Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Josh Allen is questionable for Sunday... would the Bills still use him against the Vikings even if Keenum Starts?

Episode Date: November 12, 2022

Matthew Coller talks about Josh Allen being listed as questionable against the Minnesota Vikings and then answers fan questions about how the Vikings can learn from adversity, whether they'll need to win every game the rest of the way to get the No. 1 seed and a wild suggestion to get Odell Beckham Jr. to Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider presented by Liquid Death. Go to liquiddeath.com slash insider and learn about the Tallboy can, which actually has water. Find out where you can get it near you at liquiddeath.com slash insider. Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and we'll get to a bunch of fans only questions in just a moment. But first we have injury updates starting with Josh Allen. He is listed as questionable and it is questionable whether this is just for the Minnesota Vikings to have to think about the possibility of Josh Allen playing right up to the very second they are about to kick off the football or if he actually is questionable for this game and there's any possibility of him coming out and playing against the Minnesota Vikings of course the only people who know that are Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills. Based on his practice this week, you would think he's not going to play.

I still lean heavily toward this man is not going to play because this team would not want to risk their future by putting in Josh Allen and potentially having him get hurt again and flushing a season where they could possibly win the Super Bowl all the way down. I don't think they want to do that. I think they would be much smarter to just give him this week, maybe a couple of weeks to recover and then come back and get back to blasting the rest of the AFC. However, when you look at how tight the race is and also the type of competitor Josh Allen is, I would not be shocked if they were having to try to talk him out of it or if he was trying to talk his way into playing.

It kind of reminds me of how Dallas handled Dak Prescott last year when Cooper Rush beat the Vikings, which was they had him warm up. Everybody took all their videos of him warming up, and he was throwing passes from the 50-yard line and everything. He actually looked really good in that warm-up session, and then they were like, no, he's not playing. But you guys did your whole warm-ups looking over at Dak Prescott, wondering is he going to be under center when we come out, or is he going to be inactive, and you don't know until the inactives are actually announced.

I think Buffalo might be doing the same thing. Another thing that came to mind was everything on Josh Allen works except for his elbow. So is it possible that Josh Allen could be still in the game, still the backup quarterback, and then come into the game to run the football occasionally. This feels possible. I don't know if they would do it, if they would create some sort of Josh Allen package for the week. Again, they're not going to tell you whether that's something that they would consider, but Josh Allen is their best runner. When you look at his running statistics, it's really remarkable. I mean, this is the stuff of Mike Vick here.

What he did last year, 763 yards, six touchdowns. And this year, he's averaging 6.3 yards per attempt, same as he did last season, almost 400 yards already. He's actually averaging more yards per game this year than he was last year. That is a serious rushing threat that is being taken out along with him as obviously one of the best armed passers in the entire NFL. So would they keep him active? Would they have him still run the football now? And then let's say you have a third and one that's really important. Who better to get a yard than him lining up in the shotgun, doing the Cam Newton thing,

slamming into the middle of the offensive line for a first down. I mean, it does make some sense on some level because it's really just throwing the football that's the problem. And he's still a significant weapon in running it. And with most quarterbacks, you'd say, oh, wow, I don't know if you want to do that because this guy could get banged up. But Josh Allen runs the ball all the time. It's not like he's a first timer.

He's run more than 100 times every single season. And this year he's on pace to do that again. This is a very experienced runner. He's also gigantic. I don't know. It's a possibility that I thought of for him. So, I mean, again, we're still in very much. We will see, but the fact that they didn't rule them out is that gamesmanship

is that actually something that could happen. Uh, we will be watching certainly all the way up until the inactives are announced on Sunday. The rest of the injury report is worth noting before we get to your questions. Cam Dantzler is out as we kind of expected. Delvin Tomlinson is out as well. Dantzler seems like it could be a few weeks when Kevin O'Connell says week to week. I think he really means it with Dantzler. So it's a Caleb Evans season and Delvin Tomlinson didn't practice all week and is out. They did a really terrific job stopping the run with Delvin Tomlinson out last week and have become a legitimate run-stopping team. They're going up against a team in Buffalo that does not run the ball very well,

but really wants to run it in a game if they have to start Case Keenum. And that's another matchup to watch here because the Vikings have been so good against it recently. If they allow Buffalo to run, that's where Case Keenum, and we saw this in 2017, could start doing play actions and rollouts and all those same things we talk about with Kirk Cousins. It all applies to Case Keenum where they're just better when it comes to being able to run the football. Let's see, looking at the injury report on Buffalo's side, they are going to likely be without Kier Elam. He is listed as doubtful. That's one of their outside cornerbacks.

