Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Lions lose, open the door for the Vikings in the NFC North

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about the Lions losing, possible scenarios if the Vikings do not overtake Detroit in Week 18 and the Eagles making a case as the top NFC team Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here. It is a Purple Insider After Dark as we react to a pretty wild day in the National Football League, starting with the Detroit Lions losing to the Buffalo Bills, which could potentially have a significant impact on the Minnesota Vikings. Also, the game that is just wrapping up, just put a bow on it, the Green Bay Packers, 30-13 over the Seattle Seahawks, at least with four minutes left, but plenty of time to fire it up and feel pretty safe about that result. Now, if that had just happened with Geno Smith playing, then we would say, eh, shrugs, okay. All the Vikings will face that Seattle team next week, and they've been up and down.

However, Geno Smith got hurt in this game, and it looked like a knee injury of some significance because Geno Smith had to come out of that game, and he did not return. They had to go to Sam Howell who played horrendously. You cannot overstate how poorly Sam Howell played in that game. So here we are. What a time to be alive for the Minnesota Vikings as they now have a chance to chase the NFC North crown.

And I'm sorry, for some reason, I'm not seeing comments showing up on my screen here. Let me try to open and reopen that. Yeah, not seeing them on my screen. I can see them. I got on my phone, so I'll be able to read them, but I, for some reason, can't put them on the screen right now. So I apologize for that, but questions, comments, thoughts, and reactions to the day today where we see the Detroit lions fall. And it also wasn't just the way in which they fell. It was also the fact that they lost several more key players in the process, that three more players that are of significance to the Detroit Lions, including Elaine McNeil, who is a really good defensive tackle that has caused a lot of problems in the past for the Minnesota Vikings. It appears has a significant knee injury that he could be out for week 18. And then also, also Carlton Davis, their outside cornerback,

who was a big acquisition for them this off season and has been a pretty good player. He's a physical cornerback that could make a difference as well for that game in week 18 between the Vikings and the Lions. So let me just kind of lay it out for you to my understanding of playoff scenarios. And if I need to be corrected, feel free to correct me on this one. But my understanding of the Vikings situation is this, that the Detroit Lions would still have a tiebreaker if both teams ended up with the same record. The reason being that Detroit lost to an AFC team while the Vikings lost to two NFC teams. So that tiebreaker right there would make the difference. And that's the second tiebreaker down is the conference opponents and the record against conference opponents. So that would give

the edge to the Detroit lions. But the thing is, and I know that they lost to Buffalo and I know they lost to the very, very likely MVP in Josh Allen, But Jared Goff could not have done much more in this football game. Throws for five touchdowns. What was it? About 400 yards that he threw for their offense. Moved the ball the entire day against a Buffalo defense that throughout most of the season had been pretty good. And yet they still end up losing because they could not stop anything at all that the Buffalo Bills were

doing to them. Nothing whatsoever that the Bills were doing. And Josh Allen, again, is very, very special, but they were running the ball successfully. They were throwing underneath whenever they wanted to. They could not get to Josh Allen. They've just got nobody left. They lost Aiden Hutchinson. They lost several other D linemen. They've lost linebackers. Anzalone is already out. Now they've lost corners. They pretty much have those two safeties left in Brian Branch and then Joseph there.

And that's pretty much it for their starting lineup now on defense. And that makes it possible that Detroit could lose another game. And if the Vikings went out, they need to have a better record than Detroit to get that number one spot in the NFC North. Now here is the twist to that. If the Vikings were to win out and Detroit loses to either Chicago, and of course the Vikings have to beat Detroit at the end to get that better record or however it could happen. I guess that's the most likely way that it could happen would be the Vikings winning out, beating Detroit in week 18. So that's plausible considering they can't stop anything on defense and what Detroit has coming up before their game in week 18 with the Vikings,

they play Chicago next week. So a very winnable game, no matter who's playing defense for them, but they did almost lose on Thanksgiving day to Chicago. So that is far from just a, a total guarantee. Uh, and then they play San Francisco and that's where it could be very interesting for Detroit because San Francisco has its warts and they've lost a lot of close games and they've lost players to injury, but San Francisco can still, when it's not raining against the Rams, like it was the other night, they can still move the football. and if San Francisco can run the ball and control the game all day long against Detroit two weeks from now it is possible that Detroit could lose that game but nothing will really matter for the Vikings as by the way they are in the playoffs now so how

about that well there's so much happening my head's spinning a little bit here trying to run through these uh scenarios and everything that's going on but. My head's spinning a little bit here, trying to run through these scenarios and everything that's going on. But we should stop for just a second and say the Minnesota Vikings are in the playoffs at the beginning of this season, over under of six and a half. How many prognosticators, schedule pickers, all the gamblerslers how many of those people would have had the Vikings in the playoffs period much less by December 15th they get into the postseason with the Seattle loss an incredible accomplishment for everybody for Kevin O'Connell, Kweisi Adafo-Mensa, Sam Darnold,

Justin Jefferson the players they brought in, Harrison Smith, back to the playoffs for Harrison Smith for the first time since 2022. He gets to go. And before that, it had been 2019 and 2017. So another shot late in his career to go to the playoffs. I mean, Sam Darnold, how about that? A a guy that last year his team was going into the playoffs around this time he's standing on the sideline holding a clipboard for Brock Purdy watching him take a team into the playoffs watching him take a team all the way to the Super Bowl and now Sam Darnold has a chance to do that himself. I mean, I know there have been many times this year where we've had to kind of stop and take a second to look around and go, wow, we never saw this coming.

