Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Let's talk about the Vikings' star players and their range of outcomes

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom decide that we've spent a little too much time lately talking about the fringe of the roster (or vaccination status) so they jump into a bigger picture conversation about what it would take for Kirk Cousins to win more than 11 games this year. Plus how can the Vikings avoid a sophomore slump from Justin Jefferson and what's the range of rankings of Mike Zimmer's defense? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hey everybody, welcome to another Purple Insider and bring me the news live stream, Matthew Collar, along with Sam Ekstrom here from Purple Insider for some Vikings talk. So feel free to leave comments and ask some questions and we'll be happy to answer them. But we've got a lot to discuss, Sam, about where the Minnesota Vikings stand coming off of their preseason loss to the Denver Broncos, but I want to, instead of diving deep into the weeds with you about whether, let's say, you know, Dylan Maben is going to make the 53. Let's, yeah, well, I have him as my next guy cut. You have Amari Henderson, but that's, that is neither here nor there. I want to talk about the star players because I feel like what happens in training camp is we so often dive deep into the minutiae of the roster,

which is fun, and I really enjoy it, and I like watching the KJ Osbournes emerge, as we have seen throughout this camp, and I enjoy a good right guard battle, which seems to be resolved, and Udo it appears has won that. But I feel like what ends up happening is that we move away from the players who will ultimately determine where this season goes. So I want to talk about the range of outcomes for different star players, and then we can intersperse the things that will affect those outcomes as we go along. And in some cases it is, it does have to do with the minutia. So maybe we could start with Kirk Cousins as a football player

because it has really felt like we have not talked about Kirk Cousins as a football player in a very long time. It's his vaccination status. It's kind of the odd vibe around training camp. And even yesterday, he tried to throw in a, you like that after a big play and everyone just looked around like, Oh, Oh yeah.

Oh, we're doing the, you like that thing? Like, okay. But in terms of him as a quarterback, give me what matters to you when you're evaluating Kirk cousins and how he plays this year.

And, and we, because I think we both agree that that means a lot toward the future. But in terms of range of outcomes, where would you start? Would you start with how he plays statistically or something else? Well, first of all, Kirk Cousins tried his best yesterday, Collar, to rally the troops. I mean, he was trying to be the audible leader that I think we want him

to be. And sometimes it doesn't come across that genuinely. But from a big picture standpoint, it's tough to say that last year's performance is the floor because statistically it was so good, right? It's weird to say that, oh, like if he has another year like last year, they're going to be seven and 10 when last year was actually a very good statistical year for him. Every year is, I mean, that's just the nature of Kirk Cousins. So it is hard to evaluate him statistically, right? We kind of have to look past the raw data, the touchdown to interception ratio, the total yardage, because he is kind of an enigma in that the stats don't always really matter that much for what we expect of him from a win-loss standpoint. So I think that the ceiling can still be somewhat high.

It's not like through the roof, but I think there's still a ceiling of 11 wins to this team. I think if things go right early in the season and he can win the games he's supposed to win and not have the patented Kirk Cousins meltdown against a bad team once or twice this year and just win those games against inferior opponents, some of them from the AFC, then I think they can win double-digit games. But I do think, too, that the way things are going around Kirk Cousins, there's a lot of chaos right now. And Kirk Cousins does not thrive around chaos, whether that's in the pocket on a play-by-play basis, whether that's with injuries around him, whether that's the defense struggling around him, not where he thrives. Cousins needs everything to be perfect, and

everything has been imperfect so far in this preseason and training camp. So if that continues, Collar, then the floor, I think, does become seven wins again, because he just isn't going to be able to get it done himself if his number two receiver happened to be KJ Osborne for a stretch or if his left tackle was Blake Brandel and these are realities that we've had to face here in the last few days so I think between 7 and 11 it's the Kirk Cousins season I I don't think I see him ever necessarily bottoming, bottoming out like a five-win quarterback. I think there's too much offensive talent for that. But I think that it could be a below 500 season if things go poorly and if the injury bug continues to bite this team.

And Cousins will probably put forth similar statistics, if not better, with that 17th game this year than usual. But again, that has not had a positive correlation to wins in his career. Well, I like the way that you put it about Kirk Cousins, because with so many other players, and we do this from a fantasy perspective, but we also do it when you're trying to figure out just like who's good. And when we're ranking guys and when we're talking about, should they be signed to a long-term contract? Then what do we do? We go to the PFF quarterback stats. We go to the pro football reference.

We look at all these different things. We look at their quarterback rating, ESPN, QBR. What was their grade? What was their accuracy? What were all these different things and with Kirk Cousins I mean a they're mostly the same every single year that he's mostly pretty accurate he mostly doesn't make plays out of structure he mostly on third down is really not much of a risk taker like it's the same guy year in and year out and what matters then since we already kind of know what he is as a quarterback, what matters is the wins. And, and in this particular situation, even if he has a good statistical season, but they win eight games, you're going to say, you just can't go any farther with this quarterback.