Tremaine Edmonds is questionable and Matt Milano coming back is really big for them. Matt Milano has been banged up and he's back. Also, it looks like they'll have most of their offensive line. Spencer Brown was also beat up and limited in practice and he's back. Also, it looks like they'll have most of their offensive line. Spencer Brown was also beat up and limited in practice and he's going to play. Mitch Morse was limited in practice earlier this week. He's going to play. So Buffalo might be a team that puts more guys on the injury report. And this is why it's always kind of hard to tell because some teams, the bumps and bruises, they won't call them limited in practice, even if they kind of were.

And other teams put everybody who had missed any reps during practice on the report. But the only guys that are listed as either out or doubtful, Jordan Poyer, which is a huge one. And Gregory Rousseau as well. Rousseau is off to an excellent start to his career. So both of those guys are key players on the defense. And then Elam, Allen, and Edwards both have some chance to play. So there is your update. And Garrett Bradbury and

Adam Thielen both practiced in full. They were limited or did not practice early in the week, and they will be good to go. So there you have it. Bills and Vikings. It should be a very interesting game. I mean, the pregame all of a sudden now becomes, the show does not start at noon. It starts at 9 o'clock when Josh Allen goes out there and does his warmups. So I will be there, of course, and we'll talk about it on the other side of the game. But here is a lot of your very interesting fan questions. So off we go. All right, let's start off with Alex.

He says, Matthew, I have a question about adversity for you. Kevin O'Connell and the Vikings have not faced much of it this season outside of having to come back against a meh commander's team. Seemingly, that is going to continue with the potential of Josh Allen being out this week and not a ton of massive challenges on the schedule moving forward. How much of a positive impact do you think that adversity can have on a football team in a given season? Do you think that a tough loss can be beneficial in the long term? There's certainly an argument to racking up 16 wins, obviously, but can a team grow from a brutally tough loss or a complete butt kicking?

Yeah, I think that they can. I do. Because a lot of times something like that really reveals what your big weakness might be that may have been covered up by small sample sizes or by late game heroics or whatever else and might be the thing that kickstarts you to make a little bit of a change. And that can be a small detail. I mean, think about it this way. If the Vikings lost to Washington last week, and I haven't heard this, or I can't guarantee this would be the case, but if they had lost and scored seven points, I think that they're having a conversation about what do you do at the right guard position? I mean, is it time to bring in Chris Reed or bring in Ole Udo or Blake Brandel or try something different at that right guard spot?

Because it almost blew up the entire game for the Minnesota Vikings. But when you win, if you bench a player after a victory, everyone looks around and goes, wait, wait, are you benching someone after we just won? Like we've won all these games in a row. Why are you making a change now? Our chemistry was good. He can get better. Like then the players start to wonder, wait, why are we doing something like that when it's working? And so you have to kind of wait for the right moment if you're going to make a change. And that could go for a lot of different things. It doesn't just have to be something as obvious as benching a player. It could be even just the way you run your scheme. For example, if they had been beaten earlier this season and didn't blitz for an entire game, then they might've gone back and said, you know,

maybe it's time to be a little more aggressive. And I think that they wanted to do that. But if you're the defensive coordinator, why are you making any sort of real significant change if you're winning, even if it's not the most impressive way or the most efficient way? So I think something like that for a winning team can absolutely jog them or it can also sort of snap back to reality for some guys. I mean, for some players that may have been, you know, feeling like, as Mike Zimmer once said, feeling their oats, feeling like they're at the top of the world. And hey, here's a reminder that the NFL is harsh and you can get smacked in the mouth at any time. So I think that that kind of adversity of just losing a difficult game and having that sort of splash of cold water in your face is a good thing for a football team at times.

Of course, the New England Patriots won every game once and still ended up going to the Super Bowl. So, you know, I'm sure that they would tell you that they didn't need that, but they were also the Patriots and Tom Brady and one of the best teams of all time for normal teams. I think that is right. And even with Los Angeles last year, they lost three games in a row, all to winning teams. I think that is right. And even with Los Angeles last year, they lost three games in a row, all to winning teams. And I don't remember the exact timing about getting Odell Beckham, but it feels like it correlates with that, that they really knew they needed to get Odell Beckham in there because they needed another weapon. And then they did, and he played a huge role in them

winning a Superbowl. And I think that also Sean McVay understood after that that he needed to change some things that he was asking Matthew Stafford to do. And I remember reading something about this. I don't have all the details off the top of my head, but I think it does offer for a lot of people a little bit of an introspection, because when you're on a roll and when you're winning, you're not looking yourself in the mirror in the same way. It's just natural that you're not. And even though all coaches would say they are, all players would say, hey, we're pros, but everyone is human in that way. It's working. Let's keep doing it.

So that's not me saying that they need a bad loss at some point here. I'm sure it will come that they'll have a game where they just no show. And then they do have to look at some of the weaknesses that they have a little bit closer or decide to make changes. But to your general premise, I think that's right. If we're talking about adversity in any other way, not just losing a game, having a tough loss or having an embarrassing showing, because that happens to 99.9% of teams. The 85 Bears lost the game.

