Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Kirk Cousins benched in Atlanta -- how does it impact the playoff race?

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about Kirk Cousins being benched and then answers questions from Vikings fans about the playoff race Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and I am doing a midday stream today for a reason, because, well, the Minnesota Vikings are working their practice schedule to be later in the evening because of West Coast time. So you got to get the West Coast times. You got to get that, the West Coast time to play better football out there, practice in the afternoon. I guess that's the deep science behind it. It's going to actually be pretty weird going to the stadium for the game to start at one o'clock Pacific time when I am in Seattle this week for Vikings and Seattle Seahawks.

So we're leading up to that. But I always do a Wednesday chat. Got something going on later on this evening, so figured I'd fire it up in the middle of the day. A lot of times it's football talk after dark, but here we are midday, so hopefully you have a chance to jump in, ask questions. This is our typical Wednesday conversation where it's all up to you. Ask questions, jump in, comments, thoughts, takes, opinions, playoff race, lots going on.

But I know where we got to start the show, which is with Kirk Cousins being benched by the Atlanta Falcons. And my first thought about this was the same as yours, of course, which is we already knew that the Minnesota Vikings had dodged a bullet by not bringing back her cousins. And that was very much confirmed when we saw him play at US Bank Stadium. And it just did not look like the same quarterback that we saw even last year at the beginning of the season, where Cousins could still put some juice behind the football. He could still roll out and move. And if he had to scramble for a first down, he could do it.

But in Atlanta, it looked very different. There was no heat on the fastball. The decision seemed to get worse as the season went along. He had floating footballs. And I think it would be just the theory, but when you're out there playing without the ability to really protect yourself, you probably make a lot worse decisions than you would before when you feel like you're a hundred percent confident in your body. And I felt that there were times where Cousins made throws against the Vikings that it looked like I just need to get rid of this football and I don't care where it goes for Cousins.

And that was also the case with some of the throws that he made against the Raiders. They had lost all trust in Cousins. They were running on every single first down. There was a stat about rushing attempts over expected. So are you expected to run or pass in this situation? And Atlanta was by far the most run heavy team didn't look much different from when they had Desmond Ritter at quarterback or Taylor Heineke at quarterback. And they were just having to limit themselves so much. And the play-action game is very much fundamental to what Zach Robinson and that Sean McVay-inspired offense does.

You see it here with the Vikings, the way they use play-action. And if you have a guy who can't run the play-action because he just can't move enough to bootleg out, or if someone comes upfield, we've seen this from Sam Darnold where a defensive end comes up from Sam Darnold where a defensive end comes up field and Darnold just rolls around him or rolls back and throws the ball away but if you can't do that then you are in a lot of trouble and I wonder if Kirk Cousins is a little relieved because it just felt like over the last month that the wheels came off there

and he was not physically capable of playing at any sort of level, much less a high level, but it looked more like the type of performance you would expect from your replacement level backup quarterback. So it makes complete sense for the Atlanta Falcons to bench him, go to Michael Penix. And with the last couple of games of their schedule, they have winnable games. If with the last couple of games of their schedule, they have winnable games if they could throw the ball reasonably. I mean, you saw that team here. They have talent.

They have playmakers. They have a running game. And they have more on defense than they were getting credit for. They did a good job at times defensively against the Vikings and made some plays and got some pressures. And they tried to cause some turnovers. Darnold ended up ripping them up, but they do have some talent on defense enough to get them to the playoffs if they can end up with a better record than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who have emerged and taken the lead in that division. But this was just the time for them to do that.

But you can't help but go back to the decision the Vikings had, which I think was made on day one from Kweisi Adafo-Mensah when he was hired, that the discussion with the Wilfs to bring in Kweisi Adafo-Mensah as the general manager would have absolutely been surrounding the quarterback position and how he believed the Vikings could do the best to put themselves in a position to truly compete at the quarterback position. And then Cousins tearing his Achilles made that decision a lot easier. And we'll never know what the discussions were like about bringing him back. And maybe Kevin O'Connell wanted him back on a bridge deal

that was a one or two year contract extension to make him the bridge quarterback to still draft one. It's possible that there was some sort of path that would have included that for the Vikings, but they clearly decided early on that they were not going to have Kirk cousins on an expensive contract because that's what the last leadership did in Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer. And that's how they got fired was because the quarterback was not good enough to justify the amount of money and then mistakes that they made with the roster. You were just sunk with Spielman and Zimmer and with Kevin O'Connell, they got the 13 win season, but they were four and four when cousins got hurt. And once he got hurt, that's where it made it

easier to make this decision, not to go all in on him for the future because they had no idea what he was going to look like. And I remember Kirk saying to us, like, Hey, uh, my Achilles is going to heal. I'm a pocket quarterback anyway. Well, that's true. But Kirk Cousins, even as a pocket quarterback, there's a lot that goes into that. We see Sam Darnold throwing from the pocket, but he's got to move out of the way. He's got to slide. He's got to climb the pocket. He's got to roll out. And these were things that Kirk Cousins was just not able to do with his Achilles injury as the season went on. And probably a major part of that was that he couldn't work out in the off season.

And you just run out of gas because these guys spend so much time in the off season preparing their bodies for a full year and not being able to do that. It did look like Cousins was just exhausted out there and couldn't put much juice behind the football anymore. And he ends up on the bench for Michael Penix. Had the Vikings gone back to the Kirk Cousins route and not drafted a quarterback, what would we be talking about right now? I mean, it would just, it would be hopeless at this moment, especially now the Falcons did the right thing in drafting Michael Pennix. Some of us saw that from the beginning.

Some others did not see that from the beginning, I guess, but either way, they made the right call in drafting a quarterback. Maybe the Vikings would have done that anyway, had they brought back cousins and we would just be talking about going to JJ McCarthy and how they were going to have to bench him to go to JJ McCarthy. The all roads were leading to, it would have been a benching and they, the Vikings would probably be in the same position. They'd probably be a 500 team with mediocre to poor quarterback play, as opposed to the great quarterback play that they have received from Sam Darnall. But they would have won some games against some bad teams

and been in the race, but not really been any kind of contender. And we would have said over and over again, oh man, here they go. They made the wrong choice. And now they're screwed with the cap going forward, which Atlanta is in trouble with the salary cap going forward. They'll eventually get out from under that, but not till a couple of years into Michael Penix. So the Vikings are looking around saying, whew, we really, really dodged a bullet there with the Falcons deciding to make that decision and invest in Kirk Cousins. But I think it was also driven

from not randomness, from the plan of Kweisi Adafo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell that they had planned to move on from a bunch of older players. They had planned to draft a quarterback. Kweisi Adafo-Mensa said at some point that they had identified the 2024 draft as one that they wanted to be a part of for a quarterback several years ago. And if you remember, even going into a 2024 draft, a lot of the analysts were saying there could be five, there could be six quarterbacks. And the Vikings knew that that was going to be the year to pick one. It's certainly not this year. Good thing Atlanta did it everybody, right? Because this year, what Shadur Sanders, is there even another one? Cam Ward, I guess you would be looking at

two lesser prospects. I like Sanders, but lesser prospects than someone like Jaden Daniels or someone like Drake May or Caleb Williams, or probably even JJ McCarthy, you know, with his high end potential, Michael Pennix was in the national championship. It was a really, really good draft for the Vikings to do it. They got their salary cap, right. They even restructured cousins deal, which at the beginning of that, I was like, I don't know if this is the right way to go about it, but they did it in a way that they're out from under him after this year. and they'll go into the future either with Sam Darnold or with J.J. McCarthy with a young quarterback in place and an opportunity

from a physical perspective to make things interesting on a year-to-year basis because that was always the thing that held back Cousins and it was the biggest concern for me about the idea of bringing cousins back aside from six years of not winning in the playoffs or getting to the playoffs. But the biggest concern was always the physical element. There are so many quarterbacks over the years who have broken down late into their thirties that it was a enormous risk. I remember people talking about, well, you know, how are you going to replace a quarterback like Kirk? I mean, how do you know that the next guy is going to work out? And my response was, how do you know Kirk's going to work out?

How do you know that he's going to be the same guy as he goes into his late 30s? Clearly, he was not, and maybe he's a bit relieved to sit down because it did not look like a happy experience. Now, the other part of this is that Michael Penix, he's not, he's a rookie, but he's not the type of rookie who's 21 years old and doesn't know football and is just going to try to go figure it out. He's a, he's an adult. Michael Penix maybe watched the Steve Young in his prime or something

like he's been around in college football. He had a lot of development and he's had a lot of development throughout this year. And in a way it's ideal for Atlanta to get their future quarterback on the field as a rookie after nearly a full season of developing behind Kirk Cousins. And he's a total wild card. There's no way to know what Michael Penix can do for the Falcons, but they have three winnable games at the end of this season here. And with Tampa Bay, if they even end up tied for record, the Falcons could end up with that number five seed. That's possible. So as much as we're talking about the connections here with the front office and the Vikings moving on and letting him sign with Atlanta

and not matching that deal and all those sorts of things, the Vikings could end up playing Atlanta still in the playoffs and going up against Michael Penix. I mean, that would be one of the ultimate tangled webs we weave, right? I mean, the Vikings, it's possible that they would have drafted Michael Penix and not JJ McCarthy. I don't know that. I'm not reporting that. Don't like aggregate that. I'm saying it's possible because on draft night, maybe it was Jeremy Fowler or Dan Graziano, whoever was out at the Vikings facility on draft night reported that the Vikings were comfortable with Pennix

or JJ McCarthy. Who they would have taken, I don't know. They're very happy with JJ McCarthy, but it's hard to say. If you go back to draft night, would they have drafted the more developed guy to step into a more win now situation rather than a full rebuild the competitive rebuild situation so you go from maybe looking at that guy as your franchise quarterback michael pennix to then kirk cousin signs with atlanta pennix ends up being drafted there and then you play him in the playoffs? That could be crazy.

That would be crazy. But it is on the table. The Vikings, of course, still have an opportunity here to win the final three games, which could result from the playoff scenarios. And Atlanta is actually a part of this. Again, crazy, right? This is why we watch football, because of stuff like this. The Vikings, if they win the final three games, whether they take the one seed if the Eagles did the same thing

or some other combination of that, if they finish with the top record tied with the Eagles, as of right now, that would mean that the Vikings would get the number one seed. But only if Atlanta has a good enough record to give the Vikings would get the number one seed, but only if Atlanta has a good enough record to give the Vikings. This is my understanding. So if I'm getting this wrong, correct me. But my understanding is Atlanta has to have a strong enough record for the strength of schedule difference to matter for the Vikings to get that deal breaker and end up with the number one seed. So just craziness going into the final of couple of weeks. But once again, a reminder that having leadership with a plan that executes the

plan and then gets lucky on Sam Darnold. I mean, Kevin O'Connell bought into Darnold, but I don't think even he would have guessed that Darnold would have been this good at this point in the season, but it was a good bet to make. If you were making a bet between a 36 year old with a torn Achilles, even though he's had a good career versus a 26 year old at the time, Sam Darnold, who had been treated very poorly early in his career and still had massive upside. And you were going to give the 26 year old Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, TJ Hawkinson, a pretty good pass blocking line, Kevin O'Connell's offense versus a Falcons franchise. That's been bumbling for a couple of years. Maybe we should have all been saying that Sam Darnold was a better bet to succeed

than Kirk Cousins and was a less risky bet. 10 million, 10 million versus a hundred million. This is a good front office that knows what it's doing versus a team that was desperate and flailing in the Atlanta Falcons and the Vikings let them be desperate and let them flail. And now the Vikings are 12 and two looking to compete for a Superbowl and the Vikings let them be desperate and let them flail. And now the Vikings are 12 and two looking to compete for a Superbowl. And the Atlanta Falcons are hoping and dreaming that a rookie quarterback can come in and save their bacon.