I, at the beginning of the season, thought they could compete for a playoff spot. I remember setting the bar for a successful season as being, hey, if they get to the last week of the season and they end up in the race for the playoffs on that last week, and they have a relevant game against Detroit, maybe to get it in the post season, then it's a successful year. Well, now they might end up having a relevant game against Detroit to win the entire division twist on all of this is, and I'm going to try to not make your head spin like mine is sometimes when looking at playoff scenarios, but here is the little bit of a twist on that. If the Vikings win out and the Eagles went out and they both go 15 and two. So they have the same record as the Eagles.

The Vikings as of right now would get that tiebreaker over the Eagles as of this moment. And I guess if they went out, then that would mean nothing would really change until then. And they would get the tiebreaker. That is my understanding using the ESPN playoff machine. If someone understands this differently, feel free to please let me know. But at least I was running that in the ESPN playoff machine. And that's what I came up with, is that the Vikings would end up with the spot in the number one seed if they were to win out and Philly wins out and Detroit loses one more game. So it's all right in front of the Minnesota Vikings. And if Gino Smith is out next week, then there is the potential for the Vikings to face Sam Howell in Seattle. Now the Seattle game

was one that I was thinking about quite a bit, really all season long. Because when you look at the schedule, you go, okay, they face the Bears on Monday night, and then they have to go to a difficult place to play in Seattle the very next week. How are they going to be able to do that? That's tough. A short week, go on the road. Geno Smith could get hot. That's a pretty good team. They were just leading the division until they played the football game tonight. So how are they going to figure that out now? Either Geno Smith will be playing hobbled potentially after missing the rest of that game. And if he could have come in, it was close enough where he would have fought his way back on the field, but he looked like he couldn't even walk much less get out and play. So that puts his

status up in the air for next week. That could be one of those lucky breaks that the Vikings get. And that you need for every team in order to win 15 games in the NFL. You certainly need some breaks. That would have to be one of them for Gino Smith if he can't play or if he is not at 100%. And watching Seattle tonight, their offensive line is miserable. The Green Bay Packers ripped through that offensive line. That's how they got to Gino Smith. Sam Howell, who always holds the ball too long and throws interceptions he had no shot whatsoever they couldn't really run the ball successfully the only concern for the Vikings is that Seattle does have some really explosive players on the defensive side Boye Mafe was in the face of Jordan Love a few times Leonard Williams is a good player they've got some good players in the secondary but if they're

playing Sam Howell or if Geno Smith cannot have the same type of explosiveness in his throwing because he has a leg injury or doesn't have the same base or even the same pocket movement that gives the Vikings a pretty significant advantage so that injury will be something to watch going forward and of course a lot of this won't make a big difference if they don't beat the Chicago bears tomorrow. That is one where I have said all week long, I don't think that you should just write off the Chicago bears and assume that you're going to be able to beat them because through the years there have been enough things that have happened between the Vikings and the Bears that you always have to consider that possibility that the Bears could win

the game. So the Vikings have to get there first before we can really discuss any of these other things. But the Bears are down bad. Seattle might be down bad next week. Then you're talking about a potentially huge game against the Green Bay Packers. And that is something else to discuss here too. The Packers have looked really good lately. They have looked especially excellent on offense. Jordan Love was on fire at times tonight. Their wide receivers, the multiples of wide receivers that they have have performed at a very high level, including that Romeo Dobbs catch at the end was just a remarkable play by Romeo Dobbs

to put the dagger in the Seattle Seahawks, but also Christian Watson down the sideline with one of those dancing catches there. Jane Reed, they ran a couple of ender rounds. Once again, we come back to a late December game against the Green Bay Packers that might make a big difference. It shouldn't, if the Vikings take care of business over the next couple of weeks, it shouldn't make that big of a difference as far as like if they win the next two, then they should be there.

What I mean to say is it should be the big game. Like it should be a big game for them that they end up having still a chance to go play Detroit at the end of the season. It shouldn't be the case that they fall in one of these next two games. And then that one becomes more meaningless and then is for vibes more than anything. It shouldn't, what I was starting to say is it shouldn't matter for the Green Bay record and the Vikings record, unless something goes very wrong because they've lost four games. The Vikings have only lost two. So unless the Vikings lose the next two, there really isn't a race

between them and the Green Bay Packers. But as of this moment, if we want to take a look at what the playoff picture looks like as of this very second, can I screen share this? Maybe I can screen share this. Let's see. Can we get this up here? Okay, okay there we go can we put me in the corner no that's too much me how about we get me in the corner hey there i am okay so this is what the playoff picture looks like at this moment the detroit lions are still in the number one seed philadelphia has the two seed the The third seed is Seattle. That's listed as Seattle, but I could put that down as a loss here.