I think it was a Monday night football game to the Miami Dolphins where they completely no-showed that season. And then they win and won every other game and blew the doors off people. So, you know, it does happen to every team where there's a random surprise no-show and everybody goes, what happened there? And it just, it wasn't your day. That's every sport all the time. LeBron James at his peak would have a bad game from time to time.

Tiger Woods got a 10 on a par three. Like these things happen, right? Adversity in other ways, off the field stuff, more than just a only Udo arrest that didn't seem to ever come to anything. I haven't heard any updates on that, but a backup offensive lineman having a small issue at a club is not really something that you would call off-field adversity. But what happened, say, with Everson Griffin last year or with Delvin Cook last year, these were major distractions for the team. Bashad Breeland just basically telling the team

he quits. That's a major distraction that you're facing. Adrian Peterson and what happened with him in 2014. I mean, you could go on and on and on from what the Vikings have faced throughout their history. Those are major off-field distractions that you have to work through. And even worse, as far as adversity goes, I mean, things where it's internal issues between people. And we saw that last year, that the internal issues between people, between the general manager and the coach,

between the quarterback and the coach, between the quarterback and his teammates, between offense and defense, like that type of stuff where you have finger pointing, where you have frustration, if that crops up in a losing streak, say you lose two, three games in a row and then everyone throws kumbaya to the wind here. I don't think that's this team, but that can tear a team apart. That's not the type of adversity that you ever want.

That's never good for a team. The type you're describing? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That can be fine. Kind of a little bit of a, hey, all right, wake up. You can be beaten on every week. Yeah. Yeah. That can be fine. Kind of a little bit of a, hey, all right, wake up. You can be beaten on every week. Let's not get too cocky here.

Now that's, yeah, that can be good for a team. I would agree with that. So, and I've been saying this, that at some point they're going to have this bad loss and my response is going to be, okay, that's what happens, but don't turn that into three losses. That's where it's important. As you play this next section of four games and you play four very good teams, don't make it three losses. If it's one, well, there's going to be one mixed in there somewhere. Don't make it three. Don't make it four. And that could potentially pay dividends down the road. All right. Next question comes from Luke. If the Vikings magically won the remainder of their games and went 16-1,

would they be the number one seed in the NFC? The obvious answer is yes. But looking at the Eagles' schedule, I'm not so sure. All right, let's have a look. Eagles' schedule. I'm a little dubious on this for sure, just because I think that as good as the Eagles are, they will also have some miscues that, wow, you are not kidding though. You've got Colts, Packers, well, Titans, but it's at home. Giants, Bears, Cowboys, that's going to be a tough one. Saints and then

Giants again. Yeah, no, I think that there's enough there for the Eagles to probably lose two and possibly even three games. Not necessarily against the Colts, for example, but Packers could surprise them. And the Packers are going to kind of rear their head at some point, I think. The Titans, if they get Ryan Tannehill back, are a very good football team. The Giants are probably going to split with them. I could definitely see the Cowboys beating them on Christmas Eve. So I think, yes, 16-1 probably is good enough to get the job done. That to me is a middling type of schedule. It's not a super, super easy. Now, if they had, because they did beat the Texans this year, if they had Texans, I mean, you look at their schedule, it has not been that hard. They do have some very impressive individual victories though for the Eagles. I mean, of course, against the Vikings

and against the Cowboys, those are good wins, but recently they have not had a whole lot of challenge. I mean, they blew out the Steelers, they blew out the Texans, and then they're going to get the Colts when they return on November 20th. Actually, yeah, I'm sorry. They're going to play the commanders first and then this week and then play the Colts next week. Neither one of those games is all that difficult for them, but they'll, they'll run into a loss or two. I think that it is easy to forget though, how much time is left to go in this season. When we look at the standings right now, it feels like everything is resolved at this point. And in a lot of ways it is.

I mean, with Atlanta losing to Carolina, you're looking at San Francisco and going, who's going to stop them from being in the playoffs? Because they just beat the Rams. The Rams aren't very good. Are they going to track them down? Probably not. Are the Saints going to track them down?

Are the Packers? Even if somebody gets hot, it seems like it's just it's not there. Like they don't have the roster to get hot and win enough games to change the playoff picture. But every time we think we've got the NFL figured out, it loves to throw us a curveball. Would it be terribly shocking if the Eagles came back to earth a little bit? No, it wouldn't. Everything for them has been just as right as it is for the Minnesota Vikings and fallen into place just as brilliantly. But I would guess two to three losses for the Eagles. I guess if I had to put all the money on one record, I'd go 14 and three for them. And that's going to be a pretty tough bar for the Vikings to meet. Not impossible. Definitely not impossible. But they've still got all the division road games. And as much as you don't have to really respect any of the other division teams, all the games except for the game against Chicago and the game against Detroit were close already.

