Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Lindsay Rhodes believes in the environment around Sam Darnold

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Matthew Coller and SumerSports Show co-host / former NFL Network personality Lindsay Rhodes talk about her belief in Sam Darnold and how environment is making such a difference with QBs this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me on the show for the very first time, Lindsay Rhodes, former NFL Network personality, a hero broadcaster of my wife's actually, and now co-hosting the Sumer Sports Show with former NFL general manager Thomas Dimitrov. Lindsay, great to have you on the show. Are you becoming more GM-like now that you're spending so much time with Thomas Dimitrov Lindsay, great to have you on the show. Are you becoming more GM like now that you're spending so much time with Thomas Dimitrov? I don't know. That would feel very presumptuous for me to say, but I will say it's the perfect show for me to do for a number of different reasons. And one of them is that, uh, I'm really super into roster building. I think that that's

part of my interest in fantasy. I also do a fantasy show. I think like I have long said that I enjoy the off season as much as I enjoy the season. Like I love draft the draft cycle and free agency and just like trying to put together the puzzle of how to put together a roster, looking at what the flaws were, how to fix them, who the pieces are, and kind of getting out ahead of that, being a first guesser, bringing in all of the data, looking at tape, listening to what people are saying, reading between the lines, like all of that stuff is, is completely my jam and was my jam when I was, you know, doing more of like a journalistic type of role. And so it's, it's really exciting for me to have somebody to bounce that off of that has the experience that Thomas has.

Well, you're filling big shoes of our friend eric eager who now works for the unfortunate carolina panthers at the moment but he was a many-time guest of this show i listened all the time now listening to you as the host i learned so much from thomas's perspective of just how gms think, because I think that we all just assume their entire day is who can I trade for? But there's a lot more politics that goes into that. And I think that's actually a good place to start for us, because if we go back to when Kweisi D'Affomensa and Kevin O'Connell took over, I don't know that in 2022, we all would have said, boy, Minnesota is excited about Sam Darnold in 2024. I think that

would have been hard to see, but I'm curious about your perspective. I mean, even from the way they have torn it down and built it up with a lot of new players here and a new quarterback situation and are one of the maybe surprises of the NFL to be 2-0 at this point. Is this ahead of where maybe you thought they were going to be? Yeah, I think I am. And I think part of the reason that I'm here talking to you today is because I have been a very outspoken apologist, some might say. I would call it maybe supporter of Sam Darnold. And so there is that sense of satisfaction that I have in him being in a good situation finally, and us getting a chance to see that he, maybe he can quarterback at an

adequate level to be on a football field in the NFL. Um, so in that sense, but that said, I didn't necessarily think, you know, Sam Darnold is going to step in and we're going to be like world beaters in Minnesota. I didn't necessarily think that, but I do think that it's, it's such an interesting piece of the puzzle, the quarterback, right? When they moved on from Kirk Cousins and then they're kind of charged with like two years ago in the draft, when they had like five draft picks, some people had them trying to take a quarterback. And that didn't make any sense to me because they had some other holes and they still had Kirk Cousins for a year.

And while you want to get out ahead of that, you also need to be competitive in his last year there. And with that many draft picks, it just didn't feel like they had the capital to get the quarterback that they wanted. Now this year it made a lot more sense, but you don't necessarily want to throw JJ McCarthy on the field right away,

maybe for reasons that we're actually seeing in real time with the other rookie quarterbacks, right? Like he looked very, very good in the preseason in the small sample size that we saw, but maybe that wouldn't have continued in the regular season. Once the, you know, bodies start flying and everything speeds up, maybe CJ Stroud was a little bit of a unicorn in terms of his ability to step on a field and read a defense properly and have everything kind of slow down very quickly from a rookie quarterback standpoint. So maybe even if he had been good enough, maybe it would have been smart not to start him right out of the gate. And I think that Sam Darnold is the perfect high-end backup,

which is I think what they brought him in to be, ultimately, that if he has to play, then you're at least getting a higher-end caliber backup quarterback who can start. Maybe like the Patriots are getting out of Jacoby Brissett, who I think is doing some professional quarterback-type things that can only come with experience, like his ability to evade sacks. His pressure to sack Brissett, I'm talking about now, is really, really lowade sacks, his pressure to sacrate Brissette, I'm talking about now, is really, really low. That's an important component to quarterbacking,

keeping the play alive, extending drives. And so I think that there are some things that maybe go unlooked with certain quarterbacks, because when you take them very high, your expectation is perhaps that they just do all the things. Whatever we put around you should be fine. I took you with the first round pick or the number one overall pick or the number three overall pick in Sam Darnold's case, and you should be able to make up for all of the ills of this team. But maybe when you're a reclamation quarterback, the expectations come down and now you're more realistic about what quarterbacking actually is and what you need around him. And you call plays for him. You put him in positions

