Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - JJ McCarthy stands out and Day 2 Vikings camp notes

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about JJ McCarthy's strong practice, the cornerback situation with Mekhi Blackmon out, the approach to Sam Darnold and much more in a Day 2 recap of practice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here inside the Purple Insider studios following another day of Vikings training camp. Just got back from TCO Performance Center where we watched an interesting practice where it was less eventful than day one because day one we go out there looking for everything where's everybody playing what's the initial lineup how does it look and then day two we go it mostly looks the same as yesterday obviously minus Makai Blackman whoman who kevin o'connell started practice by confirming that mckay blackman does indeed have an acl tear and will be out for the season so we'll talk about that a little bit as we go on and of course everyone wants to hear the

quarterback update we'll get into that tomorrow by the way gonna have alec lewis of the athletic on the show so make sure you keep an eye on the channel for that conversation that we're going to have out there. And then I'll do another live show here as promised after every practice, I will do a live conversation with you guys. And tonight I'll be making sure that I keep an eye a little bit more on the comment section. Yesterday, I was talking about Makai Blackman and the uncertainty around his injury, as you guys were seeing on social media that it was a torn ACL. So I'll make sure I'm flipping back and forth between my notes and what you're saying. And of course, leave all your questions from training camp or whatever you've

got on your mind about football in the comment section here. And I will, after I'm done going through my notes for the day, run through all your questions and we will chat into the evening about the Minnesota Vikings. So I know where you guys want to begin and where we should, which is with the quarterback competition, Sam Darnold and JJ McCarthy. Sam Darnold is going to, it seems on a daily basis, give us at least one play where you walk away going, yep, that is one heck of an arm. And he did it again today. And if you want to see it, the Vikings tweeted it out not too long ago, Darnold's throw. This time it was to Jordan Addison on the other side of the field from where he hit Justin Jefferson on a deep throw. And let me describe it. He dropped back and he threw it a million miles an hour and it went really far and Jordan Addison caught it. I'm kidding. But the way that it looked, and we've got a pretty good view of where they're practicing, there is a hill that we can stand on behind. So they're throwing toward

me. Think of it that way. And you could see the entire flight of the ball from Sam Darnold. And it had a very NFL filmsy type of look. And this is where it is most impressive with Darnold's arm talent. And I know that you you're hearing this, you heard it from mini camp, but you see it again and just go, uh, observe this man's arm. It just had the perfect type of touch and angle and velocity to guide over the corner into Addison's hands without going too high, not going too low. Any of you who are big golfersers you understand hitting it directly in the middle of the club face not flying it way up in the air not hitting a worm burner but just getting the perfect arc on it that's what sam darnold has had on a lot of these deep throws so far and came

just about this close to hitting justin jefferson later in the practice now it was not overall the smoothest practice from sam Darnold. He threw an interception and there seemed to be a little bit of confusion on the play. Brandon Powell kind of threw his hands up a little bit. Shaq Griffin got the interception, got a little banged up. I'll talk about that in just a moment. It was maybe an up and down practice or not super noticeable for a lot of other throws outside of the one deep one from Sam Darnold today. But it also wasn't that intense of a practice either. When we really get down to the who played better, how many passes versus completions and all those

things I think should be when the pads come on when they're practicing without pads. It's like an accelerated mini camp. There's a little bit of physicality with the corners and a little bit of pass rush. But when the pads come on, the pass rushers start really working and they start creating the actual pressure and the speed ramps up to close to what they would want it on the actual field in US Bank Stadium. That's not truly what's happening until they put the pads on, but I would say it was a fine day. Otherwise, the interception was a little bit of a wonky play and the highlight was the deep throw from Sam Darnold. But I did feel that JJ McCarthy had a, I would say, very good practice. He had three noticeable passes that stuck out where you saw velocity,

some touch on the football, took a deep shot that was caught by Jalen Naylor, and then had a short throw to the sideline that's fairly routine, but was very nice in rhythm to Trent Shurfield, where the ball has to travel a fairly long way to get to the sideline, but he could put such good velocity on it. And I thought he looked confident today in throwing the football. And again, the Vikings tweeted out the catch from Jalen Naylor, where he, you know, showed Sam Darnold that he's got a pretty good arm too, and launched it pretty deep down the field. Hard to give you an exact right yardage. They were starting at the 30.

It probably went to the other 10, 14, 15. Hard to say. I need like the yellow line to tell me exactly where they were snapping it from and some sort of AI digital program for how many yards he had to throw it in the air. But it had nice touch and it hit Jalen Naylor in stride. Maybe he had to slow up ever so slightly and make a contested catch, but that wasn't his best. I thought that his best throw of the day, it turned out to be a very nice catch by Robert Tunyon. He had to reach out a little bit for it. And maybe in 1996, a safety would have come over and taken his head

off. But in today's NFL, you can make this throw. It was one where he dropped back, hit the back foot and just let it rip over the middle of the field. And Tanyan reaches out and grabs it. And that was where you could see one, the arm strength of McCarthy when he's throwing over the middle of the field, he just seems to have very good mechanics there, the outsides and really deep balls. That's where he's working on a lot of it. But when guys are crossing the middle of the field, and in college this was very much the case at Michigan, he seems to have good technique there and good footwork and can, you know, whatever, push the button and let it fly.

Maybe, yeah, okay, so there's some touch issues that he had in college, and that's one thing he's going to be working on a bit, and this was not a touch throw by any means. This was a complete laser from J.J. McCarthy, but there is more room for error when you throw it this hard into the secondary when it can get past the linebackers. You don't always want to throw it on the low trajectory. And this wasn't a low pass, but it certainly wasn't one where you had to guide it over the linebackers. That's something he's working on.

And you can even see him working on it in warmups, where it almost looks like at times when he's throwing, because they have all the guys get together, they run their routes and so forth. You can see where he's almost holding himself back sometimes on certain throws. This one's got to have touch on it. This one's got to have touch on it. But as far as the initial impression of how JJ McCarthy has looked in his first two days, it has not been ugly or problematic. There was one play yesterday that

pass got tipped up in the air and you worried a little bit. Is somebody going to fall on JJ McCarthy? That sort of thing. Other than that, it has been fine. And there was progress from day one to day two. Once again, we don't really start looking at, okay, how did the entire practice go in totality? How many throws? How many incompletions? Until the pads start to come on, then we're going to see a lot more of how J.J. McCarthy really looks against this Brian Flores defense that blitzed him on the first play of practice yesterday as Brian Flores want to do.

But if you're getting some completions some confidence some timing going and I saw McCarthy before a couple of plays meeting with Kevin O'Connell going into the huddle but all is going I think according to plan over the first two days where Sam Darnold confidently quarterback one has had no issues getting everybody lined up throwing what it seems to be the right places. I don't have the playbook for the entire practice to be a hundred percent sure of that, but the timing has looked fairly good to me. And then with JJ McCarthy have not seen anything so far that would make you go, Oh boy, this is trouble. And that's more of what you're looking for in the first couple of days. There's been a couple of Nick Mullins reps.

