Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jordan Addison charged for DUI, Jerry Tillery OK and a big week for JJ McCarthy

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about the uncertain outlook for Jordan Addison as far as a suspension following the announcement stemming from when he was cited for suspicion of DUI last month then discusses Jerry Tillery's good health news, a big week for JJ McCarthy, a Kirk Cousins report connected to the Vikings and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, broadcasting again during a storm outside. It was pretty nasty when I came downstairs, but at least this time I'll be prepared if there's any lightning strikes and it won't scare the absolute heck out of me as it did the other night. So, got a lot to talk about about there was no practice today due to the weather conditions the vikings had to move back their night practice it was supposed to be tonight was all jacked up to go out there for the night practice then come back here and report on it but instead that has been moved to next monday and it actually looks like a nice week of weather, but on my app, which is always 100% correct, it said the only little storm emoji thing was next to next Monday.

So hopefully next Monday we can have the night practice. And then after that, on Tuesday, I fly to Cleveland for the joint practices, the 14th and 15th, and then the Vikings play preseason. But we've got a preseason game coming up this week. There will be plenty to preview and talk about with that, with the various guests that will be coming on the show from TCO Performance Center and otherwise. So make sure you're keeping an eye out for that. Also just want to check with the commenters here and make sure my audio is okay. The other day, I didn't realize it was a little bit muffled and a few of you mentioned it, but I didn't see the comments. So let me know if everything is okay for tonight. I think that I just disconnected a little bit on my microphone and then it wasn't connecting

fully. So audio is great. Okay, good to go. we can fire up the show here and start talking minnesota vikings uh well where do you guys want to begin uh i mean there's uh we got charges for jordan addison we got jerry tillery news we could go one way or the other uh one is good one is not so good why don't we start with the tough part first and and then we'll go forward from there. Jordan Addison was officially charged. And I'm going to read this right from Ben Gessling of the Star Tribune, so I don't get any of these details incorrect. Here's what Ben wrote about Jordan Addison. He was charged on July 31st with driving under the influence of alcohol and driving with a blood alcohol content

over California's legal limit of 0.08% after officers found him asleep behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce blocking lanes on the freeway near the airport. Now it doesn't say exactly what his blood alcohol limit was or content was just that it was over the limit. Anyway, he has an October 7th appearance in Los Angeles court to be arraigned and enter his plea for the charges. If convicted or if he pleads guilty, he could face up to six months in jail, pay fines up to $2,000 and or lose his driver's license for up to six months. According to the NFL's policy and program on substances of abuse, players face a three-game suspension for their first criminal offense

regarding alcohol use absent any aggravating circumstances that would lead to further discipline. Addison was cited for driving 140 miles an hour on Interstate 94 last July, but was not charged with any alcohol or drug related offenses in that case which could help him avoid harsher penalties related to his arrest last month so there you go uh we have uh now in the middle of the season is the court date and then after that very hard to say exactly when there would be any type of punishment from the NFL and also it's hard to say if he's going to plead guilty plead this down there there's still legal things

to go from here but this was the first step in Jordan Addison's legal process toward us getting an answer on what it is going to mean for him and the Minnesota Vikings potentially this year or even hard to know where it could go from there because he has a court date right now but as we've seen before and in Delvin Cook's case I know that was very different than this but sometimes these things get moved back sometimes they get moved to a different day. Sometimes they get pushed down the road. And then the decision when it's made, then the NFL has to assess what they're going to do as far as a penalty goes. It appears that the fairly standard penalty from

the NFL is three games for exactly what Jordan Addison is charged with. Will the NFL act after he's been charged, or will they wait until he is either pleaded guilty or is convicted or whatever it might be, and the legal system has completed their entire process? This I do not know, because over the years, it has always been pretty tricky to figure out how Roger Goodell and the NFL are going to act when it comes to this and when. So even if now that he's charged, even if it is completed and taken care of, and he is, I don't know if he's going to plead guilty. Let's say that he does and they do a plea thing and that's the end of it. And he'll, I don't know, have his license taken away, whatever it might be. It's not like the NFL swoops in usually the next day and says, ah, that's all set. You're suspended next week for the next three weeks. It might end up being farther

down the road. It might end up being next season before he ends up ultimately serving a penalty for this. I really don't know. And if any of you have looked closer into this, I guess, let me know because through the years tracking these things with different Vikings players or throughout the league, I've never really been able to pin down some sort of pattern. If X happens, then it is why every single time, like if the date is on October 7th, that he goes to court, then three days later, Roger will have a suspension for him and he'll miss something late in the season. Would they announce a suspension midway through the year or would they wait until the end of the season and do it for next year. Will the actual court date happen when it says it's going to happen? We really do not know at this moment, but three games now that he's been charged feels

much more likely to happen. It's just when it's going to happen is still unclear as far as Jordan Addison goes. And also the charges kind of solidify like what happened a little bit more. I mean, we already had a good sense for it from the initial police report, but now we can pretty definitively say, this is what he is being accused of. And it will go from here on down the legal process. So there's not a whole lot more that I can really opine about it. We've

already been through the Jordan Addison thing a bunch of times. I just, I guess from the perspective of the wide receivers, when is he going to be suspended? I don't think it is going to be super soon. And at the earliest, it would be something like after the case was completed. If it was completed quickly in October, maybe it would be on down the line after that this season. That would be my suspicion that it would, but not really clear. The wheels of justice move super slowly in Roger Goodell's office, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it ends up being the beginning of next season so I guess it's anybody's guess where this is going to end up but as far as you know the wide receiver depth and what they're going to do there if he misses games I think we have seen Jalen Naylor Brandon Powell

stepping up at that point but we are a ways away from getting a solution on this it's just another step in this process that he was charged so that's really all there is to say about Jordan Addison his situation that's the latest uh now let's just get to the field which is that Jerry Tillery is okay everybody when Jerry Tillery went down it looked pretty bad I. I mean, he went down. He had his hands over his face. And Kevin O'Connell was standing over him. And Harrison Phillips came and kneeled down next to him and was talking to him. And just from the sideline, when they bring out the cart, you go, all right, what is this? It looked pretty serious.

But it turned out, the Vikings told us yesterday, that he was cleated. And that's why he was in a great deal of pain and ended up needing to be carted off. That just somebody's cleat ended up getting stuck in his leg, which sounds absolutely horrible that that happened so you know we'll see how when he comes back but it doesn't sound like it's going to be uh very serious from jerry tillery which is a good thing for the defensive line they need to stay healthy the there has been quite a competition going on there levi drake rodriguez getting himself involved but tillery is somebody who could be a difference maker in the past rush and has gotten a ton of the first team reps along with Harrison Phillips. And it appears improved from what it was last year when they were really

relying so heavily on Phillips and Jonathan Bullard to take all the reps. I hadn't looked at the schedule reconnected says, does Addison make the London trip when he has to be in court the next day? I would assume the answer is yes. And, and, or as Preston says, his attorney can go for him. Yeah. I mean, I don't know that he has to be there for that exactly. Yes.

To submit a plea. Lawyers need to help me out here. Exactly how this could work. I'm sure that he won't skip it. I'm sure that they won't just ignore it and he'll be a fugitive on the run. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen. And they may end up moving the date back because that ends up happening a lot in the legal system. And I'm sure that the Los Angeles County court or whatever has a lot of things to deal with on its plate and you know you never know

how that's actually going to time out but we do have a date we do have charges that's the update more or less for today but uh yeah we'll uh have to find out also with jerry tillery if he's going to be right back in practice when we go out tomorrow and if he's not, then as Evan mentions here, it'd be interesting to see if Levi Drake Rodriguez's reps continue to get in with the first team. But the first time that Levi Drake Rodriguez, I've never asked if Drake is part of his last name or if it's his middle name. I think, is that his middle name? I could just call him Rodriguez. I have not, or I'm sorry, I did see Rodriguez in there when Jonathan Bullard returned. So the first day that he was taking first team reps was because Jonathan Bullard was taking a veteran day,

but then the second day Bullard came back and still Levi Drake Rodriguez was working in there. And that tells you something right there. And as Brian Flores said, of course, you know, you're not going to crown anyone. You would never want to do that. But when a seventh round draft pick gets any first team reps, you have to pay attention because there is, there's no obligation to say, we drafted this guy, we have to give him reps. You only do that if the defensive line coach is telling Brian Flores, Brian Flores is agreeing to say, hey, we got to get him in there. Let's see how he goes up against some good competition and see how he performs.

That's the only reason you would do that, which is a good sign for him. It's kind of like last year, once Ivan Pace Jr. started working in with the first team linebackers, I think it was the night practice was the first time we saw that. Then it gets on after that. That doesn't guarantee that that guy's going to be a big role player, but it means he is officially on the radar once he gets those first team reps. And now we are very much watching him. He'll be, I'm sure part of the preseason preview of things that we'll be watching for and whatever list I'm going to make Levi Drake Rodriguez and how many snaps he gets

and how he performs as now moved up on that list because he is officially a training camp intrigue player. Uh, so we'll, we'll, as you said, we'll see if that, how much that continues into this week. I don't know if Jerry Tillery is going to miss a couple practices or if he's going to just be back there. What we were told is that he is okay, that it's not a serious injury. It's not an Achilles. It's not an ACL or something like that. And they just really, really need, you know, that depth at the defensive tackle position, because beyond that, even if Levi

Drake Rodriguez emerges as a guy, you're still only talking about having the two proven players in Harrison Phillips and Jonathan Bullard, and then two potential players who could rush the passer because I think that what Levi Drake Rodriguez has is some jolts to his game some jumps some motors some bursts uh that definitely if we're talking uh you know cliches from the draft high motor is a way I would absolutely describe Levi Drake Rodriguez and that's what they need for occasionally being able to get to the quarterback from that position and not just having their defensive tackles be body movers for blitzers, because I think that they want to get to the passer a lot more without having to send a ton of rushers.