You got to go on the road. Like, you'll probably lose one of those, maybe even two of those. So I think the Vikings end up still short of Philadelphia, but I don't think that Philadelphia is going to win the rest. If they did, what a season that would be. Folks, I want to say thank you to all of you who have given Liquid Death a try and sent me your tweets about it. Very cool of you guys to support the sponsors that support this show. I've actually gone to splitting my time between Diet Soda and Liquid Death's sparkling lime, but they also have Mountain Water as well. But it really says

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That's liquiddeath.com slash insider. All right, on to the next question here from Sam. Cut Eric Kendricks for $4 million and sign OBJ to try to win a Super Bowl this February, or hope we can accumulate enough cap space and picks to try again next time. Wow, I mean, this is the maddeniest Madden move you could come up with, which would be to cut your starting linebacker, who is one of your captains and most important players to your defense for a receiver coming off of his what second career ACL. Now, look, I mean, I think that Odell Beckham, if they could get him here would be a really good

addition, but we don't even know how Odell Beckham looks. I mean, he just tore his ACL against the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl. It was not that long ago that the guy tore his ACL. You're expecting him to come back and be great. Now, he could probably work his way into it. In my experience, I mean, I've seen a number of guys tear ACLs like Delvin Cook and come back and look really good within a year or even less than a year. So it is within the realm of possibility that he could be a big impact player down the stretch for someone. And if he's interested in coming to Minnesota, it could be the Vikings. Cutting Eric Hendricks is one of the most questionable ideas that has been pitched on the show, I think. I mean, Kendricks

this year does not have good PFF grades. And I think part of that is just the system and how much he's asked to do and how much room there is to cover when you play two deep safeties all the time. But if you watch what he did against Washington, he's still a terrific player. And he's still one of the centerpieces, the heart and soul type of players. And the guy behind him has never played. Brian Asamoah is a third round pick that has barely seen the field this year. So you're going to, for a wide receiver, cut one of your most important players in the middle of a season where you're winning. That doesn't really match up. And if you did that, you'd be alienating the heck out of the locker room.'re winning, that doesn't really match up. And if you did that,

you'd be alienating the heck out of the locker room. I mean, guys would be losing their minds. If you said, oh, we're cutting one of our captains, a guy who was a former all pro, you only do that in the case that someone is tearing apart a locker room or that person is a complete disaster. You wouldn't even do that if he was playing the worst football. And I don't think that he's playing the worst football. So one of those ideas is good, which is still not losing sight of that potential Odell Beckham idea. But the other idea, not so great. I can tell you how you can do this though, which is to extend Delvin Tomlinson. That's the button that they have not pushed that is there to be pushed. Working out an extension in the middle of the season isn't always easy, but Tomlinson has been great.

He's been a perfect fit for this system. He is a little banged up right now, but generally over his history has been very, very healthy. That's a way to create cap space if they need to sign Odell Beckham, not to cut a starter. That would be the ultimate Rob Peter to pay Paul type of situation. You don't want to do that, but extending Delvin Tomlinson makes sense. He's not old. He should be good for multiple seasons going into the future. And I think he's a very highly

respected guy by the coaching staff in the locker room. There's no real downside except for his side, which is he, after this year, probably wants to hit free agency. So it would have to be a lucrative extension. But if you were in go-for-it mode, then that's a way to go for it if Odell Beckham showed some interest. All right, this comes from Steven via email, says, I hear a lot on rebuilding in time horizons. One of your recent podcasts discuss drafting positions of low cost

last year, thinking out years from now to limit cap space. Could the plan be to draft lower paid positions now? So when those players are on their second contract, well, younger draft picks years from now are in higher paid positions on their first contract. If that's the case, how would you grade the draft? I don't think that that's the case. I don't think that that's what they were doing. I don't think it's 4D chess. I think that they drafted the best players on their board. And the best players on their board were guys at non-premium positions at the moment that they had those draft picks. That's the way I think it went down.

That Louisine, and you saw this from the leaked Cowboys draft board was pretty respected in the league. And I think a lot of teams liked him. He was a guy who was rated by most draft analysts higher than he was picked. And they took the best player on their board and tried to rebuild the secondary. It wasn't at all non-premium positions. Corner was mixed in there twice,

a move that I praised by the way, when sometimes it's funny that the things that I question stick out more than the things that I say they did right. But drafting Andrew Booth Jr. and Caleb Evans, I thought was very right because those are two premium positions. But I can't see them going, oh, you know what? We need to draft these positions now and then get receivers, edge rushers, quarterback, so forth later because that's when they'll be expensive. I mean, when you look at Adam Thielen and his age, there was an obvious need for another wide receiver there,

and they ended up having to spend draft capital to go out and get TJ Hawkinson. Now, bringing in Zedarius Smith has really resolved their pass rush issue. But when you look down the road here, you would need a pass rusher very soon. I can't look at it and say that their time horizon is to ever include being so bad that you're drafting non-premium positions in order to many years from now have rookies on higher contracts. And usually the thing about non-premium positions, part of it is them not being expensive, meaning you can fill those spots with free agents. That's part of the equation. You cannot get Joey Bosa in free agency most of the time. Once a year, there's a great player at a position in free agency.

