Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Ben Linsey talks about solving the Vikings' OL issues and the woeful NFC North

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Matthew Coller is joined by Pro Football Focus analyst Ben Linsey to break down how the Vikings can work around their struggles with the offensive line and Mike Zimmer's comments about not being "built" to win games where they have to pass often. They also discuss the Chicago Bears' ugly start to the season and whether there's any way they get on track quickly and Green Bay's brutal loss to New Orleans and what it means for the Packers. Visit tickpick.com/insider today and use the promo code INSIDER to save $10 on your first order of Vikings tickets! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. 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. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me on the show from Pro Football Focus is Ben Lindsay.

What's up, Ben? How are you? I'm doing well. We got some games action in on Sunday to break down the tape this week. So can't complain too much how are you doing i'm doing okay ben we have to reflect on the fact that my old show was the first show that you ever appeared on as a pro football focus analyst so i'm glad that we could get back together now i see you're going on national shows you were on sports map radio so your your star is rising and i'm proud of you ben i appreciate it i appreciate you giving me my my first shot there a couple of years ago. Yeah, for sure. So let's talk about offensive line play around the NFL, because that's what everyone in Minnesota is thinking about this morning.

And a comment that Mike Zimmer made that I thought was really interesting about how the Vikings are not built to win the way that they would have had to win against the Cincinnati Bengals. And I look around the league and I understand that score effects play into this with the number of passes that teams have to throw. But I see Tampa Bay throws 50 times. Dallas throws over 50 times. They're in a tight game. Last night, the Raiders are throwing a ton with Derek Carr. And I don't think that there's only one way to win in the NFL, and that's by throwing 50 times. But I think we also have to ask when a head coach says, we're not built to win in a game where we have to come from behind,

where we have to throw, where we can't stay ahead. I guess the question is, why is your quarterback paid that much then and why haven't you figured out a solution to being able to to win in those circumstances because we've witnessed this problem time and time again so I wonder what your feeling was watching this week where we've seen even I think the gas pushed down even harder on past first offenses. Yeah, and I think it really brings into light that you have to be able to pass from every situation. If you're only able to pass when things are going your way, when defenses don't know whether you're going to run a pass,

when you're able to run a heavy dose of play action, you're going to find yourself in situations where you can't compete with the best teams in the league because you're going to have to come back at times. You're going to have to be able to pass out of spread formations when defense knows that you're going to pass. And I think that just sort of brought the light back. And I think that's what Zimmer was talking about.

So I was playing around with some numbers last night, and I discovered that the Vikings on second or third down in either short or medium, Kirk Cousins since 2019 has a 130 quarterback rating, which is higher than Mahomes, Brady, Wilson, Dak Prescott, better than all those guys in that situation because they're able to run play action and take shots downfield. And yet the Vikings are in the bottom third of the league in the amount that they run play action pass plays on first down because they're so often giving Delvin Cook the football.

And I feel like, Ben, there has to be an adjustment because they're just not going to win with a number one defense in the nfl where they can just get ahead by a little and then shut it all down like they're going to play in a lot of games like sunday so what is the solution because i think it's throwing to justin jefferson more on first down and i hope i didn't take the words out of your mouth but that that to me is crank up first down passing. And I think the teams will still gear up for Delvin cook. And then if they don't, then you can run Delvin cook. But I feel like the way that they do it now with so much focus on running on first down, it puts them too often in bad situations where Kirk cousins is not that effective. Yeah, I think that's absolutely correct.

You don't even have – you can still run play action on first down. You can still take those shots on first down. A lot of the numbers point to the idea that you don't necessarily have to set it up with the run. The fact that they merely have Dalvin Cook and the run game that they've had the past few years, that's already set up. So if you use that early in the game, get those targets to Adam Thielen, to Justin Jefferson, and sort of build a lead and sort of hit those explosive plays early,

it allows you to run more of the type of offense that Mike Zimmer and that they want to run throughout the remainder of the game, rather than putting you in a hole and going to a situation where you have to be a little bit more conservative passing and getting the ball quick. Like we saw Kirk Cousins last week under a six yard ADOT, a quicker time to throw. That's not how they want to play on offense. Right. And early in the game, in the first quarter, there were only two targets to Justin Jefferson. And one of them was a screen pass where they lost one yard and last year i joked on the show that if justin jefferson has under 10 targets in a game someone has to go to jail and spend a week in jail because