If I just click, cause they haven't officially put that in there yet. Let me click a green Bay so that this is what I wanted to show everybody that would move the loss by Seattle right now moves the Tampa Bay Buccaneers into the three spot at eight and six. And look who the Vikings would face if everything continued to play out the way it's playing out right now. The Vikings would be facing the Los Angeles Rams, one of their two losses with the number four seed. And the Vikings would have the five seed if everything

stayed exactly the way it is. And as we were talking earlier this week about just what type of scenarios the Vikings could be facing and which ones, which matchups do you think would be best for them, which would be worse for them? Clearly the Rams are the one you don't really want and it's the playoffs and you're going to have to play someone who's good at football, but the Rams are the one that you don't really want because they beat you going out to Los Angeles in the middle of the season. Maybe you take over their stadium. I don't know if you could take over their stadium in a playoff scenario. That might be a little bit harder for the Vikings to take over that, whatever that stadium is called, a SoFi stadium, whatever it's called in Los Angeles. I think the

lifelong Los Angeles Rams fans would probably come out for that one and not necessarily sell their tickets. And it would be a little bit harder for Vikings fans to load up on that stadium and make it a home playoff game for the Vikings in L.A. You also have the fact that McVay knows Kevin O'Connell extremely well. They have a good defensive line. They have an extremely good quarterback who has run through the playoffs from the four seed before. That's just not the team that you want to be going against. So we'll see how everything else plays out, but the Rams have made themselves a serious contender in recent weeks with the way that they've played. Uh, and including, I mean, this week they eked out

a win against San Francisco, just barely got through it. They're not a perfect team. I'm not saying the Vikings should be terrified to go play them, but if you were ranking all the teams, that would not be at the top of your list to go out and play the Los Angeles Rams. But the Tampa Bay Buccaneers could be just as problematic. If we look at what the Bucs did today, the Bucs had a huge day. They put up 40 points against the Los Angeles Chargers and Baker Mayfield, much like Sam Darnold, just proving his former team wrong as his former team lost to the Chiefs today. And what they have three wins still the Cleveland Browns, Baker Mayfield went 22 for 27, 288 yards, four touchdowns. And the most concerning thing there,

they ran like crazy. Bucky Irving, 117 yards, Rashad White, 64 yards and Mike Evans, Jalen McMillan's coming along, but Mike Evans still an absolute monster. So there's no easy matchups for the Vikings unless maybe the Atlanta Falcons bail them out. Now that would be something right. If the Atlanta Falcons were to bail out the Vikings. So they should actually, this is a very weird thing. They should actually tomorrow as the Falcons play against the Raiders, Vikings fans should be rooting for the potential matchup between the Vikings and the Atlanta Falcons. They should be rooting for Kirk Cousins to win that game against the Raiders

and try to get ahead of the Tampa Bay Bucks. Now that all depends on how it plays out the rest of the way to whether the Vikings could most likely play the NFC West or the NFC South. We're not going to know that without running every scenario under the sun in terms of the playoff machine. But if we're making a list of all the teams you'd want to face, we know the Atlanta Falcons are going to have an incredibly tough time with the Vikings. The Rams and the Bucks are much more intimidating. So here we are. And Washington is

another team that I think is pretty flawed. If there was any situation where they could face off with Washington and where it all starts is what Detroit is going to do over the next couple of weeks. That is what you really have to watch. If you don't pay much attention to anything else, and you don't like to play with the playoff machine on ESPN, or go to that New York Times playoff predictor over and over again, which still was listing the Vikings at having a fairly low chance, less than 10% chance to win the division. But what the playoff machine doesn't understand is that the Detroit Lions don't have any players left on the defensive side. Their offense is still great. They almost won themselves a game

against Buffalo today. They made it very interesting at the end. If they recover an onside kick, who knows what happens. But once Buffalo got ahead, there was no chance they were going to stop them. And then Dan Campbell gets progressively crazier with the worst his defense does. His onside kick may have actually been a good idea, but then he didn't onside kick the next time, which really made no sense. Why do it once, but then not the next time? So the haphazard decision-making of Dan Campbell and maybe someday their trick plays will go sideways. I don't know.

They really love those trick plays. But when you look at their defense, how are they going to stop San Francisco when they face them? How are they going to stop the Vikings when they face them in the final week of the season? So that game could be the determining factor. Uh, if they come in with the same record and the Vikings have a chance to win that game, I mean, the, it's right there for you. Now it is right there for the Vikings to potentially end up with a better record than the Detroit Lions. How wild is that? And this is why, as we go back and look through the season for the Vikings,

and we talked about at different points where maybe it was ugly against this team, or it was a struggle against that team. They didn't win by enough against Tennessee. They didn't impress in their victory against Jacksonville and so forth. And what I always kept coming back to is it's a long season and Detroit. Yes, they're out in front of you now, but there's some vulnerability there with Detroit. And the vulnerability was that their defense was very thin and Brian Flores may be able to cook up something with all of his blitzes to take the ball away or whatever when his defense isn't playing at their best. But as you saw today, there's limitations to Detroit's defense with Aaron Glenn. I think Aaron Glenn is probably a

good coach, but once they are down a couple of players and they're just trying to play man-to-man coverage out there, Buffalo is running over them because they don't have the horses to play man-to-man coverage. Well, that's exactly what the Vikings are going to bring to Detroit. So it feels like, and they have to get by Chicago and they have to get by Seattle and they've got to possibly win against Green Bay or if Detroit loses or whatever might happen. But that game at the end of the season could be for the NFC North. And now you no longer say, well, how are they going to beat Detroit? Detroit is so strong. How, how are you going to have any chance against them? Well, it's going to be hard to stop their offense, that's for sure.

