Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Picking the rest of the Vikings' schedule (again)

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Matthew Coller and Manny Hill pick the Vikings schedule and talk about Sam Darnold's odd PFF grade Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and right off the bat, Is the Faithful says, we need Manny to re-pick the schedule again. Well, you are going to get what you want. In about a half an hour, Manny Hill will join, and he will pick the schedule again. And only the football gods know how many wins Manny is going to be prepared to give them. We kind of chuckled when Manny picked them at 11 and six after they went to an

Oh, well, maybe Manny is the one who is laughing now, but that kind of begins where I wanted to start the show and I'll get into some few other things and feel free to jump in the comments. Let me know what is on your mind. We'll talk for the next half hour. Then Manny will come on, answer your questions as well. And he will indeed absolutely be picking that schedule. But how many wins they get? How many wins should Manny reasonably pick this Minnesota Vikings team to get after they have started 4-0?

Because when you begin 4-0, and I was perusing around the interwebs today. I go on YouTube all the time and see, you'll be shocked, but my YouTube is about 60% old football stuff and Rich Eisen pops up and Colin Cowherd and all these different analysts that the algorithm is giving me. You know why? Because they're talking about the Minnesota Vikings all of a sudden at 4-0. And there have been a few other times during my time covering the Vikings since 2016 that other people outside of this building, the national analysts,

have been talking about the Minnesota Vikings. And sometimes it has led to a tremendous season or one of the biggest moments of the team's history in the Minneapolis Miracle and other times it has led to disappointment such as the 2022 playoff game against the Giants, the 2016 meltdown where many things went sideways, which by the way, Jeremiah Searles returns to the show tomorrow. Can't wait to get his perspective on that because he was on the 2016 team. Manny and I will talk about it as well. So how high are you willing to now set the bar that the Vikings have won their first four games? And to me, it matters with the fact that three of those games have been

against teams that are really, really good. And the other game against the giants when they did it, I think we all left New York thinking maybe Brian Dable is going to lose his job. But since then, it's not like the New York giants have played horrendous football. They went toe to toe with the Dallas Cowboys the other night. They got a win a couple of weeks ago or wait, no close loss with Washington. And maybe they won a couple of weeks ago ago uh didn't look at the standings of what the Giants have been doing the free show prep should have been what have the Giants been doing did they get a win yeah they got a win was it against Cleveland uh so yeah I think it was so okay I mean that's not a good team they're one in three but they look better against the other

teams that they've played than they did against the Vikings. The Houston Texans bounced back and they win yesterday. They've won every game outside of playing against the Vikings. San Francisco blasted the New England Patriots yesterday. They shouldn't have lost their game to the Rams two weeks ago. That's still despite the injuries. They have a very good team. And I expect that the Green Bay Packers will still be one of the clubs that the Vikings are racing against at the end of the season for the NFC North crown or for playoff position or

whatever it might be, because look at the talent on that team. The Vikings most certainly saw that in the second half. So they beat all teams except for the giants that have playoff possibilities. And I don't think that the Giants have been a laughingstock since, even though they most certainly were against the Vikings in week one. They've made good teams look much worse than they actually are.

However, it is only four games through the season. There's a long way to go. We can't even say the quarter mark of the season anymore because it's not even quite that. Once we get to about halfway through the second quarter, maybe of the Jets game, then it will be the quarter mark of the season. But so much can change in a long year. We even witnessed this last year where the Vikings started off so slowly. Then they won a couple of games in a row. Was it four games in a row that they won because they won San Francisco, Green Bay, Atlanta, and then New Orleans

and did not end up making the playoffs. The reason that I think that this will be sustainable for the Vikings to have one of those seasons that pops up every so often with this team is, first of all, the coach has a double digit win season before so this isn't someone that's brand new that we're just learning about we're not saying as we were in 2022 well can Kevin O'Connell really get them there can Brian Flores really get them there these guys are incredibly experienced coaches who are not going to have their teams get to 4-0, 5-0, 7-1 or whatever, and then just lose their minds. And what happened last year, I don't think is that relevant because

of who was playing quarterback and some of the injuries that they had on defense. I did not attribute that meltdown at the end of the year to miss the playoffs to anything more than Dobbs and Mullins not being able to get them over the hump but you do have to manage success I still look at the veteran players on this team and go which one of these guys hasn't had at least some success so far in their career before or is four or five years into their career I mean you look at the defensive side someone like Jonathan Grenard he's been around for a few years. Last year, he was in the playoffs with his team, the Houston Texans, and they had a lot of success

last season. The guys that they've brought in, Van Ginkles, Stephon Gilmore, has been in the biggest stages of the NFL. Not players that you would expect to get high on their oaths, as Mike Zimmer once said, and so I'm putting the bar pretty high. Do I want to go higher than 12 though? I think that that's where it gets hard for me because regression is possible. Regression from playing this well, dominating to this point. Well, just the regular roller coaster element

of the season. But in the past, when I've looked at what the bar is to potentially be a Super Bowl team, it's usually 11 or 12 wins. It's usually about a plus 100 point differential. And I don't see any reason that the Vikings cannot get to that point where they're entering the playoffs with enough to be making a case for themselves as a Super Bowl type of team. Now, that doesn't mean that they'll go in as the favorite. It doesn't mean that they'll win the Super Bowl. It just means that the profile of a Super Bowl team, a team that at least goes.

I did this by looking at the last maybe 15 years of teams that reached the Super Bowl, won or lost, and just looked at how good were they at everything? How good were they at offense defense? How many wins did they have? Just trying to paint that picture of the average type of team that reaches the super bowl. And that's what I came up with, uh, that they at least need to have an elite passing game, which the Vikings have had that or borderline to that so far. I think it's been an elite passing game. Uh. They usually end up having to have a good defense. It doesn't always require that they're the best and they almost always have to

get to 11 or 12 wins. I mean, there are those outlier seasons, but you got to go back a ways now to the Packers in the wild card. I, what Tampa Bay may have been a wild card team when they won it, but Tom Brady was their quarterback. It's usually about 11 or 12 wins if you're going to reach the Super Bowl. And I don't think that it's insane to start setting the bar around 12 wins for a team that starts four and Owen plays this well, but you can let me know in the comments, if you think that I am going a little bit too far with setting the bar that high, but I just don't see aside from a quarterback injury where the big area of regression, if you told me that Justin Jefferson kept being great, like, okay, I've seen that since the minute he was drafted. Will Jordan Addison

make catches like he did yesterday and get open with route running? Yes, he will. Will Christian Derrissaw and Brian O'Neill keep stopping the league's best pass rushers, which what a performance against the Green Bay Packers by both of those guys. A combined one quarterback pressure against Derrissaw or O'Neal, which is just flat out ridiculous. But I don't see why they're not going to continue to be good.

These defensive players, Harrison smith gilmore cashman grenard van ginkle metellus is even proven now at a big enough sample size uh that he could play as well as he can i mean it's not a perfect defense i don't think but when they have this much talent there's no area where I say, well, you know, that guy's off to a hot start, but he'll probably fall off. The only area is turnovers that asking a team to get four turnovers to win a game is a lot. And they have turned over the other team a ton. So they are going to have to play games where they don't immediately just get an interception and still win. But even on a play to play basis, when the game was not completely out of hand and Jordan loves just heaving prayers over and over again, how good have they been? I think it's been very good just in the play to play down to down basis. I'll have to check or

someone could tell me what DVOA is saying about that, which is the football outsiders that invented by Aaron shots that has been good at kind of giving you a snapshot of when it actually matters. How good is your team really been? But I have to think that the Vikings would be pretty high. So let's get into your comments. Mike says four and O's four and O there definitely were things not to like, but so much to like also the defense did well, but when the Packers went up tempo, didn't allow Flores to use those packages and fresh troops. I think that's true.

They also didn't get home on the blitzes that they rushed. Jordan Love, 51% of the time, I believe it was on blitzes, and he performed okay. So Green Bay did seem to figure out some of those blitz packages. Also, I think that Jordan Love is just really awesome at not taking sacks. This is one of the best things that he does. And when you blitz, there will be opportunities downfield. It was such a give and take from him, though,

because some of the downfield plays really worked and got them going quickly. And other downfield plays resulted in a horrible interception by Jordan Love and that ultimately played into that you know for a turnover game by the Packers and if the other team is in distress all the time because they're losing like that then they will turn the ball over more but yeah I mean I think if the biggest criticism through four games of the defense is, Hey, when you guys are up 28 to nothing, but then again, one of the touchdowns is not their fault at all. I mean, there's a strip sack and then immediately two plays later, it's a touchdown. You can't really put that on the defense. And even the last touchdown where they do get the

onside kick. I mean, they are just desperately flailing at anything and they go all those yards and they rack up all those yards. But those of us who watched six years of, uh, Kirk cousins play for the Vikings. Remember was it five or six, uh, remember how many times the Vikings were in the position that the Packers were, where they got down and then they had long drives and they put up a bunch of stats. And I was thinking about Justin Jefferson today, where he averages five catches and I think 86 yards a game or 89, something in that range, which is below what he normally does. And one of the reasons is because Justin Jefferson isn't down 20 points, catching pass after pass, trying to desperately

get back in a game anymore that they've been up. So you're not usually trying to force the ball to him personally. I think they should do that more. Uh, and, uh, Kevin O'Connell said the same thing. Uh, this is something I've gotten commonly, uh, uh, today that I wanted to address from Jason says, please stop using PFF grades. They are a joke. Compare the stats and PFF grade for week four of Sam Darnold and Kirk cousins. No way based on the stats should Kirk be higher than Sam. Well, the reason that PFF exists and is so important to analysis of football is it takes you away from the box score stats. So one of the things that PFF is supposed to do is look at a linebacker, for example, and say, okay, maybe he had 20 tackles in a game, but were they all 10 yards down the field? Because back in the day, we used to say,

oh man, that guy led the league in tackles. He must be fantastic. But it also might be because his defense was bad and he was on the field the whole time or something, right? Contextualizing what actually happened beyond the box score is what PFF does. So Darnold had a bad grade for this game of 45.5, which I'm sure most of you are saying, are you serious? They scored a bunch of points. They won the game and he had the biggest drive. And how could this possibly be? Well, allow me to explain. In fact, I will explain with, I got a very similar email and I will read you what I wrote back to the email. So a supporter named Eric wrote about the same exact thing, said it's very confusing what PFF is doing with their grade. And I'll read my response.