it's that egregious of an offense and i feel like walking out of the first quarter of a game with your best player only having two targets and going into the second quarter and your first four drives only having thrown to him twice is just not enough. And I was watching last night as the Raiders threw to Darren Waller over and over and over. If you've ever seen the Marshawn Lynch clip over and over and over. But that that seems to be an effective model in the nfl who is my most unstoppable player let's throw to that person all the time and i know i'm like extremely simplifying football here but you see buffalo do it with digs you see green bay do it with adams and then waller last night i i feel like the most unstoppable weapons that you can continue to go

back over to them. You don't have to be super balanced when it comes to this. And the Vikings just don't really want to do that and get Jefferson the ball early in games. Yeah, it's those guys like some of the names you just rattled off who can win in any situation. It shouldn't be. You shouldn't be finding ways to get them the ball. And I know there was concerns about Jefferson coming out of LSU and whether he would be able to win on the outside, which seems comical now. But he showed his rookie year that he can win in any situation. He can obviously beat press outside.

He was one of the better receivers in the league. He can win when you move him to the slot against man coverage, against zone coverage so you just have to find ways to get those guys uh looks in the passing game and then that sets you up uh to run the ball with david cook to take those play action shots and all of that offense that they want to run right and uh this team does not want to use pass to set up the run i think mike zimmer is concerned about negative plays, concerned about sacks, concerned about interceptions. But I looked at the numbers

on first and 10 when Cousins passes over the last two plus years, including Sunday, and he's only been sacked 18 times on 428 pass attempts on first down. And I think that really shows you that you can run those play actions and teams are backing off for the run a little bit and not as they say pinning their ears back but that number goes way up on second or third down and long and we saw that play out so I think that changing their approach even just a little would give them a better opportunity to play in a game like that where you're going back and forth with another offense or if you have to uh or or trying to avoid playing from behind actually means

more aggressive early on i think but we'll see how they adjust it i don't know if they will the offensive line part clearly this is not going to be a year where the vikings put together the 1994 dallas cowboys offensive line from what we saw but holding penalties false starts giving up pressures sacks I mean year after year we've dealt with this and I wonder what your thought is Ben because you've studied the entire league how have teams done it that have built successful offensive lines because I moved here in 2016 and I haven't seen one yet the 2017 Vikings were average and that's the best offensive line that I've covered so help me out here like what

why is it that I don't think it's just the Vikings I think that there are a number of teams that have this issue that it just seems like they cannot get five people to play together effectively on the offensive line no matter how many that they draft or clever ideas of moving guys positions or anything else that they do? Yeah, I think one of the big things on the offensive line is development. If you look a lot at a lot of the better offensive lines in the league, you go back to the offensive line coaches in Cleveland, in New England, even in Denver, since Mike Munchak took over and sort of the steps they've taken. Because it's a position where you come into the NFL and we've seen it into the offensive line with sort of the way they've drafted the last few years with Garrett Bradbury, Ezra Cleveland, Brian O'Neill, sort of the guy who has panned out, it looks like right now.

But they've put resources into the offensive line. Those guys just haven't sort of panned out. And I think a lot of that comes to development which sort of gets overlooked um when you're looking at offensive line play and sort of how they're built so how do they work around it how do they help these folks because we've seen them have decent offenses in recent years but offensive line play that is that poor is going to put a cap on your offense and how good you can be and if you want to have a very successful team this year there has to be some workaround there has to be some change and I think that the

workaround for Cousins the other day as you mentioned was actually getting the ball out quickly which he's not known for but he started doing that in the second half of the game but I think it makes the entire fan base feel stuck, Ben. Like you just are always going to run into these spots where your offensive line has to block and it is not happening. And I'm looking to you for any answer on this. I don't know if this is the answer you want to hear because it's when the offensive line is really in a bad, and they're struggling to hold up. It's tough to get around a bad offensive line. You can do it sort of like what they tried to do a little bit yesterday or Sunday,

get the ball out quickly, sort of short, quick throws. That's what we saw the Steelers do last year to an extreme, to try to get around some of their offensive line issues. But that limits you offensively in sort of the plays you can run. You're less explosive as an offense. It's also what we saw the Bears try to do a little bit on Sunday night with Andy Dalton. You just sort of lack that downfield element. You can also use heavy play action, which is sort of the route that Minnesota has trended the last few years to slow down pass rushes and lean on the run game as they have.