that he can succeed in. You don't highlight his weaknesses. You plug in other players from a roster building standpoint that will highlight the strengths and not highlight the weaknesses. And so maybe this is actually a smarter way in some ways to build an NFL roster. Well, and I guess I have been thinking about that too, because it always does come back to who you pay at the quarterback position. And the fact is that the Vikings letting Kirk Cousins go resulted in them being able to build a defense through free agency, which kind of in some ways does violate some principles of the analytic folk

who think that, you know, you shouldn't go crazy and free agency, but this year was unique because Brian Flores was able to bring in one guy in Andrew Van Ginkle that he was familiar with before. Another guy that Minnesota knows extremely well in Blake Cashman and Stefan Gilmore and Jonathan Grenard kind of speak for themselves to, to bring in that much talent in one off season and guys who are either in their prime or older in Gilmore's case, but played very well last season for Dallas. It's not often you get that, that chance to bring in that many players.

Usually it's like a Christian Wilkins and you spend all your money and that's the one guy you get. Or for the Vikings in the past, it was Delvin Tomlinson. That's okay. That's your one big Christmas present. Usually, you know, I guess it's almost like mom and dad got a raise at work and now they could spend more on your Christmas when you have the money that was left there by Kirk Cousins leaving.

And so there's this question of, I mean, we know what J.J. McCarthy, if he turns out to be good with how they can build around the rookie contract. But I almost think there's this question, the NFL, do you take a journeyman and try to pump him up rather than drafting a quarterback and hoping he solves all of your problems? This discussion has not been had. I feel like in a long time, because it's just been so much on try to draft the next Mahomes, try to draft the next Allen. But with so many failures recently, I feel like the Andy Dalton's got to be looking around going, Hey, I've been good for a while. Like why didn't anybody, you know, try to do this, this for me, but it's almost like the way this season has begun has kicked off that discussion again for teams that are in the future

going to try to rebuild. Do we have that journeyman quarterback that Sam Darnold instead of trying to just run out and draft the first guy available at quarterback? Yeah. And that's actually, uh, tomorrow on the Thursday edition of the Sumer sports show, Thomas and I, the whole theme of the episode is going to be about salvaged quarterbacks and how you find the right one and how you built like the whole approach, everything that you just said. So, um, but I do think that this year it's really emerged more than ever as a possible way to approach the position because, uh, I mean, we saw it already with Gino, you know, for the last few years, Gino, a guy that everybody wrote off as a bust. And then all of a sudden he steps on the field in Seattle and like, wait a minute, like he's not, he's not

a, you know, the whole truck versus trailer draft conversation. Daniel Jeremiah likes to call people trucks or trailers. Um, you're either pulling everyone along with you or like you're good enough, but you are being pulled along to a degree. I think a lot of these quarterbacks fit the trailer description. They clearly are not. And what you're looking for in the draft, to be honest, is the truck. You want the next Patrick Mahomes. You want somebody that's like a Josh Allen. You want to hit on that pick and have somebody that can cover up a whole host of ills. And now you have this star franchise quarterback that if it all falls apart.

And by the way, watching the bills last week, it started off really slow. And you're like, oh, Josh, all of it. And but at the same time, if you've watched them and him for a long time, you're like, don't worry, it's fine. It's coming. You know, he will, he'll just adjust. He'll be like, oh, all the things we started trying to do in the first half, they're not working. I'll take over in a different way. Like he just has the ability to do that. So in a perfect world, you want that you want to draft that at quarterback. So in that sense, drafting these quarterbacks that are good enough to be average and play in the NFL, but they're not going to carry a team along with you. That's not what you're looking for. So in that way,

these guys were busts in that sense, but that doesn't mean that they can't play in the NFL and we should throw them away completely. And we have so many examples of that this year. What with Gino, what with Baker, what with Darnold in Minnesota. You've got Carr to a degree in New Orleans, right? I mean, the Raiders who were super invested emotionally at the very least in him, like everybody loved Carr. Carr wanted to be the face of the franchise. He desperately wanted to retire as a Raider and they still were like, sorry, we have to move on. This isn't working. You're not good enough. And then he goes to New Orleans and it still still looks kind of bad and that's the perfect example of taking pieces that look like they're not working literally the pieces are the same but now you just approach it differently with a fresh set of eyes

and say i can make this work we just have to be creative you can't just expect that they can do anything now we have to put them in a position to succeed. And now that's on me as a play caller or as a coach. And now we find out who can coach in this league. And I think in some of these cases, the quarterbacks that just are passed out constantly, like Darnold's a perfect example because I wanted over and over and over again. And I can't tell you how many times going into the year, I was like, we're going to learn this year. We're going to learn this year. And then I felt sheepish at the end of the year by being like, we did not learn this year, but here's why we didn't learn. Here's another excuse.

