Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - More reaction to JJ McCarthy being lost for the year and joint practice recap

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Matthew Coller chats with Vikings fans about where things stand with JJ McCarthy and what he saw in Day 1 of the Vikings' joint practices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here inside the Courtyard Marriott in Cleveland, sort of about 20 minutes away from Cleveland, where I have earlier today not only witnessed the Minnesota Vikings joint practices. today, but also was there for Kevin O'Connell announcing that JJ McCarthy is going to be out for the year and also watched Jordan Addison go down in practice today, which of course, the instant reaction was probably from us in the stands where there's a stands where we can sit and watch the same as yours when you saw it on social media or wherever else, which is that there was a little bit of what is going to happen next after Jordan Addison went down. And just to describe the scene a little bit for Jordan Addison, he went up to try to make a play on a contested ball, went down, got back up. And then when he got back up, he realized something was wrong in the leg area. So he went back down and trainers came over to

him. They had to help him up and then got him onto the cart. And as he was leaving the cart, kind of had his head down in frustration. As he went back, we didn't see him again. So then the four of us who are here covering the Vikings, myself, Alec Lewis, Dane Mizutani, and Mark Craig, we kind of hung around after waiting for Kevin O'Connell. And when O'Connell came off of the field, we had a chance to ask him about Jordan Addison. And he said that he believed he would be all right. He wasn't going to practice tomorrow, obviously. And he, there was never any plan. I'm sure to have him play in the game against the Cleveland Browns. I'm absolutely certain that they were not going to have him playing in the game. And so we don't know after

that, but the way that he put it was, I think he'll be all right. And that's the best we can really do for right now. All right. Could mean a variable number of things. It could be, he'll be all right. As in he's right back to practice next week. Sometimes when it comes to an ankle injury, it seems more serious than it actually is. Uh, could be two weeks, could be the start of the season. I could be into the season. We don't really know. And I think that they didn't really know right after practice. And he talked about getting a picture of it, which I assume he means they need to take the x-rays and understand exactly what is going on with Jordan Addison's ankle to know when he is going to be back. But anytime it's something like an ankle sprain, then you could

be talking about a few weeks before he's back to a hundred percent. And, uh, then we go from there with an ankle thing that you never know could crop back up or whatever else, not what you wanted to see from Jordan Addison, who has had, uh, despite the driving issue off the field, has had a very good training camp, has connected with Sam Darnold quite well. And what we got was today a real glimpse of what would happen if Jordan Addison were to go out. And this would also apply to Justin Jefferson as well. And I know you guys already know this, but it's not great. It's not great if that were to happen, because as much as we've seen Jalen Naylor grow, the idea with Jalen Naylor is that if he's paired with Jordan Addison and Justin Jefferson, then he can be really good. But when it comes to asking him to be Jordan Addison, that's a big ask or asking him to be Justin Jefferson. That's a big ask for somebody who only has a handful of receptions in their career. And then everyone else gets moved up the depth chart. So we were seeing Tristan Jackson.

We were seeing maybe there was a little Trent Shurfield mixed in. I know he was definitely making some plays with the second team. I thought he actually had a good practice and Nick Mullins got it together after a very tough start, got it together and ended a little bit stronger with one good throw to Trent Shurfield. But the second team had just as tough of a time as the first team, but we were seeing what would happen on the depth chart. Tristan Jackson has to be moved up. And then you're talking about Jefferson with Tristan Jackson, Jalen Naylor, and Johnny Munt. And that is not exactly how this operation is supposed to work.

It's supposed to work with Jefferson, Addison, Hawkinson, and not with the crew, kind of the Motley crew that he was with today. So there was a lot of forcing the ball in Justin Jefferson's direction. He did have one tremendous catch on a deep ball. It was an extremely, extremely physical practice. I thought Cleveland really brought it on that side of the ball and made the Vikings offense have a lot of tough times out there. And it wasn't easy for Justin Jefferson. I didn't think he completely dominated today, had a few nice plays. And the one deep ball was very impressive. They tried to work some

deep stuff to him. And I think this was the type of practice because there are no fans at this. I think Cleveland is done having fans come to their practices. So it was only open to the team and media and so forth. And maybe family members were around. So they were running. It looked like stuff, not just kind of vanilla stuff that they didn't want out there or whatever. This was offense and defense putting on what they plan to use during the season. And Cleveland's defense is absolutely loaded and they were playing extremely well, even without a couple of their key players today. Miles Garrett is just an unbelievable talent. And he and Christian

Derisaw were going at, I mean, just really battling together, but even when they would try to throw somebody else at Miles Garrett, there is no stopping this man. He's one of the most impressive players I've ever seen in person. So that was throwing things off from the very beginning. But there are other pass rushers the Vikings will have to deal with. So when it comes to just the depth of the entire Vikings team, this is part of the issue of where they stand right now. And when we try to project what they're going to be as a team, we have to consider that if one guy gets hurt in Jordan Addison, that suddenly you're in a lot of trouble as far as Sam Darnold having multiple weapons to be able to work with. The other thing that I think was a

little concerning and we'll see where it goes tomorrow. It's a little harder to say because they have to stop. They don't tackle the guy, but I did not think that it looked great in the run game today. It didn't seem like the run game was getting a whole lot of push against Cleveland's defensive line. Again, this is a very good defensive line. This could be one of the best defenses in the NFL and it's great practice work to go against them. But at the same time, you want to see improvement in the running game and it didn't feel that way. So I tried to get a sample today because they're practicing at the same time, offense and defense on two different fields. So I can't watch everything at once.