I said that the reality of the PFF system is that its biggest struggle has always been with quarterbacks. And I mean, just as an aside, think about how many things go into a quarterback performance that you're trying to capture versus an edge rusher. Edge rusher rushes passer. Pressures, not pressures.

It's not that hard to figure out if you focus on that guy, whereas a quarterback has so many moving parts to try to capture all at once. Did you make the right read? Did you make an accurate throw? Something cannot look accurate, but being the only place where the guy can catch it, is that a good or a bad play?

There's so much context that has to go into it. Anyway, so I said it is often not like Jared Goff and loved Andy Dalton. There's some weird results every week that are so different than the box score that it can feel like it's mind boggling. But the thing with Darnold's grade from yesterday is that turnover worthy plays will destroy a quarterback's grade he threw an easy interception to the Packers on the first drive that we all forgot about but did not get caught by the Packers defender he also threw the interception in the end zone which he stuck on that read to Aaron Jones out of the backfield telegraph that

throw it would have been a pretty negative play under through it. And then also they likely downgraded him for the fumble, which they probably said was his fault holding onto the ball too long or not identifying the blitz there. And if you only throw 28 passes and you have three turnover worthy plays, that's going to, excuse me. Oh, sorry about that. Came out of nowhere. Sorry. That's going to excuse me oh sorry about that came out of nowhere sorry uh that's gonna destroy your grade see i was so caught up with the grade that it threw

me off i got emotional uh talking about this pff grade but the point being that three turnover worthy plays is big negative hits in the pff grade He only had two by PFF in the first three games. So you can see how that would really hurt a grade when he has those plays. But the box score is not going to show that first interception because it didn't happen. So you can always say, well, it didn't happen. But if you throw it to the other team

and they drop it a hundred times in a row or something, okay, but that's not what happens, right? They usually catch it half the time. And if he catches it, it might be a different ball game. So he deserved a turnover worthy play for that. Also, the other thing is that some of the throws that were the most meaningful, including the touchdowns. Okay. The touchdown to Jefferson's great. The touchdown Addison, he is wide wide open every quarterback in the league hits him for that touchdown the other one was a screen pass to Josh Oliver quarterback rating is going to go bananas for those touchdowns but they weren't something that you would grade spectacularly this doesn't mean that it didn't happen it does not

mean that he didn't throw on time that he didn't come through in the biggest moment in that game, which he did. But even the Justin Jefferson throw that got him 17 yards to start that drive was a wide open pass. And the throw to the sideline is an amazing catch by Jefferson, which I'm sure they gave more credit to. So when you pick apart the performance, I think that this was the sloppiest game that Sam Darnold has played so far. He has been really, really good, was a top 10 graded quarterback heading into this and is still a highly graded quarterback by PFF. But if they're going to do this thing where they evaluate the plays and not just the box score, then you have to go along

for that ride. Sometimes where I think that they miss is sometimes where a quarterback is rightfully aggressive and it doesn't work out and they will downgrade him for a throw. Okay. Well, you know, sometimes it's good to be overly aggressive to somebody like Justin Jefferson, for example, but if it doesn't work out, you might get a negatively graded play. The other thing that they're not always good at is when a quarterback throws to the right spot at the right timing, it's more important oftentimes than the actual placement of the ball. So Jared Goff has this happen.

Somebody's wide open because he's timed out the play and read the defense perfectly and the ball's back here and he doesn't get a plus throw for it from PFF and, and aggressive quarterbacks get downgraded more than Andy Dalton, who will check down a bunch of times and get a high grade. And, you know, Kirk would have this happen as well. So it's, it's very difficult to grade a performance, but when I look back at it, I think it's great to win the game, to get your team up 28, nothing. He took advantage of a lot of stuff, including how good his wide receivers are. He operated the offense excellently in yesterday's game overall.

But if you tell me that you weren't a little bit nervous after he throws the near pick, after he throws his second red zone interception of the year, after he takes that sack where he didn't seem to have quite the awareness, which did happen a couple other times so far this season. One time, Nick Bosa almost got him and he held onto the ball,

but it was very close. There's been times where it's been a tightrope with him so far, and that is probably the Sam Darnold experience. Grading him as low as they did, 45, if you had asked me, I would have said it probably would have been closer to a 70, but they really heavily weigh something like those turnover worthy plays, which I think is fair because that is the thing that has downgraded Sam Darnold as a quarterback for his entire career. If he didn't have the turnover worthy plays in his career, he would be a really good quarterback, but that's the thing that's always plagued him. And if there's one thing that's worrisome about the rest of the season, when we talk about how many games they can win, it is that one thing. So hopefully that kind of clears up

why that grade ended up working out that way and why it was so much different than the box score. And just for the record, if you're asking me, I think Dane Mizutani and I yesterday, we gave Sam Darnold a B plus. We thought overall he did the job he was supposed to do. And despite the mistakes still was there for them in the biggest moment. And I think it's a B or a B plus type of performance, but you can't, you can't throw the picks. I mean, he almost had two picks and you can't fumble the ball. You can't lose it that many times. Almost never are you going to, let's say he had thrown the interception to start out the game where he threw it right to the Packers defender. How many times can you overcome that many

turnovers? Uh, the answer is not many. They were lucky to get four away from the Packers and the skill, skill and luck, but you're not going to normally take the ball away that many times. So, uh, you do have to downgrade the performance for that. All right. Hopefully that makes sense. Uh, Elijah says I would consider, uh, Lawrence in this class. I think a guy like, uh, Dion Walker could be really good and much cheaper. So I'm 50, 50 on it. What are we talking about here? Um, are we talking about, I don't know who we're talking about there, Elijah. Are we talking about getting players? Are we talking about draft?

I'm a little confused on that. I just clicked it because it looked reasonable, but I know, I don't know who these people are. If you're talking draft, I'm not there yet in my life. I'm sorry. Uh, Dustin says, uh, Matt, can you please explain for the hundredth time, uh, what DVOA is and how it works? The, um, the analytics hour here with Matthew color on the purple insider live stream.

Well, Dustin, uh, DVOA needed a better name to tell you the truth. Uh, it's value over something. Honestly, it's been so long that it's been around that I don't remember what it stands for. But the idea with DVOA is to get rid of the noise. For example, when you are up 28 to zero, you are going to give up a ton of passing yards. The other team usually doesn't score that much

like they did with the Packers yesterday, but that's just a fact. You're going to give up passing yards when you're up 28 to zero. What it aimed to do was downgrade those or adjust for those. So they don't get as much credit against your defense. Put it this way. If they had named it smart yards, it would have made a little bit more sense and it adjusts for score and a number of other factors. I think that it doesn't worry about turnovers because of how random they can be when assigning the value or there's certain values to turnovers that have been mathematically figured out. But what it aims to do

is give you an idea of how strong your football team actually is. And it definitely worked in 2022. I remember having its inventor, Aaron shots on the show and saying, Aaron, why does your stats say the Vikings are like the 24th ranked team? And he acknowledged that sometimes it's a little aggressive and there's no way they were that bad, but there was something there saying this team is not matching up with what their actual record is in terms of their real talent. And remember, they were giving up 400 yards a game then. And we all knew that, yeah, I mean, at some point this is going to come tumbling down in 2022. And it eventually did. Is the faithful says, I just think Green bay defense is bad on top of players like kenny clark

not showing up this season uh it is true that uh kenny clark did not have the same type of game he usually does and a shout out to garrett bradbury all week we talked about that advantage for the interior but then uh speaking of my youtube algorithm it was giving me um aaron nagler and cheesehead tv and the headline of their recap of the Vikings Packers game was where did the quarterback pressure go because they did not get after Sam Darnold outside of the hit and the fumble and he was not under pressure a whole heck of a lot it was about 30 percent 30 something percent of his drop backs and I was giving a lot of credit to the offensive line,

but you're right. Clark has been playing with an injury. He's also on the older side. You do have to give credit to the Vikings tackles, but where I disagree is that they're bad. I don't think that they have a bad defense. They have a talented defense, but if Clark doesn't play at a high level and they don't have Jair Alexander, they're not going to be that great. They're not going to be at all exceptional with their offense. They still should be a contender for a playoff spot. But we saw some of the holes in the cheese yesterday for sure. Jonathan says Colts, Jags, Titans, Bears should be a relatively easy stretch. That's the wild thing about this schedule. It truly is, is the hardest part of it. We were saying before the season that if they just got

through this at two and three to start the year that they could make the playoffs. That's how stark the difference was between the beginning of the schedule and the middle of the schedule. Will Levis is not only bad, but now hurt. And Mason Rudolph is playing in this game. The Jags are an absolute disaster. Doug Peterson said his offensive coordinator called a great game and then blame the players. He's got to be fired. And the Colts, Anthony Richardson is banged up. Looks like he's going to be okay, but he's kind of a wild ride and a young quarterback. Really like the way Caleb Williams played yesterday. He's starting to have it click in a little bit, but still a young quarterback against Brian Flores' defense.

