Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Looking at the big picture of what 1-3 means for the Minnesota Vikings and Mike Zimmer

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Matthew Coller and Brian Murphy break down what the Minnesota Vikings' loss to the Cleveland Browns means for the big picture. Why the schedule going forward makes a quick turnaround very tricky and how games at Detroit and Carolina may now determine Mike Zimmer's fate. What does Brian think of Zimmer saying the team is good and why it feels like Groundhog Day for the Vikings to be losing close games and saying that it means they're close. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you own a bustling hair salon or a hot new bakery, you need business insurance that can keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay for what you need. TD, ready for you. I want to remind you before we get started, the TickPick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. TickPick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider brought to you by our friends at SodaStick. Go check out SodaStick.com for Minnesota sports inspired goods. Matthew Collar here with Brian Murphy, who has written. Well, I gave it the headline, Brian, and I want your approval on the headline. You

wrote a very good column and just a clever read at purpleinsider.substackbox.com. But my headline was don't look directly at the one in three. And I thought Brian should be proud of this, this headline, because I feel like that was Mike Zimmer's tone after the game was telling ownership don't look directly at the one in three think about how good we actually will be in the future do not look at the record and you referenced it uh in your article and i made mention of it yesterday but it was sort of the opposite of bill parcells you are what your record was or is from his famous quote. And so I tweeted that out, what Zimmer said, and the fan response was really fascinating to read.

So I want to get into some of that. But first of all, after yesterday, just how are things sitting with you after yesterday and what Mike Zimmer said about them being better than their record, essentially? Well, look, he's obviously desperately coaching for his job. We all know that. And I think in fairness to him, in the bubble that these guys live in, in their own carefully curated world of X's and O's and alpha maledom,

and we all know better than the general public does how this game of football is played and how to manage a professional group of men, blah, blah, blah. I think he sees his team as pretty fragile. And instead of going into the locker room and, you know, taping, you know, beating him over the head with how disappointing of a showing it was. I think he took the opposite tack, which was, hey, we did some really good things out there. You shouldn't feel too bad, bad about yourselves. Never mind the outside negative nabobbs of negativity. They're going to pile on us. I know in a here in my heart of hearts that we're a good football team.

And I'm going to go out there and tell the world that right now, too. So I want you guys to keep it together. And basically what he's saying is, I can't I can't be my old crusty Mike Zimmer. I expect better. I'm the disappointed dad routine because he may lose his club. And if he loses his club, he's going to lose his job and he may lose it before the snow flies at the rate they're going. So I think it was a tactical decision on his part. The problem is it it's pure gaslighting. And I think the fan base completely sees through this, that, you know, you can dress this up as a one in three team,

but for a couple of moments here, there would probably be three in one and three team, but for a couple of moments here or there would probably be three and one and on our way to LA or at least on the train to LA among these other contenders. No, don't buy any of that at all. You scored seven points at home against an overrated quarterback and you allowed a team to basically out Viking you on your home turf. And, you know, people are not buying into that. I mean, you are one in three, which basically means you're as good as the New York Jets. So if you're going to tell us all that I've been around 27 years and I know football and you guys are just a bunch of neophytes that pay the bills. I know more than you do. We're better than

one in three. Well, you're not. You're one in three. And, you know, you're probably going to win next week because, you know, the gods have dropped the Detroit Lions in your lap at home. So you're probably going to go into the bye at two and three. But then the rest of the schedule is a minefield. And I think it was really all him just trying to keep a locker room together for the long haul and for his long haul. Yeah, and I think that that's the only way that he could really approach it, because burning it down in the past has not really worked all that effectively. Last year, he gets to the point where he says we're a bad defense. And at that point, though, you've reached. The season is already over.

You've already missed the playoffs. It does not matter if you say what everyone just saw on Christmas Day, which was you give up 52 points. But I remember back in 2016, there were a few times where when they were going through a rough patch, Zimmer kind of let everybody have it. And especially they lost their first game. They were 5-0. They lost their first game to the Philadelphia Eagles I was there for that yeah

yeah and Zimmer came out and called them soft and especially the offensive line right and uh Jeremiah Searles has acknowledged on this very podcast that that did not sit well with anybody in the room and of course the offensive line was struggling. It was beat up. They were on two backup tackles. Jake Long was still trying to play football and to be called soft when you're just trying to grind out anything you can from those guys, many of whom weren't even starters, was the wrong tenor to take for Mike Zimmer that year. And I think that in recent years, he has been better about sort of saying, being a little bit defiant after losses and saying, hey, we're a good team. And I believe in these guys and things like that, because the other way just has the potential to burn it all down to the ground. And Sage Rosenfels has said before on the show that, you know, how badly you want to have your coach keep his job does show up in how people play.