I wish I could. But I wish they gave us all the videotapes so we could go back and review every single play. So I watched a lot of defense first and then went over and watched the offense. And it was just the tale of two football teams on both sides. I mean, the offensive side was having a pretty rough time, and Cleveland was being very, very physical, very aggressive, winning the majority of the reps. And then when he went to the Vikings side, the Vikings defense,

they were, I thought, very good today. They were pressuring Deshaun Watson and Jameis Winston all the time. The interior of the defense line, I thought very good today. They were pressuring Deshaun Watson and James Winston all the time. The interior of the defense line, I thought, looked like it had a pretty good day today from the times that I was watching. The blitzes were getting home from Brian Flores. Deshaun Watson looked a little frustrated. There were a few times where he completed a pass, but the whistle blew and he would have been sacked.

We saw a number of different blitzers come through and Andrew Van Ginkle really, really impressing me in these practices, the more that he plays. And as far as the corners go again, I only watched half of the defense and half of the offense, but I thought there was so much confusion from the starting offense of the Browns that the corners didn't have to necessarily stay with their guy for the entire time because the ball was coming out to a lot of checkdowns and short passes and things like that from Deshaun Watson because he didn't know where to go with it. So it started to make me wonder about what this team and their identity is going to really look like now that we know Sam Darnold is the quarterback. We know that their identity is going to really look like now that we know

Sam Darnold is the quarterback. We know that this isn't going to be a year that's about JJ McCarthy's development because he's out for the season. And we'll talk about that in just a minute to David, how they're mixing in Turner and Van Ginkle. The answer is interestingly in a lot, there's a lot of different packages that they're working in with those guys. And to have the amount of talent that they have, and even Patrick Jones as a situational rusher can be effective to be able to put Dallas Turner and Grenard and Van Ginkle on the field at the same time in third down workouts from time to time. It looks pretty nasty. I mean, if you're

the offense, I don't think that you're going to really like that. Um, and, and this is the point I was going to start talking about is that they may have to be a more defensive minded type of team this year. And Kevin O'Connell may have to adapt the way that he calls his plays. And unlike last year where they had this very distinct Kirk cousins offense that was throwing the ball all the time, leaning into the Kirk, leaning into Justin Jefferson. And then when Josh Dobbs got here, they felt like they couldn't really severely change that. But in this case, they've had Sam Darnold here learning this offense from day one and i know that i've said over and over again that kevin o'connell's going to pass he loves

passing the football that's what he's going to do and i don't doubt that that's still going to happen but they may have to adapt a little bit if the defense ends up being the stronger part of this team and look for explosives from Sam Darnold, rather than Sam Darnold, just running the entire operation, like he's Matthew Stafford or something back there for the Rams and just throwing the ball all over the place or what they had Kirk do the last two years.

Instead of that, they may have to dial it back a bit, which could be potentially difficult if they are still wanting to work the ball to Justin Jefferson as much as possible. So I'm not saying don't throw and become Mike Zimmer, but you have to play the cards that you're dealt. And at the beginning of the season, if Jordan Addison is delayed at all in his recovery from this ankle injury, we are now what, less than a month away from week one.

And we know that TJ Hawkinson is extremely unlikely to be back in starting in week one. So you're talking about, you know, the not having a full deck of cards, but you have a healthy Aaron Jones going into the season. He practiced today. That was very good news for them. So did Jonathan Grenard. Gabriel Murphy remains out. Not sure.

We just have not got much of an update on Gabriel Murphy, but he's not going to be a huge part of the operation for this year. Anyway, that's Dallas Turner. That's Andrew Van Ginkle. But they may have to formulate a little bit more of a play action, short pass screen, then look for something big, run the football effectively, and then play defense. That might be their best chance to try to hang around in games and then hit something deep. It's kind of how actually Sam Darnold won some games with the Carolina Panthers in 2022 at the end of the season where they played pretty conservatively

with him, they didn't ask him to do dropbacks all the time. It was a lot of play action. I think he had almost 40% of his dropbacks were play action. They've done a lot of that this year and then look for some deep shot and then hope that Brian Flores' defense can take the ball away and can continue to play well because they're just not going to have a quarterback. I think what you could walk away from just the sample that we have, they're not going to have a quarterback that's the same as Kirk Cousins, who had been in the league for a long time,

had this big sample of success. They're going to have a quarterback who has been way up and down like crazy throughout his career and more downs than ups, but has a chance to improve. But if Addison isn't a hundred percent, you're really just relying entirely on Justin Jefferson. That's where you have to lean a little bit more into the run game, into the screen game, into the play action game and try to play defense. They may have to start the season that way and see how it develops. If Jordan Addison is down. So Miles asks, and then I want to get into what happened with JJ McCarthy and the outlook going forward for him and the strong statement that was made by Kevin O'Connell today. So Miles says, does going after someone like Gilmore make sense. I think that it still does. Um, because well, one,