Those are all extremely, extremely winnable games. So it is hard to not start going down the road of, do we get 12 or more? Is that what we're really talking about here? Do we have on our hands a Minnesota Vikings classic 12-13 win season that we never saw coming? Ken says 13-4 will split with Green Bay, Detroit, Jets and Cardinals, maybe Seattle, 70-30 on Seattle. Yeah, Seattle looks like a great team. That's going to be a tough matchup. It's not that they don't have any difficult matchups. The rest of the way, the Cardinals can play a little, but they don't look great. The Jets can play a little, but they don't look great. The Rams, they don't look great. The Rams might go

into selling mode by the time the Vikings end up facing them. I think it was Peter Schrager who suggested that they could even trade Cooper Cup. And at that point, if they're way out of it, are they looking at, will another team want Matthew Stafford for the stretch run to potentially trade him away? They might feel like they are so far down that they don't have much of a chance by the time the Vikings get to them in the middle of the season. So then the teams that you think, okay, are 50, 50 or worse matchups, Detroit is at the top of that list. That still is a really good team. I don't think we've fully seen what Detroit can do yet. And the Arizona you mentioned can get hot

and has the talent and the quarterback and Seattle at Seattle might be the toughest game of the entire rest of the season. But outside of that, there isn't too much terror when it comes to the opponents that the Vikings are facing, not after the way that we have seen them play. So let's see here, go to, uh, Earl says, uh, jets, uh, jets win Vikings at home versus lions. When Rams, when Colts, when, uh, Jaguars,

another hot garbage show, when Titans also hot garbage six and Oh, the next six games, 10 and Oh, as possible. Uh, I, I don't think that 10 and oh is actually a possible, but, um, I, you know, I also, I just, it's funny because you, you get to, um, you get to a point where you keep saying, well, it's going to happen eventually. It's going to happen eventually. And when they don't have that drop off game and even the second half is kind of the drop off game, but yet they still hold on to win. It's like, when are they going to fall apart? But if you were talking about, think about just how crazy this is when you get a four

Oh lead on the season is that got them at six and Oh, even if they go four and two, then after what? 10 games that puts them go four and two, then after what? 10 games that puts them at eight and two, eight, even if they just go four and two, which would be a, a decent result considering who they're playing. Mike says,

are the Vikings buying at the trade deadline? Yeah. I mean, if they are, what's the trade deadline? Is that week eight? They move it around. Must be week eight right

there was talk that it moved back and i don't remember if it did or not but anyway seven games into the season if they're six and one then you have to be having that discussion uh you might look around and go what do they need to buy? Another corner could be something. If somebody is selling a corner, a guard, are you making a trade deadline deal in the middle of the season for a guard, an additional running back? I mean, wide receiver, they're pretty set there. Someone will get injured. Maybe another pass rusher on defense. You can never have too many.

Dallas Turner didn't have much of an impact on yesterday's game. Maybe there's somebody that Flores likes as another chess piece for the defense. But I mean, my answer is yes, of course. And if you look at what they did with TJ Hawkinson, where with TJ Hawkinson, they trade for him and then they sign him to an extension immediately. That is something they could look for somebody who could be for the future. Well, let us bring in Emanuel Hill, Manny. The people are shouting from the rooftops,

Manny, Manny, pick the schedule. Do, do, do, do, do, pick the schedule wall that's what's been going on for the first 30 minutes and a lot of people have just kept watching as I did that repeatedly you'd be surprised what's up uh yeah I'm ready to pick the schedule man after after what happened yesterday afternoon I mean I know the second half was shaky and i was in the moment watching the second half of that game i was kind of losing my mind over the way things were transpiring but at the end of the day they're four and oh man and i'm i'm excited it's really time to uh really re-examine how this team could finish in the final 13 games of the season. Can I ask you real quick, what was the part about yesterday and the comeback that bugged you the

most? Honestly, it was probably, and my mind goes into weird places with stuff like this, it's probably not what a lot of people would think. Honestly, it was the third and one on the second to last possession of the first half where you've got the ball. I don't know if it was like the 40-yard line or something like that, 35-yard line, something like that. It's third and one. Just run the ball, KOC. Run the ball.

You try to throw to Brandon Powell, and it's a bad throw by Sam Darnold. Brandon Powell ends up getting hurt. And then it kind of becomes a domino effect because Powell has to temporarily come out of the game. You put Jalen Naylor in as a punt returner. We saw what happened there. And that play basically handed the Packers seven points. And if you take that out, I think we might be talking about somewhat of a different second half where the game doesn't come down to, you know, one or two

possessions the way it did. But that was kind of the moment where it's like, what are we doing here? You're up 28 to nothing. You're in full control of this game. Stop trying to be cute, KOC. You just like you hit that pass button just one too many times it's third and one run the ball get the first down and then maybe you get in the field goal range before the half um and go up 31 nothing at halftime and at that point the packers might be demoralized and they might be done whereas you see the way things played out they get the touchdown before half now they're feeling good about themselves they're feeling much more confident they feel like they can still come back and win and then we kind of saw the way things played out. They get the touchdown before half. Now they're feeling good about themselves. They're feeling much more confident. They feel like they can still come back and win.

And then we kind of saw the way the rest of the game kind of played out. So that was probably the one play where it's like, as you sometimes say, don't do that. Third and one, KLC, don't do that. Just run the ball. It's okay. There's probably four different times where i felt that way remember when in 2019 opener against uh the atlanta falcons they won the game and kirk threw 10 passes and i think he was eight for 10 and it was because it went just like that they were up by so much early on against the falcons they got a couple picks and i think anthony harris might have had two picks or something and it was just like okay just run the football the rest of the day and go home with a win. And there's no way Atlanta is going to score this many points coming back. And they didn't. And Kirk actually

did a great job in that game, hit a couple of big passes game over. Good night. We'll see you later that third and one. And then the second and one, when they get into the red zone that was that was the the and one that drove me crazy was you're up 28 to 7 and i think the packers had just punted they got a big play to jordan addison they got a big run by aaron jones and you're sitting at second and one jones has just run for nine yards at the 21 yard line or something like that. If you just knelt down, kneeled down three times and then kicked with Will Reichard, what's your chances of Green Bay coming back at all? I mean, if you're up 31 to seven, that is four scores that they need to put on the board

in the second half. It's just not happening. There's not enough time to do it. And instead here comes the, the tricky little out of the backfield. I think they call it like a rail route or something for Aaron Jones, trying to swing out toward the goal line. Darnold throws the interception, like buddy, Sam Darnold, still your quarterback. And he's still capable of doing some of that stuff. That's the second time we've seen him do it when they had points on the board. So it's nitpicky when we're complaining about not winning by enough for a team that's 4-0.

But I think that if there's anything that was bothersome from the game, it's probably that. Okay, let's pick this freaking schedule. Let's not go on about that. The Vikings are 4-0, Manny, and they go to London to face off with the New York Jets of New York. Do they win or do they lose? I am going to call this a win. I think it'll be ugly, but I think it'll be the win. The Jets are just a mess right now. It doesn't seem aaron rogers and robert sala are on the same plate same page

i know the weather was ugly yesterday in new jersey but the broncos are not a very good team they have a pretty good defense but their offense is a mess and the fact that you just couldn't get anything going offensively against that team and find a way to, you know, grind out a win has me really concerned about the Jets. So I'll call that a win for the Vikings. They lost to a quarterback who threw for 60 yards. Now you got to give it to Bo Nix. Didn't turn the ball over. If you don't turn the ball over, Marty Schottenheimer would have been proud of that kind of win where he averaged 2.4 yards, a pass, and win the game.

Congratulations, Bo Nix, his second win of his career. The bye week, as long as there are no arrests, you can't lose the bye week. Now we'll come back October 20th in a game that I cannot wait for. Also, a Purple Insider revenge game. Former intern Haley English works for the Detroit Lions. So that's a big one for this here operation. But a big one in the NFC North.