And we have seen teams across the league many times over the years just give up on their coach and say, we need a change. So Zimmer can't have that. He can't have his players giving up on him and losing these next two games. And then it's pretty much a lock to be over at that point. So he doesn't want that. There's also the part of, you know, saying to the Wilfs, look, give me more time. Give me more time. Give me these next couple of weeks. Give me that section that is just hell after the bye week, which I mean, wow,

if you've looked at that schedule, they have to play a murderer's row of really good teams after that. But if you get two wins in a row going into the bye, you're a 500 team. You've got a much better case for we're actually good and we can go toe to toe with these teams. Now, in terms of it adding up to are you actually good and what this does for you, I was thinking about this this morning. They only have, I believe, five home games left after Detroit, and they have seven road games because of the way the 17-game schedule works out. They play a lot of winning teams. They play a lot of teams with really stout defensive lines.

They give the Vikings lots of problems. And it's just a hard case to make that we can flip a switch and turn it around. And, Ryan, what it looks more like to me now is that you're going to end up with a very similar season to last year, a very similar season to 2018 to 2016, where there are some moments and there are some really good games that you play along the way. And you could say, look, we were almost there. But we were almost there is sort of the story of the of Mike Zimmer in Minnesota. Yeah. And it's a sad club to be in the we were almost there club. The we were one or two plays away from club. Nobody wants to hear that.

In fairness, again, like I said, he's doing his job. He's doing his job to keep his job and he's doing his job to keep his locker room together. That's all fine and good. That doesn't mean we have to believe it. We don't have to swallow it. We, and that doesn't mean we have to just nod our heads and go, well, Mike knows best. So I'm, I'm all in on that. I'm sure there's a sect of fans that are still clinging to that. But you know, my job that you're paying me to do extremely handsomely, by the way, thanks

for the Venmo drop on Friday, what we're doing and what, you know, I would think a discerning and fan that demands accountability is saying, well, I'm not buying that. I know what I saw yesterday. I know what I watched. I may not know scheme. I may not know every little intrigue about, you know, who's up and who's down on the depth chart. I know what I saw. And what I saw was a team take the opening kickoff, go 14 plays, march 75 yards down the field, score on the opening drive, and then climb into a cave, essentially, certainly on offense. I saw a team that seemed to have rectified its offensive line problems and pass protection problems regress again. And look, you know, Cleveland's got a tough, tough defense, you know. But that being said, watching Miles Garrett truck Rashad Hill on a close up late in the game was indicative of the fact that Kirk Cousins, again, the jittery Kirk Cousins, the Kirk Cousins who doesn't perform well under a fierce pass rush, like a lot of quarterbacks, but him in particular, couldn't get anything going. And, you know, Dalvin Cook was banged up. He was clearly ineffective. I mean, they brought him back on the last couple of

drives just to, to get something out of him. But there was nothing there. And it came, it looked like it was 11 to seven for a long time. And I'm thinking, well, if they don't score a defensive touchdown, they're going to lose. And they didn't even do that. So I, you know, they never got past the 26-yard line of Cleveland after the opening drive. I mean, that's 52 minutes of futile football. That's what I saw with my own eyes. So I don't want to hear about how good they looked

and how many good things that they did. You don't put 255 yards of total offense up on an average team at home. And, I mean, Baker Mayfield does not look like an NFL quarterback at this point. And the fact that he and Stefanski, even at the end, tried to hand the Vikings points and hand them this game and, like, begged Minnesota to take them into overtime. The Vikings still couldn't do anything with it. And we'll probably get into this at some point too. Again, their inability to manage the clock or perform with urgency in the last two minutes of a half or a game is astounding to me at times. Well, and so yesterday when I tweeted out what Zimmer said,

the responses that I got were mostly like, it feels like we've sort of come to the end of the road with this whole way of doing things. And through four games seems like premature, but when you start going through what you have to do now to be a good team, think about this. I mean, there are teams in the league that will lose four games this year. To have a good season, you get maybe six or five losses, and you've already got three. And in all three games, you can blame fumbles, you can blame field goals, you can blame referees yesterday. That is something that you can do. But in all three games, there were a lot of