And it's all about how much you win, even if it's not his fault. I mean, last year, there were plenty of times where he played well enough to win and they didn't come away with a win, but you still said, look, that wasn't the goal is to put up 300 yards today. It was to get the final drive against Tennessee, or it was to get the dagger drive against Tennessee. It was to get the final drive against the Seattle Seahawks. It was against the, you know, Chicago against Dallas. There were a bunch of games where there were opportunities to go win and it didn't happen. And then it all ties back into this has been what his career is, is lots of chances to kind of take that next step to get a team to be very, very good because the talent on that team is good and it just hasn't quite happened so let me ask you this because I was going to ask you I had it

written down to ask you if you were sticking with 11 wins for this team because that's what you picked the day that the schedule came out I went with 10 you went with 11 what does it take for Kirk Cousins to win 11 games like what what will have happened from him as the quarterback for them to have gotten to 11 wins? I will say in my defense at the time, I was pretty positive Rodgers was not going to play for the Packers and he is. So that probably adjusts my number from 11 down to 10. But to get to 10 or 11, you got to perform against the NFC North. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. He's a Detroit killer and not good against the others.

Granted, they did beat Green Bay last year on the road, and that was largely fueled by the running game. But, you know, we'll give them credit for, for a win there. Um, they've got to go four and two, five and one against the NFC North. Um, and then you got to win one game that you shouldn't against a really good team. Maybe it's, um, maybe Dallas comes in like, you know, seven and one on Halloween and, uh, you have to win that game at home, or you have to go on the road against like a trey lance led 49ers team and win that game you need to steal one to win 11 games um you know the team that won 10 games uh a couple years ago they went into dallas and won to their

credit i mean that's kind of the one game they and dallas wasn't amazing that year but it it's still a tough place to play. Still a team that had a lot of talent and they beat them on the road in a primetime setting. I thought that was a really big win for that team and kind of gave them cushion to afford like a slip up in week 16 that year against Green Bay, which, you know, cost them seeding and potentially a division championship. So not great. But you got to steal one. You got to beat teams in your division. And like I said before, you can't have the blow-up game, the 2018 against the Bills or last year Atlanta.

That's kind of the formula, I think, to get to that double-digit win plateau. So I was thinking about this the other day, and I started fiddling around with pro football reference to try and figure out, does it matter? Is it a big deal that they haven't beaten winning teams since Kirk and Scott here? And I came across a crazy stat that will blow your mind. The New York Jets in the last three years have more wins against winning teams than the Minnesota Vikings in the regular season. The New York Jets, the worst franchise in the NFL has four and the Vikings have three with Kirk Cousins. And that's the key right there is you look at this schedule, there will be plenty of opportunities to get that win against winning teams they're going to play San Francisco they're going to play Green Bay twice

that was one of them and Cousins mostly handed off it through screen passes to Delvin Cook in the was another one of their and the other two were against nine and seven Philadelphia teams like this team has not beaten anyone good since Kirk Cousins got here save for one playoff game against the New Orleans Saints that's the difference right there if you always go by just beat the teams you're supposed to beat and then no show against the teams you're not supposed to be you're going to end up as a 500 quarterback because that's probably your schedule and this year you come right out of the gate with a team you're supposed to beat.

I think we've seen that story before that Kirk cousins probably blows the doors off of Cincinnati, but then it gets hard. And you know, it's, then you got to face Cleveland when they come here. And it seems like every S and you got to go to Arizona. Who's not going to be a rollover type of team. Every time we hype up a game and we say, this is Kirk cousins opportunity to beat a of team. Every time we hype up a game and we say, this is Kirk Cousins' opportunity to beat a good team, it doesn't happen. And this year, if it doesn't happen, you will go eight and nine

based on the schedule. The other thing too is Kirk Cousins has to find a way, and I don't know what that way is because it certainly is not running, but he has to find a way to overcome good defensive lines because we watched him practice against the Denver Broncos this last week and they've got a great defensive line guess what happened I don't remember a single long completion by Kirk Cousins the two practices that they went up against the Broncos because the Broncos defensive line was beating the Vikings offensive line. Well, guess what? It's going to happen again. I mean, you're playing a sixth round tackle at guard that you just moved there right before camp. You are playing a left tackle who has never started a full season before in Rashad Hill. And maybe you'll be switching from him to a rookie at some point. You're playing a left guard who's

never played left guard before ever in his life in a game in Ezra Cleveland. And you're playing a left guard who's never played left guard before ever in his life in a game in Ezra Cleveland and you're playing a center who is not a very good pass blocker that thing that always happens to Kirk Cousins is going to happen where there's going to be pressure up the middle for him so when we talk about range of outcomes for me to think that it could go higher than 11 wins or 10 wins, it would have to rely on that. Like, what are you going to do against the Pittsburgh Steelers? I don't think that the Pittsburgh Steelers are a great team, but I think they have a great defensive line.