Is that a win for the 5-0 Minnesota Vikings? I will call that a loss only because it's hard to start out 6-0. It's really hard. We don't see teams do it a whole lot. And I think at some point this team is going to lose a game. And I think, you know, even though it would suck to lose to the Lions, you know, a division team that you're kind of chasing right now, just in terms of like pecking order in the NFC North. The lions are still a very good team. And you know, we'll see how things play out tonight as they're up seven,

nothing on the Seahawks right now, as we speak. So lions are very good team. I know it'll be home against us bank stadium, but I'll call that a, a loss on the schedule. if there's anybody who has no problem whatsoever with us bank stadium, but I'll call that a, a, a loss on the schedule. Well, if there's anybody who has no problem whatsoever with us bank stadium, it is Jared Goff, who just has been totally,

since that first game he played with the Rams, he's been totally fine inside the Viking stadium. So understandable six and one net. Then just a couple of days later, I will get in a air bus and fly myself out to Los Angeles, California. And hopefully this time I will not get lost in this stadium and, uh, start, uh, calling for emergency people to come save me.

Um, it's a weird situation, Manny, where the LA stadium is built deep into the ground. So it's not that far above the ground. So when you exit, you exit through like the fourth or fifth floor, not the bottom, like every other stadium in the world. So I, after the game just went down as far as it went, which is what you usually do in every stadium and had no idea how to get out because I was deep in the earth, close to molten lava. So then one person I found, I mean, it was late at night, covering the game, one person, just a janitor. I was like, dude, how do I get out of here? He's like, you're nowhere close, man.

You got to go all the way back up to the fifth floor. It was a terrifying experience. That has nothing to do with you picking the game, but I'm still shaken from that, and we won't make that mistake again. So the 6-1ings face the rams it's kind of like uh kind of like what they said about madison it's kind of like the opposite of madison square garden right because isn't like you i've never been to msg but you walk in you actually have to like go up a flight of stairs or like an elevator or something to go up to the

floor up to the arena um but anyway i the rams man i just they just don't look good right now and i know we we know sean mcveigh is a is one of the great coaches in the nfl and matthew stafford you know has had a great year last year and you kind of thought maybe they would build on that um but they just don't look good right now and they you they had a bad loss to the Chicago Bears yesterday. It's going to be, I would imagine, a pretty good traveling crowd in favor of the Vikings as well. So I will call that a win in Los Angeles. A lot of injuries in LA, and we'll have to see what Puka Nakua and Cooper Cup status is. But that is the main thing is that they have been super banged up. And I just wonder if they're sellers at that point, if we are reaching them, getting close

to the deadline and saying, well, you know, and I will say that the big thing that we brought up over and over a bit again about the Rams trading for Stafford and going all in was if it doesn't work, they are going to have a very tough time being great on the other side of that. And we're looking at potentially two of the last three seasons, missing the playoffs, first round elimination. They have not been able to be the same version. And Aaron Donald retiring is a problem there as well. So now we're talking about the seven and one Minnesota Vikings coming back home to face presumably Anthony Richardson unless he is injured again. And if that's the case, then Joe Flacco and the Indianapolis Colts at U.S. Bank Stadium.

Now, Manny, I do feel that you got to work in a massive letdown game at some point because, and I'm not suggesting this for this one, but this is a staple is the massive letdown game. I'm just saying, i'm not trying to influence this thing but they're seven and one at this point it's like the giants and and in 03 when the vikings started out six and oh and a bad giants team came into the metrodome and with you know kind of an aging kurt warner at that point they weren't very good um and the giants ended up winning jeremy shocky i think think, I remember having a big game that day and beating the Vikings. Yeah, this one's tricky.

This one is tricky. I don't think, I think there will be a letdown game, but I don't think it will be this one. So I will give the Vikings the win at home against Indianapolis. Eight and one. Minnesotaianapolis eight and one minnesota vikings eight and one heading to jacksonville until it actually happens i'm going to keep talking about how much i'm looking forward to golfing in jacksonville leading up to that game because that's all i'm going to be caring about for that one i think if the vikings are eight and one and doug peterson has been fired which is right around the corner, how about the owner saying that this is the most talented

Jacksonville game? I almost flew to Jacksonville and tried to fight him in an alley. Our team, the most talented team. He said, this is the most talented Jacksonville team that's ever been put together as far as players fight me. I want to fight. you know you know they own aew as well so if you go down there trying to fight them they'll probably just take one of the wrestlers and send one of those guys after you i mean mark brunel my dude mark brunel is way better than trevor lawrence fred taylor is way better than any running back you have jimmy smith keenan mccardle tony basselli tony brackens donovan darius what are we doing here and i'm sorry this i don't need to rant about the other team every time we get to

a team but you're picking them like a madman so uh you need some distraction here eight eight and one playing jacksonville i think this could potentially this this is going to sound crazy, but this could potentially be the letdown game because Doug Peterson might not even be the head coach anymore at this point. I mean, he's trending to, like, he's trying to get himself fired tomorrow, it sounds like. And it's just kind of one of those weird things where a guy gets fired and the team just starts to play better

because there's just a little bit of a injection of energy into the building and into the, into the organization. So I could see, I mean, this Jaguars team is talented and I think that's kind of the problem and why Doug Peterson could be finding his way out because they're Owen four and they really shouldn't be.

So I think there is talent there. This could potentially be the letdown game that you were talking about a minute ago. And I believe it would be the first time the Jaguars have ever beaten the Vikings. I don't think the Jaguars have ever beaten the Vikings. Yeah. So I'll put that down as a loss. Yeah, that could potentially be a loss in kind of a letdown way i i could see that as well uh it does remind me of the oh and five falcons showing up and they

had just fired dan quinn and then like they get that little boost or how about the vegas raiders last year where they fire josh ms and then Antonio Pierce comes in and suddenly they're playing with their hair on fire. The Raiders are bad, but there's something to that where a team kind of gets inspired immediately. I even remember with Indy when they named Jeff Saturday, their coach, I think they won a game and they played really well in another one. It's like, Oh man, maybe he's the hero they need and no no he wasn't long term so if they fire peterson right before that be scared eight and two going to tennessee to play maybe will levis maybe mason rudolph you'd rather play will levis to be honest with you

yeah and right now they're up six to three on the dolphins right now down in miami so that's uh the uh tennessee titans surprise surprise playing an ugly game full of nothing but field goals who would have been on a thursday really should have been on a thursday against the jaguars um i i don't think the titans are very good i know they've got some talented guys and deandre hopkins one of the best receivers of this last decade um but if will levis is still playing quarterback by then i'd really like the vikings chances um i don't even know we might have talked about this before i don't even know who their backup is who is their backup right now for tennessee it's mason rudolph oh mason of course you just mentioned it my bad um yeah well

then if will levis gets benched and it's mason rudolph i still like the vikings chances so i'll put that down as a win i do as well nine and two going to soldier field where you know i think people were celebrating a little too early on caleb williams the other day after he had a tough game um he has come back and played pretty well the last two weeks they get a win against the rams november 24th sounds like that grass will be slick are you picking the vikings to go to 10 and 2 i am not i'm gonna put that down as a loss it's soldier field caleb williams is potentially paying much better football by then and i got a feeling it could be a little ugly weather-wise, and that could make things tricky. So I'll give the Bears a close victory at Soldier Field there.

So that'll drop the Vikings to 9-3. 10-3. It is interesting how much you have to strain to find the losses because of how much better the Vikings have played than everybody else in the NFL, where you're saying, well, yeah, I think they'll lose it. Soldier field, which would have been just a given for us to talk about over so many

years. And I could just hear people being like, what the heck's your problem, Manny? They're going to beat the bears. 10 and three would be a nice start. December 1st against the Arizona Cardinals at home. I will put that down as a win.

Cardinals are talented, but the Vikings having that game at home, I think will help a lot and they'll come away with a dub. 11 and three against the Arizona Cardinals. Now, Kirk Cousins revenge game. This one is a little actually revengey. We've had a lot of that this year, all sorts of connections going on. December 8th against the Falcons,

who got a big win against the new orleans saints i am shocked to find out that derrick carr was hot and then cold i can't believe it it's only what he's done for his entire career all the time he's not different december 8th what do you think i will call that a win because i think uh i think k Kirk will still be playing by then he's starting to kind of pick it up a little bit but I think Brian Flores is going to have something nasty in store for Kirk Cousins and it's going to make him really going to make things really tough for him so I will put that down as a win okay to Chicago did I give them one too many wins i think we why does this always happen that is 11 and 3 right that would comment section telling me like i think that's 10 i think that's

10 and 3 okay because there are four games left okay sorry i got one i got one ahead possibly two that's 10 and 3 now they're facing chicago i don't know who i gave them two wins against but uh chicago at 10 and three sorry about that i put that down as a win at home monday night football um i think the vikings will kind of get you know feed off of the the previous two wins and rebound after a tough loss in soldier field and get a little revenge on the Bears and split that series. Okay, now 11-3, which I may have declared them twice before, but we corrected that. Out to Seattle at 11-3. Could be a tough matchup.