Like, oh my God, the coach was that bad again. You know, the new coach was still awful or the wide receiver got hurt and he didn't have anyone to throw to her. Like we thought the O-line was better, but the O-line was still crap. Like there, there were always things that kind of held him back in terms of having an environment in which he could succeed. So to know who you're working with. And I think too many coaches and general managers don't get that part of the equation. Or if they get it, they're not able to execute it to the degree that we would like. Right. And the Vikings are blessed to be able to execute it by

this guy who wears number 18, which of course helps quite a bit. And they can always make that argument. I mean, the roster around Sam Darnold in the past, and I went through this in an article and dug as deep as I could. And what I kept coming up with was, wow, receiving wise, offensive line wise, coaching wise, as you mentioned, it's never been anywhere near this. And coaching is hard to objectively measure, but offensive lines, receivers, we have numbers for those. We have PFF to give us the grades on those. He never had Christian Derrissaw and Brian O'Neill blocking for him. And the way the Vikings have run the ball so far with Aaron Jones,

a huge addition in the off season, by the way, spent with cap space that they used because they let Kirk cousins go that they have been able to build a foundation that you can always say, well, team should just build this foundation. But in that case, you would need the best receiver in the league. The one of the best left tackles in the league, one of the best left tackles in the league, one of the best probably offensive play designers for wide receivers and a former coach or a quarterback turned coach himself in Kevin O'Connell who understands that position. And it's been interesting to sort of track Kevin O'Connell's answers about Sam Darnold and about the way that he's tried to help him build his confidence and put him in the right situations and all those things, because I don't even know if Kevin O'Connell fully understood how good Sam Darnold

could be when they put him out there. I mean, in practice, it looks good. And I had heard that it looked good in Carolina at practice at times, but then I think what you're seeing from him is a confidence that he's never had before. I guess I was curious from your perspective, though. Why did you keep buying? Because nobody did. Vegas did not. A six and a half over under. I think most of the national reaction to the Vikings signing Darnold was really that guy. What's he going to do for you?

And now that reaction is quite different. Yeah. For me, it was never like I see something you don't see in him. It was, I think I am just such a strong believer that environment really, really matters for quarterbacks, unless you are again, an outlier quarterback, which we're all looking for. And so again, I'm not saying ever that I was indicating that Sam Donald could potentially eventually become that. I think that's the only thing that we learned over the first handful of years in the league

is that he's not that guy, which doesn't necessarily mean cannot play, cannot work with this guy. And I think just over the years, like so working with David Carr and just tracking his career, how it went. I mean, David Carr, I don't know what he could have been in the NFL because the time clock, the clock ran out. He just ran out of opportunities because at some point when you are behind an offensive line where you're getting sacked more than anyone else in the whole world, like literally in history,

your rookie year, you don't have a chance to succeed. Now you're out of sorts. Now you're not confident. Now you have happy feet. Now you're anxious back there. You can't even do the things that you can do well if you're standing behind an offensive line that you trust and think, and that is settled for you. There are just things that happen that mess everything up. And so at a certain point, a couple of years in, it makes sense that teams where the life cycle for the hiring and firing of the coaches and the general managers is what it is. People give up. They're like, this isn't working. Move. And this is your big piece. And this is the headliner of it. And if if you're not winning, then that person has to pay the price.

And so I think that there are just so many examples of that. And nobody wants to hear about all the gray areas. Everybody has much more fun with their barroom conversations about this guy being a bust or this guy being the greatest of all time. Those are the only conversations that people want to have. I'm really interested in asking the next questions about, well, why? And it's happening right now with Bryce Young where people are saying, well, the truth is he's just too short. And I'm like, okay, I get that that is clearly a factor for him, but you can't just boil down to that. It cannot be boiled down to that because

Kyler Murray is the exact same height. So why is he not too short? So clearly the problem is not that he's too short. It's that he's too short without a B or C like there's something else to it because for future evaluation of quarterbacks saying Bryce Young is 5'10 and that's too short, so you should never consider a 5'10 quarterback, that's clearly not the answer. You've got Russell Wilson at 5'11. Russell Wilson for a number of years was fine. He was good. Maybe because they worked around the height and they came up with a different game plan

so that that wasn't as problematic for him. Whatever it was, Drew Brees, short, Hall of Famer. That's not the issue in and of itself. It might be that if you are that size, you also have to be a certain weight. So you are maybe more durable. Or it might be that if you are that short, you have to have something that is crazy outliery in terms of arm strength or speed or elusiveness or something like that but to just boil it down to too short well yes that's clearly a factor my brain's like i can't compute this like it doesn't make sense mathematically that's not the only part of the problem because there's too many outliers to it even one outlier is too many, right? So for me, the Darnold thing. Also, I think it goes back to, I think we can all relate to this to a degree.