And then, wow, it would be something if they ended up matching up in the playoffs. So we will see, but just a reminder. I mean, we broke it down very much when the Vikings played the Falcons, but a reminder that a team having a clear path to where they want to go and how they're going to get there is one of the most important things in this sport. And that's what the Vikings had. And that's how they got to this point, as opposed to where Atlanta is, which we all remember that feeling. We all remember the feeling of 500 in the hunt graphics talking about Kirk cousins future and all that. And yikes. So

he is now a hundred million dollar backup for the Falcons. Uh, all right, let's, uh, take your questions, your comments, your thoughts. It doesn't have to be on kirk anything anything at all uh vikings nfl related throw it out there and i'd be happy to uh answer whatever you got uh fanny fanny uh says kirk to the jets next year why not of course why not that's a very jetsy and thing to do i will say about the Jets that some of the candidates that they have been interviewing for general manager are people who have had success before in the league, which they probably needed to do. Thomas Dimitrov, John Robinson, those guys, is it John, Jeff, John, the former GM of the Titans. They're looking at people who have had success before in the NFL. And I'm always perplexed a little bit at why teams,

they'll hire a retread coach, and that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. But they won't hire retread GMs. I mean, the Vikings didn't, and they ended up here at 12-2, but it's just kind of of odd thing in the league. I don't know what, what Kirk Cousins future holds. I think if you're Kirk, it's very clear how much this guy loves football, right? He has fought so hard to be at this point. And I'm sure fought very hard to recover, to get to the point where he could have some

good games and throw for 500 yards in a game and win games and look like they were going to win the division at one point. Does he want to go into an off season and go through everything again to try to get to the point where he could either, I mean, at this point, Atlanta has to move on. So if they're moving on from him and it ends up like a Russell Wilson situation that they could, that he could, I mean, go somewhere else and compete for a starting job. I just don't know. I just don't know if you want to put yourself through that again. If you're Kirk Cousins, he's had a good career. He has won a lot of games. He's had a lot of great moments. He made a lot of money it might just be time to call it a day but people like him

who are very driven they have a tough time walking away I mean there was an argument we wondered the day he got injured at Green Bay this Achilles injury if you're in your 30s, is just a nightmare for guys. There's so few players who have come back. And even Aaron Rodgers, he's got a little juice, but it's not the same. He makes some Aaron Rodgers he throws, but it's not the same. And he's a much greater physical talent than Kirk Cousins. But we thought that he might retire. And he talked about thinking about it himself retiring right after the

injury happened because it's so hard to come back so will he go into the offseason try to put in the work try to you know make the case to himself hey I was just coming off that injury now I get a full offseason and I can go play for the Raiders or whoever desperate football team there's going to be or compete for a spot somewhere. I don't know what Kirk Cousins future holds now, but it definitely, it definitely does not include him playing for the Falcons again. I just don't see how you could do that unless Penix got hurt. He came in, got into the playoffs, and then I don't know, right? But I just don't think that that could happen again. Skull Guy says, do you think there's any possibility that we sign Kirk on a Russell Wilson contract next season? He has offset language.

That would be a hilarious timeline. Oh, zero chance. No, the Vikings would not be bringing back Kirk Cousins. No, that's not going to happen. In fact, at this point, Daniel Jones is a better option for a backup quarterback and Cousins is not going to be doing that anyway. I mean, he's not going to go to a place where he's not competing for a starting spot. He would want somewhere where he is absolutely competing for a starting spot. So even if Darnold does go elsewhere and McCarthy is the starter,

it's got to be a backup who is going to accept the role as a backup, which might be Daniel Jones. If they resign him, if he likes KOC likes Minnesota, all that, but even Daniel Jones might go somewhere else. And we might have JJ McCarthy and Nick Mullins again. I don't know. Uh, but I just don't see any chance that cousins would, uh, come back here.

Uh, Sarah says, do you think that Kirk lost his confidence because he doesn't have KOC to quiet his mind? Uh, no, I think that what happened with cousins is really the most simple explanation is the right one. When you tear your Achilles, it's very hard to recover from. I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but I have covered enough football to know that even partial tears of an Achilles take a really long time to come back from. And at that age, it's not like your Cam Akers. And Cam Akers, you still see, doesn't have the same jukiness that he used to. He's good at north and south, and he's been a very effective player for them. But there's not a sharpness from left to right.

And I think that's probably because of his injuries. Brian O'Neill's was only a partial tear, and he didn't play at the same level for last year. And he was young and in his prime and all that, not 36 like Kirk cousins. I truly believe it's just physical, but then if you are not at your physical best out there and think about Kirk cousins is already, I'm not insulting him. It's just a fact like look up his NFL combine stuff, the worst athlete at the position of all starting quarterbacks in the league already. That was before he tore his Achilles.

So when you're out there already having to try to protect yourself with not being a great athlete, and then that drops off, he is a below NFL caliber athlete. And the way that he was still surviving is by being smart and being able to still throw the football. But what we saw in recent weeks was panicky decisions. And I think that's when things start to break down and the pocket collapses. And there was a lot of Chuck and duck and just get rid of it. But the explanation for this, I think is very straightforward. It's just the Achilles did not get back to the point and his leg did not get back to the point where he was explosive at all in throwing the

football, where he could torque and throw the same way with velocity. And you have to be able to make quick movements. You see this all the time from Sam Darnold, where it's a little juke here. It's throwing off the back foot there. There's so many things you have to do as an NFL quarterback that are involving the feet and legs that this was the biggest risk for the Vikings. If they were going to bring him back, Atlanta rolled the dice, assuming that he would just be the same player, but injuries are a big deal. And that's what, that's's what got Kirk and I think their running game and their weapons allowed him to stay alive for a while but now we're talking about the league leader and interceptions and just somebody who who just can't really be out there and succeed

uh Viking Jerome is Daniel Jones moving up the quarterback depth chart uh not as of this moment you'll know when he does though uh and i believe the vikings can get a comp pick i know you guys love those uh comp picks if a pick if he were to uh play for a game or be active for a game then they would be eligible to get some sort of comp pick which may have been part of the reason that they wanted him here. And then if he leaves and signs somewhere else, they might be able to get something. It's not going to be a third round pick. It's not going to change your life, but it might be something. I'm a sixth rounder.

I think is what the Rams ended up getting for Baker Mayfield. Leaving them was a sixth rounder. There might be that. So at some point he will be active in these next couple of games. I always thought that the reason that they wanted to sign Jones, other than having him as a potentially a future backup for JJ McCarthy was the playoff scenario that Jones has won a playoff game before. I saw a stat today, the guy hasn't played in five weeks and he's still in the top five and

receivers dropping the ball. So I'm sure that that played into why Kevin O'Connell decided to bring him in, that he's just another guy with such bad circumstances. And if you're talking about a playoff game, who could give you a better chance if Sam Darnold went down in a playoff game? It probably is Daniel Jones. I'm not entirely convinced of that, that there's a huge gap between him and Nick Mullins because Mullins knows the offense so well. but Jones is the more physically talented quarterback.

And we know what Kevin O'Connell does with physically talented quarterbacks. So I think eventually when they get to the final week of the season, when they get to the playoffs, Jones likely will be elevated to be at the backup quarterback, but we'll see about that. Marley says, as much as I would like to LOL, I wish that the injury hadn't happened because that just sucks in general. Yeah, no, no question. But also because it's another excuse for the apologists. Well, yeah, I mean, there's look, I've always thought of this with, with anything, anyone who's a fan of anything is always going to be an apologist. If you said to someone, hey, Taylor Swift's album, their last album just wasn't that

great. They're going to have a lot of things to say to you because they're huge Taylor Swift fans. And the same thing goes for Kirk Cousins. And I know that I was critical of him throughout his time here and the decisions to keep him and things like that, and always got the backlash. But I always understood that because those people want their team to win. They want their quarterback to be good. They're trying to speak it into existence, but here on the show, we're very black and white with things.

And the black and white of it was that injury happening should have and probably did solidify for the Vikings you can't do this you can't make any sort of commitment to Kirk Cousins no matter how much you like him no matter how much you feel like it's the safe option it became not the safe option for him to have that injury. And they made the right call in moving on. And they also believed in themselves and the environment that they could create, the coach that they had, the situation with the wide receivers. They drafted Addison and traded for Hawkinson for a reason, because they know the top thing that's going to get you there is quarterback play. And they created something here around that position that gives it a really good chance

to win. Had Kirk been here, had they decided to go in on him, then we would be singing a very different tune right now. I do wonder though, there is one question that pops into my mind because the front office, the head coach, they all deserve a ton of credit. They were drafting a quarterback anyway, even if they had brought back cousins, they were not going to give the four year deal. But what bounced into my head was if Atlanta had not come in with that offer, what would

have happened? Would cousins have just come back on like a two year, $75 million deal with one year guaranteed. Then we would have been six and whatever. And talking about, okay, well, you know what? I don't know.

Maybe McCarthy doesn't get hurt. Hard to say, but we would have been talking about, ah, well, they're six and whatever, and they're going to McCarthy and next year, right? And we probably, it would have been actually a better situation for the Vikings

because, as opposed to Atlanta, because the Vikings timeline this year was supposed to be a fringe playoff year. That's what we all expected. And had they ended up nine and eight because they played Kirk for 13 weeks and it struggled and then went to McCarthy or something, then we would have more likely said, well, they're set up for next year. Then they're not in the worst position ever, but they're still going to have more dead cap

and all that sort of stuff. So maybe it wouldn't have been as catastrophic as it is with Atlanta because Atlanta has been trying to build for years to be in this position. And now they signed him to this massive deal that hurts their cap for the future. How are they going to improve that defense with dead cap hits from Kirk cousins everywhere? It's much more messy there than I think it would have been here because the Vikings were never giving him a four-year contract or a hundred mil guarantee. David says starting Pennix against the Giants seems like a good gamble. It's not like the Giants defense is the 85 bears. The Giants defense is not even the 2024 Bears. It's really that that team is not good at all.