So he would help that if he can take this and then ultimately build on it. Now, one other newsy note that I had was from an old friend, Kirk Cousins, who according to a Jeremy Fowler report from ESPN, Kirk Cousins would have given more consideration to a short-term deal with the Vikings if he knew the Falcons were going to pick a quarterback. So my question to you guys in the comments would be, do we believe Kirk on this, that he would have thought a little longer and harder about the short-term deal that the Vikings presumably had on the table for him if they were maybe even upfront about drafting a quarterback? Because I think that the Vikings wanted to draft a quarterback anyway they talked about this through the process that they had planned since the beginning to draft a

quarterback this year would that have meant just being up front with Kirk and saying that that's hey that's what we're going to do we're going to draft J.J. McCarthy or Michael Penix or whoever's there and then we're going to have you for a year and then you're going to go. I think that Kevin O'Connell would have liked that outcome if he could have continued to split the uprights of the competitive rebuild and slowly developed JJ McCarthy behind Kirk Cousins. I think that there are probably a lot of people on the team who would have liked that because you're not talking about having the uncertainty of playing with sam darnold but i am going to call shenanigans on this i think kirk cousins was going to whatever team was going to hand him the most guaranteed

dollar bills regardless of whether they were going to draft a quarterback the biggest issue is just that they didn't tell him. And then when they did tell him, it was too late. It was right before the draft pick. If they had been a little more upfront about it, even going into the process, then you could understand where Kirk would be less irritated. I also think that it's interesting that this story continues

to kind of bubble in Atlanta and that is Kirk Cousins and his agents own fault because on draft night they didn't have to come out and say we're shocked by this we didn't expect this because there's no walking that back that's what your reaction was you were mad as hell that they drafted Michael Penix and now everybody knows it so now everyone's reporting on it and I also think with Kirk he might be trying to walk back a little bit like well you know I wouldn't come here if I knew you guys were going to do that to me a little passive aggressiveness that he kept with him from Minnesota and took to the south it was guaranteed dollars it was what the dollars represent. He told us the

truth. He knew that somebody was going to put them guaranteed dollars on the table and he accepted the most. And the difference between a short-term deal with the Vikings and a four-year deal with the Falcons could have been 50, $60 million guaranteed. There is no way the Vikings were matching what the Falcons put up for him it was never going to happen it just was never going to happen when the falcons put that much money down if they if those were the two offers 40 million guaranteed over two years fully guaranteed over two years and maybe it's you know i don't know whatever 50 million a year salary or something but it's spread out versus what Atlanta gave him.

No way. Just no way. No way. Kirk takes that to stay here. I think that there's maybe some saving face with this or what he's doing, because obviously someone told Jeremy Fowler this is trying to send a little bit of the message to show how unhappy he was still with that draft pick. And then it also could be too, that every headline I read from Atlanta is,

Hey, Michael Penix is look really great in practice. That could be another part of it as well. That, that thing just screams eight and nine, doesn't it? It just has eight and nine written in a black and red for the Atlanta Falcons, but no longer our trouble. So those are the headlines that I've got for this evening. Your questions, your comments, your thoughts. Let's have a conversation and I'll answer you guys and also start talking about what we are looking for this week, which begins with clearly JJ McCarthy, Sam Darnold and rep count. So the other night I mentioned that McCarthy had only taken the two first team reps. Whenever I talk about rep counts, it's always 11 on 11 because seven on seven is a drill.

That's not a full team actual who's in there matters as much. 11 on 11 is when they're really practicing like they would be playing. And so that might be the difference that McCarthy took a couple of reps with the seven on seven, but that's, it's a, that's an offensive drill. That's not a full team session. So anyway, just thought I would clear that up, but the rep count for this week will be very interesting to watch because I thought the way that JJ McCarthy ended his last week and they had a walkthrough the other day, that's why we weren't out there. But the last time we saw them full speed in pads, JJ McCarthy had a terrific practice. It was his best practice

as a Minnesota Vikings so far, looked in control, did a couple of scramble throws, made some plays. I mean, it looked good. And the better you look, the more in control, the more you get rewarded with reps. But are we going to see more than just one red zone drill where he takes two snaps, or are we going to see a little bit more rotating in and out and kevin o'connell said well i also want to get sam darnold in with some of the two guys and there is truth to that because kirk cousins would go ones and twos and then the backups would get in occasionally to go with uh the threes but kirk cousins would always go ones and twos because they wanted him on the

same page with the backup center they wanted him him on the same page with the receivers. But if McCarthy starts taking any significant amount of first team reps, then it's kind of big news going into a week where they are going to play a preseason game, because I won't buy that it's really a quarterback competition until we start seeing the mixing up of first team reps. Until then, it's more of just tracking the progress of each quarterback and trying to project how it's going to look with Sam Darnold as the starter and where J.J. McCarthy is going to end training camp,

which again, so far, I would say it's been a very, very positive experience for the first couple of weeks of training camp for JJ McCarthy's farther along than I expected him to be. Although it is weird out there on the internet, in social media, trying to, I guess I should have known that when the team you cover drafts a first team quarterback, first round quarterback, that everybody's trying to get in first to declare that the guy stinks or is awesome. And the reality is he's coming along progressing on a daily basis as athletes have to do when they are learning to be professionals. Uh, everybody wants to rush to the conclusion because I don't know, I I'm not really sure why we have to do that. Uh, they want to be

for the first one to tell you he's been this, or he's been that, uh, they want to put out statistics, which I don't see the purpose of. Cause I don't, I don't think statistics. I saw one tweet saying how many touchdowns he had. Like what, what do you mean touchdowns? Like in red zone drills? What are we talking about here mccarthy has had a very very good start in my opinion to training camp i think he has made immense progress since mini camp but anybody who's making declarations beyond that is just pulling your chain or desperate for clicks and attention because i mean there's no way to to really look at it right now and make a super strong conclusion other than we know that he can get under center and run plays. And we know that

his accuracy is improved and we know that the work ethic is there. We know that the leadership is there. Like we've checked a lot of boxes so far, but beyond that, where it's going to go as far as when he's going to start, that's still unclear. And we hope to learn more about that. But I think that sort of following the day-to-day is the interesting part for me. Not trying to jump to the, oh, well, you know, he had a bad practice, so he's not going to be any good. Or, wow, I saw one highlight on Twitter from somebody in the stands. That means he's going to be the next great quarterback we really don't know yet it's coming along in my opinion exactly how they would have drawn it up now does that mean next step is to get first team reps more and more

that's what I'm really looking for this week because I think it has to start happening this week in order for it to be a thing if it doesn't happen by the night practice next week that he's taking regular first team reps well then we're way down the road on this thing it would be kind of wild to then suddenly take a left turn and go to Cleveland and start playing them all the first team reps there after not doing it all the way through the off season. I think this week is pivotal for figuring out, okay, is there actually any chance that he starts week one or is there not really any chance, which of course is totally fine with me. I mean, that's kind of what they've laid out from the start. I wouldn't criticize that at all, even though I think that JJ McCarthy is looking more and more ready each day. So that is number one. And then the other position battles will start to separate themselves. We began to see that last week. We began to see, all right, it looks like they want to play Fabian Morrow a lot. Okay, it looks like Jay Ward is going to play corner. It looks like Jalen Naylor does have something there

and is standing out in training camp. Already, the rep counts that we're seeing, we've started to see some separation there, and this week should be going into the preseason game a little even more definitive. If you're not getting on the field with the twos, then that's not a great sign for you, and players who are getting in with the ones and twos, that means they're ahead because

the preseason games used to give us the answer for this. We would just want, well, I mean, really we would know going into the preseason game, but the preseason games for Zimmer were very important and we would get to see, all right, this guy didn't play till the fourth quarter. That means they're out on him. This guy was in early in the game. That means he's ahead on the depth chart. But with Kevin O'Connell, it's less clear that way because practice to him is more important

than what's happening in those preseason games. Although that's the biggest storyline with the preseason is how much does JJ McCarthy play? Does Sam Darnold play? So a lot to watch for. This is a very exciting week. This is the week where I feel like the pedal goes down to the metal of training camp. We were getting going. They're doing their installs. We're starting to get our sense for things, but now they've got the offense in, they've got the defense in,

and now they're getting ready really for the season. Turn it up to 11 for this week of practice. Very exciting. Very disappointed that we couldn't have the night practice tonight, although it's hell on earth outside. So probably the best choice that no one would get hit by lightning out at TCO Performance Center. So, all right. On to your questions and your comments here.

From JP, Addison suspended. It's almost as if we can be 120% sure Sam will start. I don't think that Kevin would start JJ without Addison, Hawkinson, and let him learn from Sam. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you're saying that if Jordan Addison is suspended, then they will start Sam Darnold. I don't know how connected

those two things are. And I also don't think that the wheels of justice are going to turn fast enough for that to matter for week one. It would be not totally shocking because it's the NFL, but I would be quite surprised if they came out after he was charged and just said, all right, this is three game suspension. We're all set there. Move on to the next one. It seems like these things are just moving very, very slow. There have been times where somebody has been arrested for a DUI and then it isn't until

the next season that they end up getting suspended. I just don't have a good sense for this. But if they were to do it for week one, again, that would be very surprising since his, you know, I guess they would be just going off the charges and not what ends up ultimately coming from it. And again, I, you just don't know. The NFL does not give clear explanations of their thinking when it comes to stuff like this. Roger doesn't get on his cell phone and say, here's why I decided to do this. It just sort of happens. They announce it and

there you go. But I would be very shocked if it was week one. So I don't think that the Addison suspension will play into the decision at quarterback. That is my opinion right now that could change. But I think when he's ready to play, he's going to play no matter what, if you're a quarterback, there will be times where your tight end is out or your number two receiver is out. You just got to go forward. But I understand your point. I just don't think it's going to work that quickly. Evan says, when do we start the GoFundMe to bribe TMZ to get the Vikings draft room reaction to when Atlanta took Pennix?

I'm imagining it's like Spielman when the Eagles took Rager over Jefferson. Yeah, that would be great. You know, those videos that come out, everybody rushes to them and they're cool. They are just like the Giants hard knocks thing. It's cool. Anything behind the scenes is better than nothing behind the scenes but release the full tapes release people i was just talking to somebody the other day about draft rooms where you know the the somebody panics the gm panics and they just draft a guy that they didn't even plan to pick and stuff like that i cannot imagine what it is like as

things are actually falling and the looks on their faces. There was that meme of Kevin O'Connell when they got Dallas Turner, where he went like, Oh, uh, I would have loved to seen his facial expression when Atlanta picked Michael Penix. But then the fact that they apparently didn't even tell him until the minute before they were going to do it was so crazy to me. I still can't believe that, that you wouldn't at least go into the draft, even when they went out to visit with Michael Penix and give a phone call, a long text, an Instagram DM, anything to Kirk Cousins to tell him, buddy, we're thinking about drafting a quarterback. And though I think he would have still been extremely unhappy,

it's just like anything else. When something happens that you expected but is negative, you go, all right, well, that's life. But when something takes you by surprise, then it's completely out of the blue shocking. And I'm sure that was the case to him. But I just think it's worth noting that kirk cousins is still kind of putting little things out there to take jabs at

atlanta falcons and also from that perspective he's their problem now they made their bed when they could have just drafted pennix and not paid Kirk anything. And that would have been a good outcome for them. They have a bunch of young players. They have a good offensive line. He's a mature quarterback who is ready to step in right away. It makes it see people looked at it. I think backwards, they looked at it as, well, why would you draft Penix when you just signed Kirk? I look at it as why did you sign Kirk? If you could draft Pennix, you had to have known that you were going to be able to draft Pennix, right? I mean, with all the other quarterbacks at the top, I think we should really look at it the other way. Reconnected says I'll be rooting for Pennix this

year. I mean, what that guy had to fight through to get here, the injuries that he had leading his team to the national championship. The more that we got closer to the draft, the injuries that he had leading his team to the national championship. The more that we got closer to the draft, the more things I heard that the NFL really loved Michael Penix. And I'm intrigued. I'm very intrigued to see what he's going to do eventually. It could be as soon as this year. And I'm going to keep my theory that they looked at Kirk's medicals and decided we better draft a quarterback. They also might've looked at next year's draft and thought, oh, we really better draft a quarterback because even though it's a hundred million fully guaranteed, if you look at that