But do you have a chance against them? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because you might be able to just stay on the field for the entire game against Detroit. So let me get to some of these comments. Unfortunately, just not really working to put them on the screen, but I do have them up in another

window so I can take a look here. Yep. Seattle makes it official that the Vikings are in the playoffs. How about that? Hunter says, this is why we watch the games. Exactly. I mean, this is why throughout the season, you know, so many times I felt like there were a lot of Vikings fans who were just declaring that this team couldn't get it done. Ah, they're, you know, they're just not good enough. They're too flawed. And I always thought, and I didn't know it was going to go this well for them. And they were going to win all these games, uh, to be at 11 and two, but I always thought who's not flawed, who's perfect. And the closest answer right now is Philly. Philly is the best team in the NFC. Now Detroit is second. The Vikings are two a, I can't say at this moment that the Vikings are a better team than Detroit,

but they're way healthier than Detroit. And I think if they played today that, well, not today, Detroit's very tired. If they played next week that I would pick the Vikings to win. So maybe the Vikings are number two because they actually have defensive players. In fact, it seems like the Vikings are getting more defensive players as Dallas Turner gets more opportunities. Gabriel Murphy, we've seen Fabian Moreau come in and give Stephon Gilmore a little bit of a rest. So it seems that the Vikings are getting healthier. They're going to get pace back. They're going to get Gilmore back. And this is a, I suppose a knock on wood for their health against the Chicago bears, but they are going down the stretch as a completely healthy defense when

they get pace junior back. And when they get Stefan Gilmore back and you compare that to Detroit and they've got nobody and they're just getting season ending injury left and right, I would pick the Viking. So yeah, I mean, if we're just power ranking, you can't put anybody ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles. They have been on fire. They dominated the Pittsburgh Steelers today, completely outplayed them. And that's not the easiest game to play against a very good Mike Tomlin football team. Tomlin's got them in the playoffs again. How about that?

But that's a good team that they beat today. And I thought that was kind of a prove it game for the Eagles to show how strong they were because they had racked up some wins that maybe weren't the most impressive, didn't have the most wins against winning teams and all that, or two score wins and so forth. So I was curious, how are they going to show up against Pittsburgh? And they played extremely well against the Steelers. So you've got to put them at the top. And then right behind them is the Vikings and the Lions. And the way Green Bay is playing is exceptional as well.

That's why that December 29th game, it may be the difference between the Vikings having a chance to go to Detroit, to win at Detroit and to take the division. If they win that game against Green Bay December 29th, which again is just incredible drama for a season that we thought back when it started, hey, it's going to be a roller coaster. Hey, this one could be a drag. They lose some players to injury in training camp. Mak know, Makai Blackman gets hurt. We go, who's even going to play corner for this team?

They're going to be mid. They're going to be average. And here we are. And this is why you cannot predict football, no matter how hard we try in July, when we're doing all of our predictions and all of our breakdowns of the standings and expectations. You just, this one you would not

have seen coming that the Vikings are strolling into the late part of December with a shot and I think December 29th is going to be the day against the Packers where if they win that game then they fly to Detroit with a chance to take the division and we'll see about the conference but it could be the conference if they win these next three games and then fly to Detroit, it could be for the entire conference, which would mean home field throughout the playoffs. And that would be nuts. That would be nuts. I don't, you know, it's not going to matter much if they lose to Chicago, and then we're going to feel maybe a little silly for having all of this discussion, but just a incredible turn of events today for the Detroit lions to lose to Buffalo,

because this was really the game where if they beat the Buffalo bills, then of course you're talking about, wow, they're strong enough to beat Buffalo that's a big deal but it would have made it very very difficult for the Vikings to have any chance to go there and possibly take over the division possibly win the conference but with this loss now they very much have that opportunity right in front of them with two teams that are just not very impressive in Chicago and in the Seattle Seahawks. So that is what we have going on right now as we go into the final stretch of this season. So how are you guys feeling? I see that we have an enormous, enormous crowd here tonight for this reaction. Are you feeling nervous about how good the Packers look?

Are you now into this team? Are you all in now? I mean, because I think last week was really the, all right, people are adopting the Minnesota Vikings as a legitimate contender after the way that they played against Kirk Cousins and the Atlanta Falcons, because it was against Kirk. So I had a lot of emotion and drama, but it also was a 21 point victory where your quarterback played the best that we've seen any quarterback play in a long time. I think 2019 Cousins against the Eagles, going back to Case Keenum against the Tampa Bay Bucks years ago in 2017,

maybe Sam Bradford week four against the Houston Texans, no, week five against the Houston Texans in 2016. And then you got to go back and back before that. A couple of Teddy games, a couple of Favre games. I mean, that's the level that Sam Darnall was playing on. And what I felt after that game was Vikings fans starting to really believe that this thing is happening. And I ended the podcast after the Falcons game saying,

now do you believe in this team? And the other part of that famous hockey call where Rick Jennerette said, now do you believe, as he said, these guys are scary good. So I guess we'll see tomorrow if they get to have that scary good label. It was a scary good offense against the Falcons last week. So now do you believe that this team has a chance? It's certainly not going to be easy. The league has very much separated.