But most of the time, you're paying Christian Kirk $21 million. That's the point. If you need a tight end, a center, a guard, a run-stuffing defensive tackle, Harrison Phillips is a good example of this. One of the better run-stuffing defensive tackles in the league signs for a very reasonable price. That's why you don't draft them, because you can sign those guys for very reasonable prices. Look at the safeties, a cam Bynum, uh, Anthony Harris, like the, that position has always been something

that you could not use a whole lot of capital on and replace that. And instead they decide to spend a first round pick on it. Despite that, that's a huge part of the equation is you cannot find an elite edge rusher in free agency 99% of the time, but you can find a very serviceable and very helpful safety or guard, which, you know, they've gone bottom of the barrel, but if they hadn't gone bottom of the barrel, a lot of teams are able to fill with quality guards for not a high price. So that's, that's kind of the point when it comes to drafting and looking for these premium positions is that more so than working out, I think, the exact time horizon, because that would just be too difficult to manage.

I mean, you'd get to the 32nd pick and go, well, look, we don't want to draft a wide receiver because four years from now, we want another guy on a rookie contract. I don't think that's exactly how it works out. It's an interesting thought, for sure, of how this plays in. What I think the draft more was like for them was you really need to rebuild the secondary. It was horrendous over the last two seasons. So they focused on that with three players in the secondary in the first four rounds.

They needed a starting guard and they tried to draft a starter, which we've seen fail before and fail again, to draft a quality starter on the offensive line. It's just too difficult of a position to throw somebody into the fire and expect above average play. But I think they knew they needed that at the guard spot, that that was a wide open position. So they drafted to fill it. And then someone like Brian Asamoah was, this is a good player. And I believe that they felt he was really versatile. I'm not sure we've seen that. I don't, I think that the hybrid player is kind of mythology. Like the, Hey, this running back is also a wide receiver receiver or this linebacker is also a safety

there's very very few guys that are like that but um i think that that was part of it is the the coverage they thought this is going to work and it might uh asamoah has been really good on special teams and long term it might but that was also a we're not going to have jordan hicks and eric kendricks here forever so look down the road one year who can replace them. So kind of drafting for maybe future and immediate need in this draft. And as far as how I would grade it, you can't really grade it at this moment. But if you forced me to, I mean, it hasn't been really a good draft at all. I mean, so far it hasn't yielded anything aside from some good special teams play from

Brian Asamoah. And I'm intrigued by Caleb Evans. But as far as even looking down the future, the fact that Andrew Booth Jr. is not starting and Caleb Evans is not a great sign. The play from the right guard has not been very good. It could be. And that's why, you know, to really know,

it does take two or three seasons. But if we're grading it right now, they have gotten almost nothing out of their draft for taking those not premium positions. Take a wide receiver, take an edge rusher, maybe you'd have a better chance there. But that's kind of the game they always have to play with Kirk Cousins contract is you have to draft rookies to be starters and you have to get them to play a big role right away because they're cheap. So that does play into it. All right. This one comes from Luke via email says, is it possible that the lack of offense and bad quarterback play so far this year is partially due to the Sean McVay model? It seems more teams are running plays

specifically for their number one wide receivers and using other receivers only to get the number one guy open rather than running a legitimate route eliminating some of the quarterback's options. You know, I think that there's something to offenses being built around number one wide receivers for sure because when I looked at how many receivers were on pace to go over a thousand yards, it was almost 30 guys. And I think last year it was 25 and the year before, and I know it was 16 games. So this probably played into it, but it was only 20. It does feel like there's an increase in more and more teams that are centering around one player as their offense. I don't think that's why offense is down this year though,

because I, I, it really looks like it's just quarterback injuries and quarterback play and failed draft picks playing quarterback and so forth. I mean, I watched Malik Willis play the other day and absolute yikes. I mean, just what did he complete five passes?

That's a backup quarterback. There's been a lot of backup quarterbacks playing. I feel like it's the players, not the plays. And guys like Josh Allen, who have one main wide receiver and it's built around that guy have succeeded. Miami is succeeding big time built around Tyree Kill and Jalen Waddle. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's so much that. I mean, I do think

that there is some copycatting when it comes to focusing everything on a number one wide receiver, but to show you how different Los Angeles is, when I looked at the slot percentages for elite receivers, so I took 10, this is for an article the other day, I took 10 elite receivers and I compared them to each other, looking for similarities. Like, what do they do? How do they line up? And all that. And what I found was Cooper Cup is a major outlier, being a slot guy as much as he is.