So I'll use an example for me as a TV host. I was, and maybe this is not a good analogy, but this is how I relate. So me as a TV host for a number of years at NFL Network, I did shows that were structure shows. And there are different types of TV, sports TV shows. Some you go on, it's like a postgame show and it's kind of like you're just winging it. You're just okay, we're going to say, we're going to say hi for 25 seconds. And then we're going to go to a 15 second VO that says that to a tongue of ILO is on IR. It's going to be video of him and the concussion of on the field. Then we're going to go to a 15 second soundbite and it's going to be Mike McDaniel talking about why they put them on IR and what this means. And then we're going to go to a graphic of the dolphins. And this is only going to be 20 seconds long. It's going to be the dolphins with and without to a tongue of ILO in the last couple of years. And then you're going to go to a different location. You're going to be walking

this whole time. And now you're going to show up at a desk with two people. You're going to have a minute and a half to have a conversation and that's it. And I know exactly where he's going. And I know exactly where he's going because they have to have already pulled the right B roll to match and graphics and stuff like that. Visual support. The whole show is like that. The whole show is tell the story in 15 seconds, which means that I spend my day writing each 15 seconds to the best of my ability. I am in structure and I can kick ass in that structure. Now, let's say I go do that show and they have an intern running teleprompter and the

teleprompter, she doesn't know how to run the teleprompter maybe. And we're not in the right spots. And so the structure that I was prepared for is just, it's not even there. And now, but I'm still in a structure show. Now I still have to tell this story in 15 seconds, but the 15 second story that I spent a lot of time trying to most efficiently cram value added information into the story, rather than just saying, you know, Patriots and Jets, Thursday Night Football, Foxborough, AFC East Affair. Maybe I've taken my time to actually like write something in there that's a fun nugget or a stat or something like that. Well, now I might not be able to process it quickly.

My point is you've taken me out of the structure that the whole show is. And so I might not look my best. And nobody at home is going to go, oh, the teleprompter operator just completely stopped moving the teleprompter. And she doesn't have access to any of the information or the ways in which she played or prepared for this. Whereas a different host who doesn't care necessarily about spending all of the time to try and make that 15 seconds, the best 15 seconds that it's ever been, they're going to succeed in that situation because they didn't spend any time that day talking about it. So take them out of structure.

They're fine operating out of structure. So it's just like, what is the environment? How did we set you up to succeed in the environment that we asked you to be in? And is it realistic for us to judge the way that you performed in this specific situation when what we asked you to do was something that was impossible for you to judge the way that you performed in this specific situation when what we asked you to do was something that was impossible for you to deliver on. So I kind of look at, I think everyone has in their own lives, different examples that they can look to where you're like, I'm not being set up to do the thing that you want me to do. You're, you know, your boss is asking you to

turn something around, but you're like, you're also asking me to do eight other things. How am I going to do this in a way that you're happy with it at the end? I think that those sorts of things exist for people who are making millions of dollars too and for quarterbacks. And so sometimes it's worth just pulling back and going, what was he supposed to do in that situation? Like what did we, who, who is maybe the best person in the whole wide world that's ever existed at hosting would be much better at doing that job in that situation than me flipping the switch from structure to now we're not in structure and really calmly and casually relay everything that was in your brain from five hours ago.

And you wrote that 15 seconds, but you know, that doesn't mean that I can't do the show if the structure is competent, right? It just means that if the structure is going going to fall apart you might need somebody different so i feel like the quarterbacks are are an example like that too and we all have those different examples in our heads that um kind of can relate so one hell of a metaphor by the way well done on that did it make sense not that anything would go wrong behind the scenes in television. For my wife's career, she says everything's perfectly fine. She has never mentioned any issues at all with producers or technology or anything.

So purely hypothetical on your part. But let me follow along with this. It's kind of funny to think of Kevin O'Connell as a tele a teleprompter guy it's wearing the twitch for sam darnold like just matt rule was the teleprompter operator okay matt rule was the teleprompter operator to be clear right i guess yeah but now we're gonna have to call sam darnold ron burgundy because he just needs to read what's on the thing and then but he wrote it too he wrote it too that's all I just want to follow up my teleprompter metaphor with, I wrote it. But you know, let me throw the, let me just jump on, on, on board with this metaphor with Sam Darnold, because there with Bryce young, I tend to think that he has lost his confidence

entirely. So if you went on television and you had something go wrong and then you just screwed it up entirely. I'm sure you, I'm sure that Bryce young went home every game last year and just beat himself up. And I compared it to getting in a car accident that you don't want to get back on the road and you're always looking and kind of, Oh, is everybody going to stop around me? You get T-bone every turn you take, you're kind of looking over your shoulder. That's what he looked like to me.

He looked like he had enough pass protection to throw the ball in a lot of instances, but he was just freaked out. And I actually think from Sam Darnold's perspective, nothing could have been better than him going and spending that time in San Francisco, because I was watching some Carolina for him. And the word that gets used about him in the pocket is jittery.