And they did not feel like playing football last week against the Ravens. So that's a good point. I think Raheem Morris picked the right time to start Michael Penix and waited long enough to where it just had to be obvious because I'm sure that he and the general manager had to have a long discussion with the owner that the buddy, we're not making the playoffs. If our quarterback is keep throwing three interceptions a week and can't even pass the ball on first down, we can never run play action. Uh, and I'm also sure that they wouldn't do this if they didn't like what they've seen from Pennix, but putting them in, in a nearly preseason environment

against the New York Giants is a good idea. Dennis says, who's the starter for Seattle this week? So I have not seen injury reports. They will come out later today. And my guess is that Geno Smith will be limited in practice and there's a good chance that he will play. That's just a guess. Maybe a similar type of injury to Brian O'Neill, for example, just the knee banged up, but he will be able to play. It's something to keep an eye on. I

am currently thinking that Geno Smith is going to be the quarterback for Seattle. If it's Sam Howell, that's just a different universe of what you're talking about there. Gino has a tremendous, tremendous arm. He's got great receivers. He could push it into tight windows. He can evade pressure. I mean, he's a good quarterback that I would not say the same for Sam Howell, who just looked unprepared and does not throw the ball. And when he does, it goes to the other team and Brian Flores would eat his skull. I just think there's almost no chance that Gino doesn't try to fight it out, but I'll be curious about his mobility if he is the starting quarterback this week. And maybe they'll try to play some games with, oh, is Gino going to be ready? But the Vikings aren't going to prepare

for Sam Howell because he's just bad. Uh, Hunter says a pie chart of NFC champions. Ooh. Okay. Hunter understanding how a pie chart works, which is good. That's always a good start. Uh, Vikings, lions, Eagles, or someone else. So percentages out of a hundred that the Vikings, lions, Eagles, or someone else will be the NFC champions right now. I would go 40% with the Philadelphia Eagles. And I know that's not what anyone wants to hear. It really isn't, but the way that they're playing their team, the way they're built, their D-line, the quarterback's been there, the weapons they have, the offensive line, I would have to pick them against the Vikings

as of this moment. That can change over the next few weeks. That's just as of what we know right now. I would lean toward the Eagles with the highest percentage. Maybe 40 is a little healthy, but I think that these three teams are better than everybody else. I, you didn't mention the Packers, I think for a reason, because this is a Vikings podcast, but the Packers belong in this discussion.

Maybe there's someone else. So maybe 40% is too much. I'll go 30% Eagles, 20% Lions, 20% Vikings would put us at 70% and then 30% someone else. A very even distribution with the Eagles at the top, but the Vikings and Lions having equal chance. And someone else might deserve even more than that, but the Eagles are the best team in the NFC, in my opinion, with the Vikings right behind them and then the Lions. But if the Packers beat the Vikings on December 29th,

that's going to seem either extremely equal or even the Packers better than the Vikings, depending on how it goes. So that night will determine a lot of how we feel about these teams going into the playoffs. But I think it's a fairly equal distribution. So 30% Eagles, 20 and 20 with Vikings and Lions. I think the Lions could get a little healthier into the playoffs and they've just got such a great offense. You win one game and then you're right there on the doorstep. And they've got a good enough quarterback who's been to the Superbowl before Vikings I'd put in there. And then someone else deserves a very high percentage as well.

Good question. 86 Chrysler five T five. Okay. We'll just go 86 Chrysler. Seattle forecast is upper forties, eight miles an hour wind and rain. How concerned should we be about the offense not being able to move the ball in these conditions? That doesn't sound bad. I mean, for somebody, Sam Darnold's been living here now for a while.

I think Sam Darnold's probably totally fine with that. I mean, a little rain might be an issue, and there have been some times where he hasn't looked quite as sharp. I mean, I'm thinking of the London game. Are there other, no, he was really great against the bears and it was rainy that day and it was cold that day. No, that, that weather shouldn't have much of a impact at all on the situation. I mean, Sam Donald's got huge hands. He throws the football super hard. And if you look at his December statistics over his career, he's been a December quarterback. He has been better in December than any other month by far. So yeah, I don't think that that should have too much of an impact. I'll tell you what can have an impact. The Seattle

pass rush, the Vikings upfront at protecting Darnold last week against the bears. It's a good bears team, but not good enough. And Seattle is a little more violent, uh, infamous. If you were the 49ers, would you try to swap out Brock Purdy for Sam Darnold in the off season? That would be something, wouldn't it? That would be something. I don't know. I don't know. I understand that Darnold has more physical talent, but I think Brock Purdy is a good quarterback. I really don't think that this season has been Brock Purdy's fault yet. Kyle Shanahan has been searching for that physically gifted quarterback forever. And he does know the system. It's not, it's not the craziest thing I've ever heard. It is not the craziest thing for them to heard it is not the craziest thing uh for

them to be looking at sam darnold as a potential option because he's had the koc coaching school for this year but i also don't know if that opportunity is going to arrive for anyone to have sam darnold on their team but yeah they i mean mean him going to San Francisco is really the reason that he's here in Minnesota is that he was able to beat out Trey Lance in a competition and they liked him as their backup quarterback. And when he got in the game, he played very well. That little run was convincing to the Vikings that he could come here and do a lot of the same things. So if you're them, the price tag might matter. But if both guys were at 50 million bucks, that's so hard because Purdy took his team to a Superbowl already and showed he could play on the biggest stage. And he's one or two plays away.

He's in overtime against Patrick Mahomes in the Superbowl. Hard to move on from that guy. I think if you're anything, if you're the 49ers, this, if, if I'm running the 49ers, I might have to just think about the run is over. They went to the Super Bowl several times in a five-year period. You can't ask for much more than that NFC championship, but McCaffrey is old and banged up. Kittle's on the older side. Iuke's very expensive now. Samuel's very expensive now. And now Purdy's going to be expensive. And Bosa and Warner and all these guys, it might be time to hit the reset button for

them rather than trying to run it back with Brock Purdy for 50 or $60 million. Because I think he is a quarterback as, as many are that would need the supporting cast, need the system, need everything going right to get you to a Superbowl. It's not Josh Allen or Mahomes. That's just going to be this unstoppable force. Brock Purdy lives in that, that territory. I have a ton of respect for him as a quarterback. I think he's a great playmaker anticipation thrower. He's really good, but I don't know if he is a guy that you pay $55 million. Uh, Amir, uh, am I weird for not being worried about the Seattle offense, but petrified of the Vikings offensive line going against the, uh, the Seattle defensive line. Boye Mafe, a guy that we're all familiar with. Leonard Williams, Owusu.

Yeah, you're not a crazy person. Though, the Seattle offense, this is a tough matchup. I mean, this is the toughest matchup the Vikings have faced in quite some time. Probably since the Rams game. I would have to say since the Rams game, this is the toughest matchup. It's there. It's on short rest again. And they have that defensive line,

which has been, if there's a few different things that kind of get the Vikings, it's a team with a good pass rush, a veteran quarterback with weapons, and they have both of those things. Leonard Williams is the one that, yes, you should be terrified

because teams recently have been taking advantage of Blake Brandel, who has graded under 50 by PFF for three straight weeks, seems to be wearing down. I don't know that I like that matchup at all. And Brian O'Neill is a little banged up. I think he could still play banged up and be all right, but that's still not the same as the 100% Brian O'Neill. You are, you are not crazy at all for being worried about that one. This is one that all season long I've thought was a loss. You know, if you guys watch when Manny Hill is on picking the schedule each week, he's thought was a loss. I don't know if I love the matchup

for the reasons that you're stating. They can win. I'm not saying Seattle's a way better team or anything. The Vikings are the better team. It's that matchups and circumstances are leaning a bit in their direction. James says, Matt, who do you think is this team's MVP? It's safe to say the most important contributions to this team are, in fact, from Kweisi, KOC, and B-Flow. Well, I mean, is it safe to say the most important contributions to this team are in fact from Kwesi, KOC, and Bflow. Well, I mean, is it safe to say that? Well, yeah. I mean, the builders of the team have put together a group of veteran, high intelligence, high competitiveness.

I was just watching film, I know, football guy, but for an article upstairs of Blake Cashman, Jonathan Grenard and what they did against the Chicago bears, Blake Cash. I mean, identifying that from Brian Flores, making it happen. If you're Casey, it awful Mensa, that's how this thing's supposed to work. That's the biggest thing with these three leaders of this franchise, Flores O'Connell and Casey Ad-Mensa, is it's supposed to work like this in lockstep where the head coach needs something for his offense. Say it's a tight end who can catch anything underneath. Say it's a running back and a veteran who can make some plays like Aaron Jones did, convert a third and what, 14, 17,

whatever it was the other day. On defense, you need a linebacker who's super high intelligence, who can make any adjustment or change and who can track people down and who can blitz and all those things. They get Cashman. You need an edge rusher to replace Daniil Hunter.

They get Grenard. These are, even at the last minute, saying we are one piece away from being a really good defense. And that piece, his name is Stefan Gilmore. Let's jack up that price and get him here to Minnesota. Them working together to do that. That's yeah, that's the MVP proper leadership for any franchise is going to be more valuable than just about anything, except for an elite quarterback. The team's MVP is Sam Darnold. I mean, that's the most important player, the most valuable player,

the guy who has made the ridiculous throws, who has led them in final moments, that two game-winning drives in a couple of weeks span, one of the best games in team history. I mean, he's the most valuable player. It's always going to be the quarterback. But this might be the one team where you could also throw in the wide receiver, Justin Jefferson.

It's really spread out, though. I mean, I think it's Darnold and Jefferson are the most valuable things. If you were to say you only get one reason why the Vikings are 12-2, I would say Jefferson and Darnold. But on the defensive side, Jonathan Grenard, Blake Cashman, these guys have been super valuable to them. They would be my first two picks, but Van Ginkle has been good as well. The defensive linemen have been good at slowing down the run. This is what you get with 12 and two team. You look around and go, that's been good. That's been good. Sometimes on a weekly basis, I think it's funny with our press conferences with the Vikings,

where we're just asking, Hey, like how good's this guy been? Huh? That's like most of the questions we're just, Oh, this guy's been really good. What about that guy? Uh, I would also throw in there. KOC's decision to make the change at right guard is one of the most important decisions. Just watching back how well Reisner has played in pass protection has been super valuable as well. Great questions coming in. Let me remind you just real quick that the show here has some sponsors and one of them is US Cellular. There's only a few days left until Christmas. And so if you're looking for a last minute gift, I know gifting is hard, but you can give the gift of connection from U.S. Cellular.

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$90 a month. US Cellular built for us. All right. Back to the comment section here. Jason, good to see you, Jason. Schedule analysis. The Vikings have a serious scheduling advantage going into Week 18 against Detroit. As of now, the Green Bay game is at noon.