I mean, if you spend say $9 million on Stefan Gilmore, it's not like you don't get it back. I mean, he would likely play one year here. Maybe you trade them away at the trade deadline. If it's going bad, if it's going good, you try to make the playoffs with him. Kind of feels 2021 Patrick Peterson ish, where there's no real downside to having someone like Stefan Gilmore, because what I thought the downside was going to be is, well, then the young players won't really get their chance. Well, one of the young players, they traded to the Dallas Cowboys. So we don't have to worry about that. And then the other player with a Caleb Evans, the sample size has grown throughout this training camp. And I think their interest in

Stephon Gilmore really tells you where Brian Flores stands with a Caleb Evans, which is not the most confident and with Shaq Griffin's injury, Shaq Griffin was here and he was warming up a little, but did not look like a guy who's going to be ready to play anytime soon. The outlook for him continues to be somewhat positive for week one. That's really all we can really tell you. And it would make sense that look, if Griffin is banged up already and that could crop up again and they don't trust the Caleb Evans, Fabian Morrow is kind of a replacement level backup corner or starter on a team that doesn't have great corners. Sure. Get Gilmore, try to have a great defense. If you have the 20th best cornerback play in the league,

the 15th best cornerback in the league, this could be a very good defense because of all the other strengths that it has. So I have no issue with them going out to get Gilmore now that they have found out how they feel about some of the younger players. Evan asks, does Jaron Hall make the team or do they still put them on the practice squad? Yeah, I don't really know. I mean, I guess this is something to talk about is should they actually do something here with the quarterback position? And the first thing that you would consider would be calling Ryan Tannehill because Ryan Tannehill is still a free agent, veteran quarterback. He was not at all good last year, but you are an injury away from having to play Nick Mullins for a really long period of

time. It would make a lot of sense to just get Ryan Tannehill in here now and have him back up Sam Darnold. And then if Darnold gets hurt at all, at least you have a veteran quarterback that you can put in who has had success in the NFL. Because I mean, when it comes to Nick Mullins, that's, it just can't, you just can't do that. If they had to play Nick Mullins for a long period of time, we saw that what that would look like. We've seen it actually a few times in the NFL with Nick Mullins. I have the utmost respect for him. He's a guy that shouldn't have an NFL career based on his physical talent. And it's all about his work ethic. It's all about what he can do mentally. And he made for two really entertaining football games last year. He airs it out. He's got guts, but if he had to play 12 games, I mean, that would just be a disaster for them in a season

where they want to compete for a playoff spot. If we were talking about tanking, then okay, but we're not talking about that with this ownership group. So I think that they may have to do that. Your question was more about Jaron Hall. He's just not in this conversation. Jaron Hall is at best a practice squad type of quarterback. I don't believe that if you have a backup quarterback who is competent, then you think if you play well, you could maybe win half your games or at least be in them. I'm not sure that you could win any games with him playing. And that's just the unfortunate reality that some guys aren't good enough to do this. That's kind of how I see a Jaron Hall. So whether they keep him or not, I don't know. I think because they drafted him, they'll probably put him on the practice squad.

But I mean, I think if Ryan Tan wants to play football, then it would make a lot of sense to give him a call and see if he wants to be the backup for this team. Now that we know that JJ McCarthy is out for the year. Tommy says, did you notice any psychological wear and tear on Kevin O'Connell? The list of the last six weeks or two, you lose a couple of corners, wide receiver, J.J. McCarthy injury,

and now Addison, of course, Kyrie Jackson, what happened with him. That was very difficult on fans who never even met Kyrie Jackson, much less the coach, the general manager, everybody in that locker room. It has been an incredibly difficult training camp in a year that everybody was coming into with a lot of excitement and a lot of like, this is new, this is fresh. This is a new era of Vikings football. And immediately they get hit with some really, really difficult things to work through for a head coach. And, you know, I think with Kevin O'Connell, we talked to him several times a week and we ask him questions and that's

the relationship that we have as the media with the head coach. Um, I think if you were to sit down with him at a restaurant for an hour and ask him to share his feelings, he would probably talk a lot about how difficult this has been. When you're the head coach of a football team, this is stuff that you have to go through. Losing quarterbacks, losing cornerbacks to injury, players that you really like going down. I mean, it's part of the game, but when you add what happened with Kyriei jackson and how difficult that was now to this it feels like these things start to add up um toward us i i don't think kevin o'connell has shown anything but just leadership for his team and he's had to make a lot of