There's been a couple of Jaron Hall reps, but there were times where we talked about how Nick Mullins, I guess, possibly could be the backup. It doesn't look like that. I mean, this looks like JJ McCarthy is taking many reps here in training camp. He's not sitting behind Nick Mullins and I don't know what's going to happen week one. We're a long way away from that, but if McCarthy looks good throughout training camp and Darnold wins the job, you're very likely, I think right now to see JJ McCarthy as the backup. Anyway, I also thought today, well, this is why we play it out because I don't know what's

going to happen with JJ McCarthy and Sam Darnold. I have kept a little bit more of the door open for McCarthy to win the job. There's going to be preseason games. There's going to be joint practices. And if he looked in the first couple of days of camp way behind, way away from where Sam Darnold was, then I might say, okay, well, let's just put that on the back burner. We'll talk about Sam Darnold and Sam Darnold only for a while and see where JJ McCarthy is in a few weeks. But after a couple of very effective throws today, then we start to get to that discussion of what does JJ McCarthy have to show the Vikings? What does it have to look like on a daily basis in order for them to consider it? The way that

Kevin O'Connell has talked so far has been so much caution, patience, all those types of words and saying, I'm only going to do it if he checks this, this, this, this, this, and this box, but he might check these boxes as we go along. That's not me saying I've moved the meter to 75% McCarthy starts. I've always had it around 25%, a one in four shot that he just does really well in training camp and starts and wins the job and goes forward from there. I still would say today that it's going to be the more experienced Sam Darnold. This was just one of those practices that opens your eyes a little bit to, okay, all right, we're seeing some confidence. We're seeing some progress and we're seeing some nice throws early, early on from JJ McCarthy. So it's what

you wanted to observe in the first two days, because if he came out and looked like it was in mini camp and it looked like it was a slower process trying to figure everything out, then you might go, all right, there's a long way to go here. And let's just not consider that a very high probability, but I think he's looked better than that. He's been a little bit better than where my expectation would be for the first two days. But Hey, this is training camp. If we're not breaking it down practice by practice, what the heck are we doing? That's why we're out there. And the pads will come on soon enough.

I would guess it would be they're going to have two more practices and then an off day and i think it's after that that the pads come on but i have not been told yet when that's going to happen it will be soon there won't be many of these practices that are only in the shells or just in shorts and then we can really start talking about Darnold versus McCarthy, still all with the second team for McCarthy. If he starts to take some reps with Justin Jefferson, if he starts to take some reps with Jordan Addison in the first team offensive line, that's where it becomes really something. So we will have to create a button, the, is it a quarterback competition button?

And that button, my hand is not hovering over it right now. But if McCarthy starts to take some first team reps, then we mash the button. But the button's not being hit yet. It was a good practice for J.J. McCarthy. A great catch by Robert Tunyon, who is playing with the second team. It's Munt and Oliver with the first team I started to think by the way that I wouldn't be very surprised if they use a lot of fullback and tight end a lot of two tight ends and have the two wide receivers because wide receiver three is a little more up in

the air it should also be mentioned that the throw that McCarthy had his best throw so far of camp, uh, the deep one to, or the longest pass to Naylor good catch by Jalen Naylor. He's looked fast and has been mixing in there with Brandon Powell. Is he going to, when the pads come on, remain healthy? Because if he does, then that might be your wide receiver three. It might be two dudes who play the game a little bit differently and they do different things. Powell is more of an underneath wide receiver. Naylor is more of a deep threat outside wide receiver. That could very much be the approach here. Lucky Jackson has gotten off to a good start. It's made a few catches from JJ McCarthy. No one else has stood out to the point where I have thought again,

two days where I have thought, Oh, okay. They love what they see from this or that, or that guy that's going to take place. If it will happen over a number of days, Malik Knowles did stand out to me a little bit today. He's got some explosiveness to his game.

That is more of a slow burn for wide receivers. Takes a little while to put together day after day after day and build chemistry with the quarterbacks before we can start saying, hey, you know, could be the next Adam Thielen. We'll start to find that out. But so far, I think that there's been decent enough performances from Brandon Powell and Jalen Naylor and Jordan Addison and Justin Jefferson look great. I would expect no less than

that. Also, I had a chance to ask Sam Darnold a question about playing with the 49ers last year and his opportunity to get to see the game through a different lens because he was a starting quarterback. He was a backup for a short time in Carolina. I think he was also banged up that year, but mostly for his career, he has just been a starting quarterback until last year where he was a backup. And what Darnold said to me, I asked him, so what did you take away from seeing the game from a little bit of a different perspective when you were in San Francisco? And he said, playing the game like a point guard, take what they give you play after play, and eventually something will pop. And he

admitted that take what they give you. And even now I would, I would say playing the game like a point guard. These are all things that are cliches. At the same time, they're cliches that he needs to take to heart, which is throughout his career. One of his biggest issues is that he's always been on bad teams. He's always been in position to try to make too much happen, to put too much on his shoulders, to try to be the top overall draft pick, make all the crazy throws, fire it into traffic, as opposed to,

and he talked about on first and second down, that he was really focusing on taking what the defense gave him, which doesn't have to mean a check down. It can just mean making the right read and not always thinking, how can I make the absolute most aggressive, wow, number three overall draft pick type of play. read and not always thinking, how can I make the absolute most aggressive? Wow. Number three, overall draft pick type of play. And instead, all right, we've got something short. We've got something underneath. And then as you progressively work through that, if you put pressure on the defense over and over and over again, by moving the chains, getting completions, then something

will pop as far as a deep ball goes. And when you look at the NFL, now we're slobbering over these deep balls because I have to say, just as enjoyers of football and fans are going to see this when they go out there as well, you have to be blown away by how incredibly well Sam Darnold can throw a football deep, but deep passes only make up 12%, 10%, somewhere in that range of passes in the entire NFL throws that go beyond 20 yards. This isn't something you're doing over and over and over again. Most of the throws in the NFL go between one and 10 yards. And the average depth of target year after year has gone down and down and down. And this actually might help Sam Darnold because the San Francisco

49ers are a high yards per pass attempt team, but not necessarily throwing bombs all the time. They are asking the quarterback to deliver the ball to the right place over and over and believing that the player running the route and the scheme works. And if Sam Darnold can take even somewhat of the Kirk cousins approach, just somewhat of that approach of just delivering the ball where the receivers are available and where the ball is supposed to go. And Kirk was really, really good at that. Then it can be a lot better than it's been before in Sam Darnold's career.

And I was thinking about how Sam Darnold is about the age right now when Kirk Cousins was first getting his chances to start in the NFL, which is really wild. When you think about it, the first chance for Kirk Cousins to start in the NFL was in 2015. And now what is he 36 now? Someone do the math for me then, but it was around what, 26, 27 years old in 2015 when he, yeah, he must've been 27 because he's 36 now. That's Sam Darnold's age. so the crazy how this works and Cousins had been a backup and he had learned progressively and finally got his chance but with Sam Darnold we've seen a such a big sample of him playing that it's easy to forget that his actual age is only about the same age when Kirk Cousins first got to really play football in the NFL as a

starter. Now that doesn't mean that he's going to do the same thing where Kirk got his chance with a very good Washington team and had an excellent first season after coming off the bench or getting spot starts and not looking that great. Like I'm not trying to conflate the two necessarily, but just put it in context a little bit of how young Sam Darnold still is in his career. And if he can learn this, and I mentioned this a few weeks ago when I talked to Rich Gannon, and this was his exact message. If you can have a mentality of getting the ball to the right places first, and sometimes taking what's there and not trying to push too much all the time to make great plays, then you've got a better chance to keep the ball in the fair