I mean, there is a line drawn between the good and the bad teams. And when the good teams played the bad teams today, it was mostly very ugly. So only the good teams are going to be left here. And the Vikings are doing battle with a Seattle team. If they get back, Geno Smith, it is on the road. It's not an easy game. They've got good defensive players. And then Green Bay after tonight.

I mean, they got to be walking out of that game feeling like they just played extremely well against the Lions lost by three points. And they were complaining about the refs because you're not the only ones who do that. Packers fans, for some reason, think the refs are out to get them too. I don't know. Maybe that's 32 for 32 teams think that. But they played very close with the Lions last week, and then they played extremely well in a complete game tonight

where I think that if Geno Smith plays the rest of that game, they still win handily like they did. They jumped out in front of them. They're running the football well. Jordan Love is playing at his highest level. There is a lot of juice in this NFC. And from my perspective, it's just exciting. It's just exciting to look at the way that these good teams are playing, including the Vikings. A lot of these good teams are honing in good football down the stretch. So the Vikings will have to earn it by beating the Packers. The 29th is really the big game to have that shot in the final week of the season. And then, I mean, who knows? Who knows what it could be like in week 18 against Detroit? So I'll get, some of your comments and questions in just a moment, but

lucky for us, this show has sponsors. So I want to tell you about our friends, US Cellular. Gifting is hard, but you can give the gift of connection with US Cellular. If you're not sure what that means, here's a slightly more specific hint. You can choose four free phones and get four phone lines for $90 a month with us cellular. Your family wants new phones. How do they know? They told us the good news is that compared to wrapping presents, you're great at taking a hint. So take a hint, get four free phones and four lines at $90 a month. You haveular built for us. And how about this? Underdog Fantasy, I was playing today

and I put in a pick'em where I had five things that I needed to go right. And I got four of them and I missed by one tackle. One tackle away from hitting big on the pick'em a underdog fantasy, a fun time for me today, as I was watching the games with all of you and a reminder that underdog fantasy is the easiest place to play fantasy sports fastest growing app in

the industry. And you can use the code purple to play along with me to claim your special pick and first time deposit offer up to a thousand dollars in bonus cash must be 18 or older terms apply concern with your play call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit ncpgambling.org i went with the higher number on josh allen's fantasy points probably the easiest selection i have ever made in my life and that paid off by halftime. So I was good there. Just one too many tackles by a Bill's corner. I flew too close to the sun there and did not win big, but still came out on the plus side of that.

So remember that code purple helps the show. If you sign up using that to play along. Also, just a reminder, I have two articles coming out, big articles tomorrow, one on Sam Darnold, one on the peanut punch, which we saw a ton of the peanut punch today. Guys punching the ball out, causing fumbles. I did a big article on that as the Vikings get set to play the Bears. So purpleinsider.football, go over there, sign up for the newsletter again great way to support the show so let me get back what is the vibe check how are you guys feeling about where the vikings sits right now in this playoff race and i feel like i i need to uh take take a deep breath because it's just, you know, mind is going a thousand miles an hour with everything that is happening today right now.

Joe asks, how can our secondary adapt to a dual threat offense like Puka Nakua and Cooper Cup with the Rams. That is the biggest concern that I have, hands down, is that if they have to play the Rams, it's not going to be an easy matchup against Puka Nakua and Cooper Cup and Matthew Stafford. Because, well, it's true that Nakua and Cup were great. There were a few plays in that game where Matthew Stafford just went legend against the Vikings. He dodged, I think it was an Andrew Van Ginkle sack, spun around, threw the ball. It might have been, I forget who it was, might have been their third wide receiver there, Demarcus Robinson in the end zone. I mean, he made some spectacular plays.

And Stafford's been playing great. If you look at all the potential quarterbacks that the Vikings could play in the playoffs, the one you really like to play is Kirk Cousins. It just feels like it's getting farther away the way that he has played lately, including last week against the Vikings. But Kirk Cousins is playing nowhere near the same level as somebody like Baker Mayfield or somebody like Matthew Stafford. And then Gino Smith in Seattle. I mean, the Vikings kind of have a chance to just put them out of this conversation and then lock it in almost to being Los Angeles and Tampa Bay, but there's still things up in the air. I mean, the Arizona Cardinals won today, and they're not entirely out of this discussion either. This race is still very much hot,

and you could spend all day plugging into the playoff machine all the different situations and scenarios. Arizona would be a team that I think you would like the Vikings to go against, even though they had to survive against Arizona. Not an easy team to play against. They beat the Patriots today. Uh, but the Nakua and cup duo is as difficult as it gets. I don't know with Tampa Bay. I don't know about Chris Godwin status. If he's going to have a chance to come back at some point, but they've got McMillan there. They're rookie playing. Well, Evans is still crushing it.