contract, it's much more of a two-year deal than it is a four-year deal. And you would never look more than two years down the road with someone who's 36 years old. It's quite possible that they just decided, you know what? Next year's quarterback class is bad. Let's get one right now who we really like. And I'm going to be defending that decision for a while. We'll see how it plays out. Zoomer Kev says, I think the Falcons weren't sure if they could get Pennix in the draft. They wouldn't have taken McCarthy or Nix. So they had to sign Kirk. Well, you know, that could be true, but what was anybody at the point

with Penix in that draft? And you look at the, go back and look at the draft order that was going to take him like where the Vikings going to trade up for him seems not that likely the teams that were drafting before they had their set players because they were getting really good players like the giants getting malik neighbors and so forth i don't think that anybody even projected pennix to go that high and the teams that they all stayed when they could have tried to trade out of their positions but they stayed and took harrison uh they took neighbors they took joe. If you were the Falcons going into the draft, maybe you would have felt it was different if they didn't have Kirk and other teams would have expected them to take Pennix and maybe felt like they had to trade ahead. But the Vikings,

my understanding was they were always comfortable with either Pennix or McCarthy. So they weren't going to trade way up. But it's one that we're going to be relitigating for a very long time. I just have chosen to look at it the opposite way after all this time and kind of like getting over the shock value of it, that it just makes maybe less sense that they would sign Kirk Cousins in a draft class that had so many good quarterbacks because they still had three dudes on the board right there that were first round talents that they could have taken. But they didn't even, it all is strange because they didn't even go visit Pennix until the final minute. That's what makes

me think that they got scared by something. Mike says, maybe I missed an update what details can you share on blake cashman his fit and any progress uh i haven't watched blake cashman too closely because number one training camp linebackers unless they're like ivan pace last year who's throwing his body all over the place and making plays it's kind of hard to figure out i, a lot of times it's because they don't tackle people. So they hand off and, well, it looks like he run fit okay. He's moving well. He's healthy. Seems to be fitting in fine. They were using him in the nickel and not pace.

So he was out there calling the plays. I did notice that. Cashman, though, based on what he did last year and his talent, is a really good player. So I've kind of taken it for granted. And I've thought numerous times over this training camp how funny it is that in a normal year, we would be talking to Blake Cashman every couple days because he would be the biggest signing. Or Jonathan Grenard or Andrew Van Ginkle because he would be the biggest signing. I mean, those guys were as big or bigger signings

than someone like Delvin Tomlinson or Michael Pierce. And we were talking to those guys all the time. Hey, you're the big signing of the off season. But instead it's, oh yeah, Blake Cashman. Looks like a good player. Moving on back to the quarterbacks. I suspect he's going to be a very good fit and an underrated piece of why this defense

is more complete than it was last year. All respect to Mr. Jordan Hicks, who is one of my favorite guys to cover, always willing to talk football, super insanely tough linebacker. So really appreciated him as a player, but Cashman is younger. Cashman is quicker at this point in his career. He hasn't had, well, he's had some injuries, butordan hicks had some that slowed him down a bit hicks was more of a traditional linebacker run stuffing and blitzing and i think what cashman brings them is the ability to drop back in coverage a little more effectively but i haven't been watching him close because i don't believe in my ability to identify how he looks is he is he doing he, is he doing the right, is he in the right zone on a play? No, I don't really know. Is he rushing in the right lane? Not really sure, but I know from

last year, he was excellent for the Texans. And I expect if he stays healthy, it'll be the same for the Vikings. Tristan says, have you been following the other rookie quarterbacks and how they're looking? I know may has been looking really rough. Sometimes he has. I've seen that he's had a couple of good days recently. I have only seen, because I follow a couple of Denver people, that Bo Nix seems to have fit in pretty well. I've seen that Penix is having a good camp so far.

Have not seen as much maybe on Jaden Daniels. I guess maybe I just don't follow a lot of washington reporters because they haven't been relevant in a long time uh it's training camp for everybody i don't really know what to say when it's drake may has some of the worst teammates you could have some of the worst offensive lines some of the worst receivers and he's also young too just like jj mccarthy so you might have seen while he has a bad day and then everybody starts talking about it. But I'm not getting too judgy on things that I can't see myself other than just the occasional tweet that pops up or article about how somebody's doing.

It seems like Caleb Williams is having a pretty good camp so far that he's making some throws that you just haven't seen from too many quarterbacks because he is very talented, but it's going to be really played out over the next two seasons. So what they're doing in camp, I'm kind of, I don't know. I get to watch every rep of McCarthy, so that's easy for me, but one article, one tweet here or there, I don't think, I don't believe in my ability to watch linebackers or read one tweet and know the whole truth about Drake May either. So I, you know, I just, it looks to me like the guys that are going to get opportunities right away though, are Jaden Daniels, Caleb Williams, and Bo Nix. And so they're going to get a headstart on this and then the rest might end up

sitting for a little while. I would suspect that Drake may gets in pretty fast if they try to play a lot of Jacoby Brissett, not really sure when Michael Penix will get to play, if it's this year, if it's next year and then JJ McCarthy. So I, again, I do see people who are kind of trying to gather tweets and then rank how the quarterbacks are doing. I mean, that, that, that's a, again, if you could do it in, in training camp and figure it out, you are one impressive football analyst because I, I sure can't. I just think that we have to judge them differently on where they're at. Like Caleb Williams is the number one pick.

So he's going to play right away and he should be looking good right away. Bo Nix is older than I am. So he should be playing right away. Jaden Daniels is also, I think 23, maybe going on 24. Number two pick. He should be playing right away. Drake May and JJ McCarthy. These guys are a lot younger.

Maybe they shouldn't. And Michael Pennix is in a totally different situation. We're going to have to watch it play out over a longer period of time when it comes to these guys. Anthony says, really feel like it's closer to five to 10% McCarthy starts week one, as it would be a huge step back if he struggles early and then needs the bench as he's not ready yet. No, that's a good point. And what I keep thinking about, Anthony, is when it comes to this decision, at least for the beginning of the season, you have to think about the upside and downside. I mean, the downside to sitting J.J. McCarthy for a few weeks is what?

Nothing? I mean, we don't get to see him? The downside is for you and me because we want to see what he looks like. The downside is not for him. He gets to see what it's like for Sam Darnold to prepare for an NFL week, to prepare himself for an NFL week. He gets to go through practices that are preparing to actually play in a game. And he gets to stand on the sideline and watch how it's really going to look at full speed. And then he gets to go back and analyze all that tape in the quarterback room and then practice

again. Like that experience is very, very good for a young quarterback. It's okay. If he ends up having it, there's really no downside to that. The upside to playing right away might just be that if he's that ready, then it's a really good sign. If he has done enough to convince Kevin O'Connell over just a couple of weeks that he's better suited for this than Sam Darnold, that means he has had a phenomenal camp. And I don't think that we're there yet. Otherwise he would be taking those first team reps. But if over this next week, week and a half, he were to do enough to show Kevin O'Connell, Hey, I'm ready, man. Just put me in. That means that he is way farther along than they ever dreamed because everything that they have said, they have, uh, you know, they have told us that they were going to, um, sit JJ McCarthy,

more or less, and not that specific language, but insinuated that he was not going to sit J.J. McCarthy more or less and not that specific language, but insinuated that he was not going to play right away from everything they've said since the time he was drafted to right now. And because of that, I think it would be a huge turn if they decided to say, no, actually he's going to play.

That would mean he would just be absolutely outstanding over the next week, Totally dominant in practice. The thing is too, that Sam Darnold has looked good. I would say the other day, he looked damn good with the way that he was connecting with Justin Jefferson. Now look, I'm going to get in the comment section. Darnold stinks. I get it. I know all about his previous career. What I'm saying is as we analyze the two quarterbacks, if Sam Darnold looks that good on the same page with Justin Jefferson, he's playing. And then we'll see how it ends up playing out in the regular season.

But if Kevin O'Connell has the veteran quarterback that he wanted to buy into to bring here as a bridge QB with his maybe last chance to ever be a starter. And then day after day in training camp, he's getting these long connections and timing routes over the middle with Justin Jefferson. Well, then Darnold's going to start because O'Connell's not going to say, you know what, actually get to the pine guy that I believed in and brought in here with the plan for the start, you know, and look that good. It's, but yeah, the way I look at it is there's no downside really at all to JJ McCarthy sitting, which makes it vastly more likely that he sits, but we're going to see this next week is really going to be a determining factor.

And we might actually have it become a battle over the next seven to 10 days. Whereas thus far, it has not become a battle. And that's why they play the practices. And that's why we go to them. And my skin is recovering from a day without practice, but I still got a little bit of sunburn from the other day. Wade says we all need to send flowers to the Falcons every year. Not only did they take our ex-girlfriend from us, they take Pennix basically handing us McCarthy and Turner on a platter.

Well, you say that now about Pennix, but we'll see how it ends up playing out. I really like Michael Pennix and wouldn't be shocked if he ends up playing out. I really like Michael Penix and wouldn't be shocked if he ends up turning out. I mean, I know that the Vikings were comfortable with those two guys, whichever one was there, they were going to pick, uh, whether it was JJ McCarthy or Michael Penix, that means that they evaluated them and decided both would have been worthy of playing. So when the, uh, worthy of having is your first round pick future franchise guy so when another team in the nfc gets him you can't really celebrate that too much because your team

also liked that guy as well the falcons were not the only ones but as far as taking kirk uh yeah you needed somebody else to make that offer and we're seeing already with j McCarthy, why it was such a good idea to let him go and take McCarthy because already the signs are McCarthy looks like he's on track. Whether that means playing right away, playing at some point this season, playing next year, you didn't necessarily need Kirk to stick around even though there was a good relationship there with Kevin O'Connell even though they could have been a little more competitive maybe than with Sam Darnold no guarantee of that but possible it just didn't make any sense when you talk about the price the uh the Achilles injury the age and the fact that they were going

to draft a quarterback but they did need someone else to swoop in and make that offer and the fact that they were going to draft a quarterback, but they did need someone else to swoop in and make that offer. And the Atlanta Falcons did them a solid by making it impossible to, to have the Vikings do it. And they also got the plausible deniability anyway, not that it was any sort of nightmare from a PR perspective, fans were completely ready for that to be over. It's just that Kevin O'Connell said all these great things about Kirk and had they just let him go with no offer, then it would have looked like, oh, okay,

you were kind of just talking out of both sides of your mouth, but instead they could say we tried, but somebody else paid more. Uh, Zoomer Kev, have you talked about the new motion rule? Do you think motion will not be such a game breaker now? No, I don't think it's going to be any different. My understanding is that they're trying to cut down on guys starting to, and you can tell me if you've read something different, but just starting to head up field and being a little more litigious about that. Because last year there were times where it looked like,

this is really a Miami Dolphins and 49ers rule. In some of the motions, they were headed upfield as the snap was happening. They really have to just follow the motion rules. But it is such a huge part of those offenses, and maybe it'll be more of the Vikings offense this year. It's been some, but you'd like to see Kevin O'Connell ramp it up even more. It's not going to have any sort of impact or change. There was an initial reaction to it that made it sound like there would be. But then when I read about it, it just looked like they were more of cracking down on some, uh, perpetual line steppers to the actual rule. Uh, Austin, how is Jaqueline Roy

looks so far in camp? Any noticeable improvements from last year? Not really to tell you the truth. Now I've only looked at him a couple of times and I haven't seen that he's taking any first team reps. I've seen him in one-on-ones a couple times. He's a massive guy. He's got strength. Is he part of the conversation for somebody who's going to be anything more than just depth that will have to be proven over the next week plus, but things happen fast. They draft another player. It's Levi Drake Rodriguez, and suddenly he's the bell of the ball and Jaqueline Roy.