other areas where you had an opportunity to win. And there were other things that went wrong for the other team. Like you said, Baker Mayfield overthrew about five wide open people yesterday that would have completely just blown the doors off the Vikings. You talk about how it could be different. Yeah, it could be different if there wasn't a penalty. It could also be different if Odell Beckham had been, you know, delivered the football properly a couple of times. And then we're talking about, you know, 28 to seven instead of 14 7 so you know i i guess uh the way that i'm sort of hearing it from fans through emails and twitter and everything else is even the people who over years have said i like zimmer i think he's a great coach i think we

you know need to do this this this this and this that area, do that. A lot of people are starting to say, you know what, it's just the same results over and over and over again. And it's the same conversations over and over again. And even the seasons past outside of 2017 have mostly looked like this. Even 2019 looked like this. They just had a very favorable schedule. But every time there was a game that was hyped up, we ended up with, well, you know, the other team's defensive line plowed your offensive line. They made, like you said, clock mistakes and things like that, where, you know, Zimmer's aggressiveness on fourth down but you know against arizona they were playing very conservative on those and um the numbers went completely against it so you never really know from week to week is your coach going to make the right decisions um is is your roster

going to be strong enough to overcome any types of issues and what you end up with whether it's just zimmer or it's the quarterback or it's just the construction of the roster is it's always too flawed to be a great team except for 2017. And so that's one year out of this is eight now and every other season, it's too flawed to be a great team. And where do you go from here when everybody is feeling this? I think that was the, that was the sense that I got from the fans yesterday was just, everybody is feeling this, that it's just groundhog day with this team. And what do you do to dig out of that? Well, that's the thing. You're four weeks into the season and eight weeks into the coaching regime or eight years into the

coaching regime it's pretty much baked in I mean what you know it's not like baseball where if you lose your starter you can go at the deadline and get an arm and maybe make a postseason run that that's not how it works in football your your roster is what you are you're gonna have to manage injuries you're gonna have to coach guys up you're going to have to replace them when they're not performing. But there's this is who they are. I don't see where, you know, you can keep playing this this shell game of, yeah, don't believe what you see here, because this is how it feels and this is what I know and this is what we could be. And this is where how close we are. And if we just clean up that and if this and if that. And that's why the NFL is such a brutal league, because it really does not allow it punishes mediocrity and it punishes teams that are incapable of overcoming mistakes.

And here is another example, too, that I think the Vikings, I don't have a statistical analysis of this, but they are not good at handling success. Their one week of success this year made a lot of people feel really good all week long. That, oh, well, wait a minute, they can do these things. And Cousins is an MVP candidate, we think. And boy, the defense, when it gets after a quarterback, can really make some things happen. And boy, look at they overcame a deficit against Seattle. And maybe Seattle isn't what they were, but it's still Russell Wilson and it's still the Seahawks. And they took all of that momentum and basically shredded it yesterday.

So now you're back to where you were two weeks ago at 0-2 with very few people believing in you. And your identity is hardening. And your wiggle room is shrinking to do anything about it. And now guys are getting banged up. Now guys are getting even more and more banged. I mean, four weeks in and Dalvin cook, how, how much is this going to linger with this ankle? How much did he, how much stress did he put on it yesterday? And what's that going to be like all week? It just, you know, and we didn't even get into this too, and it didn't ultimately cost them, but a terrible mental mistake with good intentions by Sheldon Richardson.

Yeah. He's like, oh, I'm a veteran. We've got too many guys on the field. I'm going to step up and call timeout. Well, Chris Weber, you have no timeouts. And oh, by the way, that's Zimmer's job to do. Thanks for the effort. But this is where you have a team that is not on the same page and not cohesive as you got guys going a little bit rogue thinking I can fix this alone. And it's like, no, that's not on the same page and not cohesive as you got guys going a little bit rogue thinking, I can fix this alone. And it's like, no, that's not your job. And look, for a long time, that point looked like it would have been critical. Or certainly, you know, the Vikings could have been in a position as they were driving at the end to win the game as opposed to just force overtime. Never came to fruition, but it's indicative of where they are as a team right now,