The running game is still good. What I've come to as a conclusion about the Vikings and their playoff position and who they're going to play is, and this is going to be a crazy hot take for you. They're going to have to score early in the season. They were able to lean pretty heavily on their defense, get a lot of turnovers, score first quickly off turnovers, and then play defense the rest of the way, get a couple of big plays from Sam Darnold profit, or hold on for dear life at the end of a game like against green Bay, profit. I don't think the Vikings can

win that way against playoff teams, but they haven't been playing that way to win games recently. As you see, Arizona is a good team. Atlanta has a lot of talent on that team, and they played the Vikings fairly close, but they end up still winning by three scores because of their quarterback, because of their receivers, because of their coach. And if you're playing the Los Angeles Rams, it's pretty unlikely or the Tampa Bay Bucks, or even if you get the top seat, you'll see these teams eventually. Or week 18 against the lions. The Vikings defense is good, but it's not unbelievably good. It's not the 2000 Ravens.

This just doesn't really happen anymore. If you look around the league, every defense is kind of up and down depending on the week, depending on the turnover ratio, depending on do you get sacks? What opposing quarterbacks are you playing? Are you playing an easy schedule? But when the good teams play the good teams, it really seems like the offenses always end up rising to the top and being the reason. When the Vikings played the Lions, the offense did enough and was right there to have a chance to win the game. Didn't convert. And then ultimately Detroit's offense is just this much better and ends up setting up for the game winning field goal, winning that game. And that's probably how it's going to be when you reach the playoffs. I mean, how about the

chargers? The chargers have this really good defense. They've been boasting all year. They've got this great defense. They play Tampa Bay, a good team. They play the Bengals, a good offense. And what happens? Every team has an offense who's in the playoffs that's good enough to take advantage of a defense, even if the defense is good. What the Vikings will need when they reach the playoffs and down the stretch over these final four games is for Sam Darnold to continue to play the way that Sam Darnold has played over these last four weeks. And I think the biggest thing that's different about Sam Darnold and the reason you might have some confidence that he can repeat what he's just done over the last four weeks, where he's played at this MVP level, where he's played on par or close to somebody like Josh Allen. I mean, what Josh Allen did today was pretty unbelievable, so I don't know if it's quite that good, but it's been very close to that good. Going into today, Sam Darnold was PFFs number one quarterback over the last

four weeks. And a major part of that is big, huge, awesome throws, 52 yard touchdown, crazy play making all that stuff. But if you peel the layers back a little bit more, It's a down to down basis of not committing turnover, where the plays executing within the offense, understanding where the football is supposed to go, cleaning up technical things that maybe were causing problems for him. He brought that up this week that some of the throws that he made, he was more upset with the actual throw than he was the decision. So take, for example, in the Jacksonville game, there's an opportunity to throw the ball deep to the pylon to Justin Jefferson and make it a kind of him or nobody type of play. And he ends up throwing it short and inaccurately and it gets picked off. Well, those are the types of things that he looked at.

What am I doing wrong? And what, what's my technique on this? What's my footwork on this? Because that's going to make a huge difference. That's where he's been so good. I mean, you look at the timing throws that he's had the last couple of weeks, drop back, hit the back foot, let it loose. Bang. I mean, he's just had that so many times if he stays in that rhythm. And I also felt like, well, can you knock him off the rhythm? Is that something that you're able to do to Sam Darnold is just getting his face, sack him a couple of times, get him down in a game and then he'll struggle, right? That hasn't been the case. The Falcons and the Cardinals both hit him pretty good.

Tennessee got after him a few times and he was still able to overcome another team getting in his face, putting pressure on him, forcing him out of the pocket, all those things. He was able to respond to playing within the system, but also having answers to when things go wrong, to not get down on himself, to not lose confidence. I mean, he's playing like the system, but also having answers to when things go wrong, to not get down on himself, to not lose confidence. I mean, he's playing like the type of quarterback that can

go up against any of these guys and give the Vikings a chance to win, whether it's Gino next week, if Gino's playing Jordan Love, Jared Goff, and then into the playoffs, Stafford, Mayfield, whoever it could be. Right now, Darnold is playing at the same level as all the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Can he actually continue to do that deep into a playoff run? Is it going to be more of a roller coaster? These are the things we're looking to find out. So Hamza says, Matt, being that you're from Buffalo,

how amazing for your hometown team to have a stud like Josh Allen, uh, all of my friends. So the thing about that is, uh, all of my friends from Buffalo, those people suffered, uh, in a different kind of way than Vikings fans where Vikings fans just came close many, many times. I don't need to tell you that. They came close so many times. Always good teams, always competitive, always great receivers. In Buffalo, to see a game like today, where they have definitively the best quarterback in the league,

and Mahomes got banged up today, but he has not been anywhere close to Josh Allen this year. You're allowed to say that. This year, putting aside other Super Bowls, this year, Josh Allen is hands down the best human being in the world playing football. No question about it after today. Just insane throw after crazy run after they even took a touchdown off the board of his that was amazing to go through JP Lossman and Trent Edwards and all those terrible terrible quarterbacks that they had EJ Manuel to come out