Things happen quickly. This is, I don't want to say make or break. It's just his opportunity to get up into those first team reps or consistent second team reps where he's going to be a clear depth player. That still has to happen. You know, I've seen him out there a lot, but as far as making an impact a little bit harder to see on the interior, sometimes is he getting a push?

He's a, he's a huge guy that is strong and has some upside it just could be that some other players have kind of come along uh extreme bar bingo do we have any tj hockinson update yeah the only update was that kevin o'connell said that he felt like he was ahead of schedule which you know what does that mean like he was ahead of schedule, which, you know, what does that mean? Like a week ahead of schedule, four weeks ahead of schedule, not really sure. And they kind of say that about a lot of guys when they're recovering as maybe some encouragement to keep on going and get back as soon as you can because you're really good at football. But he's been working off to the side. And the fact that O'Connell brought up maybe the idea by the end of camp of doing some individual drills would tell you that they feel good about where he's at.

I still can't see him getting back very soon because it would just be a really short timeline for him to start very early in the season week one week two and when you have no training camp uh from what i've seen in the past it's there's a ramp up period when you have no training camp because these guys they do this for a reason i mean they're out there working hard in these padded practices running all the routes getting it all down and that's where your explosiveness kind of comes back is during training camp and this is a guy who hasn't been able to run with pads on since last year that is a big gap to make up the one thing that has come from this though is johnny munt has had a very good training camp and he did

a decent job filling in for hawkinson last year. That's somebody they brought back that they liked. And with Robert Tunyon down, Johnny Muntz has, and really it's always been Muntz as the first team tight end. He's made a lot of plays throughout this training camp. I don't think the drop-off will be quite as enormous as we thought. Like instead of one of the stars that you have competent play from Johnny Muntz for a few weeks, but I'm still looking at four or five weeks, maybe that's a total guess, but just based on where it was in

the timeline that he tore his ACL, I think it took Adrian Peterson X number of months. Somebody did the math on that and Peterson came back even faster than you'd expect. So, you know, I think we're going to be a little patient with that. Cole says Dane Mizutani expects a run heavy game for McCarthy on Saturday. If true, do you think that's a good strategy? A lot of times in preseason games, that is the case that they play it pretty conservative. I don't know if Kevin O'Connell is capable of sticking to the run, even in a preseason game. Maybe he is through a lot of passes with Jaron Hall last year in the fourth preseason game. You know, I don't know. They've got to want to see a

little more Ty Chandler. I would think in the preseason, he's got a lot of reps kenny wongwu has been rb3 so do they want him to show that they can at least trust him as miles gaskin you're going to make the team is there anything there with dwayne mcbride they probably want to do give those guys in the backfield quite a few reps and i think they want to maybe protect mccarthy a little bit from having to just throw a gazillion passes when he goes in, but run the plays that he knows and see how it looks. I mean, if he starts and he plays two quarters, then you'll see him throw the ball.

But I, I mean, they're not going to show everything they're going to do with their passing game though, in that Wade, my main reason for watching tonight is to hear Matt, Matthew Matt's prognostication on play times for quarterbacks for the upcoming weekend okay uh well i will guess then and i'm

sure i'll have several guests on the show who also take their swing at this but i will guess that they will play sam darnold for two series and then JJ McCarthy will come in and play through the end of the first half. Then it will be Nick Mullins and Jaron Hall the rest of the way. That's my first guess at it. And I will be interested to hear what everybody else thinks because Kevin O'Connell has made it clear that he is not going to tell us, which is fine. I don't mind the cat and mouse game. I don't need to know. I'll find out on Saturday afternoon.

Asa, what's up, Asa? Good to see you, buddy. How nice is it going to be for a Vikings quarterback to have legitimate level of mobility? Well, yes. Over the past few years, maybe longtime listeners would know that I have become frustrated at times by

the lack of playmaking ability of the Minnesota Vikings quarterback position. Yes, it's necessary. It is absolutely necessary unless you are Tom Brady and he's retired to have mobility as a part of your game. If you're going to win and go anywhere in the NFL right now even if you go back and look you guys know that I look at the PFF stats and things like that go back and look even five seven eight years ago and mobility has always been great playmaking has always been huge in the NFL but how many more pressures guards give up than they did even seven years ago how the the pff grades of guards have dropped because defenses are getting better at this not worse at creating pressure sending unique blitzes

stunts twists coverages there are so many times over a season where your quarterback isn't sure what's happening back there or gets quick pressure and what would happen with cousins is that the play was just over and as good as he was there was no real answer and what we've seen at training camp is a few really spectacular scrambling plays but what i noticed was even when they run bootleg play actions which kirk was very good at those throws when he was on the roll but team started just sending people upfield at him and he had to just dump it down or throw it away because he couldn't get outside of those edge rushers

and still have time to throw the ball. Even when Josh Dobbs ran it a couple of times, you saw him like, here comes the edge rusher, but he just ran right by him. And JJ McCarthy and Sam Darnold are fast enough to do that. And they're strong enough with their arm talent. This was when you talk about arm talent, there's so many factors to it where Kirk Cousins has a ton of arm talent when he can set his feet, step into the throw and let it rip as hard

as he possibly can put his whole body and his torque behind it. And he's very accurate but if anything is muddy there and he can't put his whole body into it and he has to be off kilter or something it's kind of just over now with Darnold and McCarthy there have been many times during training camp so far where they're not throwing it directly over the top with a perfect step forward maybe it is a sidearm throw maybe it is on the roll and they can make plays it's a lot of times going to make a difference between a third down punt on fourth down or a third down conversion even Daniel Jones did this to the Vikings in the playoffs or a few times his ability to run or scramble or do something with the football on a third down made all the difference.

Ty asks or says, just watched a video of Riker hit a 58 yard field goal with at least 10 yards to spare. Could he be one of the best? He is the most talented kicker that the Vikings have had at training camp since I've been covering the team. And that includes Daniel Carlson. He's been better than Daniel Carlson. Carlson had a big leg as well, but when I was watching from behind, when he kicked that one and he made all six and I stood on the field behind him so I could see it like a golf shot from behind with the shot tracer. Every single one of those kicks was down the middle.

I mean, his accuracy from deep, but it's just accuracy in general. And then the power people when he was drafted were acting like he didn't have a big leg. I think he does. You mentioned it 58 yards with a lot to spare. And we talked about that at minicamp, how high the ball was going on 40 and 50 yard kicks through the goalposts. He is part of a new wave of kickers that have been training since he was 12 years old with professional trainers and mastering this craft by the time that he got here. It's going to be different.

We've just seen kickers get better and better and better and better over the years and what's to come from here is think about how pitchers i was watching a guy the other night throw 104.7 miles per hour blows my mind because i remember troy percival throwing 97 and being like oh my gosh this guy throws the ball so hard. And here is a guy throwing 104. It's like that with kickers too, because we have all this biomechanics and they can make it into a truly scientific every single move. How about this? For golfers, a par five used to be 475 yards on the tour. 475. Well, this is a 500 yard hole. It's going to be tough. Now, 500 yard holes are par force. They got to make them 600 yards because the guys can hit it so far. I think mechanically we have so much information

and so much training that the top athletes are just getting better. And that involves the kickers. Is he going to be one of the best? I have no idea because the real pressure of the NFL is different than it is in college. But from his talent, you can see that this is a different generation of kicker that the Vikings have. Cause C-A-W-S. Do you think the hardest part about not starting JJ right away is trying to find the best time to plug him into the season, especially if we're 500, a hundred percent. Yep. Because

Sam Darnold, I absolutely guarantee you if he starts eight games, we'll have one or two of them that are just awful. There's no way that he can completely change entirely who he's ever been before. He will have games like that. He's had a practice or two like that, where there's just some consistency issue in his career. He's had a lot of great games. He's also had a lot of astoundingly bad games where he goes, I think there's one in Carolina where he went five for 15 or something like that happens, uh happens that he has this inconsistency. It's part of the reason he's here. And do you overreact to that?

Do you stick with it? How does the team feel about it? How does the leadership feel about it? I remember, you know, Mike Zimmer went to the team and I think Everson Griffin told us this in 2017 and he asked the team, should we go to Teddy Bridgewater or should we stick with Case Keenum? And the leadership council or unit said, you know, we're winning the games with Case. It'd be pretty hard to make a change right now. Let's stick with it. And I think you would end up in the same sort of situation with Justin Jefferson,

Harrison Smith, maybe some of the veteran players you know Brian O'Neill let's have a conversation Garrett Bradbury what do we think the best thing to do here is uh and get their feedback because if they are in a 500 type of situation that makes it delicate because that means you're in the playoff race if you're hanging around 500 but then two bad sam darnold games in a row and jj is ready uh do we go to him do we you know we're four and four do we go to him or not go to him because if you bring in the rookie and he struggles then you're going to play yourself out of the playoffs and guys like justin jefferson are going to go hey i know it wasn't going well but we were in the playoff race and then you threw in a rookie and then we lost. That is the, one of the most delicate types of situations for the Vikings

is if they are in that spot where they're in the hunt in the playoff race, but Darnold has some tough games, maybe they win through their defense and they think, well, now is the time. The extremes are so much easier if they're one in six. Well, who's going to argue with playing Justin Jefferson? If they're six and one, who's going to argue is sticking with Sam Darnold. But the most likely outcome is probably the 500 one, which is that they're going to be back and forth type of team and have a difficult decision of when to go to them.