And that has always been the thing that has taken down the Vikings every time Kirk Cousins goes up against them. So is there an answer to what they have at offensive line, or is there a Kirk related answer to counter that? Because I haven't seen it in three years. Well, and to further your point, this has not been a good camp for Kirk Cousins. I mean, we've watched every practice. He has been, you know, obviously out for four practices. So he's had kind of a big hiccup in the middle. But he's come back from that, and he has made far fewer big plays than we've seen in the past. Maybe that's because the Vikings have a much better defensive line.

They've got a lot of push up the middle with this group. We've seen Ezra Cleveland get worked. We've seen Garrett Bradbury have some struggles too this is a good defensive line against a little bit of a makeshift offensive line and I think we're seeing already in a practice setting that that's giving Kirk Cousins some trouble um so that's not going to get any easier in the regular season we've seen the Vikings try to combat inside pass rush with bootleg, but we've also seen opponents counter by just putting an edge, just setting that edge and having them rush the bootleg and making Kirk throw off his back foot. And they're kind of giving up the run in exchange

to stop the play action. And that's worked pretty well for opponents. The Green Bay has been doing that for two years and they've had a lot of success doing it. So how does Kirk work around that? I think you need to throw the ball even faster sometimes. And that might mean less play action. That might mean bubble screens. That might mean those little quicks to Justin Jefferson, the thing that Green Bay does so well. Pitching to Dalvin Cook more often. You got to get the ball to the outside more and out of Cousins' hands faster because you don't want him sitting in these pockets. And I also don't love him rolling out blind if there's going to be an edge right there. So I think teams kind of are onto the Vikings a little bit.

They know how to put the damper on the bootleg game. So I think it's tough to just ask Cousins to be more mobile. You've got to scheme it better. You've got to do something schematically that's going to force teams to be honest. And I guess Mike Zimmer's going to say, well, we've got to run the ball. We've got to run the ball. We've got to establish the run. And therein lies, I think, the fear that Vikings fans have

that they're going to be too intent on establishing the run. And you've played two and a half quarters. You're down by 14 and you haven't established it. And you lose the game. That was the problem last year. And it could be the problem again this year. And I think if you're a Vikings fan, your optimism comes from, well, we're shuffling the deck on the offensive line. We're shuffling the deck and we're going

to hope that, you know, we get a flush like with, with Hill instead of Reef and Cleveland left guard, Udo right guard, that these new pieces will somehow get along really well and mesh together and have a better result than last year. Hey, everybody. The season is on the way. Fans are going back to stadiums, so you have to be ready with the best Minnesota football gear. That's why you have to check out Soda Stick. I saw a ton of Soda Stick gear around training camp.

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Everything is screen printed here in Minnesota. And I can tell you that the shirts are comfortable and they last because half of my closet is now SodaStick at this point. Again, that's SodaStick.com, Minnesota sports inspired goods, and keep your eye out for our SodaStick giveaways. Right. And that is a little bit hard to see. Now, if Dakota Dozier doesn't start, you're probably immediately better because even if only Udo is below average,

it's not the worst in the NFL, but we're going to have to see him play in real games to understand even what he looks like at guard. We've been watching him in practice and you can see his size and his power. But you're talking about a league that has a lot of great interior pass rushers, and it's not too long before you face Judevian Clowney. And that's a different type of thing than going up against the nose tackles or the Armond Watts that we're seeing in practice

to go up against some great interior rushers. And that's what has taken apart offensive linemen who have played on the inside for a long time. And it's what took apart Ezra Cleveland last year in pass protection was that these guys just come off the ball so quickly on the inside that I think that's much different than at tackle where you sort of have a quarter of a second to look at it and see where the guy is going to go and react it's instant when it's on the inside especially in pass rushing situations and now lots of teams put their edge rushers on the inside so it's the quickest and most athletic

people and that's where trying to say that you know two guys who were tackles just two years ago who are now guards is just going to work is sort of hard for me to believe, which I think wherever that offensive line is sort of caps what you can get out of Kirk Cousins. And the same goes for the fact that Justin Jefferson suffers an injury during training camp. And if that injury at all nags him throughout the season and he can't produce at the same level you're not talking about getting to 11 wins and so my question for you well I've got I've got two of them I mean I think one one being can Clint Kubiak change this outcome but the other is was there something that they could have done in the offseason where we talked just all the way through about offensive