Hope it stays there. Detroit plays that Monday against San Francisco, 36-hour advantage. Now, my understanding is, and do not look at me as the expert on how TV scheduling works, but this is just my understanding, is that that game cannot be flexed to national TV. There's an explanation. I don't really have it, but there I'm sure is one, and you can Google it. But I think it could be moved to the three o'clock slot. And that would be a 33 hour advantage. That is true. And not to

mention, but when people play against the lions, we always talk about, well, that's a physical game. That's tough. You know, that San Francisco is not giving up that playing against San Francisco is still going to be a really difficult challenge for the Detroit lions. And I'm not entirely convinced they went out. Uh, I'm not convinced the Vikings went out either. I mean, they've just had a lot of close calls and some sloppy games. And at some point, you know, maybe in Seattle, I might pick the Seahawks. I might make a pick for the first time against the Vikings, and I don't know how long. I've been picking Vikings each week and having it go right.

Maybe I'll this week have to pick Seattle because of some of the disadvantages with scheduling and with travel and things like that. So who knows how it's going to play out? But I circled that game with San Francisco that if the Vikings do lose a game, the Lions could definitely lose that one too, to the 49ers. And they could go into that week 18 game, both having lost and then still needing a win for the NFC North. But that's a good point, Jason, that there is a little bit of an edge there that Detroit is going to be playing for their lives on Monday against the 49ers. Definitely could be an edge there.

Mustin Sir says people worry about the Seahawks too much. I might eat my words, but most of the losses we've had were in the Legion of Boom era. Well, let's see. Against the Seahawks in Seattle, They had a couple of bad ones, man. 2018, woof. That was the game 2018. And this is why continuing to extend Kirk Cousins was always kind of crazy to me. They needed a win in Seattle in 2018.

Kirk threw the ball backwards to Latavius Murray. The Vikings held Russell Wilson. And this is where I think Kirk really lost Mike Zimmer. They held Russell Wilson to the lowest quarterback rating he had ever had in a game, and the Vikings lost in Seattle. The 2020 game, yes, 2020, where Cam Dantzler doesn't cover somebody in the end zone,

Russell Wilson leads the game-winning drive. That was the one where Drew Samia started and it was crazy. And they had Alexander Madison run behind Drew Samia on fourth and one. It was the right decision to go for fourth down and win the game, but not the right decision of the person to run behind. And they end up giving up the game winning drive. Yeah. Cam Dantzler, I think, gave up a couple of plays on that drive to lose. Maybe that's what they're talking about when people aren't super thrilled about the team going to Seattle and they haven't. Did they play them in 2022?

I don't think so. So maybe that 2020 game is the last time that they actually went out to Seattle. So it was a long time ago. It was a different team and a different quarterback and everything else. So I think if you're concerned about Seattle, it's more of, they have that formula of things that tend to work against this Vikings team, which is a very difficult defensive line and good wide receivers, Jackson Smith, Najigba, Tyler Lockett, DJ Metcalf. They have dudes to throw to for a veteran quarterback. One thing though, is that Gino

will throw you the football and the Vikings are at the top of the league at taking the football away. And Gino has, I think six interceptions in the red zone. It's just kind of crazy. He's, he's been really wild with the football this year. So that, uh, is something to watch. Uh, if the Vikings can kind of even things out there, Jason says, JJ McCarthy would be the number one pick in the 2025 draft. He would be taken ahead of Sanders. Okay. Well, I, this is, I'm not a, I'm not a great draft analyst. That's not, that's not my thing. So I would have a tough time trying to compare those two quarterbacks, but I think you're right. I think so. McCarthy was not anywhere close to the first quarterback taken in this draft though. Uh, you had four quarterbacks taken ahead

of him, which may have all just been significantly better than Sanders. You might not be a Sanders fan. I think Shadur is a pretty good prospect. He had a great year this year, led them to a lot of wins this season that people didn't think they were going to get. So I like Sanders and I was probably more skeptical about McCarthy. So I'm not sure about that statement. I'd have to ask Mel Kiper or something, but if JJ McCarthy would definitely be a top two prospect in this draft, if he was not one, which circles back to the point that the Vikings had identified and circled on their calendar, 2024 is when we're drafting a quarterback. So even if they had brought back kirk cousins they would have drafted jj mccarthy anyway and kirk cousins might

have been unhappy the same way he was with pennix but i think they would have told them unlike atlanta and not only that but they also uh they also tampered as well that's also a funny part of it uh go get them what was your favorite interview so far this year? Do you mean like a one-on-one or cause I can give you the answer for my favorite kind of one-on-one interview that I've had in the locker room and maybe just other, otherwise, you know,

that were podiums or player, you know, Josh Metellus, Jonathan Grenard, Aaron Jones have all been tremendous guys that I would put at the top of the list. We are, we are going to give out our media good guy award in the media room. I think next week, I know who it is. I will not reveal who it is, but there was a lot of great candidates this year that are at the top of that list. Um,-outs to Andrew Van Ginkle, Harrison Smith, Harrison Phillips, Cam Bynum. There's so many guys on this team.

Justin Jefferson won it for us a couple years ago. He has been great this year at dealing with our questions about, Justin, there was one game where you didn't get the football enough. What do you think of that? But otherwise, I mean, Justin is one of the easiest players to deal with in the league. I think my favorite this year, as far as a press conference was Aaron Jones talking about how he puts new flowers in the locker of Kyrie Jackson.

Just a totally selfless type of act for Aaron Jones tells you why people feel the way they do about him. And my favorite one-on-one conversation, well, was with Kevin O'Connell. And if you want to see that article, go to purpleinsider.football. You can scroll down and find it from a few weeks ago before the Jacksonville game. Luckily I got him before the Jacksonville game and not after, but sitting down with Kevin O'Connell and having him break down his post-game speeches was incredible insight and asking players about him, incredible insight into why Kevin O'Connell is a successful head coach. And that enthusiasm, that belief, all that sort of thing, the way he communicates with players, the way he highlights great performances and his message to the team is what you see on those viral

clips is who he is behind the scenes all the time. And that's what I learned from doing that story. Also, I did a one-on-one with Bo Richter, great background for Bo Richter, very cool story. He got on the field on defense last week and has been a key special teamer. So it's been a great team to cover hands down the easiest a great team to cover hands down the easiest and best team to cover probably has something to do with the fact that they're 12 and 2 i would guess uh digital planes media matthew what are the odds that kirk ends up on the browns next year dump watson and run the 2019 offense led by stefanski that's a good good one yeah decent i think decent odds because

of the way that the salary cap hit would work out. The Cleveland Browns need a quarterback that is making almost nothing. There was a report that they could continue, continue to go with Watson in a competition next year in camp. And if I'm cousins, I kind of want nothing to do with all that, but he might not have a choice. And the Stefanski may hesitate on cousins. They might not have a better choice, but he may hesitate there because of the play action stuff. And he likes his quarterbacks to be bootlegging out and rolling and on the move. And that is not what Kirk cousins can do anymore. That was his strength. We Kirk cousins, as I mentioned, not a great athlete by NFL standards, but if he was in his prime 2019, if he was out there on a field anywhere, any sport with you, he would destroy

you. He would be way faster, way more skilled, way quicker. He could beat you up. Like the level of athleticism is just wild in the NFL. It's crazy. And I think what you saw is he sort of looked normal this year with his athleticism. And it made you realize how much it takes to actually play that position. We make fun of guys. He's not a good athlete. All right. Tom Brady ran like a 5-0.

Go try to run a five. Oh, I bet you tear your Achilles. I mean, these that it just sort of highlighted how elite you have to be to even get in the door of an athlete at the quarterback position, uh, to see him struggle the way he did. Cause he used to make these throws where he would roll to his left, flip his hips around and let it go. I mean, he, he had good athleticism as in he could probably play golf really well. He was a good basketball player, like things like that. It just wasn't the raw size and speed that we see from a lot of the good athletes at quarterback. Now, Matt says, I think the bucks roll and win that division, but the Falcons would be funny.

The Falcon schedule here is, if I'm remembering correctly, the Giants, Washington, and Carolina. If the Bucks lose a single game, we're talking about playing Michael Pennix possibly. Washington should beat them, but it wouldn't be shocking. Would not be shocking if, if they lost like Washington plays with fire all the time. They are a pretty mediocre team overall, like great direction and great coaching this year and great quarterback play from Jaden Daniels. But as a true contender in the NFC, they're a tier down they're in the Atlanta tier. So it would not be mind blowing if they just won three games, Tampa Bay loses one. And you're just looking at Atlanta in the playoffs, maybe playing against the Minnesota Vikings. That would be

crazy. Uh, Matt follows up, uh, the number of wins among uncommon opponents eagles are ahead now but the packers lions seahawks put the vikings ahead okay gotcha uh eagles would need upsets from the browns cowboys giants yeah so there is that that scenario and uh i don't know if that's going to play to fruition or not but uncommon opponents that's what i was looking for because i someone mentioned that the falcons and how good they were was involved in that, but I guess since they both played the Falcons that maybe that wouldn't make a difference. I don't know. Uh, or the fact that the Eagles lost to the Falcons and the Vikings beat them common opponent tiebreakers tiebreakers. Uh, Eric says as much complaining happens, Casey has been very good

knowing when it's time to say goodbye it's been a top two skill from him for sure of even with someone like daniel hunter hunter's playing great but he's eight million dollars more expensive or whatever than jonathan grenard and he's older than jonathan grenard and there's more risk there of injury uh than there was with i mean a neck anytime there's more risk there of injury than there was with, I mean, a neck. Anytime there's a neck injury, you're wondering how long that's going to last. Even though Grenard had some other things, it wasn't like as serious, but yes, that's exactly right. Knowing when to say goodbye, they moved on from someone like Zedaria Smith. He wanted more money. We're not going to do that. We're not going to put down more guarantees. Time to say goodbye. You're a good player, but you're not projectable to be going up.

And this is where the analytics thing is wild to me. When people act like Kwesi had some sort of wacky, spooky ideas, it really just means that you're making informed decisions based on history and numbers and what has happened in the past with all these guys. So with older players, when you see a decline in Delvin Cook's performance over two seasons, what are the actual odds that he's going to swoop back up suddenly? Historically, the odds are almost zero that a running back starts to fall off in their late twenties and then magically figures it out. And they've made a lot of decisions based on that. Where is this thing trending? How many quarterbacks at age 36 are even good period

throughout history? I've made that point a hundred times. You have to be one of the best quarterbacks ever to still be playing at a high level at 36 years old. And that would be stuff that they just studied and made informed decisions on. And also your point about complaining. This has been, this has been the ultimate year for me of people will complain about anything, no matter what, if it's 73 degrees, they'll wish it was 72 when it comes to football. And we found that out through all these wins that the Vikings have had. And I'm sure what will happen if they don't win in the playoffs, if they lose a game,

that all those same folks will come back and say, see, I told you that that Titans win didn't really matter. You know, we'll get that. And there are some people that enjoy complaining more than football and you'll find that out. But at the same time, when it comes to Kweisi Daffelmensa, I remember this off season saying, I am reserving judgment. I like the direction. I like a lot of things that they've done, but I need to see it come together before I can really know. And I wrote when that whole thing about contract extensions came up, I wrote, I want to see it through first before we make decisions on is Quacey a good GM? Is Kevin O'Connell a good coach? Let's just get a big enough sample size

to where we know. And I thought that a point would come in 2025 where we would all be able to say with total consensus, you know what? These guys know what they're doing. Or you know what? These guys have no idea what they're doing. We would be able to say it came much faster. It came much faster to say, these guys know what they're doing. We would be able to say it came much faster. It came much faster to say, these guys know what they're doing. Kevin O'Connell knows how to coach a football team to the point where on December 18th, you're preparing for a massive game to try to go down the stretch and win the NFC. Okay. This gentleman knows what he's doing. This is the second time in three years they've been in this position.