If they actually want to do that. Joel says, if JJ begins to outperform Sam Darnold in the camp or throughout the season, is that bar high enough to thrust JJ into competition? Do we really, do we want him to really impress the coaches before playing? Yeah. I mean, I think that the way that Kevin O'Connell has laid this out is as true as you're going to get from a head coach. He has said, he's got to check all the

boxes and that's what I'll consider playing him. And his boxes are not that difficult to figure out, right? He's laid those out. He's got to have the timing, the footwork. He's got to have every play down so he can call any play on the menu. I asked Kevin O'Connell the other day about the two minute drill. And he said that one of the biggest things about the two minute drills is that he can at any time call whatever play he wants to call and not prepare it beforehand in the walkthrough, but just go to the menu and go, all right, XZ jet, whatever, whatever, whatever. And McCarthy has to know it, get it to the other players immediately, no hesitation,

execute the play, do the right reads, get it on time. And I think he's done a very nice job of this so far i think he's looked comfortable with this so far but it has to be the point where o'connell could call anything that he wants to call and mccarthy is going to know what to do and go up there and do it and then execute it and throw accurately and make plays and and all those things which is it is a high bar to ask as opposed to paring it down. But it's also one that they have the luxury of doing because he is 21 years old

and they have this other quarterback. So they can wait until he reaches that high bar for him to go in. I mean, if he outperforms Darnold, we have to also kind of contextualize it. Is he outperforming him enough to where they want to give him those first team reps? Because that's really the indicator right there. I've always thought this, that the most accurate you're going to be is not just watching and

saying, oh, well, this guy caught the ball. Alexander Hollins, Amir Smith-Marset, these guys have caught balls in training camp and then not made the team. And then we'll report on it and fans will ask, well, what the heck happened there? Why did they cut that guy? You said he was doing great. Well, there was a reason, must be. But the rep count was usually more indicative. Well, OK, but those guys were always taking the second or third team reps,

even if they were making plays every day. So that's what told us. From my eye, McCarthy is doing a lot of the things that I would expect would be boxes Kevin O'Connell would want to check, but only he and Josh McCown really know how far along he is in that meter. I like to think of a lot of things as meters, right? So like how, if you guys know audio, that you can, you get to the red, you max it out,

you get the green, and then it gets into the yellow that you kind of want to live in that space audio wise. And then you get into the red. So is he in the green where he's, you know, still he's doing okay. He's creating levels. Is he in the yellow where it looks like, okay he's doing okay he's creating levels is he in the yellow where it looks like okay he could take first team reps soon or is he in the red where he is filling up all the boxes that you want and and doing as well as you would expect him to do uh

the only thing that's throwing me off there is the audio wise you don't want it in the red in this case you would like is he filling up the whole meter uh to where you want i think right now he's probably in the yellow to continue with that comparison where it's far enough along to be impressed with him as a rookie but not far enough along to start giving him reps over darnold if that happens then it's on then that night's show is going to be one heck of a show. And this is what I've always tried to say is when it's time to talk about this, the potential of him starting, we'll know. It won't have to be guessing and, well, what do you think? I don't know.

Maybe it'll be okay. He just took the majority of the first team reps. It's on. But that hasn't happened yet. So we're not there yet. Bradley, was I the only one surprised to see cam acres playing in the hall of fame game after all those injuries happy to see him play yeah whether the vikings ever wanted cam acres back or not is still i think mysterious there were reports that they were going to sign him and then they didn't. And then when we did the running back preview for training camp,

I included Cam Akers because it seemed like he was going to sign here based on the reports. And then he didn't and signed with the Texans. One of the toughest players that you're ever going to run across. Truly one of the most hard nose. He was loved as a teammate. It was really unfortunate what happened to him, but I was happy to see him back. And this is the thing when it comes to, for my own perspective, the results are the results. I'll cover it either way. It's my profession as a reporter, but I hate seeing players get hurt.

And I like seeing guys come back from those injuries and get back on the field. And so I'm very happy for Cam Akers because last year it was really pretty crushing when he got hurt against Atlanta, especially he had a good game in that one. Mike, wouldn't you think we would need an RB three? Cause can they ain't it? Yeah, I do. That's a position that maybe you're looking at potential cuts. Somebody else has a running back that does really well in preseason cuts that running back. You bring well in preseason, cuts that running back, you bring him in. Kenne is going to be the kick returner, and he is probably going to be pretty good at that job, as he always has been. But as far as a running back goes, I just don't really

see it. The way, even when you watch him versus Ty Chandler versus Aaron Jones, it's not the same. And I've always thought, Hey, an end around a pitch to the outside one time per game for a guy with that speed or twice per game would be a good way to spend a rep. But as a, as a running back, if he had to come in for 40, 50 plays or something that I just haven't seen enough to believe that that's what he is in the NFL. He is a kick returner, which now could make you a star in the NFL like it used to back in the day with your Dante Halls and your Tameric Vanovers and Mel Grays and guys like that. So maybe that's what's in for Kenny Wongmu. But as of right now, being RB3, it is concerning because of the

history of injuries with Aaron Jones recently. And Ty Chandler, is he a full-time running back? We can't really say that for sure yet. Alex, do you think there's a chance that they go out and get Stephon Gilmore? Or was the fact that he was torched in the playoff game a factor in him being still on the street? That last part most definitely could be. There is not much history. Terrence Newman, Daryl Green, not much history of cornerbacks continuing to play that position at a high level at his age. That's also a factor. Price could be a factor. Him, maybe Superbowl hunting could be a factor. I don't know if he

plays the way they wanted him to play he was really good at man coverage last year which you know maybe would carry over but you're right that he did struggle in that game against the Packers I don't think that there's any chance they go out and get anyone else unless there's another injury I think Fabian Morrow was the signing which is okay that's okay Fabian Morrow has a history of being a starter in the NFL and not a catastrophe that's the best you could do there but he's started a lot of games so this isn't somebody that we're talking about has just been awful or has never played before and that's why he was able to get in and take first team reps right away but I think that's your signing and the other answer

was well Bobby McCain can also play nickel if they need your signing and the other answer was well bobby mccain can also play nickel if they need him to and the other answer was jay ward at corner i will watch closer but i've liked the way that jay ward has looked at corner and the preseason game may be more telling he's a big guy for corner but i like the way he moves he i think he's been tracking receivers pretty well for somebody that has not played corner really since college and has been more in this hybrid or safety type of role. Mike, how long do you think McCarthy will play in the Raiders game? My total guess, because again, we're keeping this a secret.

Kevin O'Connell says there's a plan. It is a secret planvin o'connell says there's a plan it is a secret plan though so if anyone wants to break in to tco performance center propel down the walls into kevin o'connell's office and sneak into the drawers and find the secret plan then i'll know for sure but until then it's a secret uh my guess is that after a couple series of sam darnold maybe, maybe that we will see JJ McCarthy play the rest of the first half and then they'll go to Nick Mullins or Jared Hall or both. That is a total guess. If they played McCarthy the rest of the game, I wouldn't be against it, but I don't think they're going to do that much because once you get into needing to play the third team guys to try to figure out those last practice squad spots you'd rather have mccarthy playing with the good players or at least

the good players who are going to be in a preseason game cole says what will happen to nick mullins my guess is that nick mullins is on this football team as a backup quarterback. I don't know whether he will be active on game day or not, but after last year when they used four quarterbacks, I suspect that Kevin O'Connell is going to be maybe extra cautious with having an extra quarterback that he can trust. He might end up being the backup on week one. I don't think so. I think it's going to be J.J. McCarthy,

but there's no reason to move on from Nick Mullins when he is so good for the room with inexperienced quarterbacks. He's a good practice player. He's very much professional. He knows the offense better than anybody. He knows the offense better than JJ McCarthy or Sam Darnold. It's probably not even close. And that's why he was able to succeed to some extent last year and give them a chance because he is very knowledgeable about where that football is supposed to go. I think he's a good guy to keep on the team

and then have Jaron Hall be the practice squad and just keep that room together. It feels like it is a really good room. Scott says once the season begins, backup quarterbacks will get basically zero reps both true and untrue they will get zero reps as far as the game plan but they will get reps as the quarterback that is emulating the other team's quarterback against the first team defense which is also just learning more football and getting more experience running those plays that they expect to face with the scout team and that's experience as well but also preparing spending

time after practice with the quarterback coach there is a hundred percent progress that can be made as you go learn how it works from day one of here's what we do on Tuesday. Here's what we do on Wednesday. Here's what we do on Thursday. Well, Tuesday's day off, but maybe these quarterback, maybe these quarterbacks will work on Tuesday. That's not a shot at Kirk. Kirk is a very well-prepared person. I never criticized that. I'm just saying maybe there will be something they do on Tuesday. But the point is that the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday preparation, film watching, seeing it from the sideline of what it actually looks like, not just trying to emulate it on the practice field, a lot can be gained.

And then working after every day with the quarterback coach, a lot can be gained in progress through sitting on the bench. That is not a problem. I have no issue whatsoever with JJ McCarthy sitting. Scott says through two years of KOC, very, very few of the guys that play preseason make the 53. It's very true. And I'm not sure how much that'll change if McCarthy is playing quite a bit. Will they have guys like Jalen Naylor and Brandon Powell actually out there to help them a little bit more than they would have in the past, especially on the offensive line, this team, and this is a silly trophy to hand out, but they might have the best second team

offensive line in the league. I mean, they have at least three guys who have done a lot of starting in Questenberry, Reisner, and Feeney. And then Walter Rouse has looked really good. I think Walter Rouse has been one of the young players that you could be excited about if the left tackle that they had wasn't already a superstar. But Rouse has just been an anchor in the passing game. They have a good offensive line, but the third line would struggle probably want to play those second team guys quite a bit if you're having jj mccarthy out there to protect him gary says uh what have you seen from awesome law in training camp uh well he's been pretty much

exclusively playing along with kamu gruge hill as the third slash fourth linebacker. So that pairing of Grugier-Hill and Asamoah, those two guys have been in there as the three and four. Asamoah will be on the team. He'll be a special teamer, but I think Grugier-Hill would be the one who would go in if there was an injury to Cashman or Ivan Pace. That's just where we're at with Brian Asamoah right now. Maybe he'll continue to develop, but them signing Cashman was a pretty clear sign that they felt like they need to replace Jordan Hicks with a experienced player rather than Brian Asamoah. And we'll just have to see if he gets anything except for special teams, but he's just depth right now uh leonard asks how's the interior defensive line look so far improved i i think because jerry tillery until he got

cleated the other day was in my mind looking pretty good out there uh and the huge guy who can get into the backfield a little bit more than they had for last year and then the emergence at least so far of levi drake rodriguez to get first team reps that is a bonus right there that they didn't have last year either at very least deeper because jaqueline roy is pushed a little bit down maybe i'm forgetting someone uh mixed in there harrison phillips jonathanard. They look like they're actually going to use the traditional three defensive linemen a little bit more as the two, three, four DNs, which used to just be kind of meaty boys on the end that were more like defensive tackles. But we haven't seen a ton of that. We saw last year's mostly a four, three nickel with Josh Metellus playing the nickel. Maybe this year we will see more of those three beefy dudes and two outside

linebackers. I'm not sure that, but they could definitely mix it in. Gary says being good friends with Judd. Why are you not a guest? Well, that might be a long story, but Judd has been on the show many times on my show here. So we'll always once a year in training camp since 2016. Judd and I have been doing I guess 2017 was my first camp. Judd and I have been doing at least one podcast together from camp. So we will definitely do that on this show at some point. Let's see.

Bunion Rings says, first time here live, but about to start from the beginning and listen to this at work. Well, thank you, Bunion Rings. I appreciate you joining. And you know what I've noticed over the last, I don't know how many live shows, but our audience continues to grow. So if you are new, welcome, welcome. I'm very glad to have you here and

listening to our show. It was a major goal of mine from last year to this year to increase the presence of these live chats, because I just really enjoy talking football with all of you very knowledgeable fans. But this also gives me an opportunity to take a quick break and mention some of our two sponsors at the moment. There will be more to come as the season arrives. But U.S. Cellular, a sponsor of the show, they noticed that U.S. Cellular, that the way we use our phones has gotten ironic. We try to put our phones down for dinner, but the menu's on a QR code.