lines and wide receiver threes and everything else. And right now, DeeDee Westbrook is just not a factor. I thought he would instantly be a factor, but he just started running on the side field yesterday during practice. It was the first we've seen him just even jogging around. So I don't look at DeeDee Westbrook as being really a factor at this moment, and we'll figure out when he is. Mike Zimmer said

he's on track on the same track to recover when they signed him, but that's just hard to really wrap my head around because they talked about his workout looking great, but now he's just starting to move. I'm not sure I really understand that. So what is it that they should have done that could have pushed this farther? Because I think that your cap of 11 wins makes a lot of sense in terms of range of outcomes for Kirk Cousins. Is there something they could have done to have changed that? I guess I'm tempted to say change the offense, but we saw what Kirk does in a different offense and that wasn't really good either it does feel like and Mike Zimmer has said this in a way that makes it sound almost like Mike Zimmer begrudgingly

runs this offense I think he actually kind of loves it but he made it sound last year like well you you run the offense that fits your quarterback best. And that was almost to say, hey, this is the hand we've been dealt with Kirk Cousins. He thrives in play action. It's his best trait. And we have a really good running back. So they've built this roster around it. They kind of have made that bed now where they have a bunch of good run blockers on the offensive line and bad pass blockers. So now they kind of have to run it. So they couldn't really have changed the offense and I think had success. The best way that they could have improved

would have been to bolster the offensive line, which is pretty clear that they devoted their resources on defense while guards and tackles got signed for big money on the market. And I can see why that was intimidating to the Vikings. They've swung and missed a lot with big offensive line contracts.

They're better at evaluating defense and perhaps knowing their own shortcomings in that area, decided, well, we'll just fill these holes in-house. I don't know when that's worked for them in the past, but I'm not gonna give you a good answer here, Collar. I don't know what really could have changed. Short of investing more in established offensive line veterans, I mean, the running back stable is good. The receiving core, I think, for this offense is good because they're not changing the offense and the tight ends are deep. So I think that this is

a good offense weapon-wise, not a good offense offense blocking wise, but they kind of have to stick with what they've planned with this this Kubiak scheme. Now, Clint Kubiak calling the shots. The only thing that I can think of is that they could have gone all in on the offensive side of the ball. And that just was never something that they were going to do with Mike Zimmer in charge. As long as Mike Zimmer was the head coach of this team, then you were going to put a focus on the defensive side, but, Oh, it looks like I lost my camera. Oh, there it is. I'm back. Okay. Sorry. Lost my camera for a second. But yeah. How long was I frozen? Like.

Oh, a good, a good minute on my end i think oh no okay you weren't reacting to what i was saying i was kind of concerned oh okay well i'm i'm back camera's working again all right uh but they were just never going to do that like they've built this team from the very beginning right from 2014 to 2015 on defense they drafted defense early in the zimmer era they signed people early in the Zimmer era, like Linval Joseph, Terrence Newman, they brought defensive guys in. So they've always had that as their focus. And I didn't expect them to suddenly say, let's get Curtis Samuel and pay him a bunch of money. Or let's, they may have gone after Joe Tooney because I think they were aware

of their offensive line shortcomings. But were you ever going to be able to put an offer on the table that was higher than some other teams? Probably not. And so instead of sort of looking for offensive linemen who were proven at a better price, they did not do that. Even the Austin Blythes that we talked about that were like way down the list, but still capable offensive linemen. They said, no, we'd rather move a tackle to guard. And they've sort of made their bed with that. But I think that if they had maybe pushed all the chips to the middle of the table on

Kirk and maybe this approach sort of shows their lack of belief in Cousins that they just said, you're going to have, hey Hey man, we paid you this much money. You're going to have to figure it out. And that approach hasn't really worked. Even in 2018, their defense was good. 2019, their defense was good and getting a six seed and one win in the playoffs is your best season where your defense was good. And that's sort of what it looks like now. It looks like if things work out, that defense was healthy in 2019. It looks like if things work out now, that that's sort of what you're going to end up with Cousins. And I think that that will be the one thing that I wonder about for a very long time, if they don't have a great season this year, is, but what if you had spent last offseason telling everyone you're changing what you're doing and you're going to go to a more pass heavy offense and you're going to bring in a third wide receiver and you're going to bring in some offensive linemen who are proven and you're going to try to be the top five offense that it usually takes to go anywhere and with this offensive scheme