statements to us about the different things that are going on but there's no question that it wears on everyone and he's the leader of the entire group uh it will be a challenging season for him because it hasn't even started yet and he's got to be exhausted with all the things the amount and with jj mccarthy going down i think it's different for him even that it is for everybody else who is very excited about him the fans it's total i use the word gut punch but air out of the sales whatever way you want to put it, you could feel just how much pain everybody was feeling when JJ McCarthy went down. But from Kevin O'Connell's perspective, this is a guy who flew out to Michigan and he went to the deli with JJ McCarthy and sat down with him and watched how he acted toward the employees and all those things. And he got him in the building, taught him the footwork,

watched him grow, watched him develop, watched him create his leadership and this confidence that he fully bought into. And when he said to us, and I always try to evaluate coach speak, it's part of the job. It's interesting to me. But when he said today, definitively, JJ McCarthy has proven to us already that he's our franchise quarterback. That was a statement that he didn't have to make. And he came in and made that just right off the bat. Like, that's what we believe. That's what we've seen from him. And that matches up with everything that we have seen from JJ McCarthy, the way he's handled

himself, the ways in front of the media, how he's developed the different passes that he was struggling to make when he got here and then was making brilliantly in the game and making brilliantly in practice. It wasn't perfect, but he was, he was on his way and we don't have to talk about him as if he'll never get back to that way. Cause he will. And you have your quarterback, uh, that, you know, was drafted high and we'll start in 2025. And he's, he still did those things. He still showed you what he's made of. And there's still reason to believe that this path is going in the right way. It's just that I think for Kevin O'Connell, when you invest so much of your time and your energy, and you could tell how already defensive he was about even how many reps JJ McCarthy was taking, which, you know, I was not offended by when he would take some jabs at us in the press conferences, but it was more of like, you could tell that he's already protective of his franchise quarterback, that there's a lot of care there to it. And then it's just over. It's like he plays in this game. It's great. He puts his leg in an MRI machine and it's over for the

year. Wow. I mean, that is really tough. Now I talked to Garrett Bradbury after practice today. And what Garrett said was first of all, that they loved the confidence of JJ McCarthy. And I think you could see that from the way that the players interacted with him, that they were very impressed with how confident he was. And I think he just has that natural, there's a reason everybody gravitates to him type of thing. And Bradbury talked about that, but he also said, Hey guys, he's going to be here. He's going to be in the locker room. He's going to be working on it.

He's going to be understanding football better every week, and he's going to develop himself in every way that he can so let's not you know let's not go crazy uh it's just you know he's gonna be here and next year he'll be right out there so you know i i think that uh with jj mccarthy there is kind of this back and forth of this is terrible for everybody and everybody is down about it. But also it happened at a time that he had already done a lot of the learning and a lot of showing them exactly what he was able to do and gave them a lot of confidence to now build this thing around him. Uh, so I think that that's the big takeaway from this entire training camp from McCarthy is that it won't be easy for him to come back because he's going to have to relearn the stuff with his feet and his legs. And it all starts there as a quarterback, but he'll have a long time to do that once he's recovered. And as far as Sean, your question about

the whole season now that that did surprise me a little bit when he said he's out for the season. I don't know exactly the details of the surgery. We weren't told anything exactly, but I mean, maybe if he does come back at the end of the year or something, then it can be like, whoa, we got him back at the end of the year. But maybe it's just for as long a 35 year old quarterback who would have all this stuff really ingrained. It's more of, yeah, Rob says a red shirt year. I mean, it's kind of, it's more of a red shirt year that you wouldn't want to just have them come back in and then try to learn it all again in a couple of weeks and then play and then have it not go well. It's, it's better to just kind of, you know, call day uh this is the season this is what your season is going to be it's a development mental season and experience watching the NFL

happen and seeing what it's like from the inside and then you go from there uh it's it is it is a really tough situation for him to deal with when he showed this much, but he can do his entire rehab knowing that it, that he's got it right. I mean, if he had gotten hurt in the first mini camp in the first OTA, something like that, then you have to try to prove yourself to everybody later, but having already proved himself that that's, that's the silver lining of this thing as bad and as frustrating as it is. But I don't, I don't want to downplay how just tough this is for Vikings fans who were, if you were naming the top five most interesting things of this season and what everybody's looking forward to, it was probably McCarthy,