That's ironic. We hit the like button on social posts that we don't 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 is ironic. Let's find us again with Us Mode from U.S. Cellular. Visit uscellular.com slash built for us to get started. And in just a couple of weeks, I'll be headed to Las Vegas.

Me and Brian Murphy doing a couple of shows on the 22nd and 23rd. We are going out there to go to our favorite place in Las Vegas, which is Circa. Why? Because the Circa Million and Circa Survivor Contests are back. For the Circa Million Contest, you pick five teams against the spread each week. Winner takes home a million bucks, and the Survivor Contest, legendary. You pick one team straight up to win each week. If you go 20-0 or you're the last one standing,

you win huge prize money. Last year, four winners got $2.3 million each in that contest. It costs $1,000 to enter. And here's the key. You have to register in Nevada. So if you're flying out there for any reason or making a stop off, stop at Circa. It's either in Las Vegas, Henderson, or Reno. But you have to do it before the season starts.

So we'll be out promoting that. Circalasvegas.com later this month. I mean, it's a tough gig where they fly out to LA or to Las Vegas and go to stadium swim for a little while, which is a football field size TV and pools. I try, I try my best for you guys. You know, sometimes you have to battle through, uh, let's see. Uh, I don't even know how to pronounce your name. Freaker, uh, says, uh, are the cornerbacks looking like a competent group or is this going to be another bad defensive backfield? So, uh, the way I might look at it is a range of outcomes for the cornerback group.

If Fabian Morrow fits in pretty well, a Evans improves. Byron Murphy gets to play in the slot more often. And Shaq Griffin is even an average version of himself. With the talent around those guys, they can survive. They can survive. Will they be elite? No. There's no chance that they're elite because they just don't have the proven talent. They don't have a first round draft pick who's

coming in as the young superstar, like sauce Gardner, Patrick Sertan or something. It would be really tough for them to be elite, but if they're good, the safety group is so strong. The linebackers, the defensive ends, the interior D line. Now that we know Tillery is okay, is improved. They can, they can hang on for dear life and be okay. If there are injuries there, and then you're down to playing Dwight McClothern as a rookie or Jay Ward all the time or something like that, if some of the veterans, Griffin and Morrow, struggle and you have to move Byron Murphy back out to the outside corner and play Metellus at nickel all the time, it's going to be a rough ride. A lot of this will have to deal with how much they can pressure the quarterback with four rushers. That's also

definitely a big deal. I think that it really depends on this range of outcomes. Can you at least get a middle outcome from the corners? If it's a bad outcome, there's no way around it. I mean, we've just seen this in the past that no matter how good your press pass rush is in 2022, this team had a good pass rush. Zedaria Smith and Daniil Hunter were monsters and it didn't matter because they couldn't cover anybody. And yes, it was a Donatello's fault, but it was also that, you know, Shannon Sullivan, uh, et cetera, that, you know, Duke Shelly had a good year, but it was Ed Donatell's fault, but it was also that, you know, Shannon Sullivan, uh, et cetera, that, you know, Duke Shelley had a good year, but it was, it was pretty tough, uh, from that cornerback group. And no matter how good the rest of your defense is, if you can't cover anybody,

then you're going to have a tough time. Uh, Bradley, if you could pick a member of the U S Olympics team to play for the Vikings, who would you pick and what position? So, I mean, I haven't been watching close enough to know the people's names, every single person. It's been training camp. I've been watching my wife, artistic swimming this week, folks, middle of the day, she will be broadcasting artistic swimming. She did her first event today doing Olympic broadcasting. So keep an eye out for that the rest of the week. So I've been watching her. She's been doing the shooting events before this, the Turkish guy. If you saw him, she was doing that event, but, um, I don't know the U S people's names. It has to be the fastest guy though, right? It has to be the guy who ran and barely won in the

a hundred yard dash. Who else am I supposed to pick? pick give him give him the kick return the new kick return is made for that guy that's who i would pick uh let's see alex says when is the pod with judd coming on well uh soon we're gonna get together soon i'll talk to judd at camp this week we'll figure it out we'll do a time no question about it uh let. Wade, uh, it may have been collar breaking Judd's back window. Yeah, that was not me. That was not me, but I, it was the hail that broke Judd's back window. I told you guys it's been crazy storms. If you're not, if you're not in Minnesota, it's been wild storms. Uh, but yeah, um, that was not me breaking into Judd's car. He has nothing of value in his car anyway. Leonard says, how has Drake Rodriguez been looking? I mean, if you're getting first team reps, then you look good. What I see from Levi Drake Rodriguez is size and force that he is big, but sometimes a guy is big and just gets stopped immediately.

If he gets stopped immediately, he keeps going. And he just, there is a, a drive to that man that they identified in the draft as being unique. And it has really shown up so far in training camp. He just keeps going. And it's, it's impressive how it plays out from here. We'll see, but at least for the start, it's been a really good start in my opinion for Levi Drake Rodriguez.

Brett says, Manny ever going to join for training camp? We'll get, we'll definitely get Manny at some point. We lean on Manny pretty hard twice a week during the season and live shows. So he deserves to have his summer to himself but Manny will definitely do one show probably before the season or maybe after the third preseason game Manny's going nowhere he's going to be a big part of the show I promise Anthony do you feel Dallas Turner has been able to develop with less pressure and attention. I don't think that that

matters to Dallas Turner. He played for Alabama and he's used to pressure. He's used to expectations. If he was the guy we were talking about all the time, he would have been fine. I just, I really have been impressed with Dallas Turner's maturity. They drafted two A-plus guys for handling this transition. There hasn't been any sign of immaturity from Turner or J.J. McCarthy. And I think Dallas Turner, he just instantly strikes you when you talk to his intelligence. He comes across as a very bright guy. And then that's what they talk about. It's one of the reasons to draft him as a fit for Brian Flores is not only the athleticism, but also the smarts. And that's why I kind of compared him to Vaughn Miller,

which is a high bar to set. I know, and it's probably unfair to him, but Vaughn Miller's kind of the same way, high IQ guy, a little bit undersized, super quick. But I don't think that that would have bothered him a bit because he showed up. And was he a five star, you know, show up at Alabama? I mean, you know, Freaker by the Speaker is what the name was that I couldn't couldn't quite ascertain. Well, you spell it P.H.R. I was like, is that is that supposed to be an F? Jordan says, how did you end up becoming a beat reporter how'd you get your foot in the door so the long story short is that i worked for wgr 550 in buffalo where i grew up and went to journalism school out there in western new york and i was doing the bills pre and post game show

and also covering the american hockey league and the nh NHL with a weekly column for ESPN. So I was doing all that in Buffalo. And then Andrew Kramer works for the Star Tribune, got his job at the Star Tribune and left 1500 ESPN job opening. I came out here to work for 1500 ESPN where I worked until 2020. I had switched over to score North. I did a daily show there, covered the Vikings every day there. And then in 2020, they had a bunch of job cuts at Hubbard Broadcasting. I was one of them.

So I started this. And because the Minnesota Vikings are a very high-class organization from the inside, they said to me that I could continue covering the team the same way that I did before, even though I'm an independent journalist now. But they just kind of grandfathered me in from my days at 1500 ESPN. And I really appreciate that because it has been wonderfully life changing that that this has happened. And I'm still building this every single day. And, uh, I'm still building this

every single day and also go sign up for the newsletter, purple insider.com. So there you go. There's the whole story. Uh, Alex, uh, seeing a lot of buzz about the Packers this off season, would it shock you if they won the super bowl? No, it wouldn't shock me if the Packers won the Super Bowl. I mean, there's a lot of you who are really pleading with whatever God you pray to that Jordan Love is not as good as he looked at the end of last year, but they're a pretty good football team. And I've made fun of their whole wide receiver thing, but they've got some talent in that wide receiver group. The defense, they got rid of the defensive coordinator that was really bad. They have a lot of young players around Jordan Love. And if you got to as far as they got last year, which is a player two away from the

NSV championship, then yeah, they could get there. It would be no team has amazing odds except for Kansas City to win the Super Bowl, but I would not put them first. I think I would still put Detroit ahead of them. I would still put San Francisco and I'm going to ride this train all the way into hell. I think the Dallas Cowboys are going to be really good that all of this stuff about, they didn't do enough in the off season. They didn't sign this player. They didn't sign that player is because Dallas has to be in the headlines 24-7 no matter what because it moves the needle, I guess, on television. But as an actual football team, they are extremely good.

And you're always in the playoffs. You're a choker until you're not. Eli Manning's first four playoff starts, I think, or three, whatever it was, first few playoff starts were horrible. And then he became one of the most clutch players ever. That's kind of how it goes sometimes with being clutch. Maybe there's something to it with Dak, but when a team keeps having a number one, number two, number three offense year after year, it's going to click for them eventually. Right. I would put them right in that range right after maybe Dallas. So if I were doing it right now, just off the top of my head,

San Francisco, Detroit, Dallas, Green Bay. Is that right? Am I missing somebody? And then after that, maybe Philly, Los Angeles Rams, I would say don't sleep on for the NFC. I think that's a decent list right off the top off the dome. Matt says, which player are you most looking forward to seeing actually play on Saturday and not in practice? It's gotta be Jalen Naylor. We just haven't seen a lot of him actually playing.

We've seen a lot of practices over the years that he's looked good in. And we've talked about him a hell of a lot for a guy who has, what does he have? Nine catches in his career and 12 targets or whatever it is. We have really said his name many times for somebody. If he, if he doesn't end up working out and getting the ball this year, he will go in the, we talked about you hall of fame as a player that the ratio of discussion and shout outs versus actual performance is crazy. But I want to see him

go out there and look comfortable and look healthy and make some plays that he's been making in training camp every day. Just Sean Jones is another one I want to see. Just Sean Jones keeps making plays and I haven't seen him get way more reps than he has before, but he started to work in a little more last week and still made plays. So he might be one of those guys that puts his name on the map. Defensive players, a lot of them, because I get a lot of questions from you guys about certain defensive players, and it can be easier to tell where they stand in an actual preseason game that I can go back and watch and see how

they played than it is necessarily in training camp when I'm trying to watch the quarterback, but see other people out of the periphery. So someone like Jaqueline Roy, somebody like Levi Drake Rodriguez would be very high. Dwight McLaughlin, very high. Gabriel Murphy, very high. These UDFAs that we're talking about um really really want to see more of them uh let's see uh sean says would love a deep dive into walter rouse i like his story uh learning uh to read through comics i didn't know that um i had a similar experience myself so he's an easy guy to root for walterouse. Uh, I had a sit down interview with him, wrote a long story about him. If you want to go to purple insider.com, check it out or my Twitter

from a few days ago, uh, or his Twitter, he nicely retweeted it as well. But, uh, Walter Rouse is one of the smartest people I've ever met in my entire life. I truly went to Stanford biomechanical engineering. This guy has a special future in life, but as far as a football player, he's, he's got that thickness to him where, when a rusher slams into him, there's no movement. And I really think after watching him that he would have been drafted higher. If he wasn't so smart, that's a, that's the real thing because sometimes if you're

in the nfl and a guy goes to stanford and i know he went to oklahoma to get to the nfl but if a guy goes to stanford and has so many lofty goals after football you wonder okay does he really love it he's really going to want to be here how long he's going to play for it's like the guy who was the road scholar and ended up being a surgeon and he didn't play that long because life called and needed him. It needed somebody as brilliant as Walter Rouse. He wants to go to med school. He, I mean,

there's just a lot going on with that guy, but he's, he's good. I think he has been one of the standouts of training camp so far. I'm I'll be looking for him as well. Let's see, Alex Zimmer or Flores in their prime. Who do you roll with? Well, they're a little different, but both are elite defensive minds. You know, we can be down on Zimmer sometimes when it comes to the end of his time here and how frustrated he got with the entire situation.