way and then take your shots from time to time. So that's Darnold's mentality. Now, does that change when he gets on the field? Maybe. I did see much more of this. And when you look at the turnover worthy plays, they went quite a bit down in 2022 and his start in 2023. So maybe he did start to take that mentality a bit when he was in Carolina at the end of that season. section is continually saying, Darnold stinks. What do you stop talking about it? Look, I understand. I understand. I have looked at the tape. I've looked at the numbers. I've looked at the historical numbers, all of those things. I am telling you what I see on the practice field and how he's gelling with the team so far. And it looks like it's going pretty well. And that's the best I can do for you is that if you didn't tell me anything about this guy's numbers

and I only watched minicamp in the first couple of days of practice, I would not have told you this is a quarterback with one of the worst statistical profiles of anybody who started 50 games. I would not have said that. I would have said, I don't know if he looks like Peyton Manning out there,

but maybe this is a middle of the league starter with very good tools. That's more of how he's looked over these first few practices. So that's Darnold's mentality. If he sticks to it with these receivers and in Kevin O'Connell's offense has a pretty good chance to move the football. It's all going to come down to the turnovers. If he turns the ball over, it's not going to last very long. If he protects the football, it could. And we'll look for signs of that each day. There was a turnover today and an interception, and we'll just continue to look for signs of how that works out. The Vikings added two players to the mix. That would be Kobe Francis, a cornerback, and Jabril Cox, a linebacker.

Both of these players don't have a whole lot of experience. Kobe Francis was with the Texans a little bit. Jabril Cox has bounced around and they let go. KJ Cloyd Cox might be in the mix for a special team job or a run stuffing specialist, but more of special teams. They already have their backup in Kamu Grugier-Hill, if anything should go wrong with Cashman and with Ivan Pace. Both of these players would fall more under the category of long shot, camp body, however you want to put it, which leads me to the question, should they consider adding more? It was brought up, I saw, by Ben Lieber,

Akilo Witherspoon, who's been around and had a good season last year. I've mentioned Stefan Gilmore as a cornerback. And something happened today that may have inspired the Vikings to make a few phone calls. At this moment, it does not seem that the Vikings have a whole lot of interest in adding a veteran player, which I totally understand because I wrote an article a few weeks ago that said,

Hey, look at this free agent list. These guys aren't very good and they haven't been very good recently, even if they were at some point in the past, but there is a few exceptions to that, including Stefan Gilmore, who was very solid for the Dallas Cowboys last year. Would he sign here or is he more in the mode of waiting till a cornerback gets hurt for a team that is more contending for a Superbowl? I would guess that Witherspoon is a veteran who's been around. Maybe he would be a potential option as of right now, though, a Caleb Evans was the guy who was holding down

Makai Blackman's spot. And what we've seen in practice is what I expected, where a Caleb Evans is on the outside and Shaq Griffin is on the outside and Murphy is moving inside more often. Now, Metellus is still in the mix as the box linebacker,

safety, hybrid corner thing that he does. I think that they would like to actually take Metellus off the field a little more in certain passing situations where they can have Byron Murphy be a nickel corner more often than he was last year, which was maybe 20% of the time. It wasn't that much, 20, 25, 30% that he was playing in a nickel spot. They would prefer to have him playing in that spot a little more often than that. So now a Caleb Evans was on the outside. The pressure ramps up for a Caleb Evans significantly here. And for the first 15 weeks of the season, save for when he got hit in the face and the guy caught the ball against the Chargers. Caleb Evans, we were talking about this. I remember this where we were talking

about the 2022 draft class and saying, hey, well, you know, Caleb Evans, Ty Chandler, Ed Ingram, maybe it doesn't look as bad. It's like starting to come along and who cares if it's the fourth round pick or the second round pick or the first round pick as long as you get good players and then those last three weeks were so poor for Caleb Evans that I think everybody including the Vikings lost a lot of confidence that he could be a guy that plays for a full season he is going to have to now and as a

reminder of that Shaq Griffin went down during the practice when he intercepted the ball, he took an awkward step and fell kind of fast, like just right to the ground. And the look on everybody's, I can't see their faces necessarily in their helmets, their body language, Sam Darnold just turned around like this. Like you get, you can't be serious. Someone just went down again in the cornerback group and everybody went kind of scrambling towards Shaq Griffin, but he only stayed down for a couple minutes, got up, went over to where they have the injury cube. It's not really a tent. It's more of just a open area. You can see who's over there. So Shaq Griffin went over there for a bit, didn't practice the rest of the day, but we did see him

after practice walking around talking to Durante Jones, the defensive backs coach, and there didn't seem to be any panic or major concern on Shaq Griffin's face or that of Durante Jones. He might miss some practice time, but there was no sense of, oh my gosh, what's going to happen. Was a reminder though, you are one ankle tweak away from Andrew Booth Jr. and Duke Shelley having to play here, which may inspire them to look a little bit closer at other potential options at cornerback. That again is something where I go back and forth because did Bashad Breeland help a whole lot? Remember when they brought back Mackenzie Alexander, that didn't do much. You're kind of in 2021 territory and has any team, I don't know if you're a fan of another team,

I guess, let me know in the comment section. If this statement is fair, has any other team had as much trouble with finding cornerbacks as the Minnesota Vikings since Xavier Rhodes and Trey Wayne's left? And two of them are tragic situations with Kyrie Jackson. Recently, Makai Blackman getting injured, a guy who did show a heck of a lot of promise. Jeff Gladney didn't work out for reasons not on the field. Cam Dantzler, you can go through the entire list. They have just really struggled. Mike Hughes also had promise, but then there were injury issues along the way. They have tried to fill this position repeatedly and

struggled. Then they've tried to do it in a lot of different ways. They've tried taking long shots at guys, drafting guys high. And now they're hoping that Shaq Griffin can be a major starter for them. But this is someone who's really bounced around the league since being excellent early in his career. 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 that we don't actually like. Ironic. Which is why U.S. Cellular created Us Mode to help us reconnect with each other and use our phones. Less ironically, a phone company wanting people to use their phones, less ironic. Let's find us again with us mode from us cellular visit us cellular.com slash built for us to get started. Uh, one more note that I had, uh, I asked uh dallas turner today about battling against christian derisaw and the first thing i just said hey what's it like to go against christian derisaw

and he just gave me a look at first like whoo not easy not easy but if you believe in the football cliche maybe we should do this someday this is i should have done this in the summer where we talk about all the football cliches and which ones are true and which ones are bogus. Iron sharpens iron. If you believe that that one is true, which how could it not be like, how could it be worse to go up against Christian Derrissaw? But Dallas Turner has a heck of an opponent to get out there and battle against. And he's getting a lot of reps with Andrew Van Ginkle still ramping up. So Dallas Turner is getting a ton of excellent opportunity here. And he talked about where he was asking Christian Derrissaw. Turner was asking Derrissaw, what do you see when I do this move?