McCarthy, McCarthy, McCarthy, McCarthy. I mean, it just, after what he did on Saturday, uh, already it was through the roof and it wasn't just, it wasn't just, Oh, wow. He had a good preseason game. Everyone's excited. It was when you watch the former quarterbacks who do content and their breakdowns, when you see what happened when it came to the practices and how they were transferred over, it was all looking like, yeah, that's what it looks like in practice. And then you see it in the game. That's a good sign because there's lots of different quarterbacks who, you know, maybe play the fourth quarter of a game or something and scramble around, but there's not really an nfl quarterback we've seen that in the past before this was not that this was really running the offense in the way

that kevin o'connell wanted so that's at least there's that at least he comes out of this knowing on the other side of this recovery he will be 22 years old still two years younger than Michael Penix or Bo Nix. And those guys went through some things as well in their college careers. Penix went through a lot in his college career with injuries. And I remember talking about this and saying injuries happen in football. Like you just never really know when it's going to happen. And it ended up happening to JJ McCarthy. So disappointing,

but you know, here we are as far as now, what is left of the team now that that is, uh, out of the conversation of when is JJ McCarthy going to play? And just from my own personal perspective, how disappointing to not have that conversation on a weekly basis. Uh, I was really looking forward to going through. Is it time? Is he going to come in? What's going to happen with McCarthy? Is he going to play? Because I really felt like after seeing him Saturday, this guy's ready to play. I think I said it on the post game. He's ready. He's ready to play. He did. That doesn't mean he had to start, but whenever you needed to start him he could start and then to not have this discussion it leaves you feeling very uneasy because if the season started off

badly and they went one in four or something then going to mccarthy would have been great for everybody like all right like this exciting thing is happening and here you go and here's the new quarterback and let's see what happens and even if it didn't go super well you're still developing them on a weekly basis and seeing the flashes and tools and all that but now if it goes bad there's no emergency button to push uh there is no, we can just go to McCarthy. Like that's gone. That is off the table. So, uh, that's what makes it more difficult now for the head coach is you're riding with Jay with Sam Darnold, but no JJ McCarthy to go to, there's no button to push. There's no, you're not putting in Nick Mullins. If he struggles, you just got to ride out Sam

Darnold, no matter what. And I think just how I'm feeling today about the quarterback situation, I will admit to you is shaded by what I saw today on the practice field against Cleveland. It wasn't really that good. Uh, In fact, it was pretty rough. And so maybe I'm a little too far down on it because the recency bias in the game, Sam Darnold was really terrific. And leading up to this in practice, he was very good. It just feels like there could be a cap on this thing, especially if Addison is out for any amount of time or even slowed down for any amount of time if they can't run the ball effectively and even if the defense has some holes that the ceiling of this team even as much

talent as they have is a is limited and we knew that before but once it was limited but you knew that mccarthy could come in that didn't matter like okay it's limited with but you knew that McCarthy could come in. That didn't matter. Like, okay, it's limited with Sam Darnold to me being a fringe playoff team, but who cares? Because the rookie quarterback is going to come in and then it's all going to be about him. So, you know, I think that what we saw in the joint practice wasn't really fair to Sam Darnold because Jordan Addison went out and I'm sure that they put together the entire practice plan for Jefferson and Addison to get certain reps and certain routes. And then Jalen Naylor has to flip a switch and do them. And then Brandon Powell's in there. And then it's Tristan Jackson in there. And I think Tristan's had a great off season and he should

be on the team but someone like tristian jackson jalen nailer brandon powell i think these guys would probably tell you themselves they are not jordan addison in terms of skill so he has to come back um red red says i heard some complaining by the browns about the vikes be too rough uh i if anything it was the other way around but i i don't think i don't that I didn't see complaining so much as, uh, the Browns are just playing very physical. These joint practices are always more physical sometimes than a game. Uh, San Francisco, uh, Tennessee was really chippy last year. And, uh, actually a guy who got cut the other day, Tierra tart got thrown out of practice last year.

They've told the guys, like, no fighting and that kind of thing. But it feels always like it's teetering a little bit on the edge of, you know, somebody pushing somebody down or something. It was very physical. There was, as far as a Thayer Thomas update, we did talk to O'Connell after. There wasn't a lot of prognosis with Thayer Thomas. He went down. He was down for a little while, got up, walked back, and I wouldn't expect him to practice tomorrow. It looked like he got banged up. Hard to say exactly what happened. We couldn't really tell. He was just down, and then they surrounded him, and then he walked off by himself, which is a good sign, but not really sure what happened there or if we'll see him in Saturday's game.

So even another depth wide receiver may end up being out. that if everything goes to plan with Addison being back, Jefferson playing the way he has in training camp, and he was, of course, great today as well on a couple of plays, especially one deep ball. It was ridiculous. But if they have to try to win without Jordan Addison, without TJ Hawkinson, and they can't run that well, it's going to be a hard start to the season.