Yeah, a very tough place to play. I think Seattle is pretty good. Looks like they're getting ready to fall down 14-0 in Detroit right now, but I think the Seahawks are really good good it's a tough place to play a tough crowd i'll put that down as a loss okay so 11 and 4 going into the final two weeks home against green bay and at the detroit lions how do these two contests match up and what is the Vikings final record? Is it 13 and four? Is it 12 and five? Is it 11 and six? I will put this down as a split of the last two games, uh, winning at home against green Bay and sweeping that season series, and then losing on the road in the finale, which could be for the

division at that point. And, uh, the lions then completing the season sweep. So the finale, which could be for the division at that point. And the Lions then completing the season sweep. So I have the Vikings at 12 and five. Okay. Wow. A 12 and five season would put them right in that range of a team that can compete for a Super Bowl. But I want to run through comments with you here, Manny, and get people's reactions to you picking them 12 and 5.

Other questions. I also asked people before you came on, where should Manny have this? And you end up with 12. So let's get to the questions here. From Jake, I wonder how much KOC can learn and is willing to adapt when encountering adversity, thinking about the play calling and stalled turnover laden drives.

This is a difficult one for me, Manny, because KOC after the game said he's going to be aggressive to show he believes in his players. And I respect that, but I also think they know by now, and he should really follow along with the best possible ways to win the game, which sometimes is going to have to lean towards safe and not as aggressive with passing and not as trusting of his quarterback. Act like he's Case Keenum, but let him make his Sam Bradford throws from time to time with his arm talent. I think that the whole general feel for a game has always been a KOC criticism. That's just how I've felt since he got here. Yeah, no, I agree.

And something that you and Dane talked about after the game yesterday was, I think it was like you guys mentioned situational play calling where, you know, we know like it goes without saying, like it's for the most part in this league in 2024, you have to have a good passing offense to be successful, to have a good offense, to be in contention to win championships and things like that. But you also have to kind of know when the best option is to just keep it simple and not get cute.

And it felt like at times yesterday, and we've seen this in the past with KOC in the previous two seasons where they have just tried to get a little bit too cute because as you have said many times, KOC likes to, he likes to hit that pass button on the game pad often just, it's like hitting that X button on the, on the PlayStation controllers, the pass button, just pass's like hitting that x button on the on the playstation

controllers the pass button just pass pass pass pass pass and him being a former quarterback himself like i get it and coming from you know sean mcveigh's offense in los angeles i get it but in situations like what we've talked about you yesterday, when it's third and one, second and one, you don't need to force the ball down the field in situations like that. When you have the running back that you have now, and Aaron Jones, who's been terrific these first four games of the season,

just turn around, hand the ball off to him, keep it simple, get the first down, and then you can go back to maybe hitting your pass button a few more times. you know do the make the smart decision make the decision that kind of makes the most sense in that moment and then i think things will be fine i mean if they again i go back to that third down that third and one before halftime you just turn the ball turn turn around and hand the ball off to aaron jones get the first down you still have the still have the ball the clock is still running and if you end up getting further down and kicking a field goal right before halftime you're up 31 nothing in the game the second half of the game is

completely different so those little things are the things that we've got to see koc i think really improve on so it doesn't also have to be when we talk about well hey just run the ball it doesn't have to be an actual run every time it can also be safe passing i think about how many passes tom brady threw to like james white and danny woodhead because a little swing pass to ty chandler i really wanted to see the swing past the tie Chandler. This dude will not get caught for a loss in the backfield. Take a snap out of the shotgun. Have that dude swing out, get him the football, get him six yards.

Keep that whole thing churning. How about now? I will say when they get TJ Hawkinson back, this may be a little bit better, but I even want to see Justin Jefferson be the clock killer as well, where line up, line them up in the slot, run a little in and out pattern while they're playing 50 yards off him. Cause they're terrified of a deep pass, five yards, seven yards. And you know, who's not going to be mad about that. Justin Jefferson. And you know, who's going to catch the ball, Justin Jefferson he's, and he's going to get

yards after catch at times. They almost give him no opportunities to get yards after catch. He's entirely got to be 20 yards down the field for big plays. This is something about the offense that frustrated me in the past was that you're always asking it to be hard. And Darnold has come through so many times, but sometimes you can ask it to be easy. Just a little bubble, a little quick pass to Jefferson or Addison, get those guys with the football in their hands, let them make a play. That was something that just seemed too much where it was dropped straight back. Look, wait, go through progressions and then sack or incompletion. That's not something they need. So that don't mean to overharp on it but i think to

your point that there is a going to be as we ramp up now from hey it's good that they're fun to oh actually we should expect them to win that we are a little more putting this under a microscope of how this this went down yesterday uh is the faithful says they'll lose games at some point interesting to see how they respond because right now they're beating teams into the ground. I think that that is a good point that the potential response after a loss, if they do go to Jacksonville and lose,

how does that throw this team off? I think they have enough veteran players where it shouldn't be a massive problem, but it's really about the quarterback. I think when we're talking about that, it's just really about can Sam Darnold stay confident, but also not try to do too much. If he has a bad game, is he going to try to get the bad game back in the next game by taking too many risks? Because I think that in this game against the Packers, there was a little bit of the shaky

Sam Darnold that I expected him to look like every week. And it was only this week that he actually looked like outside of maybe one play against Houston. But this was the week where I went, Ooh, is he gonna, Oh, Oh, okay. And, uh, he ends up walking out of there with a win, but there was a little more of that risky Sam Darnold. Yeah. And I, you know, it's interesting because obviously,

they're going to lose a game at some point, and it'll be fascinating to kind of watch how they respond to that. But I'm even more interested, Matthew, in seeing how they respond to yesterday's game because of what we just talked about with the second half not being very good for them, and things got very interesting in the end

and also let's keep in mind i mean the vikings won that game by two points yesterday it got really close at the end also keep in mind the packers missed two field goals in that game as well and if they make one of those two field goals you could be actually talking about a loss here and them being three and one so I'll be curious to see how they respond to not having a very good second half and almost kind of letting this game slip away after having a big lead. If they kind of clean up some of the things that they, that they, that they maybe struggled with in the second half yesterday and how prepared they are and ready to go and sort of shake off the second half yesterday you know going into that Jets game I think will be really fascinating to

watch Aaron says can I provide an update on Gabriel Murphy I wish that I could my friend but there wasn't really much one from Kevin O'Connell today so I do not have an update on that. I mean, it was kind of, yeah, well, we got a timeline for him and not going to tell you what it is. Uh, I, I'm not really sure that's been mysterious for the whole time where he came into camp, he was good. And then he got injured and there hasn't been any real update on what the injury is or why he has been out for as long as he is. And when it happens in training camp, they don't have to put on an injury report. So I can't even really tell you what happened or how long he's going to be out, but he wasn't going to be an impact player on

this team. It's really about the future. Let's see. Tang says jets are frauds and that offensive line is going to get destroyed by Flores. Lions will be tough, but after that, it's an easy stroll through bad teams. It's never an easy stroll through anything when we're talking about the NFL, as we saw from 2016. And for the OGs, was it 03 was the year where Josh McCown did his thing at the end? So it's never easy in the NFL, but i do think that the jets are not good and there seems to be issues there as we may have expected with the coach and the quarterback and the lions will be tough multiple times seattle will be difficult i would not count out i mean

it's sean mcveigh is the coach of the rams so we can't just count that team out and say that's easy they are on the road a little bit more they're're coming off the London thing. You wonder about just keeping the gas pedal down. But I think overall, if you were, if you were to give a grade on how difficult the schedule is from here, I might just, I might give it like a B minus. It is not an A plus difficulty schedule from here on. No, it's not. And, you know, you brought up the old, oh, the the old three team, you know, that team, the Nathan Poole, Josh McCown play at the end, that team lost to the four worst teams in the league record wise. The Cardinals at the end, the Giants, the Chargers and Raiders, all four of those teams,

I believe, finished four and 12 for the four worst records in the league. And the Vikings finished nine and seven like that probably should have been an 11 win team that, you know, won the division and made the playoffs. So you can never really look ahead and say, you know, of course, I just picked them to win a bunch of these games, but none of these games are guaranteed. I mean, we just talked about potentially going down to Jacksonville and that could potentially be a late, a letdown game. The Rams could be a letdown game. I mean, we'll see how things kind of play out. Sean McVay is still a very good coach. I've been bagging on Will Levis, but that's, you know, the, the way the Titans play, they play ugly games. And sometimes when you get into ugly games against a team that still has a pretty good defense, they can make things challenging for you and make things ugly.

You kind of look at what the Broncos did to the Jets yesterday, where the Broncos are not a very good team, not very good offensively, but their defense is good enough to just kind of make things nasty and sloppy. And then you find yourself losing 10 to nine like the Jets did yesterday. So it's very possible for those types of games to happen in Jacksonville, in Tennessee. We always talk about how tricky a soldier field can get, you know, that's certainly a game that that could get, you know, we could see something like that. So it's, you're going to have to be ready to play against no matter who you're going up against, even if these teams are, um, are not very good record wise. Yeah. I mean, even when we go back to other years where they've had

meltdowns or they've lost games, they shouldn't have last year, they're playing Russell Wilson. He's not very good with Denver. There's that big story that they wanted to have Russell Wilson not play anymore so they wouldn't have to pay him. And then they're winning the game. Alexander Madison fumbles and it all just kind of falls apart. And even in Cincinnati, weren't they up like 21 to six? And then all of a sudden they come back, they make a couple of plays. Cincinnati's playing Jake Browning. They didn't make the playoffs in the National Football League. I don't know if you ever heard this before, Manny. It is a week-to-week type of league.