I do think that there's things Clint Kubiak can do to make her cousins better. I think that there's a lot of them. Will Mike Zimmer let him try to do that would be another question. Sorry that the camera is zoinking out a little bit here again. Maybe it's because I'm waving my arms around as I talk. So let's talk about, you can still hear me, right, Sam? I can hear you great. Yep. I'm seeing some words on the screen, but continue. You sound great. Okay, good, good, good. So let's talk about though, Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen and seeing Justin Jefferson back on the field yesterday, as we talk about range of outcomes made me think, okay, he's very likely going to be back for week one, but does the AC joint sprain give you any sort of hesitation at all when it comes to Justin Jefferson and what he can be this year? I don't think so. You know, the only time that I

can really think of a sore shoulder being a huge impediment is as a blocker, you know, and that's not the most important thing he does I maybe getting off press a little bit which he was the best at in the NFL last year um that could be a small problem but this was a minor injury by all accounts and that's proven by the fact that he's back in one week so I don't think it's going to be a huge issue. I mean, he looks faster to me this year, more confident, just a little smoother on his feet. You can tell that he worked with Mo Wells, who's known for like movement skills and quick twitch. He looks really, really good to me. And even yesterday in the limited time on the field, he looked normal.

So I think it's going to be OK. I don't think it's going to be a huge problem. You know, I do worry about just injuries in general to he or Thielen just because of the longer season, the amount they're going to be used, the target share. Like, I mean, you wonder why Dalvin Cook gets banged up. I mean, look at how many times he touches the ball. Well, the same can be said for Thielen and Jefferson. And Thielen has proven to be very durable.

And Jefferson in his college career and so far his pro career has proven to be durable as well. And the Vikings need to hope that continues. Because I ran a little stat experiment the other day. The Vikings had something like 500 or no, I'm sorry, 817 touches last year on offense, 522 were Dalvin Jefferson and, uh, Thielen that's 64%. So two out of three times that somebody touched the ball on offense, it was one of those three. That's just a massive, uh, uh, target share between those three and diversifying this year. I think,

I think that would be a good play on offense just to preserve everybody a little bit more effectively and to make the offense more unpredictable. If there was only a way to diversify it with other people. I mean, that, that is the thing about getting DD Westbrook at the last minute that when they they signed D.D. Westbrook, we said this is a great idea. Now, I think we assumed he was going to be more healthy than he is right now, but we said this is a good idea.

This is someone who's proven. But we also said Kendall Wright, Michael Floyd, whoever, Tajay Sharp, that there has been a run of these guys who are bottom of the barrel, last signing in $1 million deals, that there's a reason the entire league wasn't all that interested. from guys like Mike Hughes, I don't think, practiced it at all really until the very end when he had an ACL tear. And I think he didn't play until week four or five. So now we're talking about not really having a legitimate wide receiver three until week four or five. And there is also a question to be asked of how legitimate of a wide receiver three D.D. Westbrook even is. I mean, some of his numbers are okay, but some of Kendall Wright's numbers are okay. Like slot receivers who end up with 50 catches with bad quarterbacks. I just

don't really know if they're anything special or just so happened to be who the guy who lined up and ran underneath an average 10 yards of catch, right? Because we kind of see that a lot where catch numbers don't exactly mean that you're like doing anything exceptional. So that's where like for the entire receiving core, I would guess that you're still going to see 70% of the passes go to three or four people. With Jefferson, I do think there's this other part of it that is defenses now care about Justin Jefferson and not being able to practice is not a huge deal. I don't think with the shoulder injury, but he's going to take more shots. I think this year with more people putting the target on his back, I think that he's

going to get the more double coverage for sure. We saw that in 2018 when teams started doubling Thielen and Diggs in every big situation I think we'll see that as well give me your number of like what season that Justin Jefferson has catches yards if you want to do it that way that would mean I'm trying to tie this all back into your 11 win prediction like that would mean they win 11 games if Justin Jefferson does blank they probably can get there yeah um Kirk Cousins said it pretty well a few weeks ago he said that it's for Justin it's not about improvement it's about consistency because if Justin Jefferson repeats last season he's an all-pro every year so you just need to keep doing it over and over and over again um i think he was 88

catches last year 1400 yards um he's got to be maybe a little more of a red zone threat he wasn't necessarily that last year but that's where thielen comes in i think the two of them work very much together in aggregate like if the two of them are combining for 2,300 yards again or 2,500 yards, I don't care how you split up that pot. I just care that you get to the final number. And I think that probably means more than any one individual total. But for Jefferson, I'd like to see more receptions, more targets, because I think he can do a lot with those targets.