And then with Kweisi Adafomensa, talked about the drafting stuff. It's relevant. It's frustrating that it gets brought up over and over and over again, and we have to rehash it, but it's real for some of the drafting. They've found other players who have filled the void really well. Ivan Pace, now Jalen Redman's playing great. But still, you got to draft successfully to win and you have to make good free agent decisions. And last year, Dean Lowry and Marcus Davenport, those were not good decisions.

Strangely, when he got more cap space, he made better decisions. Hmm. Interesting. But anyway, so the, the collaboration between the coaches and what they wanted and their systems and Kweisi Adafo Mensah and bringing it all together, none of us knew how it was going to work and it's worked. And now we know that this should be the leadership group for a long time to come for the Vikings and that they're capable of doing this. But we didn't know that for 100% sure before we got into the season. And the organization might not have either.

And that's why they wanted to see it in action. Let's idea. Why doesn't the NFL, when it comes to the divisional round of the playoffs, take away the division winner status and give the home games to the two teams with the best record. Do they do that? Do they do that already? Someone helped me out. If the Vikings played,

this is a good, this is a good question. I actually, I actually am not sure about this. So if the Vikings play, no, maybe you're right. Well, the number, the team with the number one record is in there. So there is that, but if the Vikings were to play a team in the divisional round with a worse record, would they get home field advantage? Even if they were a division winner? I guess not. Maybe you're right now. Maybe you're right. What I don't understand. And it does, it doesn't matter, but it's relevant now to the Vikings. What I don't understand is why the Minnesota Vikings with, let's say they get 13 wins. Let's say that's all they end up with is 13.

How they could ever play on the road against a team with not 13 wins. I, it just doesn't, why don't you just take all the records and put them in order and have the best one play the worst one and then go forward with that. Make it make sense. They want to emphasize winning the division. Fair enough, I suppose. But it's just not fair at all. And everyone wants to win their division anyway. It's not like a team would be at the end of the season going, well, you know, who cares about the North? No, they want to win divisions.

Is it so they could put up more banners? I've never made sense of this. And the Vikings could very possibly get punished by it. But it's not going to change today. So the Vikings will have to deal with whatever type of record that they're going to end up with. Roll down the comment list here. Tons of tons of comments trying to keep up. But as you guys know, once I get on one subject, sometimes I,

I can't rapid fire. I'm not capable of it. Phil says Kirk wanted the money and control. Give it to the front office for standing their ground. Spielman would have caved and drafted another third round quarterback. Well, with Rick Spielman, and maybe all of us are like this. You get to the 2019 season. They're good. They win a playoff game. Kirk is great in the playoff game. And if you're Spielman, you're thinking we just rebuild around this quarterback who we know can get us

to the playoffs. And you're the guy who made that decision so you're not going to look at yourself i think human nature wise and say self this ain't gonna be it man because you made that decision based on thinking you could get the team back into position with zimmer coaching a defense you're figuring you got a couple of draft picks. Here you go. Some cap space from some guys leaving. So give it another shot. Rebuild around Cousins. That was the logic.

The logic was bad, but that had to be the logic. And if any one of us had been in those shoes and made the decision to bring in Cousins, I'm not sure any of us after a playoff win would have said, see ya. But we didn't make that decision. So it's much easier to say, dude, but you have to play the position that's in front of you. You can't play the position chasing what you thought was going to happen in 2018, which I felt that they did. I felt that they did for years. They chased what happened in 2017 and what they thought was supposed to happen in 2018.

And they kept thinking, if we just build a good enough team, he'll be different. And he wasn't. And Atlanta thought, if we just do something that the Vikings did only a little better, it'll be different. And it wasn't. It just not. It's never going to be different with that player. The only way it was going to ever be different was worse, but I always understood it from Spielman's perspective. I also think he missed that. The 2020 quarterback draft was really good and they've all been really good. If they ended up with Jalen hurts, if they ended up with, and they could have, they could

have, they could have hedged and they didn't. There's another point. You mentioned the third round quarterback, Atlanta did what the Vikings didn't. This is where they deserve a ton of credit. The Vikings had opportunities to draft quarterbacks along the way and hedge against the idea that it might not work out with cousins, even could have picked Lamar Jackson. And I know, I know it's revisionist, but even on the day that it happened, there's a tweet that I still have about, you know, maybe they should have done that, but they could have picked somebody to develop behind cousins and they decided not to. And then it was the entire ship was his and on him. And what the Falcons did was say, we'll take all the

public arrows for drafting Pennix. But you know what? When Cousins has to be benched in week 15, we'll have Michael Pennix and the draft analysts can eat it. And that's exactly what has happened. All those C's and C minuses and D's that everybody gave the Atlanta Falcons for drafting Pennix. Well, they're A's now because they have a young quarterback there to build around and their experiment with Cousins didn't work at all.

So DJ says, the fact that we've never seen Sam Darn on the playoffs is cause for serious excitement. Best case scenario, he hits an Eli Manning-Joe Flacco hot streak, and worst case is he's playoff Kirk. Yeah, well, we didn't see a lot of playoff Kirk because they didn't make the playoffs very often but a playoff yeah he had the he had a really good game in New Orleans and for some reason or another he just did not get bothered by that Superdome maybe he saw things well there. Sometimes you like a different building. I have

no idea, but he played really well against the New Orleans Saints. Maybe he understood their defense and what Dennis Allen was trying to do. He played great in that playoff game, but the next playoff game, what really was frustrating there is they got down and it was only maybe two scores and you would have thought it was 12 scores. Just there was no chance of him moving the football against that team. And that's where the athleticism came in, the arm talent. You just couldn't make something happen. And I am curious to see Darnold in the playoffs. But I also know this about Eli Manning is that the only time the guy ever won

playoff games was in two seasons, but he won the Super Bowl both times. And it tells you about how random the playoffs can be one game. You're going to wherever, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And I would say to you, you really shouldn't judge the Sam Darnold decision based on how he does in the playoffs, that would also be me not living in reality. These final three games, you really get a, at least a four game sample, all good teams against Sam Darnold. Seattle's good. Green Bay's good. The lions are good.

Whoever they play in the playoffs is good. Four games to get a bigger sample of huge games with implications against great teams. Was it just a heater in the middle of the season that he went on? Although I'm not thinking that because what is it now? It is, they've played 14. It's 12 or 11 of his 14 games have been with a hundred quarterback rating or better. There has been a level of consistency, but these games will expand that sample size of what we know about Sam Darnold. And I think in the building opinion, not reporting or suspicion, not reporting that inside that building, they probably haven't decided what to do. They are like you. They're going to see how it plays out. They're going to try to chase a Super Bowl. And then at the end of this, they're going to look

at the whole picture and not try to guess as they go along. I'm sure it comes up in the hallways and I'm sure it's a thought on a daily basis, big time for Kweisi Adafomensa, but they have to realize that you should just go week to week because you won't really have the big enough sample size until we get there. And there is a ways to go. And that ways includes the Seattle Seahawks this week, which is not any sort of easy opponent at all.

So Purple Jesus lefty says, uh, who's, uh, who's a good twins left-handed pitcher that be, um, Eddie Gordado. How about everyday Eddie Gordado? There's a, there's a lefty for you. Uh, let's see. Uh, I think, uh, it has more to do with him being used to being out of the shotgun and pistol and not play action anymore. As far as his struggles, having watched it, it's just about him not being able to move. That's what it really is. I just think it's, he can't, he cannot, it's not just his, whether he's like comfortable or not. can adapt to different stuff he can't drive the football anymore and when you are a quarterback who always had to use your whole body to get that

football to move taking away a part of you is not something that is going to help your game and that's where we've seen him struggle. I think the football just floating on him. And that comes from driving your foot into the ground. You look at Sam Darnold. Darnold has said that his biggest thing mechanically was keeping all of his cleats in the ground, not getting up on his toes. He said that before about his mechanical throwing,

keep his feet driven into the ground. And then you're torquing off your bottom half. It's hard to do when your achilles is ripped up and repaired uh brah blake griffin won the rookie of the year in his sophomore season after missing an entire rookie season is jj mccarthy eligible to be in the running for rookie of the year next year or no i don't think there's any chance of that. That must be an NBA thing. I can't remember any instances. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. People get hurt so much in football. If you did that with football, then a lot of people who get hurt in their rookie years would

have a chance to be a rookie of the year. That must be a basketball thing. I don't know that that's a football thing. I also don't know any time it's ever come up. So maybe I don't have a great answer for you. I've just never heard of that happening before in the NFL or even getting talked about. Hey, this guy who was drafted, who got injured last year, he could be rookie of the year. That also is kind of silly to me. That seems like an attempt to just make sure that the top draft picks who are stars get awarded for something because you're not a

rookie. Even if you were injured, you're still collecting a paycheck and you're on the team. So I don't know about that, but I've never, never had it. Never had it come up before that I can think of. Uh, sorry, this, this Nick Mullins would be the most interesting quarterback to lead, uh, an exciting playoff loss. So he's got my vote. Yeah. We're talking about who would come in in the playoffs. There is no doubt about that, that, uh, when it comes to Nick Mullins, it would be exciting.

It would be fun. It would be entertaining. Nick, Nick would have no fear. He would come in there and work the ball down the field. And, uh, whatever happened next would be up to the football gods, but you know, you know, Hey, you, you know, we can talk about this with Nick Mullins. You saw how Sam Howell came in the game the other day. Nick Mullins had to come in the game twice. It's two for two with two first downs. That's a guy who's ready. Sam Howell was not ready to play. Nick Mullins is a pro backup quarterback, and I would take him as a backup quarterback on any team ever for him as the backup quarterback. He's going to come in and he's going to sling it. He's going to

give you a chance and he's going to get the ball to your receivers. He's going to throw the ball to the other team, but you're going to be in the football game. He always was with San Francisco and he's going to be prepared as heck. He's going to lead that offense. And, uh, you know, it's going to be fun. And we watch football for fun. If you're cause anytime your starter gets hurt, you're probably not going to make it anyway. So entertainment value. Uh, Adams says, if you look at the contracts, Atlanta paid cousins, his first and second year signing bonus up front, they were basically giving a two-year contract. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's no, that that's true. They gave them a deal that they could move on from after two years. Yeah, I agree with that.