How do you read what I'm going to do? How can you see what I'm going to do? And then trying to work at it through there. So that's a combination that is maybe fun to watch once the pads come on and those two going up against each other. But Dallas Turner right from the outset struck me as a pretty bright dude. And when you're talking like that, like every day, his idea is to learn as much as he can from a top five left tackle in the league about how he can be a better pass rusher. You just usually don't need a lot of a sample size with a young player to go, okay, I think this guy's getting, you know, I think he gets it or we might have some problems here. Uh, and with Dallas Turner, even from his early press conferences,

I mean, you just get a sense that he gets it. And going up against Derrissaw, a very good experience for him in his rookie year. So there is my notes for today. Let me know if you saw anything else from anyone else that you want me to comment on or anything else like that. And questions, comments, thoughts, what's in your hearts, what's in your hearts what's in your minds let me know we'll start out with Russell Matthew find us some DBs I don't know what to tell you there's not a whole lot of options when it comes to veteran defensive backs they sign

Kobe Francis who I'm going to tell you the truth I had never heard of he's 25 years old. He's only played a handful of special teams snaps ever in his career. Must've been somebody that they had semi on their radar, uh, once upon a time, cause he's been in the league for a couple years or fringe of the league for a couple of years, but this is not someone you would expect to be a next man up. But when you talk about finding DBs, are you going to trade? No, you can't trade draft picks. Who would you trade for players? A running back?

I mean, are you trading Ty Chandler? I mean, what do you have that someone else wants that you're willing to part ways with for a corner who could be with you over multiple seasons because you're always thinking long-term you don't want to take a caleb evans necessarily off the field for stefan gilmore because a caleb evans might continue to develop and be a good player he is shown over stretches the ability to do that it's not a bad thing if a Caleb Evans continues to play, but it's the idea that if you lose one player, then you are down to Andrew Booth Jr. Jalen Williams. I mean, there's just not much

left here. And Duke Shelley, who had a very nice 2022, all respect to Duke Shelley, but not exactly someone that you think, okay, this guy could play 17 games. Maxwell says, how do these coaches wear sweatshirts on hot summer days? I would say today was not that hot. And the material that they have, it's not really sweatshirts. It's more of that athletic gear that's supposed to soak up the sweat and cool you. So think of like a ShamWow or something. It's like technology. I don't know, but the shirts are all made of that. That's one thing. from Georgia, Alabama, Florida, that to them, 80 degrees is a spring day. And Dallas Turner mentioned that this is great. It's going to get hotter as we go along, but I think that's why I have thought that before though, about guys who are in long sleeves. And I remember saying this to Juwan Williams, where I said, man, you got the long sleeves on again. And he said that, dude, I'm from Tennessee. Like this is nothing. So they enjoy it. They like being out there in the, in the heat. Edwin says, is Sam Darnold the most Sam looking dude on the planet? I have no idea how to answer that.

I don't. He, everyone looks like their name mostly, right? Do I look like the most Matthew guy on the planet? I don't know. Do I look like a Todd? I'm not sure how you figure that out. Interesting thought though. If you gave me a guess, if you just looked at Sam Darnold's face and said, what is this guy's name? Sam is probably a top 10 name that you would pick for him though. So maybe a fair point. A horse feather says not training camp until collar has his first neck sunburn. How am I doing? I think I've done pretty well so far. Of course I'm developing. Yeah. You can see that you can see the, the farmer's nature already to this. Let me remove the comment like right there. Yeah. That's a,

that's a big line right there. It's already developing only a couple hours in the sun is hellacious for me. So, but I am trying, I got the spray stuff out and I'm covering every available inch of my body that is to the sun. It's just never, I'm never going to prevent it, but it prepares my body for winter and then it recovers and it goes forward after that. Uh, man juice says, uh, how do you expect the offense to be different this year with a different quarterback at the helm? I really don't expect it to be crazy different. One thing that is going to be different is that both quarterbacks are mobile.

You don't really think of Sam Darnold as a running threat, but he is. Carolina used him in actually some design runs, rollouts, more rollouts than with Kirk Cousins, who was good at throwing on the run, but not exactly the speediest. So if Cousins was facing something that was, and I think this is why they stopped running a ton of bootlegs. If someone was coming downhill from the defensive end position, they could just catch Kirk Cousins, but Darnold and McCarthy are both fast. Darnold is actually a dynamic runner, which was part of the intrigue from him coming out. So you're going to see a little more on the rollout side i would guess a little more mobility they might use a shade because of hockinson's injury more two tight ends and the lack of a wide receiver three might use cj ham just a little bit more trying some

different things with hockinson out uh just with a different slightly different approach but what we learned last year from when josh dobbs and nick mullins went in if you compare it to when joe burrow got hurt jake browning ran a lot of different stuff than you would have seen from joe burrow zach taylor pared it down for his backup quarterback and made a lot of play actions and a lot of screens and tried to simplify. That's not Kevin O'Connell's philosophy. He believes that his offense works really well and that, and who are we to argue? I mean, they had good results with Kirk Cousins over the last, uh, whatever, how many ever games he played with cousins must've been 25 regular season games maybe. And they had good offensive results. Justin Jefferson had phenomenal results.

Jordan Addison, pretty good. TJ Hawkinson, phenomenal. Unlikely that they're going to say, well, let's throw all that out because we've got a new quarterback. Maybe some tweaks. Maybe these two quarterbacks are a little more willing to try to press the football into some tighter windows

because that wasn't the major part of Kirk Cousins' skill set. Although I don't ever want to make it sound like he had a noodle. Cousins could let it rip, but not quite to the level that these two and maybe the aggressiveness of Sam Darnold can be too much at times. It also could be good. And when you look at how Matthew Stafford played for the Rams under Sean McVay in 2021 what did he throw 15 16 17 interceptions they do ask the quarterback to try to take some risks if they've got that kind of arm talent that could be a slight change

I don't see anything yet because this is all the basic stuff that they're starting to put in that I went, Whoa, this is way different than anything they did before. I think Kevin O'Connell has his offense. He believes it works. It's all designed to get just the Jefferson, the ball. And that makes a lot of sense to me. The running game is where it's hard to pick up yet on any sort of running game. When they're not in pads, the running game is where

they're really relying on Aaron Jones. Maybe they made some changes to that. I think they should have. The left guard may have been the biggest change. Sal the Viking says, sorry if I mispronounced that. Sam looking good out there at camp. Hope he does it in the regular season. And that is always, of course, the question and what i mentioned just comes up repeatedly when people ask me about sam darnold and i say well actually it looks pretty good and then it's always well yeah let's see him in the regular season i mean of course but i can't fast forward to then we're gonna have to go day by day and see how we feel at the end of training camp through a couple of days and

a mini camp. Sam Darnold has looked like a solid NFL starting quarterback with a very strong arm. That's all I can really say at this moment. And I think that while you can't throw out everything from the past, that the past sample size is not great to work with because he was so young because the circumstances were so bad. He has some tendencies that are going to result in mistakes that will continue to happen probably the entire time he plays football, but those can be mitigated by having great wide receivers, a little bit of a different mentality than hey i gotta go out and make a play all the time and we saw the whole darnold experience in 2021 where he struggled in the first half of the game i think that identifying stuff for him against zimmer's

defense was difficult and then the light came on and he played super well. This is the Sam Darnold that we've seen through his whole career where it's been fluctuating between some really excellent moments. And, and that's why he's still getting a chance. That's if, if the numbers were truly reflective of what the guys who coach and make personnel decisions in the NFL thought he really was, he wouldn't be here. He would be a backup. But instead, he's getting another opportunity because they believe that that sample doesn't tell the real truth about Sam Darnold. And we will find out if it does or not. We don't even know who's going to be the starting quarterback for sure. But that's been my approach. My approach to Sam Darnold has been, I'm going to just observe