So if I could fit in as many cliches as possible, I'm not sure they can count their chickens before they hatch when it comes to the rest of this schedule. So I don't want to say that it's a walk in the park, but what you said, 12 wins, the door is open and the bar is set. And part of that is the schedule. Uh,

Adam asks, uh, isn't it true that PFF has had a lot of staff turnover and drama recently? I feel like grading Byron Murphy higher than Gilmore was weird, uh, and other issues too. So the, uh, staff turnover is mostly not on the side of the people who do the

grading. So that shouldn't have much of an impact. It's more on the content side of things and some of their data scientists who use the grades to create studies and stuff like that. One of them is working in the NFL presently. So they have had some key people leave, but it shouldn't impact how those grades are done and delivered to all of the NFL teams each week. As far as Byron Murphy, that's another one where sometimes the grade takes an explanation. Byron Murphy had a tough game at times and then made two spectacular, enormous plays for them. And Stefan Gilmore was running out there for the love of the game they didn't want anything to do with Stefan Gilmore now which one of those things is more valuable who's the better player of course Gilmore is the better player and Murphy got picked

on a few times and missed a couple tackles but the punch out is so massive the interception is so massive we ran into this with Anthony Harris and Harrison Smith a few years ago, where Harris had some splash plays and it upped his grade. It didn't necessarily mean that Harris was a better player than Harrison Smith and all of it. It's very tricky to grade every play in the NFL. And I think if we understand the shortcomings, then we can, I think, use them, use those grades effectively. If you just want the answer to how everyone played in every single game with no context, well, I mean, you watch the game and then you go back and look and you might say, you know what? I actually

didn't realize that this guy missed a couple of tackles, or I thought this guy had, I thought Metellus had a worse game than he had. And I'm sure I'll go back and look at it and realize that it was better because of the PFF grade. So I like to compare and contrast for what they saw. Let's see. George says, if a KOC doesn't get away from being stubborn and develop a short yardage run scheme, we will lose a game because of this. I hold my breath with every one or two yard to go versus third and six. It is true. And I thought yesterday, you talk about getting cute, a pitch to the outside with Aaron Jones. When Christian Derrissaw plays for your team,

you just put it right behind him and Blake Brandel. Garrett Bradbury had a good game yesterday. And then the end around thing, which worked, and it worked for Addison and it felt like it might've been a little predictable at that time. I mean, yes, this has been, this has been a problem the whole time he's been here is when it's second and one or third and one, I just like, what do, what do we do here? What do we do here? There's no tush push. And then when they tried the tush push, it was the stupidest possible person pushing behind the tush than it cost in the game in Cincinnati.

I mean, I agree with that. I think that there does have to be a very distinct, this is how we are going to get those yards. And Aaron Jones running that way, straightforward, seems like the best option to me. Keep it simple. Stop trying to be too cute. It just seems like every time KOC tries to get a little bit too cute, it kind of backfires and it makes things more complicated than it needs to be. Because all you need is a yard. And then you've got a whole new set of downs to work with. Simple screen passes. You've got a running back who's very good at catching and turning and running on screen passes.

And those are simple throws for your quarterback to make. Just keep it simple. Don't try to get too cute. Occasionally, yeah, you want to get fancy to try and catch the defense off guard but when it's when when the the ultimate result that you want is very simple it kind of makes the most sense to just keep things as simple as possible i agree uh marcus says pff grades love 68.8 and darnold 45 they both had three turnover worthy plays make it make sense uh yeah mean, I don't want to spend the whole time on just trying to explain a single PFF grade. They can do that for you. But as far as Jordan Love goes, he had some pretty bad plays and he also had, gosh, I don't know, six or seven

unbelievable plays. And Sam Darnold only had one big time throw. It was the throw to Jefferson in the end zone and a big time throw where you escape the pocket and fling it 30 yards down the field to a guy in traffic and make a play is going to get a higher grade on big time throws than throwing to a wide open Jordan Addison in the end zone. It is hard to, it's always been for these PFF grades, hard to explain that they are not giving Sam darnold almost any credit for the addison touchdown because there's no one around him and it's an easy throw that is not to say it's not important or it wasn't a great play but it's that the whole standard is kind of could anyone do it? Was this great? Was it exceptional?

And if you have more exceptional plays, you're going to get a slightly higher grade. I also am just going to keep saying it, the hardest position by far, it's not even close to grade is quarterback. It will never be a perfect or an easy thing to do, but the correlation is high between PFF grades and actual winning. The more often you get higher grades from the quarterback position, the higher the grade goes, the better your chances are to win the game.

People have studied this. So yesterday, I think, was one of those kind of strange exceptions where the turnovers, because the way the game played out, just did not cost Sam Darnold. But normally, if you throw it right in the hands of the cornerback, you just can't say that enough. Like, he threw it right to him. And what is PFS supposed to do about that?

One of his touchdowns is a two-yard pass to Josh Oliver. I mean, you could have done that with anyone. That's how they're grading it. That's not me saying that he had a bad game. It's just, or that it deserves to be that low. It's just, that's how the system works. So we have to understand that when we rant about it, but give me your opinion, Manny though, how would you have graded on like an A to F scale what Sam Darnold did yesterday I thought it was I thought it was a solid b I mean I think I thought he made some good plays some good throws I think the drive late in the game when the Packers had made things really close

and just some of the throws he made to Jefferson and and just executing in moments when they really needed it because they were kind of reeling a little bit. The Packers had come storming back in the game. And it's those are high pressure situations. And it's hard to it's a lot harder to execute in those types of situations. So I think Darnold gets a lot of credit for that. But like, you know, the interception when he had a couple of other guys open and you're trying to force the ball to Aaron Jones, because, oh, you're trying to get them in the end zone so he can do his Lambeau leap that he was talking about earlier in the week. It's just kind of like, again, it's like, don't do that. Don't do that, Sam. You know, just, just don't do that again.

Keep it simple. You know, sometimes the best play to make is just the one that's right there and the easy play to make. I mean, sometimes you just got to lay the ball up instead of trying to do a between-the-legs dunk, which we all love seeing. But sometimes a simple play, both are worth two points. You know what I mean? In the case of basketball.

So I think that's kind of where i have him as like a b or a b plus because i thought he made some good plays again the late drive was good but then there's other plays where it's like okay sam don't don't do that don't do that keep it keep it simple and the strip sack is something that look if that happened to kurt cousins you guys know what i would have said after the game i would would have said, that's bad. That's on you. You can't have that happen at that point. You cannot get strip sacked.

Anything can happen. You can throw it up in the air as high as you possibly can over the stadium and let it fall to the ground. Or you can do anything except for get strip sacked and give them the ball and an easy score like that. That was a major reason we're talking about the defense. Well, they gave up this many yards and they played too much pre-fend didn't blitz enough X, Y, Z. Well, what are they supposed to do when it's first and 10 at the 20 yard line or whatever it was, it might've even been better than that. And two plays later they're scoring. Well, there's nothing you could do at that point if you're the defense and that was on the quarterback so he does deserve to get downgraded for that

but it's also balanced out by the biggest situation where they needed a drive to win they found a way to do it and he was the leader of that so I agree with you I think Dane said maybe B plus I was kind of in that range yesterday but we can all we can all use our brains with these PFF stats and stuff like what is it what does it tell us that he had a bad grade? It tells us that turnover worthy plays are very bad and that they're, these grades are often tied to the math as well. And I'm sure that if you have three turnover worthy plays, you normally don't win football game just normally because he only had two coming into that game. Uh, so it kind of tells you a lot about that's scary. And if he does that in the worst situations and they're

not up 28 points, that will cost them. Uh, Marcus says Darnold revenge game feels like a trap game. Ooh, that sounds like we should be Stephen A and Shannon and we should be yelling. This trap game is proliferous or something like that, you know, at each other. And you could be you can do it a Shannon impression if you want. Just don't do an impression of his Instagram. That's not what I need. Let's hope not. I'll just probably just tell a tell a story about something that my grandma told me when I was very young.

You know, something like that. Yeah, Shannon. Yeah. Well, I don't want to I don't want to make a fun of his he kind of always had that little bit of a lisp there but uh real quick shout out to shannon sharp though the greatest hall of fame speech i've ever seen so if you haven't seen it go check that out but uh to your point his brother in the hall of fame damn it i know i know i come on i know he's a big part of put him in the hall of fame man as a side note revenge game or trap game well what would you prefer there out of the cliche ways that we label football games i would i would say trap game uh just because the jets aren't playing well right now and and the thought is that you know the vikings

should kind of handle business in this game but revenge game for sam darno i mean how many people are still with the jets since sam darno left i mean the coach is different you know there might be a couple a few players that are still there from when he was with the jets but it i mean it feels like a completely different team now i know you know probably a lot lot of some similar front office people, the ownership is obviously still the same, but I don't know. I probably lean more towards trap game than revenge game.