So that was something also that people missed or did not maybe think enough about when analyzing their draft pick of Michael Penix that this was not a four-year contract this was a more close to two year contract and they were trying to spread it out but they still gave him a hundred million dollars guaranteed which is maybe more closer to three years worth of fully guaranteed money. And that's going to be cap hell going forward. But that's a good point about them not necessarily giving him a huge deal. I think if the Vikings were going to do it, it was going to be way less than that. I don't think they were going to lock into that guaranteed money anywhere close. Jason, question is, will Kirk stay engaged with the falcons or tell them to stay away like

the raiders did with derrick carr so the raiders thing i believe had to do with his contract and if it doesn't make any difference contract wise then it shouldn't be he should be qb2 they shouldn't uh have him sent off like they did with Derek Carr. Unless that, I think that that's really the Daniel Jones thing too, that they would have just left him as the backup, but, uh, they, they had to bench him because of the guarantees. Maybe, maybe that's part of it. I don't know. I haven't seen that reported though, that the guarantees were part of it. Maybe it was Jay Garrettrett gino's 20th against pressure going into the green bay green bay game and it showed the vikings are at the top of the league

in terms of pressuring quarterbacks seattle has a terrible offensive line terrible the underneath passing game if gino can be patient be there, but that's not really his game. I like the matchup between the Vikings defense and Geno Smith. I don't love the matchup the other way around. And I don't also like the matchup with Smith Najigba, Lockett, Metcalf. Those guys are really good. And when the Vikings have faced receivers who are really good, that's where there has

been some struggles. Even last year, like when you look at, I'm sorry, not last year, last week, when you look at Caleb Williams, Caleb Williams had opportunities to find receivers. He just didn't find them. But the veteran quarterbacks, they have been able to find wide receivers underneath and keep possessions going. That would be my concern against the Seattle Seahawks. If you make Geno Smith, though, drive the length of the field slowly, that does increase the opportunity for a sack or a turnover,

which he has been prone to do since elevating himself into being a good starter. Jim says, I was one of the few that said drafting Pennix was a possible genius move for Atlanta. Now they improve their chances from zero to better. Yes. Yes. Well, Jim, you and I were on the same page there. I just thought what we like in society more than nuance and more than breaking it down and trying to say, hey, the person in charge, what were they thinking here? What we like to do is go, they're stupid, right? We like to own people, right?

We like to say, what is this general manager doing? He's crazy. I don't know why we get a Texas accent when we do it, but that's what we do in our brains. We like to react to brains. We like to react to stuff. We like to go nuts. What are they doing with that draft pick? That's more fun than saying, Hey, let's think this over. And I don't think that the guy in charge is a nutcase. So maybe they thought it was possible that cousins wouldn't work out. Maybe they knew that the most important position by far is the quarterback and having a future quarterback that they really like and are bought into

is a great idea. And they might've thought about the quarterback class of 2025 being very concerning. And there's a lot of different obvious justifications for it, but you're in win now mode, which is weird because we know that draft picks don't determine Superbowls. Very rarely does a team who's winning the Superbowl have a guy in his first year. That's the reason that's making the biggest difference.

There's some times where a team drafts a guy and he's a good rookie, but usually rookies need at least a year to be who they're going to be in the NFL. So had the Atlanta Falcons drafted Dallas Turner, are they different? No, they would just be more screwed. Now they have an answer. They did a good job. They did a good job, but it, the, the, the, the crazed opinion, the, we get to say how stupid a front office is, that's like its own cottage industry is people in the media whose entire thing is not to break stuff down, but instead, what can I do to be more outraged, more worked up than you or try to work up people who are watching or listening? And it works,

man. I mean, that's a path to the top. You can succeed doing that. If you're the one who comes on and goes, the Vikings should trade Justin Jefferson. He's a greedy loser. If you did that, you'd get way more engagement than saying, hey guys, maybe we should just wait till May. So the Purple Insider Show does its humble thing, tries to bring you the best information rather than the outrageous type of stuff that gets a lot of attention. But that's what I'm here for.

So anywho, Adam, if Josh McCown makes a leap up in the coaching ranks, would Kirk be a good quarterback coach? I don't think so. I don't think Kirk is a coach type. I really don't. I have been around many guys who I thought would be great coaches. I'll tell you who's at the top of my list right now, Josh Metellus. I think Josh Metellus could be an NFL head coach someday. But I never thought that about Kirk. No, I think he doesn't relate quite to people that way. And you know what he actually would be really good at, I think, is a high school coach.

And you see this all, that's not an insult. Teddy Bridgewater just won a state championship in Florida as a high school coach. And I think that Cousins would be great with high school kids and teaching them the game at the NFL level. I don't think that that would be great with high school kids and teaching them the game at the NFL level. I don't think that that would really be something that would fly. Uh, I, I just don't think that that's him. I think he's really, really smart about the game, but he sees it his own way. And he's very specific about his own way of doing it. And isn't really all that malleable from what we've seen in the past. Um, he, and that not to say, that's not an insult at all about Cousins. I just don't see him that way.

I don't see him as being an NFL type of coach. I see that as much more of, like he would be, and there was some stat that like 24 former NFL players won state championships at their level this year. Jason Witten did. I think he would be great at that. Great at that. I think Phillip Rivers is coaching a team. I just don't know if head coaching or coaching in the NFL and quarterback coach. Here's the other part of it. When you've made $200 million, quarterback coach is a grinder dude it is a grinder that guy is he is there 18 hours a day

at that facility if you made 200 million dollars do you want to spend 18 hours at a facility probably not i i don't know about that uh man juice good to see you i think the quarterback next year is one kevin doesn't have to hold their hand as much or put a governor on them. If Sam is that he'll be back next year. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that he's held back Sam Darnold as in tried to make it some sort of limited offense. You look at the Vikings run pass ratio. You look at the myriad of different concepts that they run in a given game and they they are good at play action but they're not just running play action all the time they're not running screens all the time when you saw just for example jake browning was pretty good for cincinnati for maybe

a six weeks period that was them just going hey we're gonna throw screens and play actions and run because that's our only chance with jake brown And he did a good job. That's not what I see when I'm watching Sam Donald, I'm watching the whole Minnesota Vikings offense. It's a little different from where they throw the football from Kirk, but it's downfield stuff. It's multiple read stuff. It's anticipation throw into spots. He's played like a superstar level elite franchise quarterback so far. That's if that, if the only thing the decision was based on is how much of the offense can he run? How many of the throws can he made it make? If that was the only thing that was making this call, Sam Darnold's under contract already because he's shown he can make every throw. He can lead game winning drives.

He can let it rip into places that few quarterbacks can. he can make every throw. He can lead game winning drives. He can let it rip into places that few quarterbacks can. He can make plays off schedule, all the talent things in this sample size. But a decision like this about the quarterback position is not just about that. It's a big picture. It's a, how can your team compete best to win a championship? Not just is your quarterback good enough to get you into playoff position or good enough to lead a good offense. You're looking for how do we have the best and most going to be this close, but they are close right now as far as being the most complete team. It's probably Philly and Buffalo is close, although they gave up a lot to Detroit and LA the last few weeks defensively. They've got some injuries there, but as far as just the way that he is playing this year and the things that he's done. I mean, franchise level stuff this year, big sample size left to go. Dennis, would you switch Reisner to left guard and put back in our former starting right guard? Not if you paid me. Nope, I would not. Not a chance. No.

Blake Brandel has had some struggles. He is nowhere close to as bad as Ed Ingram was playing when he was taken out. Ed Ingram was three straight years of not ever being good. It just Brandel has hung on for dear life when he's been poor. And that, that's what I see is that there are some quick losses and those turn into QB hits. He has not played great recently, but with Ingram, it was just getting beat constantly. Huge mental errors all the time. I mean, he just, I looked today at where everybody ranks in pass blocking out of, I think there were 81 guys who had played at least 300 snaps.

Dalton Reisner is 21st. Ed Ingram is still sitting at 70th. And Brandel is somewhere in the middle. He's been fine. Like as a, just a replacement level, like slightly below average guard. He's been okay. It hasn't been special and it hasn't been destructive. Reisner has been a legit difference maker as a pass blocker. And, uh, I, I don't think there's any reason to go back to Ingram unless there's an injury. And if there's an injury, that's going to cause some problems.

I just don't think they would be here had they kept Ingram in at right guard. I don't think they would have won some of these games because Reiser's really been good as a pass protector. Anthony says, any updates on Geno's status for Sunday? I have not seen yet. Wednesday is normally the day that the first injury report comes out, but because they're on the West coast, I could check my email, but, uh, usually I get it in the email inbox. Uh, I do not have it at the moment.

They're practicing the West coast. So that one would be one I can't have just yet while we're doing this stream, but keep an eye out for that today. They'll put out an injury report today. I suspect he'll be limited. I think he's probably going to play if they face Sam Hollis is the totally different story. Totally different story. A skull guy. How do you, uh, UDFA contracts work similar to rookie deals? Uh, yes, there is some complications in there, but essentially, yes, there's an equal rights free agent thing that basically means you just get to decide whether you keep them or not. And teams always do if they like the guy. So yeah, you get four years of control, uh, over your undrafted free agents so they can develop those guys, which is a pretty good benefit there.

Bra, Kwesi trading all them picks because he's banking on yearly free thirds from KOC's rehab. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. He's trading them picks. My suspicion on why he trade the picks is that for Dallas Turner or for TJ Hawkinson is that he believes fundamentally and there is a I know this because he said it on the podcast when he came on my show earlier in the spring you can go back and find that I mean he talked about stars driving the league and sometimes you need to just put your chips to the middle of the table to get stars. And we know this, that complete football teams are the ones that go the deepest. But a lot of times those middle players are ones you can find to fill the voids. Josh Metellus was a development player.

Cam Bynum was a development player. These are really good, above average, solid NFL players who will make plays and make stops and play multiple positions. And they're good players. They're not Jonathan Grenard, right? You need X number of superstars. And then the other parts are easier to fill in. They're easier to develop.

They're easier to find in free agency. But you take the risks for the stars. And that easier to develop. They're easier to find in free agency, but you take the risks for the stars. And that seems to be their philosophy. That's why they traded for Turner because in the future, they see him as a star. And the last couple of weeks, he's certainly shown some signs. Thank you for the super chat, Purple Jesus Lefty. Reisner has been playing well. Don't tell Forness that. Well, you know, everybody's got their own opinions, and they are allowed to have them. But the facts are the facts.

Zero sacks allowed so far from Dalton Reisner. There's not going to be a more important stat than that. And there were some people who didn't want Ingram benched, and I'm sure they know more than Kevin O'Connell and Chris Cooper about who's playing good at guard. That's all I have to say about that. I don't, I don't, but they do. I'm sure.