And he knew things were coming apart and the quarterback and all that. But the way that Zimmer taught that defense and identified the players that would fit for him and built it from the ground up from the worst defense in the NFL to the best in just a couple seasons. Really, really impressive. I think Mike Zimmer had a tremendous understanding of the feel for defensive play calling, when to rush, when not to rush. I think he trained his linebackers incredibly well and his players to make adjustments, to have the answers to the questions that the offenses would present. Every defensive mind is going to be a lot better when they have better players. Brian Flores, when he first got to Miami the first season, they were terrible on defense because they had terrible players,

and they got better as he built it in his eye. And had the Vikings drafted better corners along the way, they might still have Mike Zimmer as the head coach here. I respect both of them deeply. I am, I think, more fascinated by Brian Flores because there's so many moving parts. Zimmer had a very static way of doing it, which worked, but it was the same personnel pretty much all the time, all the time, unless you put one extra linebacker in, Ben Gideon. But with Flores,

you could show up to the stadium and go, wait a minute. This practice squad guy is active. Wait a minute. This guy's on the, like on the field for 30 plays. What is going on here? I mean, why is that guy lining up there? Where, where did those rushers come from? There's a, there's an artistry to Brian Flores' game that is really fun to watch back on tape each week to see what he added that was different from the week before a freaker by the speaker. We got this right now. Do I think Bradbury is ready to step up his game? I think Bradbury has become a average NFL center who is a very, very good leader and is great for that room and is good for the quarterbacks. He will never be. I know that

there's a thing about putting on more weight. He will never be this center who is just stout as far as taking on the best defensive tackles. It's never going to be, you got Bradbury, he's going to shut those guys down, but they could take advantage a little more of his movement skill, his ability to get out on screens if they wanted to do that. And last year, through about 15 weeks, he was, I think, 10th or 12th by PFF, and then he played Kenny Clark. That's the guy who just tears him apart. Oh, his Myron Roll was the surgeon.

Yes, thank you. But before that, the last two years, he's had pretty much average center years. And considering he's a good leader, then yeah, I think he's fine. And for the money that they pay him, I think you're getting a pretty good deal. Brett says talent top to bottom floors has had middle of the pack defense with really no big names besides Hunter last year. Hitman is good but at the end of his prime uh when they uh went to miami when he was in miami go double check that

they went out and got byron jones xavian howard became an elite player they had van ginkle just got paid a bunch of money they had a lot of guys they had very, but it was built by him just as we're seeing this year. And that is what gives you some confidence there that Brian Flores can keep doing it here because in Miami, they just kept getting better. They did spend on that defense. They did bring in one of the best corners in the NFL to help them. There's no coach ever. Who's going to have a top five defense that just has garbage everywhere. You're not going to take an XFL team and just be like, no, I'm going to coach them up. When Zimmer had all the talent, he was number one in the league.

When Flores has had all the talent, he's been a lead as well. That tells you what you need to know, that the ceiling is always going to be top notch. Evan says, do you think Rouse was a sixth rounder because he's so intelligent and has aspirations to go to medical school? Yeah, that's what I was saying, is sometimes the NFL looks at these guys who have really, really impressive backgrounds

educationally and goals in the future and says, are you sure? Are you sure you really want to be in the NFL? And Walter Rouse may decide at some point in his NFL career that there's a different calling for him. I know the offensive lineman for the chiefs, he took an entire year off, I forget his name, to help with COVID because he was a doctor. I mean, can you blame someone if you have that ability, that IQ to be a biomechanical engineer and want to go to med school that you would want to also use that? Uh, but he really, I mean,

he works really hard though. He's one of the last guys off the field. I think he's done. Uh, he's done well. Uh, has he been practicing? He's only been a tackle. Yeah. He's not a guard. Definitely not a guard. Uh, we can't, sometimes we've gotten into this habit of saying every guy is versatile, like just on this team. Cause they like versatility. Not every guy can just play guard or whatever. Uh, he's definitely a tackle miles. Do you feel like the Wilfs are looking to lock Casey up for an extension? Uh, I think they should be with both of them. They're tied together. Kevin O'Connell and Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. It's also more of the style, I think, to give an extension leading into the final season

of a deal rather than two years early. From what I've seen, the process, if you will, the roster building, the people that they've hired and brought into the building and kept Keenan McArdle, just, we kind of just gloss over that. He's one of the best wide receivers coaches in the league. Um, Brian Flores getting him here the way that, uh, Kevin O'Connell has managed the team, the locker room, all that stuff. I think we've seen enough to be pretty comfortable with this going forward, but there's also no rush. A lot can change in a year. See where we're at at the end of this year. There's not, I mean, I don't want to say this because it's the Vikings and anything can happen,

but it would have to go pretty bad not to give them extensions after this year. But if you don't have to do it now, you might as well do it later. And also, you know, I think you can wait and see because the length of the extension might matter if they go five and 12 and things are really messy and maybe have become a little, a little more tense, then you might think that may as a two-year extension type of deal. If they end up going 10 and seven and going to the playoffs, then you're going to feel like you have the best setup in the league and you're ready to explode. And here's four-year extension.

So they might do that. Brett says, who is up next for an extension? Who do you hope gets one? Well, Cam Bynum, Harrison Phillips are two at the top of the list. Byron Murphy, I think his contract voids so they could extend him and push that money out,

or he could become a free agent. Aaron Jones, we'll see what happens there. Those are kind of some of the main names that are up for free agency. Bynum is an interesting one because with Theo Jackson being what he is, they might let him go, or they might just see if Harrison Smith retires after this season. Theo Jackson being a part of this, and I wrote about him today, has changed the math a little bit there for them, but they like buying him a lot. They might extend him. And I think Harrison Phillips is a leader of that defense as well. So those are the two main guys. But there's not a million guys who are going to be free agents next year. They have a lot of cap space to work with.

Miles, with what the Vikings have done over the past couple of years, do you feel like the NFL is going to throw a wrench in the gears of how much can be allocated to UDFA? Fingers crossed they don't. No, I don't think so. I think that's always going to be Wild West because, I mean, from an NFL PA standpoint, they love that.

If UDFAs are getting $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 or more, the NFL PA has to be thrilled with that. I don't think that the lead... And look, if you want to spend a million dollars on a UDFA, well, okay. But you're also kind of risking that your owner's money a little bit on a million dollars that maybe they might want to spend somewhere else. But no, I don't think so. I think it has become a bit of a hack that they're willing to go out and spend there where maybe they weren't before. I mean, I remember when a guy got a

$50,000 signing bonus or 75,000, we went, oh, I guess they're really interested in him. And that was like 300. But that's the name of the game. And the Viking, one thing I wonder about though, is if other teams will, if the Vikings get another couple of them, if other teams will say, all right, we got to make it 500,000, 700,000 to some of these free agents because the Vikings keep paying for them and getting them. Uh, Evan,

I feel like the Wilfs will let things play out sometimes a little too long with Rick and Zim. So I'm expecting an extension at some point. Yeah, me too. They are not a crazy reactionary ownership. And I've always been a little hesitant because I know sometimes you want to look at the ownership and go, well, they should have tanked. And Hey, there was nobody was behind that more than me, uh, at times, but they have never been cheap. Uh, and they have never been crazy reactionary and just done wild stuff. And I think that giving this space to play out, giving it two more years, at least would be smart. Maybe an extension for three or four would make a lot of sense. They might want to, I don't know, they might want to wait to see how this year plays out.

I don't need that. I think that they have run this competently and executed their plan well enough that I don't need a whole other year, especially when there's uncertainty at quarterback, to be sure that it's a good idea to go forward with them in an extension. The other reality is extensions don't matter that much there. It's more of what they represent to paraphrase Kirk than it is because in the NFL, these owners will just fire a coach when they're going to fire a coach. The extensions just don't mean a lot. Uh, favorite twin cities, golf courses. Uh, I kind of play the one, you know, the local, uh, I don't play anything special. Play the Highland, the Les Bolstad out at the university, Columbia.

Yeah, I bounce around to the courses that don't cost you that much and are made for people who are as good as golf as I am and not any better. But if anyone wants to make me a member at a course that costs a hundred times what I pay for golf a year, then feel free. Feel free to donate that. What about Bob? I don't think they're tied together.

I think KOC has been about seven out of 10 so far. Kweisi four out of 10. I mean, I don't agree at all with that. I think that the execution from the general manager with this roster has been fantastic with the way that they handled the Kirk thing and got McCarthy in the first round without having to really trade up the way that they shifted from being a very old and expensive team when they got here to a young team with a bleep ton of salary cap space. I mean, they've done as well as a front office from getting from point A to

point B, doing what the ownership asked them to do as you ever could have expected. I mean, I think they are tied together. I think it is O'Connell and Kweisi Adafo-Mensa, and I would be very, very surprised if there was a viewpoint that they were different. I mean, maybe, maybe if they complete, I mean, if they botched the quarterback pick that everybody's getting fired, but what have they done with the roster that like, that you would have done differently aside from the 2022 draft. Okay. We're far enough separated from that now and signing Marcus Davenport. I mean, what like they've,

the big picture is that they've gotten to a point where we see them as a team that over the next several years can potentially compete. If JJ McCarthy is good, they have true Superbowl aspirations with the roster. They get Derrissaw's deal done early. They get Jefferson locked up. I mean, I just don't see any sign where you'd be looking at the GM and saying, oh man, I don't know. And bad draft classes happen. You go ahead and look through drafthistory.com and find me a GM that doesn't have a single bad draft class.