I 100% agree. It's just been too long. If they had just let him go and then he was doing this, then it is very much revenge. This one is more trappy because they just lost to the Broncos and their quarterback through 60 yards. If you lose to a team who's quarterback through for 60 yards, you're going to come out like you got to be in your bonnet.

The New York jets are going to be very upset. I think headed to London and, and boy, no, but nobody could tell you better what it's like to have a B in your bonnet than me. You get one of those. Well, you don't want that. So they're going to be piping hot little potatoes when the Vikings go up against them after such a bad performance.

But it is very trappy because I think everyone looks at the Jets rightfully and says they're just not that good. And the Vikings should beat them. Drew says Green Bay and detroit are dangerous 2016 vikings were 5 and 0 before they knew it 5 and 4 stay humble luckily you and i don't have to stay humble and you certainly don't when you're picking the team not at all uh you're dion dancing as you pick them to 12 wins but let's just stop and do the 2016 thing i just don't see any correlation talk about being a long time ago different coach very different offensive line situation uh yeah i think that the coach really losing his marbles played a big role in that calling out the offensive line calling them soft the injuries that they had i just don't see this as being all that similar man i don't either and you know it's it's one of those things

where and the funny thing is is i think that year the the bye week was we uh after the right after the five and oh started was week six yep and, it's the same situation here where if they, they went on Sunday, then they're five and O going into the bi-week. Um, I, yeah, I I'm with you. I don't really see a whole lot of similarities. I mean, Mike Zimmer calling his offensive line soft after they, after the first loss of the season, they go into Philadelphia out of the bi-week. They don't play very well.

Um, I think. Did Jake Long get hurt in that game. Later on. Yeah. Later in the season against Washington, they had a chance to win. Blair Walsh missed a field goal. They also don't have field goal kicker drama. They haven't fired a coordinator. The number of things that had to happen, that sort of tells you how bad it has to go to

start like this and end up like that. Thielen fumbled a punt in a game that Mike Zimmer wasn't coaching because of his eyeball. Remember that, that they should have. And really there was a penalty there. They should have, or a penalty that wasn't called. Bradford was hit in the face on a two point conversion. I mean, so much bad stuff happened and I'm not saying it can't still happen because this is the Vikings, but it was cataclysmic to get to that point.

There was the Adrian Peterson drama. I mean, it had to be absolutely wild. And I think they just have a coach who can steer the ship better. You don't have TJ Clemmings playing left tackle. You have Christian Deresawaw which that helps a ton that is a major major major like 100 degree difference there um yeah I I just think that you know you you have a head coach I would think that is not gonna like light into his team and call them soft if they lose to Detroit out of the bye you know I don't don't think you're going to have a lot of, a lot of things like that. So I think that this team is better, I think better equipped

and circumstantially in a better place to where I don't, I can't imagine a meltdown really happening unless, you know, knock on wood, we see them just get ravaged by injuries and just nobody's healthy. And then, then it could get really challenging, but I don't, other than that, if everybody can stay healthy for the most part, I don't see a meltdown like we saw eight years ago. And even when you think about it from that perspective, their backup left tackle is David Questenberry, who is okay. And has done good. Every time he comes in their backup guard is Dalton Reisner who has played the NFL for a long time as a starter and been pretty good they had Ivan Pace injured and Kamu Grugier-Hill turns into freaking Luke Keekly for the last two weeks he's making plays uh he said that he kind of

took it upon himself to read the route combination and just jump the play yesterday so you got a backup linebacker out there just going rogue and picking off passes i mean they have a lot of depth on this team except that one position and that is the cornerback position uh stefan gilmore's health i think is super vital to this team retaining their success and there's always the quarterback thing if sam darnold when he got twisted a little bit on that scramble again run the ball when he got twisted up on that scramble it's like no no so that's kind of two straight weeks where yeah if he's gonna play a little bit wonky in the pocket hold on to the ball a little bit too long scramble a little bit too dangerously that you know there

has been injuries before with him. But aside from that, it is hard to see with this schedule and these players, some sort of catastrophe, very much knocking on whatever fake wood this desk in front of me is made of. Cause nobody wants that. Nobody, nobody wants 2016 again. You know, my hairline when I got here was decent. It's not anymore. And I wear hats on the show because of 2016. That was exhausting. First name, last name says the number one seed would be so valuable this season. Feels like home field advantage has been huge for the way this team is built.

I totally agree. I mean, that's too far down the road for me. But the U.S. Bank Stadium thing is back, Manny. 100%. And that's why, like, now you're in a position where, you know, if you can get to 12, maybe 13 wins, if you can kind of avoid, like, a super letdown loss, like what I kind of picked with, like, Jacksonville, you can win this division, get one of those top seeds, get into that sort of that top three range, maybe like a number two seed or something like that, see how things go with San Francisco the rest of the year. But if you can get at least, at the very least,

one home playoff game, that's going to make a huge, huge, huge difference. You don't want to have to go on the road to maybe have to go to Detroit for like a second week in a row, you know, after, you know, maybe losing to them in week seven or week 18. Um, I think getting a home game, winning a division is, uh, you just can't really put a price on it. I like the, the back to back of these two comments. Drew says, I'm predicting someone in the NFC North going to the Super Bowl. And Jim says, 13 games left. No way I'm in Super Bowl discussion. Great, great juxtaposition there with you two.

Let's talk about the Super Bowl, Manny. Here's how I want to talk about the Super Bowl. The Vikings are going. No, that's not the way I want to talk about it. The way I want to talk about it the way i want to talk about it is although at 28 no i was looking or 28 to nothing i was like are you guys seeing this what the heck is going on here is this the best team that's ever played football and then i was like okay not quite in the second half uh here's what i want from you though i want i'm i'm gonna give you really, but a thousand dollars to gamble with.

Okay. And here's your challenge. You got to spend a thousand dollars on teams to win the Superbowl, not a thousand on one team, but you got to tell me how you would distribute your money. The entire NFL, you're picking teams to win the Super Bowl how many dollars you following with this math I know you hate math but it's too bad because I pay you for the show so this is what's happening you're taking a thousand fake dollars and you're putting your thousand dollars on teams to win the Super Bowl how much money and on whomst are you putting your dollars? Okay, so I'm going to put 250 bucks on the Kansas City Chiefs. Makes sense.

I'm going to put 100 bucks on the baltimore ravens i think they're i think they found their groove now the last couple games um all right so now i've got 650 left to figure out you picking 250 was just like hell for your math i I know this. I just want to point that out. Yeah. Okay. Let me, let me back up. I'll put 300 on the chiefs. That'll make it easier for you.

300 on the chiefs, a hundred on Baltimore. Who else do you want to put your money on? I'll put my money on Houston. I'll put 50 bucks on Houston. Okay. I think they bounced back pretty well yesterday. I'll put another 50 on buffalo okay makes sense i will put i'm trying to find an nfc team i'll put another 50 on san francisco

i should probably put a little i should probably put a little more in san francisco but they're banged up right now all right so that's how much you have you have 500 still to work with here i think right because you had 300 on kansas city baltimore and then 50 on houston 50 on buffalo yep that's fine i've got 500 left to work with okay i feel like you've really played this safely with the dollars you're trying you're trying to spread out with a lot of different teams here the whole idea manny is how much out of this thousand are you putting on the Vikings? I'm not sure if you've caught on to that, but that's what we're getting at here. I know.

I'll tell you what. I'll put, I'll go, I'll go a hundred. So I put a hundred on Baltimore, right? I'll put a hundred on San Francisco. So I add another 50 um to that i'll put i'll put 50 on the vikings okay are you putting 100 on detroit i'll put 100 on detroit how about seattle as they're playing really well here seattle of going to be a better 4-0 team if they win tonight what's going on are they losing uh no yeah yeah they're

losing it's 21-7 lions oh okay well if Seattle's three and one then do they get do they get the same are they as good I put them in the same I put them in the same spot as the Vikings so I'll put 50 on them as well the thing about the NFC as NFC is hard, man, Tampa Bay is three in one. So that that's pretty good. But when you go through the NFC and you go, well, who belongs in the odds discussion in the same ballpark as the Vikings, which was supposed to be what that exercise was trying to do it Seattle. I think you could say it Detroit.

You could say it Green Bay. They're clearly a little bit ahead of when love is healthy at the end of the season maybe it's different and i would put them ahead of anyone in the south i'd ahead of arizona ahead of the rams washington is suddenly very interesting but ahead of dallas ahead of philadelphia there's not that many teams that you'd be putting money on to go to the super bowl ahead of the vikings at this point at four and oh and to say that doesn't sound like i'm a nut job yeah i can't put anybody in the south or anybody in the nfc east ahead of the vikings right now i mean that's eight teams right

there just in the nfc that i would give the vikings, better odds of getting to the Super Bowl. I don't like anybody in the East. I mean, Washington's a little bit of a surprise, but I think they'll probably come back to earth a little bit. You know, Jaden Daniels is playing well. He's off to a nice start. And Dallas and Philly just seem like, they both just seem like kind of a mess right now.