Uh, freedom thinker says, uh, about Thayer Thomas that he, that he hit his head on the ground. Yeah. I don't really want to speculate on that for sure. I mean, it's just, it's hard to do from the sideline to try to diagnose bull. Uh, it did look to me like the way that he was down, that it may have been a concussion, but I don't want to say that with certainty and have that not be what it was because I'm, you know, a hundred feet away or something from Thayer Thomas going down. It's just notable that he went down and may end up not being able to play in the game, which is a disappointing for him because he's been very good. But when it comes to, yeah, you're right. The, the source, the source is necessary. We always

gotta add the source, but I think that just the overall takeaway and it was kind of a reminder today is that this team, when you're not quite there yet, you're always sort of teetering on the edge of one injury can cause you to go from looking like the best wide receiver duo and an all pro caliber tight end to, uh-oh, you just, who are you going to throw to? And today they were a lot of who are you going to throw to? So now I guess we could talk about just some expectations here. I was trying to think if there was any other notable lineup stuff. I thought Jerry Tillery played really well when I saw him today. He's a guy that I'm going to have a lot of interest in just where he fits in,

how much he's going to play. Can he get after the passer a little bit? And I thought it was noticeable that they were mixing in a ton of Patrick Jones, Dallas Turner, Andrew Van Ginkle, a lot of mixing changes there. Harrison Smith was back in, looked good to me today. He hasn't taken a ton of reps recently. And this defense outside of Makai Blackman, and knock on whatever type of wood this is

in my hotel room, but the defense has just looked really, really quite good. Uh, and it's felt like that might end up having to be the strength of the team. Uh, so questions, comments, thoughts, uh, I will give you a second to gather yourselves and I will do the ad reads because I'm not going to forget tonight. U.S. Cellular, a show brought to you by U.S. Cellular. And they noticed that the way we use our phones is ironic. We try to put our phones down for dinner, but the menu's on a QR code. That is ironic.

We hit like on social media posts that we don't actually like. Ironic. Which is why U.S. Cellular created Us Mode to help us reconnect with each other and use our phones less. Ironically, a phone company wanting people to use their phones less is ironic. Let's find us again with Us Mode from U.S. Cellular. Visit uscellular.com slash build for us to get started. And by the way, friends, a new thing on the show, which is our new sponsor is underdog fantasy. And I've started playing on underdog fantasy, really fun best ball drafts and have started a weekly fantasy episode of this show. It's

up now. Go check it out with Mike Shope of the Deep End podcast. Really fun where we're going through, obviously, Vikings, things that are related to this team fantasy wise, but also my struggles with being good at fantasy and him trying to help me along and teach me the world of fantasy, how to evaluate other teams, situations, all those types of things. Really fun. Make sure you go check that out and sign up for underdog fantasy with the promo code purple to claim your special pick and first time deposit offer up to $250. And just, you know, I get asked about how to support the show all the time. One way to do it would be to go to underdog fantasy, use that code purple, because the more

you use it, the better it is for the show so if you get a chance to do that please do so there you go uh there is uh we we did the ad reads i didn't forget about it today and none of you even told me i feel like that you guys this this this shows me that you're not that you guys aren't really locked in you guys are distracted by your franchise quarterback tearing his knee. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta stay focused. Uh,

let's say gold speed says whatever happens, uh, this season happens. The owners need to invest in grass. I'm tired of our first round picks getting knee injuries. It is true that kind of a strange number of their draft picks have had injuries, uh, or it's just football. I don't really know, uh, when it comes to the studies of grass versus the turf,

they haven't really been conclusive enough. And Kevin Seifert has done a lot on this. They haven't really been conclusive enough to say that it's the turf that has caused anything it could have just been somebody hitting jj mccarthy's knee or it could have been when he dove and he hit his knee on the turf i mean i really i really don't know and we don't know what play it was that caused it and this they put in the whole new turf uh and that was supposed to be the whole thing it's a little more springy it's a little more forgiving and you know i think it was travis kelsey slipped last year

and he hurt himself and then it was okay they need you know get rid of turf it's got to be grass and all that stuff i prefer football on grass personally no slight to the randy moss metrodome years but i would prefer it played like it is at lambeau field on the grass i don't know if it's feasible to be able to do here to wheel in the grass or to change what they would need to change my feeling is that it's not the playing surface. It's just how football works. There is though now kind of a strange amount of injuries that have happened in us bank stadium with their highly talented players. There have been other years where they had no one get hurt by the way,

where they had the entire defense of 2019 all healthy until I think the last week where McKenzie Alexander got banged up, but you had Mike Hughes, you had Delvin cook before that, both of them with ACL injuries. And then, you know, this happens a number of other players have been banged up. It's just hard for me to look at it and go, yeah, it must be the turf's fault. Because I think if you asked any other team, Hey, did you guys have like players get hurt? You know, of course, of course they have players getting hurt. They always do. Rob says, how does Turner look today? I just most noticed where he was

lining up and Van Ginkle kept catching my eye as far as actually getting to the quarterback, the overall sample size of Dallas Turner. I can't remember a particular rep. I just remember him being in there a lot with packages that were confusing the quarterback. But the overall evaluation on Dallas Turner is at least you still have a first round pick. Who's pretty exciting going into the season. There is that as, as you try to work your way through and rationalize your way through the 2024 Viking season, that's part of it. Dallas Turner is a top 20 draft pick who is pretty exciting. Uh, but he looked back to himself. Uh, they, they, I guess held them out sort of precautionary the other night of practice, uh, the night practice, um, that they wanted to make sure that he was going