on the other side with Josh Allen who could go toe-to-toe with the best offense in the league and beat them in their house were pretty darn impressive. Yeah. Pretty darn impressive. And the bills after that game bills and Eagles should be the teams that are favored to win the Superbowl right now, because I don't know how the lions could go through an entire post-season. I, I, I really don't know how they could go through an entire post-season with the way their defense is. Uh, Joe Burrow is better. I don't know. I think Joe Burrow is wonderful and Cincinnati should be thrilled to have him. I don't think he's as scary as a runner as Josh Allen. I mean, Joe Burrow takes a lot of sacks. Josh Allen cannot be sacked. That's the hardest thing about playing him is that drives just never end because the guy

doesn't get sacked. And if he scrambles, he could gain 30, 40 yards at any given time. He can find guys down the field. He was finding some third down back today, some third down back guy. He just kept throwing it to every time he scrambled and got a ton of yards. I mean, uh, Josh Allen is the best player in football this year. We saw that today. So Buffalo has very much a Superbowl contender on their hands. Uh, their defense is not perfect. They're banged up in their secondary. There's nobody really who is perfect in the NFL this year. There's no team that we can look at and go, man, they are unstoppable. But I do know that the Vikings or the bills have the most unstoppable quarterback. But as we talk about

the Vikings chances, and every time I bring this up, just simply where the Vikings are in the world. I mean, if they and Detroit win the same number of games, then go into the end of the season and play each other and the Vikings win, they win the division. of games, then go into the end of the season and play each other and the Vikings win, they win the division. Like it's, it's there, right. Or even if Detroit loses one against San Francisco, for example, and you know, whatever, right. It's right there for the Vikings. And I think Philadelphia is a better team than the Vikings right now. The offensive line is great. Their defense is playing really well. Their quarterback's playing well. There's nobody that I would look at in the NFL and say, Oh, the Vikings couldn't be on

the same field with them as we go down the stretch into the playoffs. And they have to prove me right on that over these final four games. But that's how I feel right now. I feel like if they went to Philadelphia, that I would probably lean toward the Eagles, but it wouldn't be by a ton. I don't think the Eagles are far and away ahead, but the entire league, you might put the Vikings ahead of the Detroit Lions right now because they're so much healthier

and the way that they're playing, even though their defense has had some flaws, but the way they're playing on offense and they have a healthy defense, they're, I think a better team or a better bet to go deep in the playoffs because I don't see how you can do it as Detroit with no defense whatsoever. You could do it with a mid defense or a struggling defense going into the playoffs. Last year, Detroit was not great on defense, but now they can't stop anything. They're onside kicking and they're going for fourth downs because they

cannot stop a darn thing. So I would probably put for the whole league, the bills first, because they have Josh Allen and nobody else does then the Eagle second. And then what? I mean, Kansas city, can you really put Kansas city there? If Mahomes is now banged up and you could say, oh yeah, well, he's got ankle injuries before, but he had a way better team before. They can't block anybody. He keeps getting hurt and keeps getting hit week in and week out. And now he's hurt. They don't have receivers.

They're getting Hollywood Brown back. Like, congratulations. They just don't have a great team. Overall, they just have to rely on Mahomes doing great things all the time, which he can. But if he has no blocking, we've seen that story before when they lost to Tom Brady in 2020. I might put the Vikings ahead of them as well after this day in which Patrick Mahomes gets hurt. Maybe that's a little bit too, too far, but I don't know. I don't know. I just, with that team, with the Chiefs, now they finally won by two scores,

right? Today, they actually got the two score win that everybody had been searching for against Cleveland. But with the fact that now Mahomes is banged up, he's had to do so much scrambling this year with their offensive line struggling. They were moving Joe Tooney, I saw, to left tackle because they've got so many problems. I just don't see the Chiefs as being a favorite that I would put ahead of the Vikings. And the Packers have to be considered here as well. Because if the Vikings end up with the five seed, then the Packers are also in that wild card race as a team that is playing extremely well going down the stretch. So Green Bay, they're feeling

pretty good about themselves as well. And it's pretty equal. That's why I think that you can make a case for so many different teams in the NFC and the NFL. And the Vikings are right in the middle of that, just as we all predicted going down the stretch here, that it would be like that. So yeah, David brings up that the Vikings control their own destiny. And if they both finish 15 and two. Yeah.

How about that? Yeah. I didn't even, you might know a little bit better. What's the tiebreaker for why they get the tiebreaker over the Eagles? I never ask questions. I just ask, do they have the tiebreaker? And the answer is yes over the Philadelphia Eagles. So Slowpoke says we could beat the Eagles.

I mean, you could beat anybody. I mean, honestly, like when we look around, you could say if you slow down Saquon Barkley, like does that team do the same thing there? It would be harder to go to Philly than anywhere else. And that's where the Vikings controlling their own destiny. Now you feel like, I mean, how greedy does this feel? You feel like you got to do it now. I mean, you've gotten to this point where if you win these, I mean, how greedy does this feel? You feel like you got to do it now.

