how much better could it look if we do have stefan gilmore a former defensive player of the year who's obviously not going to come here and be that but i think he could come here and be your best quarterback right away so i think it's a reason enough um and i felt this before we came to Cleveland for joint practices, that they should just do it. And I think the Vikings want to do it.

And we'll see if they can find a way to make it happen. Like I said, we talked about this last year with Dalton Reisner, and he came in for a visit, and then it didn't work out right away, but then it did work out. Maybe that's something with Stephon Gilmore down the road. But the defense did look good today and and i don't think that's something that is necessarily should or should be overlooked um and maybe down the road we will be talking about this team as you know i already thought the defense was going to be much improved because of the things they've added in free agency and in the draft but maybe it is a team that could function more as let's just not give up a million points and if the offense can

do something on the other end they could just kind of sneak out football wins here and there we'll see again part of me wants to say like maybe each defense wasn't as good as they look today and maybe each offense wasn't as bad as they look today I'm trying to think like if there was a a Browns pod a Browns version of Matthew Collar and Dane Mizutani doing this podcast and would they be like man the Cleveland Browns offense is terrible, like we are doing the Vikings? Probably. But I think part of that is to do with the fact that Brian Flores is a madman. He's going to create chaos any way he can. And I think that's going to be really effective with the defenders they've now brought in. The defense just, it reeks of Brian Flores and the versatility across the board. And I think we saw a snapshot of that today.

I think we'll probably see that much more once things really start to dial up during the regular season. But I'm in for signing Stephon Gilmore. I think the defense could be much better than it was last year. Will it carry the team? I don't know if that's on the table, but it might be, just judging by what we saw from the offense today, it might need to be a team that needs to be carried by the defense,

at least at times. Well, they do have a lot of talent, and we saw it actually more in full today because it has been rare that we've seen Grenard, Van Ginkle, Turner, Tillery all out there at the same time. And Harrison Smith, he hasn't done a lot in practice as he shouldn't so far. This was the entire defense and it looked pretty darn good to me. Now the corners, Fabian Morrow got a lot of reps today.

Byron Murphy was getting a lot of reps. I didn't see a lot with first team for someone like levi drake rodriguez i did go over to the offensive side after we watched a little bit of the defense just to see uh as one person described it a bloodbath on the offensive side uh i i won't uh say my source there but if you knew it would be funny but anyway um it so I went over to see how bad it was going with the offense because it didn top 10 defense that can maybe drag you to the playoffs if you get enough on the defensive side. So yeah, you're coming away from today, not feeling like this team is on the precipice of going to the playoffs after they lost their rookie quarterback, who was very exciting. They do practice tomorrow tomorrow so let me ask you one question before we wrap up today kevin o'connell was asked and i forget who asked him there's four of us here so it was one

of the four about him maybe mark craig must have been him handling all the things that have gone on here and i think this has been kind of reminiscent of some of the seasons that Mike Zimmer had where you just felt like how much more can you put on this man uh I mean how much more is he gonna have to deal with here and you've had the Kyrie Jackson thing that was incredibly stressful for him and he handled of course with a lot of class and then you lose Makai Blackman that everyone was very excited about and just in the moment where you're feeling like the thing that's getting you through is this rookie quarterback that's going to be your future then he goes down for the entire season this is a lot of strain on kevin o'connell and i don't want

to paint this as well we're going to find out about him this year but i am interested to continue to watch Kevin O'Connell throughout this and how he manages this team in their way through this. Because it would be one heck of a coaching job if they can come out and they can be prepared. Because this is more strain than any team has had put on it in the entire NFL, of course, because it's the Vikings. So I wonder what you think about that, about Kevin O'Connell and how he has and will manage his team through these really difficult things. Yeah, I thought his answer said it all. He really just kind of turned it back to the players in the room and the coaches in place. And I think he really believes in this culture

that he's really helped spearhead here in Minnesota and I think he's going to keep leaning on that when the times get tough now I think it gets even tougher to do that the tougher times get it's probably hard for him to go back you know to his hotel room tonight or to his house when he gets back to minnesota and like want to continue to believe in this culture and like that this is going to get us through um but i also don't think that it's all lip service i don't think that this is an act and if i i don't think it's possible for it to be an act and that's a good thing if this was all lip service people would see right through the bs and we would see right through the bs his players certainly would