So I don't know. Reisner is graded as a top 25 pass blocking guard. And when I see him, he gets pushed back, but he hangs on. How many times have you been watching Dalton Reisner where he went, Oh my gosh, he just got beat instantly, but none once. I think he's done a really good job. Uh, yeah, I think it's actually been a, a season shifting move to have him in there, but I don't know. I mean, the run blocking is not, it's not flawless, but they've run the ball well. So if he's this horrific run blocker who has no idea what he's doing, I don't know why they're averaging four and a half to five yards of carry

the last couple of weeks. I don't know, but Chris, Chris Cooper and Kevin O'Connell know when to pull a right guard. I mean, I don't know. Anyway, Melkill says, according to the Seattle times. Oh, we've got, we've got a Gino Smith update here. Thank you. Melkill Smith felt good today at the walkthrough. Oh, they only had a walkthrough. Okay. So he's going to be limited.

The Vikings are doing the same thing around the league. That's how it goes. They're all, they just have walkthroughs on Wednesday. So it doesn't really tell you a whole lot about how he's going to look. Uh, so we'll see. We'll see about that. I think he's going to play. I would just assume that he's going to play. Um, Juan says, when is the journeyman goat McCown coming on the pod? You know, Josh has not done a lot of interviews this year. So I would love that. I'll try for that. That's a, that's a training camp next year type of thing. And the Vikings are amazing at getting me interviews and stuff like that. But McCown, I don't think he's a huge media guy. You know, I don't think he's a huge media guy.

So, you know, that's, yeah, that's fine. I mean, if you're a journeyman backup quarterback, you're not going to be the guy out in the media. They know how to do that. Sean says, do you think Aaron Jones is enjoying being a Viking as much as it seems? I've always respected him, but have become a huge fan of his on and off the field for, uh, yeah. I mean,

when people talk about Aaron Jones, if you just say, Hey, what do you think about Aaron Jones to somebody who knows him? Somebody who's played with him. Somebody who's been at a franchise where he was at. They will get choked up talking about how special he is. He is truly special. And we've seen it here, the way he impacts other people, the toughness he brings. I mean,

he got back in that game after injuring his ribs. You could bet that hurt like crazy, but fighting through some injuries this year, the fumble issues, but you also see he comes through in big times, like on that third down, he just keeps pounding. You cannot stop him. He won't be denied, but he also is the type to be unselfish, help other people. He's a caring person. He's a thoughtful person. He communicates with Kevin O'Connell, the coaching staff, Sam Darnold. I think it's been big for him to have Aaron Jones' leadership. What did they pay for him? Seven million bucks or something?

Oh, he's worth way more than that to an organization. I could tell you that. And he does look like he's having a great time as a part of the Minnesota Vikings. So, oh, I did see this. Rascal Lover says, what are your thoughts about Andre Carter getting picked up off the practice squad? Well, when they got Andre Carter as an undrafted free agent, they thought that he could be somebody they could develop over a couple of years because he had gone to a military

institution and maybe didn't have really the, I think it was the army didn't really have NFL preparation, training, that kind of stuff that was at least what they talked about now bo richter was certainly ready to come play here so i don't know but there's not that many of the players who go to army navy air force who end up in the nfl so okay i could buy that and my thought was if he comes back this year and looks like a beast, then we'll know, okay, maybe something's there. Like if he goes into the off season and he's just comes out jacked and ripped, and we've seen this before. I expect this for Dallas Turner next year that he's going to put on, you know, 10, 15 pounds of muscle coming out of his first year. It's so taxing on these guys with the draft and the lead

up to that and everything else. Okay. All right. It just didn't happen. It just didn't look any different. And it didn't really look any different in practice and in training camp. There's a few flash moments because he's talented, but he got passed on that depth chart. Bo Richter is more of an intriguing guy for the future than Andre Carter. And Bo Richter is more of a fit

than Andre Carter. I don't know that he fits what Brian Flores likes to do. Bo Richter and Gabe Murphy. Bo Richter and Gabe Murphy are both future development guys in this system, where Andre Carter was more of a pure edge. I don't know if he did pick off a pass in Cleveland in the joint practices, but so did everybody. I'm not sure that dropping back into coverage and being dynamic was going to be his thing. So maybe he'll get a better opportunity with the Raiders and have some success there. Everything that I've heard about him is just like a good guy.

And, uh, you know, I just didn't really click. We didn't see that jump, uh jump that maybe we thought it was, was possibly there. Purple Jesus lefty says I did the playoff machine. It's insane. What would happen if the Vikings won out for the Eagles to get the one seed? Pretty unlikely. Yeah, that was, that was my takeaway too. There, there's a couple of different things that need to happen there. And I couldn't remember on the fly every single one of them but thank you for doing that yeah if the vikings win out they basically control their own destiny if they if they win out then uh they're gonna get there uh let's see adam how healthy is this team at this point in the season compared to other years? They seem really healthy compared to other teams.

This was the case in most years that they've been good. 2022, I don't remember. Well, they lost Brian O'Neill late in 2022, but there weren't that many injuries on defense. 2019, this was a stat that I kept saying in 2019 going into the playoffs for why I thought they could win a game is they had every starter on defense that they began the year with in 2019. It's often a factor, but I mean, you're going to have to knock on every form of wood that you have in your house after sending that question, but they are pretty remarkably healthy because they're getting healthier, which is to get Gilmore back, to get Ivan Pace back pretty soon. I mean, that's how

it has to be almost in the NFL. What's happened to the Lions is they got that big start and then they got injured. Had they gotten injured in the middle of the season, they would not have the record that they have right now. Bra, which good team this year is the most miserable for their fan base to root for? And why is it the Eagles? It's a different culture. It is a different culture to root for the Eagles than it is for the Vikings. And that exists around the country. Every fan base is its own type of thing. I know this from having covered the Buffalo market and those people jumping through flaming tables and stuff like that, which is, it's not a gag. It's very real. The tailgating there is out of control. I think you all know what the Vikings fan disposition is. You all love your team. You'll

never give it up. You're a Viking diehard for life, but you are thinking right now as I'm talking about which terrible thing could happen to them down the stretch here. That's how you guys are because of what's shaped you in the past. The Eagle fan thing actually goes back a long way

in history of the NFL. So the story why the Eagles fans booed Santa was the team was really, really bad and they were tanking, but then they won a couple of games and they were so mediocre and the fans got very frustrated with them. They were actually playing the Vikings and every year the Eagles would have some sort of Christmas parade in December, but the Santa, the person who was going to play Santa Claus, this is the story, how they booed Santa. The person who was going to play Santa Claus didn't show up for work and they grabbed someone out of the stands wearing a Santa suit and threw them out there. Just asked them to go out there for the parade and pretend to be

Santa. And that's how Santa got boot. And they've been this very aggressive and the East is just different in its culture than the Midwest, but they have been a very aggressive fan base because in the early days, they were so much of a joke through a time period of that franchise that I think it stuck and became kind of how they are. Not only that, but they had all those times where they got to the Superbowl and lost the NFC championships. What five times with McNabb and lost, they built up this, this, this raginess about that team to where they react to anything. If their team goes three and out to start the game, they boot. Like that's just how they are. It's just a different, but what Vikings fans do is they go quiet in the

stadium. If they are displeased and they won't boo unless it gets pretty bad, but for the most part, they will just say nothing. The other team will have the ball. Everyone will be looking around going, eh, eh, yeah, eh. And there uh, there are other places where, and Buffalo's kind of this way where you couldn't take the crowd out of it if you tried. And part of that is because they had built this home field advantage aura to that stadium in the nineties where nobody wanted to go to Buffalo and play Seattle's the same way. They, they have a pride for this. That is part of their identity, which, you know, sometimes I sit in the stadium and think, Hey, Vikings fans, can I, uh, can I nudge you to get you going here? But if things are going well, you don't want to play

in us bank stadium at all, because they'll be going crazy. And I think that's because everybody's sitting in the stands thinking of the worst thing that's going to happen and maybe should be yelling. But my, my point is just that all fan bases are different and the Eagles are certainly the most dangerous of all the fans, but their history kind of played into that. So it goes back a long ways. If you were curious about how they ended up booing Santa for this,

you know, Christmas time, there's your Christmas story for the day. Let's see. Let's see. So I'm going to have to get going shortly because the Vikings locker room is opening at five something. So I got to run soon. But let me answer a couple more here. Sorry to anybody that I didn't get to. But thank but let me answer a couple more here. Uh, sorry to anybody that I didn't get to, but thank you so much for such a great chat. Uh, Alex says, uh, can't wait for the

day. We extend KOC and Kwesi coach of the year and executive of the year. Hard to argue against that. There's a couple of games left in the season, but it is very hard to argue against them running the table and a listener to the show. Let me listener to the show, let me pull up his numbers here. Listener to the show, Matt, sent me the list of the teams that had outperformed their expected preseason win-loss by the most. So the Vikings are within the top 10 or 12 of that. Let's see. One, two, three, four, five. Yeah.

Okay. So yeah, the Vikings have outperformed already by the fifth most wins of anybody since 2000. This is according to Matt who emailed me and with the numbers. Let me try to make sure I'm clear about what I'm saying. As far as outperforming the preseason over under, which we've talked about endlessly with six and a half, already at 12, they have the sixth most wins

over their preseason expectation since 2000, 2004 Steelers, 2004 Chargers, 2015 Carolina Panthers. A lot of these are actually teams that were supposed to win eight or nine and they ended up winning 14, but there's only a couple examples of teams that were just flat out supposed to be bad and ended up winning this many games. So what you're saying to your point, when you outperform expectations by that much executive of the year, head coach, and get used to Kweisi D'Affo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell, because I think they're going to be here for a very long time. It is hard to find a GM and a head coach who know what they're doing. There's maybe 12 teams in the league that do, and then the rest just cycle through these guys over and over and over. You're in the

12th, you're in the club. And one of the biggest challenges is earlier, I was talking about how second guessing football people is like the best. If you do it loudest, it's the best way to get to the top of media. But there has been a real adjustment for even me because in years past, when I covered Spielman and Zimmer, there were really obvious anti-analytical type of things that they would do, or just all the stuff, the desperate acts to build around Kirk, the game management stuff, the interpersonal stuff from Mike Zimmer. I've had to really be quite discerning now when it comes to Kweisi Adafomensa and Kevin O'Connell, because they've done so many things in the right direction. Where, where do we, where do we critique? Where do we critique? I know, trick plays. That's definitely a critique.

Maybe last week where you're passing so much more than you're running or something like, it's more of nitpicking away and trying to guess at what they'll do, how they'll handle somebody, how they match up with teams, what they're going to do in the off season.