that they burned through their timeouts. You got you got too many men on the field on an extra point. And you've got a veteran saying, well, I'm going to take care of this on my own. Well, that that was a mess beyond all messes. It didn't factor in at the end, but it's indicative again of where they're at. And, and, and, you know, your record says who you are, but your history as under Mike Zimmer for eight years says who you are, this is who they are. What are they going to be able to do with that? They'll probably beat Detroit, uh, you know, keep the embers burning through the by, but boy, I i mean you're talking carolina dallas uh i don't know who they're playing november 7th you got baltimore los angeles yeah it's san francisco endless

crane bay yeah yep uh there isn't really a reprieve until later in the season when you face but even then it's still chicago good defensive line it's still pittsburgh good defensive line like it really doesn't take the foot off the gas. Los Angeles Rams come in to U.S. Bank Stadium. There's no Texans or Jaguars out there. Right, right. And last year there were. And I think that's the big difference between talking about whether you can get back into the playoff race or not,

is that if you have games like Cincinnati, for example, where you fall behind early because you make a lot of mistakes or in Arizona where you get ahead early, but then you let Arizona come back in the game. I mean, they were up by two scores in that game and then they come back and then they let Kyler Murray run wild all over them. And then this game yesterday, it's like, you know, these aren't the strange bounces going wrong for you. This was a Cleveland team completely commanding that football game by running, and it was the Vikings offense going absolutely nowhere. And so when you talk about projecting forward, all three games were lost more fundamentally than they seem by the final score or even by the field goal or whatever.

Now, two and two would definitely feel a lot different, but in Arizona, you gave Kyler Murray a 77 yard touchdown because nobody covered Rondell Moore and he just, you know, cruised to the end zone. Like this is this is the point. You committed a key penalty when you should have had a fourth down stop and you can debate the penalty all day long. But this is who you've been is the key moments in these close games against good teams. You are just always walking out of that stadium with disappointment. And if you want to put a number on it, I've got two. One is Seth Walder from ESPN tweeted out ESPN's FPI, which is football power index. Football, Brian, power, index, military military ground maneuvers power blitz air support

national football league so okay so the football power index the vikings are 15th the vikings are always 15th they're just perpetually 15th and everything that just tells you mediocrity i mean it says nothing beyond it tells you nothing really. Right. I mean, it's just the definition of everything Vikings. And it has been for a while. It's like you, you are 15th or let's see, I think Chad graph tweeted out the expected points added where they're 12th and offense and 17th and defense. It sort of evens out to 15th. You're just always 15th. And that's where I can feel the frustration building from people is always being on this. Well, yes, we've lost a bunch of games in a row and fallen out of the playoff race, but we're actually good.

And all we need to do is whatever. And this thing has just been sort of going around like the mouse on the wheel over and over and over again. And here's the other stat for you. The Vikings have now played 51 football games since signing Kirk Cousins. How many wins do you think they have, Mr. Murphy? 24. And they have 26 out of 51. 15.

Dead center. Just dead in the middle. And so when we look at the roster and we look at the coach and we look at the quarterback and we look at the coach and we look at the quarterback and we look at the general manager, you wouldn't say any of these people are terrible at their jobs. You wouldn't say that Mike Zimmer is incompetent or that Kirk Cousins is terrible or that Rick Spielman has no idea how to run an NFL front office. You wouldn't say that about any of these guys but with the we always circle back to is it going to be good enough to be a real contender to to like you said to book your tickets to los angeles for the super

bowl or to consider yourself in the mix and once again here we are saying well maybe they'll get to 15th in the league and be that seven seed and then maybe they'll get to the playoffs if they can work their way through that tough schedule and sort of be 500 through there and win a couple of games against the Lions. And I think that there's there's just got to be 90 percent of the people who follow this team sort of throwing up their hands and saying, here we go again. And I and I, as running this show, do not know what else to say about that, Brian. Well, and this is we talked about this early on, too, is, you know, mediocrity is poison in a lot of ways because it doesn't force tough decisions that probably should be made. It doesn't instill confidence in what you have. And if they are going to be crawling toward an eight and nine finish, it should be a regime change. But it just it doesn't there's no catharsis with that. And there's no sense of, well, let's just burn it down and start over and draft high and wheel and deal and get a new new group in here to do things differently.

If it's eight and nine, you know, maybe they, maybe they fire Zimmer, but they keep Spielman and you still got cousins. So you're not really, you know, you're not necessarily changing your retooling a bit. And I, people don't want to retool. You know, you mentioned the officiating too, and and it's always a tired trope that fixes in for the Vikings. But, look, however weak that call was, it was immediately made up for in the roughing the passer on Kirk Cousins, who basically fell down because someone breathed on him. I mean, I think there was somebody underneath him that he tripped on. But, like, I don't want to hear it.