And he did look jittery at Carolina. And the word that gets used about him in the pocket is jittery. And he did look jittery at Carolina and this year he has not. And if he maintains that confidence that it's almost like it helped him step away, reassess his own game, try to under himself, understand himself better, even grow another year. Young folks like that can grow faster than us. But you know, I think that that really helped him and probably would help someone like Bryce young at the same time, Lindsay, we can't save every crappy quarterback who some guys are just bad and there's nothing you can do. And I think until we saw him play, it was altogether possible in my mind, like he might just not be any good. Right. And then there might be something that doesn't click with him. And I think what we've seen is no, actually what we're talking

about, it is possible to, to rebuild him. Yeah. Well, I mean, in the case of like Bryce, for example, I mean, we've seen him look bad in ways that we know he's not bad at, like, because we've seen him do it in college. No, you know, don't preach to this choir college and NFL is totally different, but we're talking about some basic things where you can tell that it's not that he can't do that. It's that he's trying to do so many different things that he is just not calm enough to do the things that we know he can do. And I think your confidence analogy is a really strong one. I think if, if you going back to TV, if I had a producer, it was constantly yelling in

my ear and constantly made me feel like I'd blown it, I would not come with the confidence that is necessary to be like, whatever you want to throw at me, I can handle it, which is now kind of how I feel having done like three years on my own. I mean, if you'd asked me to come on a show like this four years ago or whatever, when I was at NFL Network and I was more in that hamster wheel of turning out content where I wasn't able to just sit and take it all in and go, what do I think about this? And by the way, Flex Muscle is about talking about it. Nobody was asking me for my opinion. Then I was asking all the questions. So if you would ask me to do this conversation, then I wouldn't have been able to. But it was because my confidence, first of all, I didn't have reps, but my confidence was low at doing this. Um, and,

and now I'm fine. And so it's a totally different, it's an environment where you feel like I feel good about my ability to do this versus I didn't feel good about it previously. It's one of the things that I actually think is the biggest problem with the conversation surrounding Bill Belichick getting back in the league as a head coach. I think, yes, historically, he has been one of the best, the best coach. And from an X's nose standpoint, and I think he got lucky to a degree that he had Tom Brady and Tom Brady was so self-motivated and so willing to, he was so hard on himself that Bill Belichick being hard on him didn't matter because it worked on him for a while until it didn't. But I think with Mac Jones, what we saw there is his inability to relate to human beings and the fact that somebody who is young and

inexperienced, you cannot treat them the same way as someone who's been in the league for 15 years and knows that they can execute. You can talk to that person differently because they have life experience that leads to confidence. If you have somebody who's literally in year one and you're like, gosh, why didn't you do that? Like you can't talk to that person the same way because you're going to lose them. You just will. And it's not about being mentally tough. I mean, some people can handle the criticism better than others but there's no way that anyone is walking into their first year in the league

with all of the confidence in the world that's legitimate because it's not earned that they can do anything like we're seeing it with Caleb right Caleb who has all the confidence in the world now walking off the field the other day did not look like the same guy he just didn't look like it he looked like he was questioning himself and I think it's good that he's questioning himself to a degree, as long as he knows in his soul that he can still do it. And he's not actually questioning like, oh my God, can I, can I succeed here? But it's good that he now is like maybe at a different place, but you got to know how to talk to that guy. You got to know how to say like in Kevin O'Connell is in a position here

where if he goes to sam darnold and he's like whoa and he's gassing him up in a way that he's probably never been gassed up before we're gonna see more and more of the good sam darnold like we just will and there's stuff to gas up that isn't that isn't um that isn't uncalled for like sam darnold what he did in that fourth quarter without justin je Jordan Addison or TJ Hawkinson is something that we all need to take note of in our evaluation of Sam Darnold, because yes, it's great to have Justin Jefferson there. Um, and, and that throw out at the back of the end, so I was freaking so great. Like, I can't tell you that was the one play where I like got up off my couch and was so excited this weekend but um in the fourth quarter uh the throws so took a sack and then on third and five he passed for 11 to powell so picked up

converted on a third down good there's a uh you know a tricky situation you need to see quarterbacks that can get you out of that second and eight incomplete third and eight pass for 26 to naylor uh second and eight pass for six to month third and two pass for five to Naylor, uh, second and eight pass for six to month third and two pass for five to pal. So now on in the fourth quarter, he's converted three third downs already, right? Like these are important things. It's not just that he won. It's not just that the peripheral stats are good. It's that he is, he knows how to quarterback and he's doing it without some of those pieces that I think otherwise we'd be like, yeah, but he has Justin Jefferson and Justin Jefferson can do it with

anybody. Right. Like, cause we saw that last year too. Um, he's Sam Darnold's playing well. Folks, us cellular notice that the way we use our phones has gotten ironic. We try to put our phones down for dinner, but the menu is on a QR code. That's ironic. We hit like on social media posts that we don't actually like. Ironic. Which is why U.S. Cellular created UsMode to help us reconnect with each other and use our phones less ironically. A phone company wanting people to use their phones less?