But obviously, like we just talked about a little bit before, you're still going to have situations where you can't be in those scenarios. You have to just drop back. And the offensive line has to hold up. So it's a tough spot to be in when you can't rely on those guys uh to sort of hold their blocks on street drop backs see my thought in doing this show is always trying to look for answers ben and this one has eluded me and them for so long but uh you know i think that the answer might be they just have to pray they have to look up to the sky

and say football gods develop these linemen. Because, well, they drafted Christian Derrissaw. He hasn't gotten on the field yet. But I think what we saw from week one solidified the idea that Christian Derrissaw will play this year, that Rashad Hill cannot play left tackle for 17 games. And Wyatt Davis they drafted in the third round. If it doesn't work out with Ole Udo at right guard, they're going to have to play Wyatt Davis they drafted in the third round if it doesn't work out with Ole Udo at right

guard they're going to have to play Wyatt Davis and so there's a possibility that this could improve throughout the season if either Udo develops as he goes along because he's never played guard before or if Wyatt Davis is ready to go or if Christian Derrissaw is ready to go but you know Ezra Cleveland had a very tough debut. He was a guy drafted to be a left tackle. They've moved him to two different guard spots. And I think there's a little bit of maybe outsmarting themselves when it comes to the offensive line.

But let me get off that because we could spend all day just breaking down the history of how they have never been able to put together the offensive line. You mentioned the Chicago Bears. There's another team that I just was in disbelief over the way they handled their offensive line after drafting a quarterback. Let's draft a second rounder. Hopefully he starts.

Oh, no, he's not going to start because he's hurt. The Bears, are the Bears just going to be bad? I mean, I was watching that game thinking like what what is this team trying to accomplish this year they're playing andy dalton senselessly adam schefter's on tv comparing it to playing alex smith over patrick mahomes which is not an apt comparison at all because andy dalton is not good uh and alex smith was good so So I don't get what the Bears are doing exactly. Yeah. On the fields, Mahomes, Rodgers comparisons, I always find those funny just because it's always Rodgers and Mahomes that get brought up. And it's not the other first round guys who sort of didn't pan out.

The Johnny Manziels, the Paxton Lynch's of the world who didn't play in their rookie year. And it was it was there's no reason that they shouldn't be playing Fields right now, especially behind that offensive line. I know the rationale is that you're looking at that offense, and Dalton, he's not going to get killed. He gets the ball quickly. We saw that against the Rams. They, for the most part, limited the pressure on Dalton just by the fact

that he was getting the ball out in two seconds, five yards downfield. But Fields just gives them a better chance. The thing is, I don't know how good they're going to be this year, even with Fields. The decisions to part ways with Charles Leno at tackle, Bobby Massey, even though he wasn't great necessarily, and roll with the rookies there and sort of the unknowns with a Fedde kicking back out direct tackle. The decision to cut Kyle Fuller and roll with Kendall Vildor and Duke Shelley in the slot.

There's just a lot of holes on this team. I don't think the defense is going to be dominant or as good as they have in the past. And it's just difficult to see this offense being explosive at all um so i i don't think the bears are going to be all that competitive folks minnesota football is back and there's no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the internet for minnesota football tickets anymore because tick pick that's t-i-c-k, P-I-C-K, is the original no-fee ticket site and the only one you'll ever need to go for NFL tickets. TickPick got rid of all those awful service fees like the other ticket sites charge, which lets them guarantee the best prices of all of their NFL tickets.

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Can't stop the Thielen hats and a personal favorite, the old video game designs that Tecmo fans will appreciate. Check it all out at SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. Everything is screen printed here in Minnesota and I can tell you that the shirts are comfortable and they last because half of my closet is now SodaStick at this point. Again, that's SodaStick.com, Minnesota sports inspired goods and keep your eye out for our soda stick giveaways I really also feel like teams that rest on their defense and think oh well we lost one piece but we've still got these other really great pieces Akeem Hicks Khal Khalil Mack, and so forth. It always kind of happens that it becomes porous eventually. And that's what happened to the Vikings,

where they had all these pieces from 2017, but in 2018, 2019, it drifted a little, drifted a little. And then in 2020, it was like, you still have Harrison Smith and Eric Kendricks, but there are just way too many players that you've tried to plug in where good players used to be and all of a sudden I just looked at the Bears defense and thought who's scary outside of their two or three really good players there yeah the defense it's sort of the aura of the Bears defense and how they've been

in the past but we saw in the preseason they it was their first string defense essentially they were just getting picked apart by Mitchell Trubisky in Buffalo and that second team offense and I think the Rams showed it again that that you can beat this defense for big plays the secondary is is really a concern in my opinion. Um, so I wouldn't be all that shocked. Um, if they really have a rough year, especially if they're going to rely on their defense and sort of a conservative offense. Yeah. I'm putting week four, week five for when we see Justin Fields, um, because if they lose a couple of games in a row, they're putting themselves way back in the race and there's really no point. And so you have the lions who