this through the context of the Minnesota Vikings, 2024 coached by Kevin O'Connell led by Justin Jefferson. That's the only way I'm going to look at this. I'm not going to think about, Hey, four years ago with the jets, the dude was brutal. I mean, that doesn't really tell us maybe what's going to happen next. That doesn't mean that I throw that out entirely as far as the consideration, but I think you just have to look at it and what's happening right now, right in front of us to try to project what's going to go on in the future. That's, I mean, because if you decided on the day that they signed him, wow, you know, this guy stinks, whatever. Okay. I mean, I guess if you decided on the day that they signed him, well, you know, this guy stinks, whatever. Okay, I mean, I guess if you want to do that, that's fine. But I think we should give it a chance

and let's see how it plays out because I liked the decision when they made the signing of Sam Darnold for a very cheap $10 million in comparison to starting quarterbacks in the league. And part of it was because I'd like to see him under good circumstances. And then we'll know if he goes three weeks, throws four picks, one touchdown, they go, Oh, and three. And it's just awful. Okay.

Then, you know, whatever, but this last shot is deserved based on his talent, I think. And so far it looks like he's fitting in pretty well. That's as far as I can really go. This is why they put me on podcasts. When I say they, I mean myself and not TV, because I've just am not banging the table enough. My computer would fall over and I'm not overconfident enough in what the result is going to be. I'm interested. I'm intrigued to see where this goes throughout the rest of training camp. But I suppose if I did shows where I just yelled that something was going to happen, Darnold's going to be the best or the worst, then maybe the viewership numbers would go up. I don't know. David says, this is

out of the box thinking, but what about Buda Baker coming in, transitioning Bynum to cornerback, depending on how and who they pursue. We will know more about expectations for this year. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. If they don't pursue anyone, then expectations are not that they're going to compete for the division, right? Because they'd be more in the mode of giving a lot of young guys chances rather than making a bold decision. A big fan of Buda Baker, but you can't transition Cam Bynum into a corner. It doesn't work that way. There have been a handful of players throughout many, many years of football

that have changed. Usually it's corner to safety like Bynum. I don't know too many that go safety to corner. It's so much of a quick twitch position that mirroring like the skills are, are very different. And Bynum does not really have the physical build. He would have had to approach the off season a lot differently. He would have had to get quicker, I think, rather than being bulky as a safety and strong and a good tackler. So I don't feel like there's anyone that can really move positions outside of Jay Ward. And if we were going to see that, maybe we would have seen it today, but Jay Ward was in his usual spot, second team safety. I haven't seen him moving around a

ton. Theo Jackson is getting out there in the Metellus role with the second team. Lewis Seen is mixing in and out with the second team. Metellus is getting some reps in as a deep safety because if there's an injury, then he's going to play deep safety or even if they just want to get Harrison Smith off the field. If they could trade for Buda Baker, that would be phenomenal, but just, I don't know how that fits. They've got a lot of safeties and in Madden, I think you can push a button and the guy moves to a different position and is mostly fine. In real life, that would be really incredibly difficult. Not impossible. I saw a receiver do it once. Who is the receiver for the Patriots that changed to corner in the middle of the season. So I did.

I mean, it's happened, but not very often. Hey, everybody. I know it's summer, but might I suggest a quick trip to Las Vegas to stop into Circa Sportsbook in Nevada? Because guess what? The Circa Million and Circa Survivor Contests are back. For the Circa Million, you pick five teams against the spread every week, and the winner takes home $1 million, and the Survivor Contest is legendary.

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Las Vegas, Henderson, or Sparks, Reno. Those are the places you have to go, and you have to do it before, obviously, the NFL season starts. September 7th, 2 o'clock is the final moment that you can get into the Circa Million and Circa Survivor Contest. But if you're headed out to Vegas, make sure you stop by, because you're going to want to get in on this for the football season. For more information, go to CircaLasVegas.com. Again, the Millions and Survivor Contests are back. David adds, I hope they load up for the 2025 drafts at cornerback and defensive tackle and continue to evaluate what they have,

including if they go more of the free agent route at corner and not a trade. I would prefer that they take a long-term approach, but also I don't think that everything has to be so much of long-term that you don't add someone that can help you win. They want to win. They want to be in the playoffs. They should. They should want Sam Darnold to get them to nine wins and go somewhere on the road for a playoff game with hopes of getting a big win and turning this into a really fun season. And who knows, right?

That's what they want is to be in the mix at the end of this. If you're talking about a one-year type of deal that doesn't include anything into the future, that's going to hurt you cap wise. I don't see anything against that, but long-term yeah. Defensive tackle and corner are going to have to be better positions. Mackay Blackman will come back in the future, but Murphy isn't under contract and Griffin isn't under contract. This is a position that must be addressed next year in one way or the other. MKF says, what does Reichard look like so far? He looks like a guy that would work in a video game store. That's what he looks like to me. Oh, do you mean kicking the

ball? I haven't looked. They haven't done any of the kicking thing that they do, the kicking reps. It's just been kicking on the side by themselves. It is the greatest job in sports is to be a kicker in training camp because you just chill on the side and work on your kicking all day while everybody else beats the heck out of each other and has to know all these complicated things and is getting yelled at by coaches and the kickers are over there going, you know, that's what they're doing most of the practice. There will be some intense

reps at some point when they bring everybody together, the whole team gathers around and then they take a bunch of kicks at once during one period of practice. That's when we can track them and we could say, hey, Reichard made eight out of nine or five out of six or whatever it might be. They do it in the night practice, too. You get a really good look at it, and then we'll be able to give a better assessment of what Will Reichard looks like. My first impression of him during a similar drill in mini camp was good, looked, looked good. Uh, and we'll go from there on how good he looks, but it's a little odd though, because you're kicking outside and it's very windy at TCO

performance center, but then you're actually kicking at home inside. Maybe a week one is on the road in the wind. You got to prepare for that. It's just that Reichert is very talented. I expect him to win the job. He's looked really good so far. We'll get more information on that as they ramp up with some of the special team stuff. We haven't seen anything regarding kickoffs, kick returns, what that's going to look like. We're going to talk to Matt Daniels, I think tomorrow, and he's going to look like we're going to talk to matt daniels

i think tomorrow and he's going to give us an update on what they've been looking at as far as kickoffs and returns go we talked to him a little about it in minicamp but we'll get a look at some of these things as we carry on uh preston says people saying darnold stinks are the same people saying koc didn't give astronaut pastronronaut, Preston, pastronaut, a fair chance. Go figure. I'm not sure which people are saying which things. I never know how to respond to that when someone frames a question or comment that way. Well, people are saying this.