see right through the bs but it it doesn't feel like that it feels genuine it feels like he is still going to be able to get everyone to kind of pull on this same rope and and you can feel like little snippets of that just by talking to two players whether it's on the record or off the record in interactions the general vibe of the team still seems to be pretty high we talked to Garrett Bradbury today after practice and while he talked about how sad he was for J.J. McCarthy how devastated he was for J.J. McCarthy he also seemed to still be pretty excited about where this thing was headed and I think that all comes from leadership so I think it's going to be a trying year for for Kevin O'Connell I think like I hope he has someone that he can bounce, you know, things off

of and, and kind of have an outlet. Because he is kind of that outlet, I feel like for a lot of these guys. And we talk about mental health a lot in sports now, like, it's hard to be everyone's outlet if you don't have an outlet yourself. So I hope that there is someone that he can lean on in these moments, but I have very little doubt that he's going to be someone who can kind of carry them through, you know, yet another storm. We'll see how the rest of it plays out. But I think to this point, everything that the Vikings have had to deal with, and everything that they've kind of battled through over the last three months, like you said, it, no team in the NFL has had to kind of go through what they've gone through. The fact that the players still seem to want to be here

and have a genuine excitement about where this thing is going, I think is all reflective on the head coach. And I think he deserves a lot of credit for where he's kind of taken this thing amid all of tragedy, setbacks. coach and I think he deserves a lot of credit for where he's kind of taken this thing you know amid all of you know tragedy setbacks now a devastating injury to your rookie first round quarterback like this is enough to break most people and and while I think it's it's gotten him down I don't think it's broken him completely and I think think that probably speaks a lot to the leadership he possesses and the culture he has kind of helped put in place.

So I buy into Kevin O'Connell's ability to connect with the players and to lead them in exactly the way you're talking about. And this might sound a little weird to you, but they don't have Kirk anymore. And I think that with Kirk, at times his leadership ability was questioned, sometimes by his own head coach. But you know what he did? He knew the offense, and he ran it,

and he threw the ball where it was supposed to go. And there was so much value in the fact that Kirk could shake off just about anything. Anything that happened, Diggs and the whole thing, skipping practice. And so many times it felt like the world was about to collapse and then Kirk would go out and have a good game and they'd be back in the playoff race or something. They were one in five at the 2020 break. And then he comes out, gets him back in the playoff race there was a consistency to him a week-to-week consistency that is very hard to achieve if you don't have the quarterback who can

do that and sam darnold his whole career has been the opposite of that it's just been these wild ups and downs for him and if he finds consistency and leadership to this team and i asked a couple people about that and i think that the answer so far has been more of they like sam darnold's professionalism and it's i think the answer so i asked o'connell about that how have you seen him lead and the main thing that he basically said is if you go out there and execute the way you're supposed to execute that's good leadership as a as a quarterback which to me kind of says well he's not going to get at people's faces and he's not going to grab anybody by the face mask tom brady style and throw a helmet we just need him to go out there and play quarterback at a competent level and then everybody else the harrison smiths the garrett bradbury's

will kind of justin jefferson will fill in the rest as far as the leadership goes and you know sometimes most of the time you're only as good as the leaders in your locker room and I think this team used to have way more of them that were solidified veterans now they have more younger or less experienced players and even Jefferson this is a new role for him having to be at the center of the leadership and getting paid what he got paid like the the temperature goes up once you get that contract and so i think there's a lot of tension with this team right now that i will be interested to see how they manage and we'll do it all again tomorrow yeah so how about that uh we will be out of practice again tomorrow make sure you follow along and we'll just try for something a little more fun. Right, yeah, a little more fun tomorrow.

So, yeah, from the Courtyard Marriott, shout out to them and their decent internet speed here right near the Cleveland Browns facility. Dane Mizzutani, Pioneer Press, Matthew Collar. They could use maybe a little improved lighting here, but other than that, all good to go. Thanks, everybody, for watching slash listening and uh we'll we'll try again next time we'll see ya