He's proven that he can be a yards after catch threat. He can make contested catches. So a target his way has a much better chance of converting than a target anybody else's way on this offense. So give him more chances and good things are going to happen. I'm going to say between the two of them, 2,400 yards, I think that translates to a fantastic offensive season, probably double digit wins. I think that if Clint Kubiak has maybe his way, that he'll be able to design some things to get just to jefferson the football quicker than they did last year every time just to jefferson ran a seven yard out he caught the ball and was wide open i mean it was remarkable that they didn't use it more often because he

just has such a great ability to get his hands on the ball but also to create enough separation to do that off the line of scrimmage that was the thing that they were concerned about coming out of college and he immediately proved that wrong that he could get off the line of scrimmage he could run quick outs and things like that and get a seven to ten yard catch I mean he does that I think maybe twice as much this year and you're moving the offense better. The thing that I hear all the time from this offense is we've got to get explosive plays. We can't have 12, 13 play drives. And I get that. And I think that that theory is correct. That if you run play actions and you have people going deep down the field,

it only takes one play to get 30 yards as opposed to three or four successful plays to get 30 yards as opposed to three or four successful plays to get 30 yards however when you have a guy like Justin Jefferson who can get open on quick routes who can turn a short pass into a long pass like you don't have to work so hard all the time and I wonder if this was part of Stefan Diggs's irritation with the way that the team was sort of designed that Diggs was running these deep posts all the time. And he would get one a game or two, a game where you'd have this huge play.

But if the other team put a safety up over top of him, which I think that they'll do this year with Jefferson, then it was like, Oh, well, they took away Diggs. We saw that in the playoff game with San Francisco. It's like,

Oh, they took away Diggs. Can't throw his way. And there wasn't this adjustment to get him the ball quicker to allow a great playmaker to make plays. And that's one thing that I think in 2018, they actually had right that against the Rams and against the Eagles in 2018, we saw a lot of quick pressure on Kirk cousins, but they threw a lot of screens and things like that to Stefan digs. And he made plays after the catch. That's something I think they need to allow just to Jefferson to do. I don't think they will. I think they're going to sort of stick with how

they're going to do it, which is generally the theme of the Vikings over the last few years. And that Jefferson ends up with, I'll say 80 catches for like 1200 yards that he gets a lot of big plays, but we're still going to go, gosh, should they have thrown it to Jefferson more? And we're still going to end up with that. Jefferson getting a little frustrated that he's not leading the league in receptions and that kind of thing.

And I think that there were some prescient comments about Jefferson, even by Zimmer and cousins last year, but even by Zimmer earlier in this camp about, well, you know, Jefferson's going to have to understand that if he's getting double covered, then other people are open. It's like, yeah, but all the best receivers get double covered. You got to find a way to get that guy the ball. And so I was thinking like when we talk about Zimmer being old school, that seems to be kind of an old school thought. Like, I don't think that everything about him is old school, but that is an old school thought process because the way it's being done in the league now

with a lot of receivers is, oh, you want to double cover us? Well, we're just going to find ways to break through that. And we're still going to get our guy 10 targets no matter what happens in the game. And I'd like to see that with Jefferson. Let me switch to the defensive side and what the range of outcomes are just for the

whole defense. We won't go player by player with this because you could do on almost everybody, but rank, give me a rank of like, here's if it goes right, here's if there are injuries and it doesn't go right, or they fail to gel together because it's a lot of new players. What is the range for the Vikings defense? I'll give you round numbers, I think, between 10th and 20th. It's it's kind of like the 2000 kind of 2019 ish, to be honest with you. I mean, 2019 defense bent a lot, but they were so cohesive that they didn't break in the red zone and they remained good on third down. I think that's what this team has to do to

some extent. I mean, I think they have enough like aging veterans that might be on the wrong side of their prime that I can't say that they're going to be a top five defense. I just can't. You kind of don't always expect when you're going to have a top five defense because you don't know which players are going to be entering their prime. Suddenly they do, like in 2017, and you've got it on your hands. This year, you could say that, go down the line, Patrick Peterson might not be in his prime. Bashad Breeland might not be in his prime. Harrison Smith, Anthony Barr might not be in their primes. If you're expecting an emergent season from somebody, Xavier Woods, maybe. I don't think you're going to get that from Weatherly or Alexander. Hunter's going to be really good. Maybe one of your tackles gets

into this system and just flourishes, but I tend to think they're not going to be on the field or rushing the passer quite enough to make that kind of impact. And Kendricks, it's going to be hard for Kendricks to have a third consecutive all-pro caliber season. That just doesn't happen. I mean, guys have pretty short peaks and he's in his right now and might even be past his. He's been so good the last two years. So I look at a lot of the personnel in that defense and they might be on the backside of their careers. So I can't call them top five. I think that you hope for a top 10 to 12 defense. And if guys get hurt, then you probably drop to 20. You do have enough talent to remain middle of the pack. And if you stop the run like you're supposed to, that probably ensures that you're going to put teams in enough