I mean, you've gotten to this point where if you win these last four games, you win the conference over the Philadelphia Eagles. Can we ask them to do it? Can we, if they don't, is it disappointing now? Imagine that. Imagine that. They come up short of winning the whole conference and we go, oh, what a letdown. What a letdown in comparison to the nine and eight season that we all expected.

Oh, the Falcons win. Oh, good point. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. The Falcons win is the reason that because the Eagles had that crazy, terrible loss to the Falcons. Am I just, maybe I'm crazy. I feel like this is the biggest gulf that I have

ever seen between the good and the bad teams this year, by the way, it just feels like the league is totally C's have parted and separated. And all you have is teams that are really, really good that are going to the playoffs, you're going to beat each other up. And then teams that are really, really good, that are going to the playoffs, going to beat each other up, and then teams that are not even belonging in this conversation. There doesn't seem to be really a lot of races going on other than for seeding. We've got the NFC West, the NFC South. Those are the two spots. But for the most part, everything has kind of locked itself in,

and now it's who's going to end up in what spot, and the Vikings haveings uh have a chance and that's you know when you go into a season now because so many teams also tank uh that and they might not say they are but halfway through the year they're trading off pieces and you know firing coaches and stuff like that if you have good coaching and good weapons, I mean, you can just win a lot of games based on that. And the Vikings certainly have that for sure. So David says you have to do it now. Yeah, I know. Right. We've come this far. You got to do it now. You can't back out now. You can't lose to the bears now. I just, I just keep going back to in this moment, the number of times

where I've done these live streams and we had all the conversations in the off season and we kept going back to the Jeff George scenario. Hey, what happens if Sam Darnold's just randomly awesome? It's happened before and it could happen again, I guess if he's got the big arm, he's got the receivers and hey, maybe he'll just get them in the playoff race and start the whole season and make them relevant and all that. Even when McCarthy went down, I was like, hey, there's a season to play here. But a lot of folks thought there's no reason to watch. Wake me up in 2025. And now David in the comments is saying, well, you got to win the conference now.

You got to this point. Come on. So that's crazy. Zaqua says, why are we acting like Detroit's all of a sudden a bad team after winning 11 straight? They were injured before today. And thank you very much for the super chat. Not acting like Detroit's a bad team.

No, no, no, no. I think when we're talking about though, comparing Detroit in their current status, you have to acknowledge that the other teams in the NFC have players on defense. They have a whole half of their roster that is historically beat up. They have one of the best defensive players in the league out for the season, Aiden Hutchinson. They had today their top defensive lineman still there. I think Reeder is still available, but Elaine McNeil, very good player. He goes out. Dan Campbell says that might be for the season. Their corners, two of them got hurt today.

So their best and only remaining corner, who's a starter, is Terry and Arnold, a rookie. Anzalone is a very good linebacker. He's gone. They can't stop anyone. So they're doing onside kicks. They're going for fourth downs because they know we can't stop anybody at So they're doing onside kicks. They're going for fourth downs because they know we can't stop anybody at the end of a game. How can you compare them? I know how good

their offense is, but how can you compare them to the Vikings or the Packers or the bucks even and say, Oh, well, you know, they would just beat those teams because they're too strong. That would have been the case six weeks ago before they had all these injuries or even before the Aiden Hutchinson injury, but they survived that because they had a few players still. Now it feels like they've got nobody. And there were a couple other defensive linemen who rotate in or who were starting that are not playing for them. They've just got nothing. And the Packers move the ball up and down on them. The bears did in the second half of their game on Thanksgiving. If the Vikings play them, if the bucks play them, if the Rams play them, if the Eagles play them, we all agree,

right? They're just moving the ball and moving the ball. So no, I'm not acting like they're a bad team. They still have amazing weapons, a great quarterback, great running backs. But if they don't play from ahead, they're going to have problems because they can't get anybody off the field. And it's very hard to see a team going all the way deep in the playoffs. If they've got, uh, if they don't, if i froze there am i freezing wait no i'm sorry if i'm freezing dang okay you can still hear you can still hear all right but i'm frozen but the audio is still good well that's not great i was uh i was going to yes you can hear me, but I'm stuck. Well, I was going to wrap up anyway. And

yeah, I just pulled it up and I can see myself looking pretty crazy at the camera. So I was going to call it a night anyway, cause it's after 11 o'clock and thank you guys so much for joining. I don't know. Tonight was just a little bit on the wonky side with uh from an internet perspective i'm not sure what happened there maybe too many live streamers going live after a great night of football so uh we'll just uh we'll wrap it up for tonight but an incredible time for the minnesota vikings to be going down the stretch of this race. Just remarkable stuff to be in this spot and look forward to breaking it all down with you guys. We'll be in the press box after tomorrow night's game against the bears with Dane Mizutani. So look forward to that very

much. So thanks guys for watching. Sorry about the freezing at the end of the show here, but sounds like you could still hear me. So appreciate everybody coming along for this ride. It should be absolutely phenomenal time for all of us, for me to talk about it with you guys going down the stretch here as the Vikings have a chance to do something special. So thanks everybody again and take care. Football.