The officiating had zero to do with that game. And you also had a player calling a timeout when he didn't have one. So like, you know, the officials, if they if they hit 90 percent of their calls, you know, that had no impact on the game. And Bill, you know, so I don't I don't want to hear that. But I I don't know. I don't know how the patience is for. The, you know, one step forward, two step back. And that's kind of it's literally what they've been doing. So I don't know what the patience level is for that, because we've seen it all before. As you said, it's exhausting. This cast of characters has been playing the same role in the same film. The Groundhog Day reference is very apt for a long time now. And I and that's the danger of mediocrity is that fans won't even be emotionally engaged. They're going to be checked out, which means, you know, the tickets are already bought, but they're going to be dumping them on the open market.

They're going to be unfortunately them on the open market. They're going to be, unfortunately, probably not tuning into this. They're going to be, you know, maybe spending more time with their kids and raking some leaves and having a more fulfilling life. Do not suggest. Do not suggest that. I just, yeah, but you want something to be excited, angry, or interested in. And I'm not sure we're there at all right now yeah that's exactly what i mean is that it just seems like a stuckness is the feeling of fans that you know sent me messages yesterday and i always on this show brian i'm always looking for what the answers are and in recent years i think we've been able to focus a lot on,

okay, how do you build around Kirk Cousins? How do you give Kirk Cousins more? And, I mean, the answer is usually it's sort of whack-a-mole. It's like you were able to get him a right guard who is fairly competent through development, but your left tackle is having to play because you couldn't afford to keep Riley Reif, so Rashad Hill had to stay there, and you can't afford to keep Riley Reif. So Rashad Hill had to stay there

and you can't afford to keep Riley Reif because you got a huge quarterback contract slash you spent all the money on the defense that just allowed, you know, 180 yards rushing and so forth. It's just always this sort of like search for, well, how can you get all the pieces to come together? And then what happens if they win? Like, how do you get them to win? What's the path? I mean, and now I feel like at this moment of being one in three happen in the NFL, unless you have the Cleveland Browns offensive line, but even they, they allowed pressure for Baker Mayfield. They've got a great offensive line, but the Vikings got after him a few times. It's going to happen all the time. Every week we have faced two bosses and a Donald the rest of the way. So you're going to see that from a week to week basis. So like, it's always looking for these answers though. And I think we've sort of reached the point where I'm not sure that I have

an answer for this actually being like really good. It's just sort of, I have an answer for how it could be in the playoffs, but that's where you come back to when you've run completely out of answers, then you have to talk about making some type of change. And like you said, that when you get to the midpoint of the season, it's not like you could trade for a tackle or something. You can't just go like, Hey, you know, can we just, you know, trade for a Orlando pace here? Like, no, of course not. That's not how it works. So then the answer is what is it to make a coaching change, but that's tough. And, and I'm, I'm not real super comfortable saying fire this guy, fire that guy. But I totally understand the people who are even saying, look, I,

I like Zimmer and I think he's a really great coach, but is this, is this going to change? Is this going to be any different? Well, a couple of things. I mean, if, if they lose next week at home to Detroit, I think he could justifiably get his walking papers. But I don't think that's going to happen. I think they're going to be two and three, and I think it's going to be a plotting thing where they're going to be two

and four, maybe three and four, three and five, three and six. And then it gets into this, okay, if they do fire Zimmer mid-season and maybe it's justifiable, what does it do for you? Because who's in the wings? You don't have a natural person to promote into. You don't have Kevin Stefanski. You don't have even Norv Turner who could have been a patch job years ago. You don't have that next guy in waiting. So then all you're doing is throwing a body over the castle walls for the

masses to put on their pitchfork. Great. And then you slog through the rest of the season and you're going to tear it all down anyway. I don't know if it'll be tenable to keep Zimmer. If it really gets ugly really fast, he will have to go. I don't know if it'll be tenable to keep Zimmer. If it really gets ugly really fast, he will have to go. But if it's a losing season and a non-playoff season, you're going to fire him probably in January anyway.