But what you know now is that they're not going to do stuff that's wacky. They they're going to do in the off season. But what you know now is that they're not going to do stuff that's wacky. They're not going to do something that isn't thought out or is reactionary, or it doesn't make any sense. Like hiring John D Filippo, when he ran a totally different offense than Kirk cousins ever had before in his life, like things like that, they just haven't done. I mean, mean the the trade down in 2022 the draft there i mean that's why people bring it up all the time because outside of that marcus davenport that was probably a bad idea as the lions found like there's just when your team's 12 and 2 and they've

shown such an ability to work together and bring this thing to where it was supposed to be. They've done a lot of things right, and they do deserve the awards this year. KOC probably deserved it in 2022 for coach of the year, but he had a team that was built already to win. This team was not thought to be in that position. So now it's fascinating trying to work through, and I like it this way, trying to work through figuring out what their thinking is and how they're going to solve these problems and try to project it forward, just like we did in the offseason to tie it back in to the Kirk Cousins decision, trying to think through what was their plan? Would Kirk Cousins fit into this?

What would the projections say? Which I knew were not great for quarterbacks in their mid thirties who had never been all pros that the projections just weren't good for anybody. Not much less someone coming off an Achilles. What, what would O'Connell think about drafting a quarterback? Who would he like? We went through this. Would he like Penix's arm?

Would he like McCarthy? Because he's a ball of clay? Like that's our conversations now and it's different. And I enjoy this more than just ranting all the time for sure. And I'm sure you guys do too. So we'll, we'll see where this takes us. Adam says, does any other team in playoff contention have a better backup than the Vikings? I haven't thought too much about who the backup quarterbacks are for the other teams. Don't know who's backing up in Philly. The Packers. I'm going to be honest. I did not.

For someone who loves journeyman quarterbacks off the top of my head, I'm trying to think who the Packers. It's not Sean Clifford, is it? Oh, no, it's Malik Willis. Obviously, I'm sorry. It's Malik Willis because he played earlier this year. But Philly, I'm not really sure. Is it Kenny Pickett in Philly?

Who is in Detroit? Hendon Hooker in Detroit if he needs a walker to get out there because he's so old. But he is their backup. I mean, Daniel Jones, Nick Mullins. I don't know. You don't want your backup playing. Unless you're Jeff Hofstetler coming in to play in the playoffs in 1990 and winning the Super Bowl against the Bills, you really don't want that.

Let's see. Antonio, the Vikings have committed 20 turnovers this season, Kansas city, 14, Detroit, 13, Philly, 13, Baltimore, 10 Buffalo seven. How concerned are you about this coming back to the haunt? The Vikings? Very, very, very concerned. Uh, well, Sam Darnold has done a great job of limiting how he has, uh, turned the ball over. He hasn't fumbled. He hasn't thrown interceptions until we get to the end of the season. Then he hasn't done that. We'll still have Jacksonville in the back of our minds. They, they have fumbled the ball a lot this year. I want, you know, a couple of those turnovers are Sam Darnold on fourth down throws the ball up for

grabs. Cause nothing was there. That was a smart decision. It just got picked off. It actually helped them in terms of field position rather than failing on fourth down. So not all turnovers are created equal, but the fumbles, yeah, they have just in general fumbled a lot. A lot of those interceptions though came in just a couple of weeks and interceptions can come in bunches. You never know when that's going to be, but this team, since Kevin O'Connell came in, turned the ball over a lot. They also get a lot of takeaways and they sometimes need to take the ball away to be even just good in general. And that matters too, that their defense sometimes can be on the field a lot

and then get a takeaway. And we go, great job defense. But if you need to get takeaways all the time, as you mentioned, those other teams don't always give the ball away that are really good in this league. Julio says, my first live. Shout out Julio.

First time checking out the live show. Appreciate you here doing it a different time today just because of the situation with the viking schedule which i do have to run in like two minutes so let me just quick answer i'll try rapid fire here julio says expect a sack fest from the v defense in Seattle. Very much. This is a big mismatch when it comes to Jonathan Grenard, Van Ginkle, the blitzes, and the offensive line. And if Geno is limited, that could be a problem. So Purple Jesus left the Philip Rivers coaching a football team made up of his own kids. It had to be said, right?

It had to be said. Jason says Kirk could be a good GM. Oh, that's a good point. Uh, if he brings his agent as his assistant GM, they'll be the best in negotiating contracts in the league. No doubt about that. No doubt about that. So anyway, uh, let's see. Is this for Rita? How hard would it be to retain cam Robinson and move him to guard? Yeah, not a guard. Yep.

Not a guard. He is one of the heroes of the season. Truly one of the heroes of this season. I know he had a bunch of penalties in the last game. I don't think he'll do that again, but he has been one of the best moves that Kweisi Adafo Mensah made hands down, hands down. So this is not true, Jason. PFF's ranking for O-line means nothing to NFL coaches. Not true. Nope. Just period. Not true. It's in my book. You can read about it. I did a whole chapter with an NFL offensive line coach about how he uses PFF. Just that your statement is just not true.

It's just not true. So, I mean, you can check it out. Football is a numbers game. The offensive line coach's name is Paul Alexander, one of the greatest of all time. And we went through, me and him, on the phone for the book about how he, one of the greatest of all time. And we went through me and him on the phone for the book about how he, one of the greatest offensive line coaches ever uses PFF grades. Yep. You can use them to your advantage. You'd be surprised. So check out the book. Hey, last second stocking stuffer football is a numbers game. Check it out. Uh, but, uh, well, ranking might not necessarily. Okay. Fair enough to say ranking, but grades, they, they use them. Yep. They use them. They don't use them as the only thing. They don't just not do their jobs, but they use them. And I detailed how in the book.

Uh, and if the Vikings weren't 12 and two racing for the playoffs and it was June, I would read the chapter to you, but Dennis, would you switch Rouse to a guard? Yes. Yes. Yes, I would. He is a good athlete. I, I would. And I think that might be an option for left guard for next year, possibly, or right guard for next year is Walter Rouse. I do believe that they like what they've seen from him. How many times has Reisner slapped the ball out of the quarterback's hands? Yeah. Zero that I could think of zero that I could think of a son of a Beavers. Don't know if you've already answered this, but now we have an opening on the practice

squad. Are there any vets we could look into? Uh, did KJ Osborne get picked up anywhere? I don't hate that. See that. Yeah, this is a great point. Uh, Matt says foreign has posted a clip and nothing against him for what I'm saying, but, uh, posted a clip of Reisner getting walked back. Like it was a bad rep and it was classics example of a slow death play. So I I've talked to the offensive lineman about this naturally. Uh, that's what I do and why I have to leave here to go to the locker room. But, uh, your point, Matt is exactly right. That Dalton Reisner getting pushed back is not that big of a problem for Sam Darnold.

What's a big problem is if the right guard loses instantly and there's nothing Darnold can do, which happened over and over and over. That clip would be a plus for the Vikings. Getting pushed back is fine. If your quarterback navigates the pocket and has the arm strength to throw with guys close to him, that even though Darnold holds on to the ball longer, it's one of the reasons he can, because he doesn't need a clean pocket to whip the football around. Those non-losses, those non-losses are huge. And they're one of the reasons that it's been

a really big upgrade to have Dalton rise there. But I had that conversation with Garrett Bradbury, actually, I think I put it in an article about just how Darnold and Bradbury play off of each other. But that was something that Bradbury said, that if you can just make sure that you're not having the bad loss, if you're not losing instantly, and if you're overpowered by Jeffrey Simmons, well, who isn't? But that's a good answer to it. It's been a massive deal.

It's just been a massive deal to have Reisner He he's been, it's been a massive deal. It's just been a massive deal to have rise there. There there's there's to me, there's not even a debate. Uh, Samuel says his Harrison Smith coach material, uh, you know, Harrison Smith, there's equal, there's equal chances that Harrison Smith could be an NFL coach, a pro golfer, a pilot. Uh, he's got a lot of talents. He's an interesting guy. Uh, chip Scoggins wrote a good article with him. Dude loves golf. Um, he he's obsessed with that. He might just go, you might just never hear from him again after he retires. And then he'll come back for the ceremony when they put them in the, in the wall or, or the, the ring of honor. So, uh, Wrigley says Bradbury is the most concerning part of the offensive line. He's been airborne

more than linemen. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of an old, I think that's a little bit of an old opinion. I mean, there are times, yes, but that's really from a couple of years ago. He's been, so the last few weeks, not as good as far as his statistics go. He had a run in the middle of the season where he was in the top 10 from week maybe five to 13 in pass blocking. It's a lot of hanging on. There are times that that's going to happen, but then you also watch him navigate his, uh, navigate his quarterback, work with Sam Darnold, all that sort of stuff. He's, he's gotten much more to the point

of being an average, solid NFL center. It's left guard is the most concerning to me because Bradbury has been in the playoffs before Reisner has been in, I think he's been in the playoffs, or at least he's been in the NFL a long time. Cam Robinson has been in the playoffs before Reisner has been in, I think he's been in the playoffs or at least he's been in the NFL a long time. Cam Robinson has been in the playoffs. Brian O'Neill has been in the playoffs. It's really Blake Brandel. This is his first time having this long season. So that's, that is what I would say is the biggest concern. I don't think that, I think, you know, what Bradbury strengths and weaknesses are, uh, one more, one more, then I got to run Lucas. Is there any explanation for why Cam Robinson could still be an NFL running back after shedding his two Achilles or Rogers and Kirk are just kind of done? Uh, well, yeah. So, I mean, there's a few

things. Number one, Cam Robinson is a freak. And I mean this in a very complimentary way, like his strength, his physique, his athletic ability. They're all elite. This guy was a second round pick dominant in Florida, unbelievable high school player, like all those things. This guy is a 90 somethingth percentile athlete. That's number one. Number two is his age. Age matters. I am way different now than I was 15 years ago physically. And of course I'm not a pro athlete, but it doesn't matter who you are. Age comes for everybody in a lot of different ways. And I mean, when you're with Kirk, it had this same thing happen at 24 years old. He would have been fine, but he's 36. Uh, the other part of it too, is that I think it has impacted cam makers. He's just found a way to work around it. Cam makers is a North and South

runner. He's not a dancer. And even when you see him try to cut, he usually kind of gets caught in the backfield. He's much more of a straightforward, maybe one cut. I think he's adapted his game a bit to deal with some of that issues, but it's a little bit different from driving and twisting to throw a football versus just running straightforward. But I think it's really has most to do with age. Anyway, thank you so much, everybody. I appreciate all of your time. A midday pod. Thank you so much. Got to run, got to go out to the Vikings facility. I'll be there next few days and then in Seattle. So we'll have another live show on Thursday night where Manny actually still needs to pick the schedule because he usually does it on Monday. So we'll pick the final three games, how we think it plays out.

We'll pick everybody else's schedule too and try to figure it out in the playoff machine. It'll be a good time. So make sure you join tomorrow. 7.30 is when we will do that show. Really appreciate everybody watching and listening and take care. Football.

Oh, the commander signed KJ Osborne. Okay, sorry. Somebody else then to the practice squad. Now take care. Football.