You won't be able to find it. It just happened that it was the first. It's kind of like a first impression of meeting someone. If they give you a bad handshake and they spit on your shoes by accident, then you're going to think this person's a jerk. Even if they prove to you that they're nice, the first draft went bad for Kweisi Adafo Mensah. And that was everybody's first impression. Since then they picked Jordan Addison who when not driving is pretty darn good at football. They get the franchise quarterback

without having to trade up. They get another first rounder with an extremely high ceiling in Dallas Turner and UDFAs that are difference makers. I mean, I don't know. They were able to attract high level free agents in Jonathan Grenard, Andrew Van Ginkle, Blake Cashman to fill out this defense. I just have very few qualms with the way the roster is built. I would have thought that some of you would have said after last year, not being able to adjust. And again, it's Dobbs, but not being able to adjust to the whole Dobbs thing or limit the

offense and losing and not making the playoffs would have been more on the coach's side. Personally, I just looked at that as Josh Dobbs and we're really going to see the proven ground now, but that's how I would have thought that some of you would have looked at it based on what was being talked about last year. Mike says, are you excited for potential change in storylines post preseason game? Oh, Mike, I can't freaking wait, my man oh the preseason game oh last year what was it the jaron hall one that post game podcast it was a nightmare it was just what what am i supposed to say about this what am i supposed to tell you about any of this it was rough it was rough enjoy it well at last because after this year we won't see jj m JJ McCarthy in any preseason games, more likely than not, after this year.

So enjoy it while it lasts. It will probably be our highest-performing preseason postgame podcast, which, by the way, will be from the PressBox US Bank Stadium on Saturday with myself and Dane Mizutani. So make sure you're tuning in about an hour after the game. We'll go down to the press conferences, come back up, do the podcast, and go from there. Let's see. Wade, I have no evidence so far to this point, but I get the feeling that Kweisi had less control over the 2022 draft,

and he is falling on the sword for ownership in the previous regime. Yeah, I mean, I also think we have to keep in mind too, that certain players were drafted in the vision, maybe of an Ed Donatell defense and not a Brian Flores defense. I like the idea of Brian Flores helping with the drafting a lot more than I, than I do with Ed Donatell. So Les Bostad is a ripoff now, and that's unfortunate. Golf just got more expensive like everything else. Fast food's a ripoff now. It costs like $13 to get Taco Bell. And I love you, Taco Bell.

You mean so much to me, but I'm getting like a couple tacos, and it's $13 or $14. What? There's no way. There's no way that it needs to be that price. Golf is the same way you get a cart and they're like, uh, can you sign over your house? Uh, okay. I guess so. Yeah. The price of golf is eight bucks, but a cart is $47 and a sample of your blood. It's the, I don't know. It's's tough it's tough out there it's tough out there brett with jackson coming up and uh does that mean that uh bynum could be a potential trade

candidate no i don't think so i don't think there would any be be any reason to do that it kind of that's a little bit like the alexander madison thing from two years ago should they trade him like no you shouldn't trade players who are reasonable depth or are starting on a team that's trying to make the playoffs. Yeah. I mean, Theo Jackson could be the future of this team, but this season I'll probably end up saying this a number of times, but this season matters. This isn't just the vibes. We'll see what happens. I guess it'll be fine. This is a season where the ownership said, and Kevin Seifert brought this up the other day on the show, but the ownership said we expect to win. So my expectation is that they win and that they

compete for the playoffs. I'm not putting them at Super Bowl, but with someone like Cam Bynum, you want them to play and you want him to make plays and you want him to help them win games. And then you also can't really look into the crystal ball. And that'll be an episode at some point with Ben Gessling, I promise. But you can't always look into the crystal ball. Someone could get hurt or Harrison Smith could retire and then Cam Bynum, you extend him. And then Theo Jackson becomes Josh Metellus, and you work the three safeties that way. Let's see. Wade, we have top half ownership, top facilities, and voted culture,

top half coach, top cap space coming up. No reason the Vikings can't be a consistent deep in the playoffs 2025 to 2029. So long as your quarterback is good, then I agree. Uh, Caleb, I mean, I don't have any criticism of that point. It's just, you gotta get good quarterback play in order to be there. Caleb says, is it dumb of me to think that McCarthy will be better than Caleb Williams? Well, uh, I always, always put this in an odds perspective. The odds are Caleb Williams will be better than JJ McCarthy because Caleb Williams was picked way ahead of JJ McCarthy. And historically,

that's what the draft tells you. And number one picks historically have the highest hit rate, again, shocking stuff, right? The highest hit rate of quarterbacks by a country mile. I mean, even when you go from the number one to the number three or four pick overall, the gap between that and the number one pick quarterback for success rate goes way, way down. So from an odds perspective, you know, yeah, I mean, not dumb, you're not dumb, but it's less likely that that's going to happen. Also though, the order of the quarterbacks has not always been the most predictive thing. And it is always possible. I mean, if the 32nd overall pick Lamar Jackson can be better than the first overall pick

Baker Mayfield, then of course it's possible that that's the case. So it's not, it's not dumb. It's just against the odds. Miles says, as we continue to navigate through training camp which position do you feel like is the most critical to maximizing besides quarterback this season pick one on offense one on defense left guard truly though left guard if the left guard is good and i think that brandle has been solid so far if the left guard is, this offensive line can be very solid. If the left guard is atrocious,

it cannot because you already have some weaknesses in right guard and center. It is a swing position for what they can do as an offensive line defense. I might go with linebacker here. Cashman has had some injuries in the past. If Cashman and Ivan base junior can play like they did last year, both of them, you have one of the best duos in the league. If they regress, then you don't. And then there's a lot more weakness there.

That is a really big position for them. But I mean, as far as training camp goes, that's not going to tell us a whole lot about those guys. But I think that they are a major swing position because we all know the corners but i also think you know that the high end isn't that that high for the corners the high end for the linebackers is high they could be really really good uh if they play like they did last year sean before camp there was talk about mullins possibly being qb2 and putting j.J. McCarthy on the 53 as QB3.

Clearly, McCarthy looks to be QB2 partway through camp. Do you think they only protect two quarterbacks now? As far as the week one depth chart goes and who's active and who's not, hard to say because they were always going to play McCarthy a ton in training camp. At this point, I would guess that because he's getting all those reps and the way that he's looked that he would be the backup for week one. Cannot guarantee that, though. O'Connell did say at some point that Nick Mullins doesn't need a lot of reps to still be ready to play in the NFL. So there is no depth chart.

Don't don't Kevin O'Connell think that i'm making a depth chart here i i would prefer they keep three quarterbacks one quarterbacks get injured two nick mullins is very experienced and you always have the option to have him as the backup if someone were to get hurt if sam darnold were to get hurt and mccarthy is starting well you'd rather have mullins than jaron hall i think that they should keep three. Caleb says, who is your best friend in media, in sports media, that's helped you the most in your career? Well, I have a lot of, I've formed a lot of really good bonds with the group.

I mean, when you're on a beat, you do it every day. It's very much a family type of thing, uh, where all of us have become good friends, help each other out in a lot of ways, celebrate the birth of kids, you know, things, things like that with each other. Uh, so it's hard, hard to just like pick one person because we've always been that way. Courtney Cronin became one of my best friends from ESPN. She comes on the show all the time. You guys know her. We talk all the time still. You guys like Judd. Well, Judd's one of the greatest people I've ever met. So yeah, he's up there. Judd was a big help here for me. Patrick Royce as well. If you're not good with snark

and sarcasm, then maybe you don't like Patrick Royce, but he is one of the best people. Super, super helpful to me when I first got here, him and Judd would be at the top of my list. I think for people who helped me the most when I've got here, but everybody has been super welcoming. I mean, when they shut down my radio station, uh, everybody jumped in to help. I mean, Ben Gessling, Andrew Kramer, Chip Scoggins, like everybody jumped in to come on my podcast when I was just launching it to retweet my newsletter, to let everybody know what I was doing. These people have just been super supportive. It's a, it's a great,

it's honestly filled, filled with great, great people in this media market. Couldn't ask for better. Um, Evan says, uh, do you think Harrison Smith will retire after this year? I don't, I don't know. Uh, he played well last year. Um, yeah, it's, I thought he was probably gonna retire after last year, but he came back to play with Flores. If they seem one year away, if JJ McCarthy impresses Harrison Smith, he might say, let me stay for one more year and see. Alex says you might be a little more Pollyanna on Kwesi. His best players are still all of Rick's guys and his best moves to date are UDFAs. There's opportunity costs for swing and missing on draft picks. Oh, I don't, I don't agree with that framing. Well,

I mean, okay. His best players are, are Jefferson and Darisaw. That is true. Also, uh, and to extend them and did a good job extending them.

I don't think he has to apologize for good players on the team that he took over, but I think you have to pull back and look at the bigger picture here. Also, let's not Jordanordan addison has problems driving let's not pretend jordan addison wasn't fantastic last year had 10 touchdowns he had 900 yards as a rookie what his best players are udfas also is that a problem does it oh no he got a great player that no one else tried to even draft idiots like what that's that's that's a good thing that's a feather in your cap that's not a well his best player it's his best player that he's drafted is jordan addison with a first round draft pick so far and as far as the also can we downplay two of the biggest signings on day one of free agency?

I don't think we can just say, well, yeah, I guess he just signed those two huge free agents on day one. I mean, Jonathan Grenard made $20 million, also signed those free agents and still traded for TJ Hawkinson, pro bowler, one of the best tight ends in the league last year. Think you're really downplaying some things that have happened on this roster so far. And then to have the cap space that they have to have drafted a future quarterback without having to trade up. I don't think it's been perfect.

No one thinks it's been perfect. Ryan Poles hasn't been perfect. Green Bay hasn't been perfect. But is it exactly what you were looking for in the big picture when he got here and they laid out the plan to get this roster to a point where in the future they are having a chance to be much better? Yeah, I don't really understand. I really don't understand how you could look at this roster and think, I don't know, the

GM hasn't done a good job. They are in a position where if they can go into free agency next year, pick up a defensive tackle, pick up a cornerback, get a little more depth on the roster. You can't just do everything immediately when you have to tear a roster down first and you weren't allowed to tear the roster down first. Uh, miles, do you still connect with Sam extra? Of course, Sam and I play golf all the time. Yes. Sam is definitely one of my best friends. Uh, should have mentioned him as well. Yep. One of my best friends in media golf buddy, we were supposed to play tomorrow actually, but they moved, uh, practice. The rain has really screwed me over on a lot of golf. So that's my excuse anyway. Uh, well, it's been a really fun chat, uh, very much. Uh, I agree. Uh, first name, last name Bynum would be a trade candidate if they start one in six. I agree with

that. Um, I haven't played a lot of, I haven't played a lot of courses outside of the city. I played a Royal, I guess, went private. There's one in Stillwater I've played. I bounce around, I bounce around. Anyway. So look, I think the roster's in a good spot. And I think that this next week of training camp is really going to show us where it truly stands with a lot of the depth chart and of course the quarterback position as well which means that you guys need to keep tuning in asking questions and having fun and tell your friends and subscribe and do all those things that you're supposed to do for youtube shows so thanks so much for a really fun conversation. Once again, tonight after practice tomorrow, I will be back here seven o'clock central doing the

show again. And after every single show, I'll be in Cleveland doing my thing out there. I'm, I'm thinking I need to buy like a wireless hotspot thing to make sure I can live stream effectively instead of relying on hotel internet. So maybe I'll do that this week as well and we'll carry on and we'll have a lot of fun. So thanks again, everybody for a great conversation and we will catch you tomorrow night. Football, a lot of football.