So then the question is, well, why make him a dead coach walking? You've got all of those variables that come into play all the time. And the Wills are not – they don't and and the wills are not they don't make knee-jerk decisions they don't make emotional decisions i don't think they have to change that right now but i think they need to be more attuned to what's happening uh they need to be aware that if this turns it's going to turn sharply and ugly, and they're responsible ultimately for where that goes. And Zimmer doesn't deserve to be dangled for weeks like that. If anything, he should be calmly let go and patted on the back and ride off.

So, you know, that decision, those decisions will come into play as we get closer to Thanksgiving again, unless they were to lose Sunday against Detroit or cause then it's that stench would hang for two weeks over the buy. And I don't think that's tenable. Yeah. But I just think they're going to, I just think they're going to keep lurching forward here, backward, forward, backward, forward. And I don't know what the atmosphere is going to be come Thanksgiving. Folks, Minnesota football is back,

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football tickets. The way I would think of it is you have these two games against very beatable opponents. Good teams beat the Carolina Panthers and the Detroit lions. You're allowed to go on the road and win a tough game. Yes. So if you don't get to the buy at three and three, because because here's the thing, when we talk about the path if you don't get to the buy at three and three, because here's the thing, when we talk about the path, I don't see a path to this being fundamentally different, not when over a 50 game sample, you're 26, 24 and one. And by the way, six of those wins are against the lions. So non lions games, you are 20, 24 and one since 2018. I mean, it's the same thing over and over. So it's hard to see a path for being fundamentally different.

But if we talk about instead, how could this season turn into 2019 where you have a chance as opposed to just straight up missing the playoffs? It's getting to 3-3. And then you can come out of the bye to play Dallas and have an opportunity to go four and three and look like a real team again. So the season is not lost in terms of can you make the playoffs? Can you be competitive? But having lost that sort of Cleveland game over and over again doesn't give you confidence to consistently winning that game that you needed so badly to win to look like a real contender against the Cleveland Browns who are very strong because there are NFC teams who look like that and then you're going to have to face them to get anywhere in the playoffs but in terms of making this a successful season per what

you have as a roster it's really getting to four and three and getting the Dallas win to make you feel like okay but what team can't say if we win the next three games in a row, we're actually good. I mean, that's another part of it. But I think if they lose one of the next two games, that really puts an end to this thing. I mean, there's really no coming back from two and four when your schedule looks like it looks in the second half of the season. You face Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert, Matt Stafford with his L.A. team. It's just Lamar Jackson is not going to be easy. Aaron Rodgers twice. So there's no selling that at that point. I think that the Wilfs would have a long discussion about whether it was time to do something else.

And even if that results in putting Andre Patterson as the head coach and just trying to have positive things happen the rest of the way and then completely looking at this thing from top to bottom. Do you want to change the way the front office operates? Do you want to trade the quarterback away? Do you want to do what Atlanta and what Detroit did, which was reassess everything and revamp your franchise after it's been this way for a long time. I think that's the time to do it, Brian. If they don't win those next two games, I think that's the time to do it. So I don't want to say the season is over because you lost to Cleveland because that's not correct. That's just not true because you have an

opportunity to get it back over the next few weeks. But if even one of those two games goes sideways, then it's impossible to sell. If you can't beat Detroit or if you can't beat Carolina, it's impossible to sell that there's something here secretive behind the scenes in the X's and O's and the all 22 tape that will magically turn this thing around against Dallas, Baltimore, San Francisco, Green Bay, and the like. And you referenced the Atlanta teardown, which is unique in the sense that that market is completely different than this market in that Atlanta is not a great sports town.

I mean, they're casual Falcons fans. But oh, by the way, they went to the Super Bowl recently. I think if the Vikings had been to the Super Bowl under Mike Zimmer at some point, they might be a little more eager to embrace a, all right, we're going to tear it down and be awful for a couple years and start over because, hey, we had our moment. But what did the Vikings really have under Mike Zimmer? They had the miracle. That's the one moment that they can really say, well, they beat New Orleans in the Superdome. Okay, fine. But every time that they did have those moments, it was followed up by a terrible clunker.

You have the miracle, and then you go to, why did you even bother going to Philadelphia for the NFC title game? You impressively beat the Saints in overtime in the Superdome, and then you pretty much were a vanishing act in San Francisco. So all of those things were quickly checked and ruined. Those moments were ruined because of the follow-up performances. And that, I think, is what, you know, Vikings fans will say, fine, let's tear it down and start over. But my God, do we have to do this again? At least the Falcons had a Super Bowl. You know, at least the Falcons had a 14-win season. At least we bought into what Matt Ryan was doing.