I mean, people are saying just about everything. I think that there is a healthy skepticism for a player who's struggled a lot. When you hear reporters that are saying, Hey man, Sam Darnold looks pretty legit so far in mini camp in this early part of training camp. This looks like someone who should be an NFL starting quarterback to us. And if you're on the outside, then you might go, well, come on, this guy's been really bad though. Right. And in every other city, if you ask them, what do you think of the Vikings? You think Darnold's going to be good? I would guess most of their fans would say, no, probably not. Right. He's never been good before. And that is fair to

have that skepticism. And I try to maintain that, but I also can't really factor other things that happened in the past when the circumstances were so different. That's what makes this interesting is there's always a rush for people to, and this goes for the draft and this goes for, for everything for people to declare first, as if you win some sort of prize, this guy's going to be this, this quarterback's going to be the best. This quarterback's going to be the worst. I called it. I mean, congratulations. If you did that good for you, a predictions are a fun part of sports,

but there is an overconfidence in sports analysis that can be downright comical sometimes i don't have confidence that the guy from the past when he was 20 years old in the jets is the same guy now i'm actually confident that he's not that that he's come a long way and i also have seen enough of these things with this team specifically and what wide receivers and coaching can do for me to believe it is possible that Sam Darnold could be the starting quarterback and have a good year. And then when you see great throws, like he's made the last two days, it's very fair to say, Oh, well, would you look at this? There's a long way to go. You can acknowledge that you don't have to long way to go. You can acknowledge that.

You don't have to be a nut job. You can acknowledge all the things that we have. And there's always going to be people, though, no matter what happens, who will say that whatever the Vikings do will fail and stinks. That is a product of being beaten down over many years by Minnesota sports

that no matter what happens, there's just a section of folks who will say the coach needs to be fired. The player they drafted will fail. What are they doing? Like, and you know, I guess, I guess if you had made a bet with your friends that they wouldn't win a Superbowl by the year 2024, when they started the franchise, you would have been right. They don't have a Super Bowl yet, but I'm willing to just let this play out. That's the point that there's always going to be some people who say Darnold's going to be the next great fine quarterback. And that might be true.

And some that say he's going to fail. And that's what makes this fun is that we get to track the entire journey and find out. And that's why I'm doing the nightly shows. And I'm really enjoying this to give you guys the updates on what it is daily. We need kind of that, like the, the tracker. So yesterday it was a little up and today, maybe a little farther down. McCarthy was kind of up. Are you, are you following all this? We'll, we'll have the trackers. We go far.

Uh, no DAC to mini says Jabril Cox was getting starting reps as a rookie in Dallas before he got hurt. I hope he can return to form in Minnesota. That's right. He did get, I forgot about that a couple of years ago that he did get some opportunities in Dallas, but since then has kind of what bounced around, uh, and, and hasn't really been a key player. But if he ends up being just depth and special teams, and maybe if he has to play, then okay. That's fine. It's a fine sign. Neither one of these, my point was not to insult Jabril Cox,

but just that this isn't some difference maker that they signed. It's not a big name or someone with a huge history in the league. Hasn't really played all that much and is not someone that we're moving the needle from nine wins to 12 wins because they signed, but a fine signing of someone who's played before. Ben says, where are awesome loss scene Booth Jr. on the depth chart? Booth moves up just from the losses. Are they going to make the roster I don't know if Louis seen is going to make the roster everyone loves Theo Jackson I'm not kidding everyone loves Theo Jackson on this team the coaches love him his teammates love him I mean I guess maybe he's pretty good when he got in last year but he's really well liked and he's ahead of Louis seen

on the depth chart. I don't think there's any doubt about that, which puts you pretty far down in the safety room. It's still possible just because the secondary has been banged up and it doesn't really benefit them cap wise. Is there a huge problem with keeping him on the team? Or maybe they would just say, all right, we're good. We're all set. But Cam Bynum is a free agent after this year, does not have an extension yet. Maybe he could get one in camp at some point. Wouldn't be shocked by that. Maybe they want to see how he plays out in training camp and get to the end and decide, is this going to be someone who could potentially be a part in the future if Cam Bynum leaves,

or should we just cut bait and focus on someone else? There hasn't been any reps in practice where I can get a sense that anything's different. Seems pretty much the same depth chart wise with Louisine. Asamoah is a special teamer at this point. Grugier Hill is a veteran that is, I think the clear backup linebacker and Asamoah is just the thing about drafting linebackers that are undersized. Everybody loves it. Everybody, oh, this is very modern. This is very modern, but it's modern to the point of if you're not a Wusu Koromoa in Clevelandveland and he's got all those huge beasts in front of him by the way but if you're not him who was a first round talent second round talent then you're probably just not good enough to do this at that size and i think he's listed at something like 226

this guy is a safety by his size and is trying to play in a position that requires a lot of physicality and it just hasn't worked. I mean, even Ivan Pace, who's shorter, is maybe 10, 15 pounds heavier, something like that. He's definitely much heavier than Brian Asamoah. That was, I think, an idea of looking for a sideline to sideline speedster player who could drop back in coverage and so forth. It just hasn't come to fruition. Third round picks kind of goes that way. Booth Jr. Yeah.

I mean, he's going to get moved up. This is it for him. This is his opportunity because if they don't go sign someone else, then it's really Booth Jr. versus a Caleb Evans. A Caleb Evans got all the playing time last year. Clearly, they liked him more than Andrew Booth Jr. And that has maintained because the minute, uh, Mackay Blackman went down all of a sudden it's a Caleb Evans in there and not Andrew Booth Jr. But he could be a, uh, just a backup depth player. That's what he was last year. He played 150 snaps as a depth player

and it didn't go terribly. It didn't go great, but it didn't go terribly. If that's what he is on this team, it's fine. But you're one ankle tweak away from him having to play a lot. And as of this moment, that's not what you're really looking for. Intrepid fool says Darnold doesn't stink, but he hasn't proven to be starting level quarterback in six seasons. Most of being an NFL quarterback is neck up. A leader with marginal arm talent like Purdy is noticeably better shrug. Yeah, I don't think that anybody is looking at this situation and saying, well, you're going to find the next superstar. I mean, I don't think that, that, oh, wow, he's going to go from having a terrible statistical profile to all of a sudden, oh my gosh, this is the best quarterback in the league. Still, it would not be the first,

second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time that someone with a lot of talent in their career found the right spot and played a heck of a lot better than they ever did before. And it wouldn't even be the second, third, fourth time in Minnesota where somebody has done that. I mean, Randall Cunningham was out of the league. Jeff George was by the next year, Jeff George was basically out of the league and a case Keenum has never been a quality starter again. He got a couple of opportunities and played nowhere near at the level that he did here

with these wide receivers. That makes it a lot more plausible. And we've even seen a couple examples for other teams just in the last few years. Is there not a Geno Smith thing here? Big arm, right? Geno Smith had a big arm, played for the horrible new york jets and then had an opportunity to be a backup came back played pretty well you're not a crazy person if you're looking at this going you know might be something there for this year no one thinks that

he's the long-term quarterback either unless he were to play unbelievable and then he would be so I mean you're fine you're fine to shrug but I personally think it's pretty interesting when you have a guy from uh you know this level of talent who has not worked out so far but then kind of has his last shot here and it's the best shot you'll ever get and when you watch Darnold play with Carolina and San Francisco, you talk about above the ears, that kind of thing. It's definitely better and more consistent. Well, consistent would be tough to say because there's a really bad game mixed in there in Carolina.