bad third down positions that you get some three and outs and you force some punts. But, you know, the secondary still could be concerning, I think, if Peterson doesn't improve in the system. If Breland has another one of his erratic seasons, which he has a decent amount of, and Alexander, you know, has always been a good, not great slot cornerback. So I think that you've got kind of a middle of the pack feel to this defense with, um, an upside of being like in the top third of the league. So, um, did you read my article? Cause you'll know the answer to this question and I won't

have to ask you. Um, but did you read my article and it's okay if you didn't, I'm not offended. You've been busy on weathering the storms, the Vikings weathering the storms. No, inform me, Matthew. Okay, good, good, good. So this is a quick math question for you, and this sort of tells you about where the Vikings' defense could end up. If three things are a coin flip chance, so 50% chance, three things, and they all have to hit for you to win, so 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50. What

is the odds of them all hitting? Like what's the percentage chance? Yeah. 12.5. Okay. Did you already know that? That wasn't, you didn't see that in the article or are you just like math inclined? Uh, math. I mean, it's half times, half times half, which is one eighth, which is 12.5. Okay. All right. So you're better at math than I am because I had to ask somebody. But the point that I was making about, I think a bunch of different things is if you say, okay, Daniil Hunter has to get 15 sacks. There's like a coin flip chance that that happens, that these cornerbacks have to be really good.

There's a coin flip chance that happens and that everybody has to gel really well together and they also don't have great quarterback performances against them which is possible considering the quarterbacks that they're playing so all those sort of things are coin flip chance and there's a 12.5 chance of all of those things coming together. And so when you talk about a football team and when you need a certain thing to go, right, the more times you say, and the less chance there is of it happening. And that's exactly how I feel about this defense. It's Daniil Hunter has to carry the entire defensive line because I mean,

when we're hearing Steven Weatherly and DJ Wanham are battling for a position it's like uh did you guys not know that neither one of those players is really proven as a as a pass rusher and you decided that that was going to be okay and we have seen nothing from either player that would say that's going to be an above average position I'm writing an article about how Michael Pierce is going to rush the passer more often. I think he and Tomlinson can create some pressure, but it's not going to be Chris Jones or Aaron Donald or somebody like that. Grady Jarrett, it's going to be push the pocket kind of thing, which against Russell Wilson push away. Right. And what are the chances that, you know, Barr stays healthy for the whole season after we've seen him miss a lot of training camp practices what are the chances that peterson it all sounds like a coin flip to

me which means that a lot of it could go right but enough of it could go wrong to where your top outcome probably is like you said probably like seventh or eighth and your worst outcome is actually kind of what happened last year because if daniel hunter is even gets off to a slow start and let's say it takes him four games before he's the old daniel hunter i mean you could be given free pockets to joe burrow who's coming off an injury and baker mayfield who's great in a unpressured situation and you could just lose because you can't get any pressure on the quarterback. And if Patrick Peterson gets off to a slow start, like this is the thing about lots of football teams, but lots of football teams finish between seven wins and 10 wins.

And that's where you're trying to get past that. And I think the two outcomes that could take this team past where you put them, which I think is probably their ceiling is 11 wins is they have a top five defense or Kirk cousins plays better in those big games than he's ever played before. And well, you know, that's, I don't know. Like, I think that those chances are less than a coin flip of either one of those things happening, which kind of puts them right where you had them just sort of where we started with you saying that you think they're an 11-win team. So give me any thoughts on that. And then I have sort of a quick question or two for you before we wrap up. Yeah. I mean, I think that the and,

and, and phenomenon plays out not only on defense, but on offense and on special teams, all three phases. Like, is Greg Joseph going to be a suitable kicker? And is Britton Colquitt going to shape up and improve his punting? These are all questions that I have about various units. Is the offensive line going to protect? There are so many. Is Clint Kubiak going to be a good play caller? We don't know that. So, and, you know, I don't know if it matters at all,

but if you were hoping for like the preseason to be indicative of what Clint Kubiak can bring as a play caller wasn't, you know, it wasn't great. It wasn't creative. And maybe they were a little hamstrung by feeling like they had to run the ball with Kellen Mond because he hadn't practiced more than two days. I think there's probably some validity to that, but you know, games number two and three, you'd like to see those offensive units move a little bit to, to instill some confidence that this is going to go well. So like, let's just

keep doing the percentages, you know, coin flip, coin flip, coin flip, do it six times. And then, you know, your ceiling, I think it's even lower. Okay. Let me ask you this. Uh, cause we've talked so broadly about this team, a thing we haven't done in a while now, which is talk about the bigger picture of how everyone's going to play this year. Um, what did you think of the fact that the vikings practiced so hard after