You never really bought into what Kirk Cousins was doing, and he's still here. Oh, I just can't imagine having to get spoon-fed that sort of patience, folks. Trust us. Trust the process. We're going to do it all right. We're going to do it again, and we're going to bring in a new a new voice. It has to be done. But the sales pitch becomes more and more difficult. Who does this remind you of? Like I was trying to think of the comparisons.

There's there's one comparison maybe that goes for every network sitcom where maybe it was a good show at one point, but then it just sort of was the same show over and over and over again uh it didn't really change anything and when they get to season seven it's just like okay fraser crane is no longer funny by season seven or something right in the rock or yeah right right hey rachel's pregnant was it ross or was it some guy at the coffee shop what is that patrick peterson is that like you know patrick peterson is uh rachel's pregnant i mean my that's it doesn't feel that way um i guess i was also thinking like sports wise that it's very it's very twinsy it's very twinsy to be like hey if we just have all these things happen we could compete with the yankees this year and you're like but, but can you? You know, I mean.

Wow. You're going to bring in Minnesota Twins baseball angst into this conversation, too. Well, I mean. Why don't we talk about the Timberwolves front office while we're at it? But you know who, you know what really reminds me that I've brought it up many times before. And so I'm sorry for being redundant on this. But the Cincinnati Bengals under Marvin Lewis were just like this. I mean, they were really good and they didn't quite get there,

but they had great times for their fans for years under Marvin Lewis. And he's a good coach and he's a respectable person. And I think anybody would be happy to have him as their head football coach. But eventually he got to the point where you're like, reshuffling the deck chairs just isn't working. And Andy Dalton's not getting you there. And you lost some key players that make this not the same as it was when you were at your best. And so even though the guy's trying the same buttons, they're just not pushing

anymore. And Philadelphia. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, right. It's a great example that even really good coaches run their course. And that's where it feels like today. Now, three weeks from now, it could feel very different. So I always want to say that, that I'm not, I'm not calling the race. This isn't, you know, the- No, you're just calling the snapshot in time where we're at and calling it like it is. Right. Oh, Brian, we're here again. We are here again. So I appreciate your time as always. Do you have any final thoughts that you would like to leave us with? Well, it's going to be fun watching the game at home on Sunday with my son, my 10-year-old,

because we're going to be FaceTiming with my parents and my younger brother in Detroit. And he's gearing up for three hours of trash talking. Is he a Detroit fan? No, no. He's a total Vikings fan. Oh, okay. He likes to tweak my parents and my brother because I don't even know if they're Lions fans anymore.

They're just sort of like we just love – it's like watching Jerry Springer. We're not getting informed anymore, but it's good quality entertainment. So, you know, the Lions, of course, are 0-4 going nowhere. So, you know, that's what I'm looking forward to on Sunday is at least it'll be a family trash talk fest, which should be entertaining. Well, that's nice. For me, well, look, I always enjoy covering NFL games, so I'm not going to be down on that. But there are a lot of game days against detroit where i wake up and head to the stadium and go do i have to it's just detroit do i have to do i have to watch do i have to watch

david blau do i really have to cover a game where david blau is playing um but the sunday bar in the press box and the three meals you get including the the pizza at the end that Hagen orders. Yeah. I have to say, you could be digging ditches. The pizza was on point. I did. Yeah, I did.

Yes. I worked road construction and a lot of that was literally digging the ditches along the sides of the road. So that's what I'm saying. I think you can survive covering the lines. I'm, you know, the,

here's the difference from last week though, or yesterday is it was so energetic and it just had this great build up to it. And even if you look at the numbers for the podcast last week, they were they were good. There were a lot of people getting excited about it. And that's where I at the end of yesterday's show sort of said, I feel for you, because every time there's a great week that leads up to something where it's like, man, if they just do this, then they're good. And then we can go forward and it's been let down after let down. And I'm sorry for that.

And so going from a game that had so much fun leading up to it yesterday, and even, even midway through the game, it's like, wow, this is a real battle. These two teams going at it. The comparison to hope you beat the 0-4 Lions is kind of off of a cliff. But anyway, so all right, Brian. Well, your column at purpleinsider.substack.com is tremendous, and people should go check that out. And also, I appreciate your time every Monday here on Monday Morning Murph. So thanks, man.

All right, man. Talk next week.