Ironic. Let's find us again with us mode from us cellular visit us cellular.com slash built for us to get started i also think when we talk about gassing somebody up i mean trusting sam darnold in that situation late in the game throwing on those plays i mean kevin o'connell could have played it safe, punted the ball away, said my defense is playing great today. Go get a stop defense and maybe they still win the game at that point. But instead he was pushing down the gas pedal saying, I trust you, Sam Darnold. And he, he did not really love my question about that the other day. Cause I don't think, I don't think he really wants to go there with

I'm the reason Darnold is succeeding. I mean, that sounds conceited on his part. It's you can kind of let other people say that, I guess. And I think it is true in part. But he also wants Sam Darnold to get the credit for leading that drive and so forth. But if you don't trust them there, and even in the first game, they went forward on a fourth down, scored a touchdown. If you don't trust him there, then he's going to notice that you don't trust him there, and even in the first game, they went for it on a fourth down, scored a touchdown. If you don't trust him there, then he's going to notice that you don't trust him there. Yes. And then it's not that you immediately lose him, but the confidence that we're talking about, I think, in a delicate situation has to remain high.

So let me ask you this, though. Now that you've seen Darnold play well and fully understand we've been checking ourselves all week. It's only two games, whatever. But now that you've seen this, you've seen the way the Vikings defense is built together with a lot of veteran players, what they have around Sam Darnold. I had this. I asked somebody else the other day. I'm very curious about your opinion. How many NFC teams are decidedly better than the vikings not a vikings podcast leading

question this is a unbiased former nfl network host you look at all the teams question objectively how many teams better than the vikings okay let me pull up the nfc really quick um oh my god uh look at this like just the teams um that are two and oh, right now, new Orleans, Minnesota, Seattle, and Tampa. God, football is so fun. No one would have said that. I think, well, ironically, we have to go outside the top seven to find the teams that like, we really think are going to absolutely be there in the end. So Philadelphia, I'm not sure, to be honest,

I'm not, I'm not sure Philadelphia narratively. We, we think that they're better than just about everybody. And we think that there'll be in it till the end, but we saw them fall apart down the stretch last year. And, you know,

I have yet to totally put my finger on what that is. I think part of that was, I mean, there were certainly offensive pieces, but part of it was a defense and secondary. Um, and anybody who plays fantasy knows that you started your wide receivers against the Eagles, which felt counterintuitive, but it was what it was. Uh, the defense has not been good this year either. So, so far, I don't know if I can check that box and saying Philadelphia is a hundred percent. I know that for sure is better than them. Uh, I'm confident that Detroit will be there at the end, even though they are coming off that

loss to the bucks. I thought that that was a matchup situation that I actually predicted. Um, let's see San Francisco. If they get healthy down the stretch, I think that that's a better roster. Dallas. I don't know. I don't know. Dallas is like a, I'm not sure about them. God, really looking at these rosters. I'm not a hundred percent. This is a good question because there aren't that many that you're like, yeah, they're going to have a tough time getting through these teams. Or these are the teams that are obviously taking up playoff spots that they're not going to be able to get past. I just, I'm not sure that I'm seeing that Tampa. I think I'm buying, and I'm not saying this in comparison to Minnesota necessarily, but I think I'm buying, and I'm not saying this in comparison to Minnesota necessarily,

but I think I'm buying Tampa. Um, and the fact that they have a little bit more continuity and experience, I think on the offensive side of the ball in terms of Baker Mayfield's a little, he's a step further in his reclamation development, um, with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. And the fact that they're all still together, even though it's a different OC, I think that that, uh, that's, that's important. Um, I think Arizona is going to be a sneaky team. That's going to sneak up on people this year. Uh, I think they're a lot better, but, but your point is well taken. And then new Orleans, I don't even, I don't even know, man, because, because what's happened with new Orleans, I think normally you would look at them and go, yeah, two and oh, small sample size.

You know, there might not be any there there. And that's how I would definitely be talking about them if they hadn't made the changes that they made, if they didn't look as different because the pieces are all the same. So there's on the one hand, you want to look at the roster and go, but it's it's that we know how this ends, right? Like there's no it's car and it's, you know, and they didn't get it done last year and they weren't particularly good. And this is going to come back to the mean. It's going to revert to the mean. But I don't think in this case that that's necessarily true because

they've just, Clint Kubiak has shaken everything up. He's taking those pieces and he's approaching them in a completely different way. Like cars under center rate is through the roof. We have all heard about the motion and the play action. They also ran an insane number of either 21 or 20 personnel. They've had two running backs on the field at a crazy high rate after only having them on the field at the same time for 34 total plays last year. Like this is Clint Kubiak has, it's like, he didn't even bother looking at tape last year. Or if he did, he was like, what not to do because he's completely using them differently this year, which is what makes me think that they have legs because I think it's related

to the usage and not just a fluky matchup here or there. So I think that the saints are going to be somebody to contend with, but this is a good exercise because you're totally right. And Flores, I think is a huge part of this because even going into the year thinking, Oh, I don't know if Sam Darnold can get it done, but if he can, I think he'll, he'll be propped up by the fact that Justin Jefferson is there. And my favorite off season stat, by the way, from a fantasy standpoint was that Justin Jefferson,