are rebuilding and had a fun game against san francisco but i think that's who they're going to be this year and so it essentially comes down to the vikings and how much aaron rogers really wants it this year right i mean i saw today someone saying and of course it's like hot take season but uh why not just bench rogers for j Love? Because Rodgers doesn't look like he wants to play. And I'm sure Vikings fans laughed hysterically at that take. It's one game, but it was a really bad game. And there's another point to be made, too, about Rodgers' offensive line last year being really, really good, losing some pieces, losing his center, who's excellent to Los Angeles

and free agency. I wonder what you think in terms of how much reaction there should be to how badly the Packers lost to the Saints. Yeah, I think it's noteworthy. I don't think it can be completely dismissed, but I also don't think Rodgers is going to look like he looked in week one against the Saints moving forward and over the course of the season. I think the offensive line is a little bit concerning, but Elton Jenkins looked good kicking out the left tackle for Bakhtiari. I don't really think that's the concern on the offensive line. I think it's more sort of how they fill in the interior with him out at tackle for these first few weeks while Bob Piare's out.

And the Saints' defense, for as much as we talked this offseason about how the Saints could potentially take a step back, they still have a lot of talent in that starting lineup on both sides of the ball, especially up front on the defensive line. Marshawn Lattimore looked great in that game, and he was rewarded for that contract. So I think it was sort of a one-off thing for Green Bay. I would still expect their offense to be strong this year. It was just a bad showing.

It was, and I guess the thing you always wonder about is at some point, all of these quarterbacks not named Tom Brady, who are legendary, just hit a wall and they're not as good anymore and there's like ben roethlisberger is just played right through the wall and uh he's on the other side of the wall for sure yeah right it's hideous and yet he's still out there grinding it out but peyton manning was able to win a super bowl on the other side of the wall because he had an all-time great defense uh i i don't think that rogers has hit that wall off of an mvp season but it did happen quickly for peyton manning

put put odds on that for me i mean is there is there a chance that they come back they do the whole last dance thing and then it just implodes as so often does in the NFL with offseason drama and hype and everything else yeah I I certainly think there's there's a chance I don't think it's a good chance I'll maybe go if I'm putting odds on it um maybe plus plus 400 plus 500 that offense takes a significant step back um and I think the sort of the big thing is you just saw a little bit of rust from Rodgers. He wasn't obviously involved in a lot of the team stuff this offseason. Coming back, I think they'll largely be all right.

It was just a bad show. Okay, so before I move on to something else, I want you to tell me the records based on what you saw final records of the NFC North. Like does anyone, does anyone get to 11? I that's, that's, that's a good question. I still think green Bay, 11-6. I'll go Minnesota. They're clearly in second place. I'll go 9-8 maybe.

Chicago. I think Chicago and Detroit can both be pretty bad this year. I'll go Chicago, six and eleven uh Detroit five and twelve man that's it's very NFC Easty a little bit if Green Bay does not turn it around but I had 10 and 7 for the Vikings going into the season but I also was putting in a W in Cincinnati so I'm kind of adjusting and thinking nine and eight makes a lot of sense here. Now the Vikings are going to play Arizona. Chandler Jones had five sacks. The Vikings are playing a backup left tackle. It's not a great situation,

but how much do we make of Kyler Murray looking like, I don't know. I mean like looking like Patrick, Patrick Mahomes, but faster out there against tennessee is that tennessee is just falling off and they're not a great team uh is kyler murray taking the next step like i mean none of us really know yet but give me your general sense on that i think it's a little bit of both i don't think tennessee's defense is all that good i think minnesota will be a little bit tougher test, even as bad as Bashaw Breeland looked in that game against Cincinnati. And Murray, he throws one of the

best deep balls in the NFL. So I think that's going to be something to look for and for the Vikings to really make sure they don't get beat with those big plays over the top um and i think he his his step forward this year i do think we could see a step from him because as good as he was early last year um he was sort of in that fringe mvp conversation before the injury before he had to start scrambling less and we saw his play take a hit so i wouldn't be all that shocked if he came out this year and looked a lot better in his third year do you feel like cliff kingsbury heard everyone uh because i mean there were a lot of really smart analysts who were talking about that offense in arizona and i have not watched the game back yet to prepare for next week but