And really running as underneath as he does. That most of the elite receivers, the DeAndre Hopkins, the Diggs, the Jefferson, most are lining up on the outside 60 or more percent of the time, and most are pushing the ball downfield. If teams were planning to do the Cooper Cup thing, well, they haven't shown it. I think that teams with elite receivers look at Cooper Cup as very much an outlier, and that was the discussion in the offseason. Well, are they going to use Jefferson in the Cooper cup role? And my thought was don't, don't use him as an underneath

slot receiver, use him as he's been used to be one of the best players in history through first two seasons. Um, so I think there's, there is something to what you're saying, um, for sure that when offenses are focused on one guy and studies have found in the past that offenses focused on one guy do have trouble when they go up against better defenses that can take that one guy away. That's part of it. I would lean more toward when we look at the NFL's top quarterbacks this year, and I can pull this up by PFF, but I think Andy Dalton's one of the top seven or something by PFF grades. Yeah. I mean, we've got two as number one, Jalen Hurts, Patrick Mahomes, Geno Smith, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen.

Tom Brady is in the top 10. Think about how Tom Brady has played this year, and he's in the top 10 graded quarterbacks. Kirk Cousins, Aaron Rodgers, Justin Herbert, Jacoby Brissett, Davis Mills, Lamar Jackson. Obviously, this is for passing grade. So Jackson is much higher when you add the run. Jimmy G, Derek Carr, Jared Goff. Well, I mean, this is another part of it is that some really good quarterbacks have played very poorly this year.

I mean, Matthew Stafford, Derek Carr, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady. There's been a lot of bad football. Carson Wentz, Russell Wilson, all those guys, Matt Ryan, who have played well in the past have all been miserable this year. And I don't think that's just a system thing. I think it's a kind of all of those guys being on the older side and hitting their walls at once is a, is a major part of it. Uh, okay. On Twitter from now for a jare on yeah i think that's how you would say it and if it's not then um i'm sorry for mispronouncing it uh says for fans only the vikings have to pull ed ingram right right this is beyond ugly austin schlottman has got to have better hands and feet than ed why is this train wreck at guard still out there? I think it's what I was saying about the adversity and just how it would be really difficult for them,

even despite the bad film and the pressures that came his way and the number of times Kirk Cousins had to throw the ball away or had someone in his face. I think that you just can't do it right now. Right now you're 7-1, everything's working, and you rally around that guy, right? But you have to have what the backup plan is. And this was the same way in 2016. I remember writing in 2016 about TJ Clemmings saying,

look, you have to bench this guy after they were five and oh, but they were never going to bench him at five and oh, they went into the next game against Philly, had some trouble, got behind in the game. And all of a sudden Jake Long comes out and they had signed Jake Long as part of this because they knew that it wasn't going to hold up and they knew they needed a second option. I think that that's where we're at right now. They have to know

that this is not working. And if it starts to really hurt them and they lose a game because of it, and the other players start looking around saying, this is not working, then you have to try something else. But until you have that feeling where it's gone past go, so to speak, where we're like, okay, it's official. This has not worked. You could look at it and say, it's only been a half a season. I think that it's catastrophic at this point, and it would take a really incredible turnaround in the second half of the year, but they're in a position to wait and see by being seven and one. When you win, everything is easier. Everybody likes each other. You can

be more patient with everything. There's no panic. There's no desperation. If they lose a game because of it, then they'll probably have to make a change. But until they do, they're going to say he's getting better. He's improving. We believe in him and so forth. And then at some point, you know, then they might have to make a change or he could get better. Like Jeremiah Searles was saying that it looks like he's really lost his confidence and it is possible that sticking with him would help him find that confidence again at some point throughout the season and play like he did over the first few weeks where he showed some

signs of having a chance to be a pretty good player. But I think that they are just attacking him time and time and time again, because opponents have no trouble seeing the weaknesses and they're just going after him. And that's not going to change because they know Derrissaw and O'Neal, those guys are brick walls, the is in the middle. And so you're seeing stunts, twists, blitzes, everything up the middle. It's yeah, that that's not going to be easy for him to get better or to get more confident. And I think when we know, we'll know, right? Like they, everyone's thinking the same thing at this point, but there will be another moment where we go, all right, they've got to do something, uh, or, or there won't. And he'll improve. It's going to go one of those two

ways. Uh, all right. This comes from, uh, Jared from South Australia here. Just wondering if you can share stats on how many times Kirk Cousins is getting hit or knocked down this year compared to previous years. The offensive line is getting plenty of praise for keeping sack numbers down. The offensive line has definitely improved, but it feels like Kirk is getting the stuffing knocked out of him every game. Is the O-line actually getting better or is Kirk just throwing the ball away? Kirk is throwing the ball away for sure because he is number one in the NFL in throwaways. And I think that's a good stat for him

because he's not taking those sacks, but it's definitely a bad stat for the offensive line that that's been the case. I can look up his pressure numbers and see if it's any different from even last season, but I think after the last game, it's probably not. It's probably right about the same as it's always been. So this year he is being pressured on 35.3%, which is the ninth highest in the league. And last year he was pressured on 33.7. That's very close. He was 15th. So from ninth to 15th as far as being pressured.