who people were like, Hmm, with the quarterback, should I not waste a first round pick? Uh, looking back at his five games last year with quarterbacks, should I not waste a first round pick? Looking back at his five games last year with quarterbacks not named Kirk Cousins, he averaged 18.6 fantasy points in those games, which would have over the course of that regular season been good for wide receiver five. Like that was with the guys that you know that the Vikings trotted out there at quarterback last year, which were three different guys in those five games. So anyway, um, I think he is quarterback proof to a degree. Um, that said, I think what Brian Flores has done to the defense and the pieces that you mentioned earlier, having brought in, in the off season, because they had money available from not resigning Kirk cousins. I think that,

I think that that's the key piece to this that will help them fly under the radar. I think the, the point of Purdy coming up to him after the game and saying what he said, I think that that's, that's telling there's, there's some, they're there. I think that they're going to be a problem defensively. And I think that's,

what's flying under the radar here and, and is going to continue to allow them to sneak up on people in terms of like narratively, you know, like not getting enough love on, you know, SportsCenter, NFL Live or anything like that. It's interesting because I think even just a couple of years ago, you started every season by saying, well, Drew Brees is going to be there. Aaron Rodgers is going to be there. So who else is going to work around them in the NFC? Now you look around and go, well, okay. I mean, I think that about five or six of these guys are very, very good quarterbacks. I think Dak is a great, is a great

quarterback, but he's not Drew Brees and he's not Aaron Rodgers. And the same thing goes for Jared Goff. And the same thing goes for Purdy. I have a ton of respect. I thought Purdy battled like crazy in that game and made a lot of great throws, but there's nobody in the NFC where you go, oh, well, you're going to lose that game because that guy's going to put up 350 and four touchdowns and there's no stopping him. There are answers to every single NFC quarterback. And some of them, there are really easy answers in like Carolina or, you know, some teams that just have no quarterback situation at all. The Giants, as the Vikings found out. And that limits the number of teams that you're really scared of making the playoffs.

But there's also a lot of Spider-Man meme going on where you mentioned Tampa Bay and like the Vikings and the Saints. These teams are kind of looking right in the mirror at each other at this point. So what separates it is probably sustainability and probably health and schedule and all those things that go into it. And then, of course, you have to win the games you're supposed to win. The Vikings are going to play the Titans. They're going to play the Jaguars. Like these are games that they can't blow if they're going to compete because the schedule

is not easy at any point. Before we wrap, I want to ask you what you think of the old Houston Texans that the Vikings are facing here. I mean, they come off this big win. Everyone's talking about, oh, by the way, you probably have to face a team that's even better. And certainly a quarterback that I, if we were doing all quarterback draft, I'd probably taken my top three or maybe four in CJ Stroud. So are you viewing this Texans team as Superbowl bound potentially? Yes. A hundred percent. The Texans I think are absolutely in that conversation. They have as much right to be in that conversation as anybody else. CJ Stroud is, I mean, this word's overused, but I think that he is very unicorny, right? In terms of the fact that he was able to do what he did as a rookie is something that

I think I maybe even didn't respond to enough in the sense that I was like, oh, well, maybe that's happening now. And so Caleb can do it too. Like I, I didn't necessarily give it as much consideration as to maybe just being him specifically being able to transition the way that he did and how special that was. Um, their wide receiver group is insane. Nico Collins. And I think people are starting to catch on to this, this year. I was saying all offseason, Nico Collins is elite. He is in that conversation.

You want to have a conversation about the guys that we put there now, which are Justin Jefferson and Jamar Chase and Tyreek and Amonra St. Brown is up there and AJ Brown. Nico's there. Nico's there. And the only reason in fantasy drafts, in my opinion, that he wasn't going in that tier is because they had three guys that were so stinking good that you had to worry about target distribution and whether or not

he could even get the ball to the degree that you would need him to, to have a huge fantasy points. But from a just pure talent standpoint, Nico in every possible direction profiles as an elite wide receiver. And so I think that that, I was always pretty confident that he was going to be the one. You were going to bring in Diggs and Diggs was going to have to play a different role. And I think that Diggs' role

is probably a little bit like Keenan Allen's role has become over the course of his career, where he loses a step later and he clearly wasn't the same on those longer um, like longer routes on those deep routes. And so then the chargers just brought him closer to the line. He was a short intermediate guy and he crushed it. And that's a high percentage play. And, uh, he also was their number one target, but with a bullet for reasons that had to do with injuries

around him. And that's not something that digs is going to have. But I think if you put him in that type of a role, then he still can succeed because those are the things he can do. Well, tank Dell is a guy who you're only going to target like three times a game, but you're going to have, he's going to be very like what we've seen from Alec Pierce so far this season. Uh, tank Dell is going to give you that a few times this year, cause you're just going to, you're going to find him in space. You can't cover all of these guys. They're so good. And then the addition of Mixon and Mixon is banged up. And so we're keeping an eye on that certainly for this game. That could be an area in which the Vikings dodge a bullet going into this game. But I think he's a good fit for this offense in maybe a way that he wasn't necessarily in