to be a hundred percent for, uh, this, this two practices back to back. So good to go. Uh, Scott says, uh, looking forward to all the healthy servings of crow from all the Darnold haters. Well, you know, I think that there is a difference between a hater. I don't think that Sam Darnold has any haters. Uh, Sam Darnold has skeptics, uh, non-believers, anybody with pro football reference. I mean, when you look at what Darnold has done in the past and you look at some of the issues that have kept him from being a franchise quarterback, it's not irrational to look at him and go, well, I'm not really buying that just playing here is going to completely change entirely who this guy has been for such a long period of time. I mean, it's been 50 plus starts of similar type of performance

until really the last seven or eight starts. So you can be skeptical, but also you can look at it and say, I could see a world where this actually works. And I'm not going back on that because there have definitely been practices that I've come on here afterward and said, Whoa, he was on fire today. It looked great. Uh, today it did not look great. This reminded me of the first padded practice where we said, it was a little bit rough when the pads came on. That's what it looked like today. They just couldn't really get in any type of rhythm. And I think that had a lot to do with Jordan Addison being out and then having to make a change on the fly because he's used to Jordan Addison being there for the entire time. But yeah, I mean, I always bucket these things. This is why we do pie charts into percentages, into what is the chances of X, Y, Z.

And we've probably done the pie chart a few different times, but there's the, you know, Scott, you're right. Kirk Cousins was hurt on grass. That's true. But maybe the turf wore down his Achilles over six years. Did you think of that? Um, but, uh, you know, when it comes to Darnold, there is a 20% chance that this thing is just bad. It doesn't work at all. And it's a total flop. And then there's maybe a 40% chance that it's got some really good moments,

but it's not good enough to make the playoffs and then a 20 chance that it's better than he's ever been before and they're right in the playoff race and then another 20 i don't even know where i'm at right now i think that's a hundred where he's just really good and he totally shocks us and throws for 30 touchdowns and we go, Whoa, this is a remarkable what Sam Darnold did. I would not, I would not change from feeling that way just because I saw it today. Um, it's well, when it comes to, so now we're debating whether he has haters or not. I just, I just think that there's a difference between, and maybe this is me being old now, but I just look at it as if you're, if you're hating someone, I think that it has to do with who they are, their personality, how they play that sort of thing.

And just wanting them to fail for no reason. Everybody that I ever talk with about Sam Darnold, all things that he has a chance to succeed and a chance to do this and be pretty good but also we can't just ignore what we've seen for his entire career which is him not being able to get the job done i mean now you could say he was eight nine in carolina and that's that's true and if he does that here then it's yeah i think sloth you're, you're right. It's like not, um, it's not the same connotation as maybe I take it for how people use haters, uh, that it's not like as, cause I think being a hater as just disliking something from someone, no matter what, like regardless of the facts, just saying, for example, if you said lebron's terrible like that's

just being a hater because lebron's awesome and that's the fact right if you say sam darnold is terrible well it's not that hard to prove from his past history if he were to have the accumulation of what he did in his last seven games as an nfl player over a 17 game sample you could compete for the playoffs with this team it's just that we're trying to now grab a tiny sample and say here you got to do this now i think that he could if hockinson comes back if addison is good to go and if justin jefferson and him continue to have this chemistry and hit on deep balls and stuff like that. And if Aaron Jones stays healthy, that's not an unreasonable list of things to happen. But if something goes wrong, it's just going to be really hard because it's not like your number three wide receivers, KJ Osborne anymore. The number three wide receiver is Jalen Naylor. Now KJ Osborne may not have been a star, but he was a good player and he knew the offense and he could make plays and he caught big passes throughout his time. It's just Jalen Naylor has really done nothing so far in his career other than look good in training camp. That's a big difference. When we talk about if one thing goes wrong, then it's probably more

likely to unravel Sam Darnold. So there's a wide range of things that could happen here with Darnold. I don't think that we're in a position where, Hey, give up on this season. See you next year. I mean, that's just not, that's just the season's too long. There's too much football and the coaching in my opinion is too good for this team to be not worth a watch at all but what's happened now with mccarthy not being an option is now that buttoned push is gone and that thing that could energize everybody about this team for this season is gone which means if it starts out slowly it'll probably feel much like 2020 where it just feels like, can we get this over with and get onto the next season? That's how 2020 felt after they started one in

five. If it's something similar, there's nothing to inject excitement into the team, but just another one of those seasons. And I was thinking about this and I don't mean to bring anybody down with this thought, but so I arrived here in 2016 after getting hired by 1500 ESPN and came out 2016 season expecting to cover a Super Bowl contending team with Teddy Bridgewater. Not irrational to think that they had been in the playoffs field goal away as maybe you guys remember with uh blair walsh and even after teddy got hurt and bradford comes in he goes 5-0 so my first impression is whoa like this team is well coached it's got great defense like this bradford's balling out this is great this is one heck of a team and after that you guys know what happened. They fell apart 17, they go to the