And it's almost consistent throughout his career, how much he's pressured. And of course with the Vikings, they've had poor interior play for the entire time he's been here. Uh, and I think that the, you know, the numbers from that perspective, uh, they're not improved and I, and that was the hope for them. That was the hope for cousins. I'm sure for the entire offensive line that they could continue to develop Cleveland,

that Ingram could step in, that Bradbury would be a better fit with more shotgun stuff. And where it seems like they need to rework some things is five-man protections. Asking five guys to block blitzes and to block all these different attacks that they're using, I just think that's hard for them. There's a reason that Gary Kubiak used extra tight ends. Ben Ellefson is a good player for this. CJ Hamm is a good player for this. Guys that you don't remember were on the field when they run the bootleg and hit Jefferson down the field. You don't remember that great block in the backfield. Gary Kubiak was really excellent at creating open receivers with only three guys going out.

And there has to be some consideration to do that more often as opposed to putting him in the shotgun almost all the time, which they seem to be doing. And with the five-man protections, it looked like they were going back the other way to more eye form and more play action, stuff like that. But last week against Washington, they did a lot of empty or a lot of everybody goes out, even if there's a running back in the backfield. And that just allowed Washington to do whatever they want. And it should be mentioned too, that if you can't run and you get in third and seven, those are the types of plays you're dialing up. You're not usually on third and seven dialing up a play where only three receivers go out because there's so many defenders and they can play back, they can play at the sticks and so forth. So these things have

kind of a cumulative effect, but he is getting the stuffing beat out of him in the same way that he has before with the interior pressure. And if that doesn't change, then those results probably won't change either. This from Tim R. Does it feel like the Vikings have created and now have a curse to play through called the curse of Rick Spielman because they now have to rebuild through all of these horrible contracts? I feel bad for Kweisi and KOC. I just hope they get a fair shake out of this because I truly don't believe that this will be their design until the Vikings surpass all of these horrible contracts. Yeah, when you look forward in the future, you see that they're going to have a lot to work around,

and they did not help themselves this last offseason. And the curse of Rick Spielman might be when you get two years from now, and you're looking back going, okay, we had to really do a lot there and take on a lot of dead cap and it set us back and made it more difficult. Um, but there's no curse of Rick Spielman. I mean, he drafted Justin Jefferson and Christian Dersaul and, and those guys are fantastic players. Um, their real curse is just that they've always felt like they couldn't lose people, that these certain guys were irreplaceable. We couldn't possibly have someone other than player X. And that was a Rick Spielman thing. That was what they did this off season,

which kind of makes you connect that to an ownership thing. Like we can't live without Delvin Cook. Delvin Cook is a great player and no one would ever say he's not, but you miss the playoffs two years in a row after signing him to the contract, the two most manageable years of his contract. And now he's very expensive and he's just pretty good and then still good, but just pretty good. And so you miss the timing on that. And there's a lot of examples, even like Carolina last night, Devante Freeman is running.

Is it Devante Freeman? What is his name? The Carolina running. Is that right? I don't know. It's Carolina. Did anybody watch that thing? Miserable.

But you know, he's a random running back for carolina picks up from where christian mcafree left off and is good it's like well you know that's kind of how this running back thing goes and you don't need yeah yeah oh dante foreman devante freeman was the guy from atlanta sorry about that um but foreman there's a guy who's just bounced around and all of a sudden he's good he's in there he's doing well enough they're blocking. Okay. And you've got yourself a running game. I think you're always a better football team with Delvin cook, but if you're talking about being as shrewd as possible, you are not signing him to that contract. If you're being as shrewd as possible, are you signing Kendrick's to the deal that he had feeling to the deal he had? And now that it's come together and they're seven and one, all of those things look fine. But as we go to the future, they will just continue to get harder

to deal with. And you don't have to look far to figure that out because you're still paying Anthony Barr to play for Dallas. And you're still playing Kyle Rudolph to sit on the bench in Tampa Bay. And that's what happens down the road. But they put together a good enough team with a lot of draft picks from Rick Spielman and a lot of players that they developed to be seven and one right now. And Kirk Cousins, the guy that he signed and put all the money into, and they're seven and one right now. I guess I would say that there's a lot of people who are always thinking from a front office perspective. They're always thinking for the future. They're always thinking about the next off season, the next draft, the next, you know, how can we be better next year? And you're, you've been in that mode for so long for the last few

years. I get it. You really have to recalibrate to, yeah, this, this year is it. This is the one we're, we're watching going to live and die each week because in the future, excuse me, it will get harder. It will get harder because of that. I don't know if I would call it a curse, but it will get harder. And Kweisi Adafo-Mensah was left with some pretty difficult contracts to manage. And when you can't move on from those players, then there really wasn't much they could do except for kick the Kirk Cousins stuff down the road, kick the Thielen stuff down the road. Same with Harrison Smith. There wasn't much of an option once you decided, no, this is the route we're going to take. Sticking with that same sort of feeling here from Scott, how do you feel like Mike Zimmer and Rick