Cincinnati with Joe Burrow who wanted to operate out of the gun and didn't like going under center. So that's just the offense. And then you look at the defensive side of the ball and the pieces that they have there are insane. Also, I look at some of the ways in which they've popped in the last couple of games is the run defense and the lack of success. If you look at running back success rate against the Texans, going back to like the second half of last season, the Texans are crushing. Like you do not have a good success rate running into this defensive line. Jonathan Taylor was held to 48 rushes on 16 carries. That's Jonathan Taylor. That's a three yard per pop average. That's not a win for the Colts in that game. And then this past week, DeAndre Swift, I don't have

the numbers in front of me. I want to say it was like 13 rush attempts for 18 yards. He had a negative 44 rushing yard over expectation number. And only one of, I want to say 16 rush attempts against that Texans defense was considered successful in terms of success rate. So this is going to be a really tough challenge for the Vikings running backs. And that's where I'm actually interested where I want to put my eye this week, because I think Aaron Jones is an absolute stud. But what's going on with the backfield? Like he was used a lot in the passing game this past week. But in terms of just rushing volume, Ty Chandler's playing a big role there. And so that's where I'm going to ask you a question about what you expect that to look like this week against this particular defense.

I think, I mean, that's a great observation and, uh, D'Amico Ryan's stopping the run does not surprise me. Um, but to your question, I think that some of it last week was the fact that Aaron Jones got banged up in the middle of the game. He only left for maybe a quarter or so, or half a quarter, but still he was in the injury tent when they had that big drive where Ty Chandler picked up a lot of his 82 yards. So that was definitely part of it. But I will say that Ty Chandler has been growing

and growing in their trust for him. And he has special burst. He has that juice guys talk about. He gets the ball and his acceleration is through the roof. I still think that they trust Jones a lot more, uh, pass protection on the 97 yard touchdown. If you watch Aaron Jones, he pops the defensive tackle. Uh, usually you don't see a running back giving help up the middle on a, on a defensive tackle, but he pushes him back just enough for Darnold to step up and throw that ball. High IQ plays like that Aaron Jones has

all over the field. So they're always going to trust him more. But if Ty Chandler looks like he's getting hot and he's flying out there, then they're going to go to him and it might end up being a little bit closer to 50-50 than I thought it was going to be. But that's really just because Ty Chandler is doing more than maybe we expected from what we've seen from him in the past. I know that you have to get to practice. And so I don't want to keep talking here. It just struck me when you were talking about Aaron Jones. And I remembered just from a likability standpoint, he's one of the most likable guys in the NFL. Like you brought a veteran who is good at his job, but is also such a good locker room guy.

Like I've never met anybody who's met Aaron Jones, who didn't absolutely adore Aaron Jones. So locker room guy, Justin Jefferson, we've all talked to this off season about how he handled his contract and contrasting that with some of the ways that other wide receivers handled their contract, which by the way, I don't, I don't fault at all. I just think it's really special that that's not the way that Justin Jefferson handled it. Um, he's so likable, right? Like, so locker room situation that could be really, really good. Uh, I think Sam Darnold is a guy that people will rally around and want to root for, for sure. And, and these are just a handful of names that keep popping into my head, but sometimes those teams that catch fire are teams that just click in the locker room.

They have enough to get it done on the field, but then there's just something special about the chemistry and about the way that they come together and they want to get it done for each other that really pushes them past the point that you think that they should go. And maybe that's something we should start thinking about when we're talking about how this team stacks up against the rest of the NFC. That might be an intangible that goes unnoticed, but perhaps shouldn't. That's a great point. And I think that O'Connell and Kweisi Dafflementa have curated this roster to have only guys that they feel like would be good fits. Sometimes we as reporters,

this is by far the best locker room we've had as far as talkers, communicators. And I'm like, you know, it's not surprising that maybe the head coach and the general manager are big talkers and really good communicators. And that's the type of players that they found, but also veterans. I mean, if you've been through as much as you have for Aaron Jones and you've been a fifth round draft pick and turn yourself into a superstar who has one of the highest yards per carry ever in history. There's probably something there that goes beyond just how fast you are. And we've started to find that out with him. He is an incredible guy to talk to for sure. The Sumer sports show,

you Lindsay Rhodes and Thomas Dimitrov, former NFL GM. There's not too many former NFL GMs out there doing podcasts and you got the best ones. So I always enjoy listening for your and Thomas's insight. I love the chemistry starting to come together there. It's a, it is very cool. So I'm happy for you doing the show excited for it. And I hope we can talk again soon. This was a really great time, Lindsay. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed it.