um i i wondered if cliff kingsbury would get the message because sometimes they do and sometimes they don't like sometimes these coaches will just say look this is my offense and it works and we're doing it um and other times they make the adjustments that are necessary and it felt simplistic last year what arizona was running out there and i guess i wonder like where the rubber meets the road for Cliff Kingsbury in his coaching career I think is whether he figures that out or not that he has to be a little more creative he has to move receivers around he has to use more motion he's got to make the adaptations as he goes throughout from week to week he can't

just run the same offense out there each week yeah I agree with you and i don't think i'm ready to say after that that one performance against nc that that he's there that he's making those changes i think they're obviously their defense and the performance chandler jones before put them in a lot of good positions positions offensively um but the thing i will say is with how heavy that their screen offense was I think the addition of Rondell Moore is really going to help them even if their offense doesn't get a lot more creative even if they still do a lot of the same things just the fact that they're getting those touches to Rondell Moore to make plays after the catch rather than someone like Larry Fitzgerald that is going to make a difference.

And you saw that a little bit against the Titans in week one. And this is a point to be made when you look at who Kyler Murray through to, because now KJ Osborne did a good job as the Vikings wide receiver three, uh, in week one. So we'll see where that goes. But Deandre Hopkins, Christian Kirk,

Rondale Moore, AJ green are all catching balls from Kyler Murray and if you have a talented quarterback there's no number of weapons that is too many I think to give a guy and Rondale Moore and drafting him sort of shows that and uh one of the most exciting players to watch in preseason to watch in college we saw a little bit of him I think against Minnesota when he was in college so give me before we wrap Ben, give me one result from this week that you thought was really telling and Team X is what their result is for sure. And you can take a second to think about this.

And then give me one where you're like, no, no, no. That's definitely not who they are. And don't use Green Bay because we already talked about that. So that's definitely not who they are, and that'll be different as you go forward. Yeah, I think the one result that that kind of impressed me and I think is is sustainable is Los Angeles and how that off the Chargers um and how that offense looked against a good Washington defense Justin Herbert was only pressured, I want to say, on six of his dropbacks, and he dropped back to pass a lot in that game. Rashawn Slater looked really good against Chase

Young again, and one of the best defensive lines in football. I think even with some of the talk about how Herbert's play under pressure might regress, how he might take a step back, I also just think the natural progression from year one to year two in an offseason where he entered the year as the starting quarterback, they build up the offensive line around him. He has weapons to work with in the passing game, that new offense with Joe Lombardi. I was impressed with them, and I think they are going to be a contender, at least in the wildcard picture in the AFC.

As far as teams that I don't want to overreact to, I think Buffalo's up there on that list. Their offense did not look great at all against Pittsburgh. Josh Allen didn't look great, but also that Pittsburgh defensive front, it's good. They can get after you with a lot of different players. It might even be better than last year, and I would say they had. It might even be better than last year, and I would say they had the best pass rush in the NFL last year, bringing in Melvin Ingram and adding him to that group.

So I think just how much pressure Josh Allen was under in sort of that matchup, I wouldn't overreact to how their offense looked in week one. I still think they'll have one of the best offenses in the NFL. The one that I felt immediately super wrong about was Atlanta. I thought Atlanta would be a better football team. But, you know, watching that, Philadelphia might be pretty competitive because their offensive and defensive lines were just completely dominant in that game. And Jalen Hurts, if he's got a good offensive line, can make some throws.

And drafting Devontae Smith was huge for them. I mean, that one might be telling, I think, that Philadelphia could be more competitive than we thought, especially with the division. Ryan Fitzpatrick's already hurt. The Giants are who we thought they were. Bad. And, you know, Dallas is still flawed. So that one actually might be telling on both sides of that one.

Yeah, just the mismatch on the offensive and defensive lines against Atlanta. Atlanta has real concerns in terms of defensive line and getting pressure in terms of the offensive line and how they're going to hold up. So I think that was a little bit of a perfect storm of strength matching up on weakness. Yeah, the other one for me is um i think cleveland is that team who can play that close with kansas city so i i think that is who they are and an impressive showing in a loss for cleveland to battle kansas city the way that they did so um well ben football is off we spent so long uh talking about what was going to happen

we finally have results and it's very exciting. Everyone, you should go follow Ben at PFF underscore Lindsay, L-I-N-S-E-Y, is where they can find you. And great to get back together with you, man. I hope we can do it again soon. Yeah, thank you for having me on. It was a great time.