NFC championship. So from my perspective, my first couple of seasons was why this team is just always going to find a way to be right there and be relevant in the conversation and have national media guys coming out and all that sort of stuff. And always being talked about always being in the mix. And after 2018 happened, it's like, man, that's what it feels like to have a wasted season, huh? That's pretty bad. That's pretty rough. Even though it was eight wins and you go into the last game of the season

trying to get in the playoffs, it was a real drudgery to get through that 2018 season. How many years have been like that since 2018? Obviously, 2018, they went to the playoffs. They lost every game to every good team that year. So that was a little bit of a slog. The New Orleans game was amazing, but then it was over so quickly after that. 2020, 2021, just wasted years of our lives. 2022 was super fun, but we all knew that it had a cap on it, where that was going to go. And then when they lost to the giants, you didn't even get a chance of going back to Philadelphia and trying to do that whole thing. But at least that, that was, that season

had a lot of excitement, a lot of great moments. So I'm not going to try to try to downplay 2022 last year, felt like it was going to be this comeback season. Then a drudgery to the end after we all realized that the past or not was not actually going to take you anywhere. The point is that what I'm feeling for you guys today in this moment with JJ McCarthy being out for the year is just how rare it's been in recent memory where you had this belief, this hope, this energy about the franchise. And Saturday was that, and then it was taken away. So I don't mean to pour salt in the wounds, but it's just even hitting me from a larger perspective of the last decade of Vikings football has had only a handful of moments where you could really get on board and think like this team is going somewhere. And a couple of those times it's ended up in disappointment. Manuel, how does RB1

and RB2 do today? I thought the running game really struggled. Aaron Jones looks like good, fast, looks quick. Haven't had any concerns about the way that he looks when he's out there. It's just the blocking versus this really good Cleveland defense was pretty tough. I thought that they were in over their head with this defense. Miles Garrett was causing problems. Derrissaw can do so much against Garrett, but he'll be everywhere at times. The interior, their D-line was pretty tough on the Vikings interior offensive line, who I don't have belief in, especially after the preseason game where Brandel and Ingram both had really tough times out there.

It's going to be the same issue that it's been for years. Uh, they're really just asking Aaron Jones to bail them out. That's kind of how I'm looking at it right now. The running game needs to be better. I wouldn't judge how it's going to be overall just by this practice. But if you were by the preseason game and this practice, you'd probably come away saying, I don't know. I don't see how they're going to have a wildly more effective running game than they've had before until they get some real guards in there who are excellent blockers. And schematically we're going to have to see it in order to believe

that it's going to be much different from previous years. So, um, do I think that they should bring in a power back for goal line things? Uh, yeah, I don't hate it. I don't hate that idea. That's kind of an old school type of thing. Having the, the big strong guy that can plow through, uh, this, I mean, Aaron Jones is good at that. Ty Chandler is really fast. He can get them outside on short yardage and Kevin O'Connell is going to throw a 20 yard out route on fourth and one anyway. So I still feel like really this thing is going to probably live or die on how well they can work those two things off of each other, the game in the past game and whether they can create explosives to Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, assuming that he's back and good to go. Of course, I've seen a lot of you making fun of Kevin O'Connellconnell and i do think that o'connell he said it was routine soreness what he was trying to say was that it happens a lot that players show up with a sore

knee and what they wanted to do was check and make sure it wasn't a bigger problem but once he used the phrase routine soreness i mean you know that that's becoming a meme in today's internet culture. So it will be remembered forever. Yes. That's that he said it's routine soreness. Then the guy's out for the year, him now say, I think you'll be all right to Jordan Addison means his career is over. Right? No, it won't. But I, it was like a little bit without context with what he was talking about when he said the routine soreness thing i i go that's yeah that's gonna be something he sees with the burner account on twitter i'm sure uh but you know that's we gotta have a little humor when it comes to this entire thing because

it's not not great overall with the start uh normally i would go deep into the night with you guys because we got a great crowd here but to tell you the truth, I'm a little exhausted. I still got to write, uh, about what O'Connell said today, what my takeaways were. So I'm going to call it a night, but, uh, not because I'm not enjoying the conversation. It's been another really good one. And thank you to the Marriott hotel and it's wifi for holding up and creating a, a nice little background scene here. I feel like I have the little light over my shoulder here, creating a little footbally glow for me. So tomorrow what we'll have is another one of these.

I also recorded a podcast with Dane Mizutani. That's going to come up on the channel a little later tonight from the pioneer press, Alec Lewis and I are supposed to get together tomorrow. Schedules, we'll see. He's flying out tomorrow. I'm flying out Friday. So we'll see what comes of it. We'll get a little more of a breakdown and we'll see just how they perform tomorrow against Cleveland. And if we can go a single day, we need a whiteboard days without calamity. Right now, it's zero. We'll see if we get to one tomorrow so thanks for everybody for watching for tuning in checking in from

cleveland here i will catch you guys tomorrow night thanks so much football