the loss to the denver broncos like do you think that players went this is this is great this is what we needed or did they go hey man it was a preseason game what's the deal and this is where i got a lot of these messages of you know who cares it was a pre-season game like i get it and normally i'm with you but it's very clear that the head coach cares and so you can't just say oh it doesn't matter whatever when the next day the head coach goes all in with an 11 on 11 practice that was essentially a scrimmage and works everybody extremely hard and goes to the podium and um you know, goes through the laundry list of things they did wrong angrily. And so I think that a lot of people want to say it doesn't mean anything, but I think it clearly did to Mike Zimmer. So what did you think of that approach to run them right back out there and do a bunch of hard

practicing? I kind of loved yesterday's practice. And I thought the starting offense in particular kind of led the way. And they weren't the ones culpable for the bad game. But I asked Adam Thielen about it before practice. And he said, yeah, his message kind of gives us a chip on our shoulder too because that was an embarrassing performance. He used the word embarrassing um and i thought the starting offense brought a lot of energy we mentioned kirk dropping the you like that which played a little bit corny but i felt that like brian o'neill was really engaged um there were a lot of guys on that offensive line that

were pretty fired up even though they you know were a little shorthanded. Rashad Hill was kind of limited a little bit. Justin Jefferson was kind of limited in his first practice back. But I liked the intensity that was present yesterday. And it made me think back to some practices in like 2016, 17, when that defense was really coming into its own, there were some crazy intense practices that required no message from the head coach. They were just that way. Like that's just kind of the nature of that group. And those practices happened impromptu.

Today's was a little more manufactured because I think there was a clear message sent and they wanted to go out there and prove a point. I mean, that was as much intensity as we've seen in, you know, I guess joint practices upped it a little bit, but it's been a lackadaisical camp to my eye. So I thought yesterday was pretty good for the team actually. And even though it's old school from Zimmer, I mean, you do have to pull the strings once in a while. And Zimmer has, you know, given a lot of vet days and he's got the music playing all practice now. He's softened a little bit. And I think it was probably a good moment to bounce back the way they did. Yep. I totally agree that he had to sort of send a message that

that wasn't going to be acceptable, even if it meant the first team offense getting out there and practicing really hard. Well, they got the day off on Saturday. So you have to prepare them in some way for real game action. And that was the closest thing we've seen in practice, even when they were at us bank stadium. I don't think it was as intense as it was yesterday. But Tyler Conklin walked off the field. We saw some other players that have had injuries.

Kenny Wong was had his knee injury. Cam Smith with a concussion. He's out. And what I think you're seeing is a lot of the players who are sort of on the fringe of things but could make a difference. They're the ones that are kind of getting dinged up here. You mentioned Rashad Hill. And you do have to balance how hard

you practice them with the potential for injury that comes along with that and uh before we wrap here and we might talk about it a little bit later but just give me your quick take do you think that Zimmer should play his starters on Saturday when they go against Indianapolis? I think he will a couple drives. I don't think he should. I don't think he needs to. I think that the game on Saturday proved the point that you need to play the backups again because they struggled so mightily that I think you counter that by playing them more and giving them more experience. The quarterback situation is going to be tough again, because if they don't play cousins, you know, Etling has so little experience and so little future with this team,

in my opinion, Nate Stanley's hurt. So it could be another, you know, a lot of, a lot of reps for Mond and that, that, you know, if Mond isn't comfortable in this offense, if he's still in slow motion, as Mike Zimmer says, it's still going to be tough to get things done. So it could be another ugly game. If you're looking at those $5 tickets on the secondary market, maybe go get some fast food instead. Watch on TV for free.

Because I think this is still a developmental preseason approach this team is taking and mike zimmer might have a losing preseason record for the first time well i think what everyone wants to see is just a better effort not three massive mistakes that get you way behind early on things that are done by players who you expect more of that have played in the league before and that's where the concern came from but I think this one he'll treat like the third one and give the starters maybe a chance but I've always been against playing starters you just can't get them hurt there's the one year where Carolina runs Cam Newton out there and he gets a rib injury or something and it messes up their season or shoulder injury, whatever it was like, you just can't risk that because we saw from Jake Browning the other day,

if someone falls on Kirk Cousins ankle, I mean, your season is just over. So, um, or you're trading for Sam Bradford or something, you know, that kind of thing. So I, I think that they shouldn't, but, um, that maybe they'll treat this one like a third. This is our first time with three preseason games. So I guess we will find out. Sam, thank you for your time. Thank you to everyone who watched on the Bring Me the News screen, stream, I meant to say.

And, you know, if you're new to this, we do the Purple Insider podcast every day, pretty much, right? And also on YouTube, Purple Insider as well. Go check us out there, our our purple insider extras from training camp and purpleinsider.substack.com is where you can read our written work so thanks sam and we'll catch y'all next time