The Eagles especially seem like just a complete dumpster fire. That's another team that might be firing their coach soon if things don't get back on track for them. Yeah, and then after that, you know, I think the Packers deserve a lot of love. But after that, it just, the NFC is really, it's almost like a drop-off kind of after, you know, after you talk about like green bay um yeah it just it just seems like a pretty significant drop-off with the rest of the conference yeah i think it's san francisco detroit vikings are and seattle belong in their own tier

and then the next level down i wouldn't be shocked if dallas got into a rhythm eventually but they might just not be that good and then i mean teams fall off so quickly like suddenly just philadelphia is not that great anymore they're more like a 500 team all of a sudden because that's how it works in football sometimes marcus says reasonable to start talking about darnold's floor being higher that we, uh, that, well, he might not be a hall of famer. There will be regressions. Minimum expectations have come up where the floor can be prevented is because of all the

things in the foundation to, uh, use the housing analogy. If you have a strong foundation made up of the offensive tackles the receivers the coaching the defense then the floor does go higher i think that actually the way the way to use the pff grade from yesterday is to say that a guy had three turnover worthy plays and graded a 45 and had so many open receivers and good performances around him that they still won the game on the road at Lambeau that really says something about the team that you have around this quarterback because normally if you do have three turnovers as an offense and you do make that many mistakes then uh and one of them was Naylor obviously that led to the touchdown if you do have that many mistakes

then gosh I didn't even think of that for the defense. We were kind of blaming them, but two of the touchdowns, they started drives right at the goal line. I didn't even think of that yesterday when we were talking about it, we should, we should have given them a little more credit, I think. But the point just being, if you can screw up like that and still have enough open receivers, running games, screen game, play action, all those things for your quarterback to rest on, then his floor does go a lot higher. Yeah, it does. And I mean, you said it perfectly. It's the foundation around him. It's the infrastructure.

It's the offensive-minded head coach, although he kind of can tend to be a little too aggressive at times when he doesn't need to be. But I think the overall environment, the overall setup, I think can allow for things to kind of be cleaned up a little bit. And you have a defense that's very quality and can force turnovers. You know, the defense gave up a lot of yards yesterday, but they forced some turnovers in big moments, which really helped them hang on to the win. And I think all of that stuff kind of goes hand in hand.

It goes back to like the complimentary football stuff that we talk about with this team of like, you know, it's, it's the, the offense helps the defense, helps the offense, helps the defense, helps the offense. You know what I mean? It's like these, It's just like everything kind of fits together perfectly. And if something goes wrong on one side of the ball, the other side has the ability to sort of pick things up. You know, when the defense got gashed a little bit in the second half, the offense came through with a big drive to kind of, you know,

keep the Packers at bay and hold on to the victory. So it's all about like what these two sides of the ball and special teams too, having a kicker that doesn't miss kicks. That's a big deal. All that stuff kind of goes hand in hand and we hadn't, I don't want to pick on the previous quarterback again, but there were just times where if Kirk had the type of game that Sam Darnold had yesterday, the Vikings at times couldn't overcome it

because the defense wasn't good enough, and then they ended up losing those games. So I think just the way they have things set up right now for Sam Darnold I think is working really well, and I can't imagine that it's going to change too much going forward, provided that everybody can kind of stay healthy. This does speak to what I said earlier about being fair and consistent to the quarterback performance. And especially now that we've raised the bar, we have to reevaluate. One of the reasons we were so critical about Kirk is the bar was always at being a Super Bowl contender.

Now that it's there for this team, I think we could say that if Kirk played the same way as yesterday and they were up 28 points and the final score was by two, we would have said, Kirk, how about we don't throw the pick? How about we don't get the trip sack? How about check one down and get a first down or complete a pass and don't throw a hospital ball?

Like we would have had some of the same criticisms. And that just kind of circles back to the Darnold when looked through the lens of is this sort of championship football definitely had his moments of that and also had his moments where you probably can't continue to mess around and find out like he did a few times in that game. Uh, Pamela says, I far prefer the Sam Darnold experience more to the Kirk cousins experience. There's a part of that that is, well, it's fun because of the guy ripping throws. I mean, that's just, you can't, it doesn't get old how fast the football comes

out of his hands and all that, how likable Sam Darnold is, uh, just in terms of what the guy went through to be here and now to have his moment. But I think another part of it is that what we were just talking about when you saw the same quarterback who was very good come short of expectations so many times, it just wore thin. And the first impression was doing exactly that in 2018. And it just ran out of gas and it got some life pumped into it in 2022, but then immediately disappointed everyone in the playoffs with Darnold. I still feel like Manny, even if I'm upping the expectations to 12 wins and we're setting a new bar for this team, I still think that you can ride the Darnold, I still feel like, Manny, even if I'm upping the expectations, 2-12 wins and we're setting a new bar for this team, I still think that you can ride the Darnold roller coaster

and just sort of go with the let's see what happens season. It's different at 4-0, but also knowing that this team isn't all in on this year and if they don't win, that the results are, you're going to fall off the edge of a cliff like 2019 to 2020, knowing that that backdrop is there, that this team has a future and good leadership and coaching does make this entire experience different. Yeah. And I think just the fact that it's, that it is just a different experience now, I think is what adds, adds to the overall sort of like intrigue and how this is going to play out because the Kirk thing just got, it was, I mean, it was frustrating.

I think for people like you and I, for pretty much the entire six year run, I think, but I think it was also just, it just, by the time we got to like year four or five and then like last year, it just started to get stale. We were just kind of seeing the same things. We were talking about the same things and the same problems. You know, Kirk's salary, the offensive line, the defense isn't good enough. We were just talking about and arguing with people on the internet about the same things over and over and over. And now it's a different guy.

He's a different quarterback. Maybe a little bit more physically talented than what we saw with Kirk Cousins. And it's fresh. It's new. The defense is really good now. It hasn't been this good in quite some time. It's just a little bit more interesting. It's a little bit more fascinating to just kind of see, to just say, okay, well, let's see how this plays out. And now, because they've gotten off to this 4-0 start, now it's interesting and it's exciting.

Because it's like, well, hey, maybe this team is better than what we even initially thought. Now let's really see how this plays out. And that's not just see if they can, you know, maybe contend for a playoff spot, but let's see if they can win this division and maybe make some noise in the playoffs. And if they do, that'll be really exciting. Okay. We're going to do another show on Thursday. I'm going to keep chatting with everyone.

So keep leaving your comments and I'll speed up and catch up a little bit to some of them uh but I want to know before you go Manny what was the other most interesting thing to you of course outside of the Vikings for this weekend what popped to you the most what uh result caught your eye from this weekend's collection of football games? I don't know if this should be viewed as a surprise necessarily, but I think it's just something that really stood out and just impressed me. It's just the, just the way the Kansas city chiefs continue to just win football games. They've got the best quarterback on the planet, and they're still finding ways to win games because he is obviously that great, but he's not even really playing that great right now,

and their defense is really good. Now we'll see how things go. It looks like they're probably losing Rashi Rice for the season. That can kind of affect things offensively for them. But just the way that they, you know, they fall down 10-0 yesterday on the road in LA, although, you know, playing in LA is not really a true road game

for any road team that goes in there. But, you know, they fall down 10-0 in the first quarter and their defense just shuts the Chargers down the rest of the way. And the Chiefs just find a way to just make enough plays. Mahomes makes enough throws, gets enough completions to Kelsey, and they just find ways to win. It just really stood out to me. It's just like, this team is still—if they're going to win a third Super Bowl in a row, it's not going to surprise me. It's not going to surprise anybody. I know some people may have their doubts.

I kind of have my doubts too, but it was just really, really impressive for them to do that. And it just, I think, further solidified that, yeah, they're still here. We're talking about the Vikings and how good things have gone with them. And Pittsburgh's off to a nice start, although they lost yesterday. The Kansas City Chiefs are still there, man, and they are still going to be a force to be reckoned with. And even when you kind of make things difficult for Patrick Mahomes, they still just find ways.

And that really stood out to me yesterday. It was impressive. I'll give you one before you go. After last week, I was saying about Buffalo, well, I guess I was wrong, that maybe Josh Allen can just throw to a bunch of randos and they'll be okay. And then they played a real team in Baltimore,

and all of a sudden it was not the same without Mr. Stefan Diggs. So that is going to be a thing to watch going forward, is can the bills when they face good teams actually go toe to toe without having a true number one wide receiver to lean upon because they could not in that game and Baltimore, I mean, Baltimore, they're just like you said, a team that they're always going to be there. They lose the first couple of games. The sky is falling. Wait a minute.

Let's beat two really good teams back to back. And then Baltimore is back. And this is also why, and maybe give KOC an extension. When you get a good coach, you stick with that coach for a long time. That's what Baltimore has done through kind of thick and thin there. Manny, Thursday night, we will preview Vikings and Jets. And we will hear your list of your favorite new york jets of all time which i am very very interested in so thank you for your time sir and i will talk to you again very soon sounds good football see you guys manny manny hill i didn't i haven't asked

manny if we're going to the links game on tuesday I'm hosting on WCCO radio on Tuesday, by the way, if any of you enjoy your AM radio, I will be on it from six to eight on Tuesday evening. So if you want to tune into that, all right.