And that's what I expect. I expect him to have many more ups and downs than you would have from your consistent top notch quality quarterbacks in the NFL. That is going to happen. It's just if he does play with a little more of the mentality that he laid out, as he has in his most recent starts, he could have some success. And that's the best I can do. But it's fun to track the journey,

and it certainly is entertaining to watch him throw the football in camp. Anthony says we better draft the top cornerback in the draft and sign the top entertaining to watch him throw the football in camp uh anthony says we better draft the top cornerback in the draft and sign the top cornerback in free agency just to put my mind to ease tired of this team always having a weak secondary yeah it's been such a difficult difficult time finding cornerbacks that can start and be consistent since, you know, really Xavier Rhodes and Trey Waynes had that position locked down Terrence Newman. But even after they didn't keep Terrence Newman, there was some in more inconsistency in 2018 and 2019. So yeah, I mean, and Jay Giza asks, is there any corners available to pick up?

Yeah, there are. Gilmore, Witherspoon. There's a couple more that are out there. I'm not interested in Xavier Howard. He was bad last year and he's got off field issues. A couple more that are out there that are just free agents that haven't played all that great. And that's really it. Just, I mean,

outside of Gilmore and Witherspoon, there isn't anyone you can look at in free agency that recently played really well. Otherwise they would have jobs. So is it, is it worth it? Is it actually worth it to spend free agent dollars and get the next Prashad Breeland, who isn't good anyway, and you didn't get ahead at all. You just kept somebody else on the bench that might've been something. I think it's a difficult decision for them because if I'm Brian Flores, I'm going, hey guys, I was supposed to have better team this year. And now we lost Makai Blackman. That doesn't help. Flores seemed really, really beat up about it. I mean, I think he was extremely high on Makai Blackman. That is the good thing for the future though. As you mentioned, you know, Hey, what are we going to do in the future? Blackman will come back.

It's an ACL. He'll be a part of the future. It's not like they lost them. It's just a frustrating loss for this year. And he wasn't able to make the progress that they expected. Anthony says all this seems to bode well for Louis seen looking like potentially a lot of three safety looks again this year. You would think so, but he's not involved in any of them that even when they're taking second team reps, he's on there sometimes and he's off there sometimes. And Theo Jackson is on a lot more. And even Jay Ward is playing a lot of safety here in the role of Cam Bynum so if Cam Bynum would go down I would think that Jay Ward

would have a chance based on just where he's playing early in training camp to be that guy or maybe they would move Metellus back try to play Byron Murphy in the nickel It's hard to see a path for Louis scene, unless he goes out there and just balls out. But I mean, when you can't even get on the field last year in a situation where the coach loves to play everybody, that's a lot to overcome. I think that would be a lot to overcome for Louis scene. And I'm just going to have to see some playmaking in preseason games, going to have to see some playmaking and him playing a lot faster during training camp. Because right now,

not really even on my radar, not among the top 10 things I'm looking for, because my mind is kind of made up until it shouldn't be on where he stands. It really comes down to, are they going to cut him or not? And if there's somebody else that they think needs to make that 53 and he's not going to have a role, then go ahead, deal with whatever consequences come along with the cap. Mike says, agree with you on letting the young guys get a chance instead of bringing in vets rooting for lucky jackson lucky jackson was he uh i think uh what an xfl guy that got a chance last year didn't get playing time but did pretty well during training camp and if they bring him back

then i mean that shows you like they when they have a player in camp that they keep on the practice squad and bring them back, that shows you that they think something is there with lucky Jackson. And he's been in the mix on a number of plays involving JJ McCarthy. And, uh, you know, we'll see if anything comes of that more than just what I said, if there's anything more for Lucky Jackson. But I agree with you. I don't want to see Hunter Renfro come in and not be good. And then you go, why did we do that? And that's happened quite a few times. Kendall Wright, Tajay Sharp, you guys know the names where we talk about, well, he's going to have this role because he had this role three years ago. It just doesn't usually work out that way. Time moves fast in the NFL.

Give me the guy who hasn't played much or four guys who haven't played much rather than one guy who we have a sample of falling off the face of the earth. Tristan says I'm 46 minutes late. Don't ever do it again. Tristan, don't ever do it again. Don't ever be 46 minutes late, but you can rewind. Uh, you, so you can see what I said, McCarthy standing out. I like the sound of that. Don't want Darnold to start a game this year. Uh, if it's better for JJ McCarthy to have Darnold start games, then you do want Darnold to start games.

Everyone wants to get to the part of the movie where we find out about JJ McCarthy. We want to fast forward. You can do that on this YouTube going back, but you can't really fast forward. And the same goes for life and the NFL. We can't really fast forward past the part where JJ McCarthy develops. If this was a movie, we would all want to go to the big fight scene and see the best part of the climax of the movie, right? That's what we would want, but you can't do that. And when it comes to a quarterback, we have to just go through each step and evaluate JJ McCarthy there. And that's what the team is doing. And the first step is coming out to training camp, looking like you belong in your reps, which he has get the ball to wide

receivers. Like immediately, this is something someone asked me in mini camp and I should just reset this, this statement. He is instantly so much better than Kellen Mond immediately. Just when Kellen Mond got here and went out for his first couple of practices, it was a nightmare. It didn't look anywhere close to a guy who was going to play NFL football. And I know that that's not the biggest bar, but that was a third round draft pick that we were all talking about. Well, they picked this guy and maybe they're looking for a succession plan. And then, oh, and Kellen Mond comes across as a good dude. So I feel bad about that, but not, I mean, that's life. It just wasn't good. And with McCarthy, you got a sense that it was starting to

click a little bit in mini camp. And then so far in his first couple of practices, especially today, it's looked like a guy who is going to be an NFL quarterback. It hasn't looked like a refined quarterback who's ready to go out there and play 17 games, but I think it's looked pretty solid so far. Not terrible, a little bit wild on the touch on the football and all that as we expect, but confident. I think getting under center, running some plays,

throwing it to the right spot. That's all the things that we wanted to see, but you got to go through that. And you might have to go through eight weeks of Sam Darnold to make sure he's ready to go. You might have to go through a whole season of Sam Darnold to make sure he's ready to go, but you want that more than you want. Definitely more than you want him to be rushed. You want to watch Darnold for eight weeks more than you want. Definitely more than you want him to be rushed. You want to watch Darnold for eight weeks more than you want to see McCarthy get pushed out there before he's ready and then lose the confidence that he's built on through training camp. Allen says, haven't heard anything about the running backs. No news. Good news.

No pads. They're there. They're there. I watched them for 10 minutes today, run through these little things. So they have this netting and it's got a bunch of holes in it and they go hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop over it. And they do different types of hops. Maybe you hop to your left and you hop to your right. This is what happens. This is the individual drills that they work on. And that's the most I could tell you about the running backs. Aaron Jones is really good at football. He looks like he's probably really good at football. That's about it. Yeah. Ty Chandler dropped the pass yesterday. He's decent at catching the ball. Usually that, I mean, with the running backs, it is hard in general in training camp because

they don't hit them to figure out, well, what do you have been tackled there? What we're really looking for is when we get to the pass protection and where Ty Chandler is with that, that is what we're actually looking for. Freddie says, who's going to be wide receiver three as of right now i have a hybrid wide receiver three the melding of two wide receiver force to make up one wide receiver three right now brandon powell and jaylen nailer are mixing in and out i think both of them would be used and even though we talk in these terms of wide receiver one, two, three, well, there's no question why receiver one is, and there's no

question why receiver two is, but wide receiver three can be anything they want it to be with this combination of players. It can be, well, this is a deep route. So we want Jalen Naylor in the game. This is underneath. We want Brandon Powell, or we want the other team to think that that's what the routes are going to be. So we switch and mix and match. As of right now, it would be a four receiver group that would get a lot of playing time, I think. And if Jalen Naylor remains healthy, then it might be a little more than that. It might be Jalen Naylor is really wide receiver three and Brandon Powell occasionally mixes in, which was the case with KJ Osborne. KJ Osborne had a very good health track record

outside of that one time that Josh Dobbs threw the ball way too high and he got cussed. But aside from that, KJ Osborne was healthy all the time. We can't really count on that from Jalen Naylor, but you're always injury prone until you aren't in the NFL. You get a couple bad breaks, then you get healthy after that. Suddenly, hey, you're going to look pretty good maybe. And then with Jalen Naylor, it's not been a matter of talent. We've seen the talent since day one. It's just, can he get good breaks and remain on the field and made a very good catch today? If he can stay healthy and be wide receiver three, though, that would be a steal for them because we had no expectations really at all for that position.