Spielman are feeling right now? The 2021 season featured many one score games that went the wrong way. And from the purple perspective, how crazy is it that in 2022, the Vikings have won every one score game. The odds seem crazy low. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and watching in disbelief. It's fun. I'm wondering how long it will last. Certainly those guys are watching this season saying, why couldn't that have been us last year? And some of those one score games were earned and some of them were complete luck. I mean, Cooper Rush beat the Vikings on a ball that bounced right off of Bashad Breeland into the receiver's hands, right?

And they lost on a field goal at the last second. They lost on a fumble that wasn't overturned that should have been. I mean, this really tells you why people look at it that way and why the statistics bear it out that this year, Amir Smith-Marset decides not to step out of bounds or Arizona's guy fumbles the punt. And that's why the pendulum of luck swings back and forth wildly because you never really know, is it our year or is it not our year? I think there is something to the fact that you have a coach who has really emphasized them being calm in those moments and is not a panicky guy, is not somebody who's all over all of his players to the point where they're afraid to make a mistake.

But the Vikings last year were such a veteran team that I never really bought that. I think it is just the cosmic forces sometimes work in your way and sometimes don't. But when they have to get to 7-1, you're given an opportunity here to do something special with the luck that you've been given, right? So think of it as if you found $10,000 and it wasn't belonging to the mob and you got to keep it, you could just sort of spend it or you could use it for something better, right? You can invest it. You can use this seven in one start to invest and create something better, to improve on those things that have caused you to be in one score games and not rely on them. I think that maybe that metaphor isn't perfect, but it's the idea that you've got to be first in your division through a lot of things going your way and now make something of it.

And that's what they have the opportunity to do here. But I think, yeah, the previous regime, all the players said it last year. They said, look, I mean, we're close, but it's just not happening in some of these close games. And here we are. They were right. But you never know when that can end. So you have to be better. You have to beat teams by two scores. You can't hope that they just drop a punt at the end of a game every time. And they know that when you talk to them, they know that Kevin O'Connell has said our best football has to be yet to come. They have to get stronger as the season goes along.

And we've seen that. I think they are overall a stronger team than when they started getting the systems down better and so forth. And they're still very healthy. It's just in order to make something of this, you can't hope for the whole rest of the getting the systems down better and so forth, and they're still very healthy. It's just in order to make something of this, you can't hope for the whole rest of the season that there's no game losing missed field goal or no random fumble at the end or anything like that. Or the other team throws a Hail Mary and you lose or something like you can't, you just

can't hope that that happens. But I'm sure that, I mean, if Mike Zimmer is coaching this team this year, they've got a winning record. I don't know if it's seven and one, but they've got a winning record for sure. If all the same things that went wrong last year went right, the health and everything else, they might not be bonding the way they're bonding. It still might feel very tense because it even felt tense in 2017 for most of the season, but they'd still be winning a lot of football games against the schedule they've had and with the luck that they've had. And I'm sure that him and Rick Spielman are looking at this

going, wow, we just missed out by one year for when everything goes right. This from Kyle. Why hasn't Jalen Rager been able to find a role, even a modest one, in the Vikings offense? Because he's not a very good player. Sorry to boil it down to that simple. Jalen Rager was one of the worst players in the entire NFL, if not the worst, when going against man coverage. That was a PFF stat when he was with Philadelphia. He just can't beat man coverage. That was a PFF stat when he was with Philadelphia. He just can't beat man coverage. His role would have to be entirely the guy runs a jet sweep,

and that's your role. That's kind of who he is. He can make some plays with the ball in his hands, but he's not a technical receiver. He's a receiver that would have to run little slants or find quick screens or things like that to get open. I mean, there's a reason why a team drafted him in the first round and was willing to just easily part ways with him after a couple of years. He's a punt returner. He's a, in case of emergency and a punt returner and the occasional, let's throw him in there to run a jet sweep. That's

who he is in this offense uh i i don't see any real circumstance where he could draw a bigger role because of the receivers they have the receivers they have are just much better i mean osborne has not played all that well this year but even he has a much better track record than what jaylen regger had and regger was one of the worst receivers in the league at going down the field. So when they target him over 20 yards, I think he caught like four of 25 passes over the last two years when they targeted him deep. Yeah, it's just, it's a punt returner who is in case of emergency depth,

and that's kind of who they are. All right, I've still got more fan questions to get to. Some of them will have to wait until next week. I appreciate everybody sending them. Really, really enjoy answering your questions. And Bills and Vikings, everyone. Enjoy the game.