Wade says, if you look at Darnold's last two year stats, project a five to 10% increase to our offense and coaching, It's totally acceptable performance for a bridge quarterback. And when you say that Wade, you don't sound like a crazy person. If this was somebody who was totally horrendous for their entire career, and then you were selling me on this increase, or if the Vikings didn't have the best receiver in the world and a coach whose entire focus is on the passing game, then I might think, ah, I don't know, Wade, we'll see about that. But when you're talking about acceptable quarterback performance, think about this.

Gardner Minshew won what? Eight games for the Indianapolis Colts just by having a little bit of talent, a little bit of guts, throwing it to the right spot, and having a pretty good team around him, it's not insane to talk about this as having potential to be a decent season. I believe that Darnold's quarterback rating from 2022 to the present was something like a 90. I mean, if he played that way, if he played 17 games and had a 90.5 quarterback rating, that means he'll have been pretty good and there will be some wins and there will be

some losses and ups and downs. That's where we could set the bar right now. Now, if he gets the pads on and start shredding this defense, I'm going to take a different tone. I'm going to say it's happening. Here we go. But not yet. Not yet.

Let's happening. Here we go. But not yet. Not yet. Let's see. Let me get a few more questions in here and we'll call it a night. It's been a really good conversation. Steve says, I believe in this coaching staff with whoever is playing. Is that wrong to think? No, I don't think it's wrong to think because we saw the way that Kirk Cousins and Kevin O'Connell bonded. We've seen Justin Jefferson's numbers with Kevin O'Connell as his coach. Those are two very good signs for good quarterback play. the sample of Josh Dobbs or Nick Mullins, because those are just not NFL starting quarterbacks. Dobbs had been with 11 teams before he got here. And there's a reason for that. He's not anywhere near as talented as Sam Darnold is. But yeah, I mean, I think that the belief in the coaching staff on both sides of the ball with what Brian Flores did last year, and at least in the passing game then yeah I mean I am on that side of things if we see O'Connell struggle this year maybe there will be some more questioning of it but I've got to see it with competent quarterback play and when I did with Kirk Cousins, Cousins

played some of his best football especially last year before he got hurt and looked really locked into an offense that knows how to get receivers open. Believing that there's an advantage in coaching is totally fair in football because it's one of the sports, if not the ultimate coach's sport, would you say, where coaching has more of an impact on what happens than possibly any other sport? Maybe. I don't know. Probably know probably right because of the sheer number of people the x's and o's the preparation all that stuff i think so that doesn't mean that they're going to turn anybody into superstars it's that you know darnold doesn't become steve

young just because he's got a good coach and that would be something we could learn for sure from Nick Mullins or Josh Dobbs from last year Anthony says how's Jay Ward looking well the fact that Jay Ward is out there is a good sign how's he looking we're gonna have to figure that out as we go along safety is probably one of the hardest positions to figure out because they're supposed to make certain reads and be in certain spots but But are they in the right spot? The coach knows that, not me. Corners are much easier to figure out because they're guarding receivers. It's man-to-man coverage. Okay, I can spot that.

Is he getting beaten or not? Is a safety supposed to drop back here or is he supposed to come down there? That I don't know. But the fact that he's getting second team opportunities on almost every second team rep is a good sign for Jay Ward. I would definitely say it's a good sign for Jay Ward. Uh, Freddie says Powell or Shurfield who's better. In my opinion, Brandon Powell is better. Shurfield has a chance. He's an aggressive player. He's got some strength. I don't think he's the fastest guy ever, uh, but he's had some times

where he's gotten in the game in the past. That's the best you could do. Powell knows the offense really well, and it has shown that Brandon Powell does. He's been making plays, getting targets, things like that early on, and we know that there is a baseline for Brandon Powell and anybody else has to be better than that. Jalen Naylor probably has the best possible chance. Wayne says, wasn't the point of hiring KOC this exact scenario? Trust the coach. JJ will be ready when KOC says so. 100%.

Yep. You hire the former NFL quarterback, coordinator for the Superbowl winning Los Angeles Rams to be the guy who mentors and guides your young quarterback and decides. And I have thought this very much that it should be a two man decision for when the quarterback plays. And those two gentlemen are Kevin O'Connell and Josh McCown and O'Connell should check with McCown. Hey, I think he's ready. What do you think he is? Okay, let's do it. Those two guys should make the call. They're the former NFL quarterbacks. They are the ones most tasked with developing JJ McCarthy. And if he doesn't play right away, then that's, I'm going to assume that those guys know what they're doing and know what they're talking about

to be able to say he's not ready. And if he wins the job, then we really know he had to win it because they took every approach to be patient. They took every approach to take their time and let JJ McCarthy have all the space he needed. So if he does win the job, well, then that really means that he has outplayed Sam Darnold at this moment. I do not expect that. I expect Sam Darnold to start week one. And the most likely outcome is that JJ McCarthy maybe starts at some point if the season doesn't go really well, but when we talk about predicting stuff, this whole franchise is chaos theory. Who can ever know what's going to happen next?

Would you watch Vikings football? If it was predictable and easy and everything went how we expected. I don't think so. If you're still here, then you love the chaos and I love the chaos or at least writing about it. When it comes to things like is Sam Dar Darnold going to be good or J.J. McCarthy? And sometimes things that aren't as fun with the chaos of this organization. But the point just being that Kevin O'Connell should make this decision based solely on J.J. McCarthy, his process, his progress, and we'll see how it goes with Sam Darnold. But if you, you know, come in and say, well, Darnold stinks. Why, why are we bothering with this? I don't think that you can, I don't think you can get me there. And he's going to have to show me that that's the

case because so far he has looked like a pretty strong NFL quarterback for this team. And when the pads come on, if that remains, I've always thought that training camp was a pretty good indicator of what was going to happen going into the season. Maybe that's something that I'll talk tomorrow with Alec Lewis of The Athletic. We're going to record out there, TCO Performance Center,

but I will also be back here talking with you guys as well. So I will lather up the sunscreen once again, get out to practice tomorrow and report back all the notes and all of your questions as always. So thanks so much to everybody who dropped in and listened big crowd tonight. Thank you all for showing up. If you came by subscribe every night that there's a practice, this is where I'm going to be

after I get back from Eagan. So usually 7 o'clock Central Time if you are just joining us here. So thanks, everybody, for watching, and we will talk to you tomorrow. We'll see you. Football.