Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - POSTGAME REACTION: JJ McCarthy struggles in Vikings loss to Bears

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani talk about JJ McCarthy's terrible game against the Chicago Bears and the Vikings dropping to 4-6. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another Minnesota Vikings postgame show here on Purple Insider from the U.S. Bank Stadium Press Box. The show is always presented by Fanduil, Matthew Collar, along with Dane Mizatani of the Pioneer Press, and we have just witnessed the Vikings fall to the Chicago Bears 19 to 17 in a game that we all regret. So let's start off with talking about the number one subject here, and then we can get into the details. But that, of course, is the performance of J.J. McCarthy, which at one point started to wonder, is it at all possible that Kevin O'Connell could go to Max Brosmer? Because there were so many struggles from McCarthy when it came to accuracy. The general operation of each play turnovers had a couple of interceptions today,

both of them being pretty regrettable for one reason or another. and then McCarthy didn't get a whole lot of help from his wide receivers in the form of drops. And just when you think you are completely out on J.J. McCarthy, he comes up with a great fourth quarter drive to give the Vikings the lead. They allow a 56-yard kick return. Cairo Santos puts it through the goalposts. And the result was actually kind of right because the Bears outplayed the Vikings. But when it came to McCarthy, he came out in his post-game press conference. and I believed he started it by saying, quote, I absolutely sucked. So I think that any critiques of McCarthy on this podcast are probably not as harsh as the ones that he is giving it to himself after that.

Following up the Baltimore Ravens game, playing a defense that came in 28th in the league, an offensive line performance that gave him all sorts of time to throw today. I thought that, Dane, this was about the biggest nightmare of not only J.J. McCarthy, but the Vikings' organization. organization. The wide receivers, again, deserving of some criticism today and we'll get there, but you wanted to see him bounce back. You wanted to see him look more comfortable, move the offense, make some plays, get that confidence back after a week of being really beaten up about what happened against the Baltimore Ravens. But instead, it looked exactly the same as it did against Baltimore. It kind of looked exactly the same as it has all year long for McCarthy, to the point where a lot of the post-game discussion,

and this is, again, coming right from McCarthy's mouth, he said, I have to be more accurate. And Kevin O'Connell was talking about that as well, and his technique and telling him feet and eyes when he came over to the sideline. These are the things that at week 11, Dane, I don't think we thought we would be discussing. But here we are, and the Vikings are four and six,

and we'll get to the big picture later. But your reaction to McCarthy and another really rough, rough outing. Yeah, I mean, the Vikings deserve to lose this game, and they did. They almost stole it at the end. J.J. McCarthy, when he walked onto the field for his final drive, had not completed a pass after half-time. He then proceeded to put together an impressive drive

like he's actually shown that he's capable of doing down the stretch when he gets into a rhythm. But if the Vikings walk away from this game winning 17 to 16, I think we're talking about all the wrong things. So the fact that they lost this game, I think, was kind of important to the growth of J.J. McCarthy in the grand scheme of things. We can't just write this off as, oh, he's a gamer. Oh, when the chips are on the table, he comes through.

No, the Vikings lost this game because he turned the ball over two times on interceptions that we'll go into in detail. And he wasn't nearly accurate enough over the course of the game. Like you said, the receivers could have done him some more favors. There was an egregious drop by Jordan Addison early in the game. Jordan Addison himself talked about that after the game in the locker room, said that that can't happen if we catch that ball. It's a completely different game.

I agree. It's a completely different game if Jordan Addison catches that ball. But maybe it's not because the quarterback for prolonged stretches, once again, just totally inaccurate, ball sailing on him. J.J. McCarthy said it himself after the game. There was a out route to Justin Jefferson on third down. Easy. Justin Jefferson worked no one on a lineback.

or out to the sideline, wide open, J.J. McCarthy throws it 10 feet over his head. McCarthy said himself, you can't miss those throws in the NFL. It's too hard of a league to miss those throws in the NFL. And he's right. But this is now, we're talking about this after now his fifth start. Are we going to talk about it after his sixth start? What about his seventh start? Like, I get growing pains are part of the process. They are. We see it all the time across the league. But it's not supposed to look like this. It's supposed to look a little better than this. So at a certain point, like, do I think they should have gone to Max Rosemary? Not necessarily. I think you have to kind of ride it out with J. Jim McCarthy. I think

he's your guy. But you have to start questioning things kind of in the grand scheme of life and of football with this franchise. Where are we at with his development and does it coincide with winning in the present? I'm not sure. If we get another game next week of 16 for 32 for 150, a touchdown and two turnovers. There's going to be some hard conversations to have both in the short term and in the long term. Well, I mentioned the stat maybe throughout the week or last week that if you complete under 50% of your passes that you win about one-fourth of the time, well, in this case, both quarterbacks completed 50%, so somebody had to win, and that was not J.J. McCarthy. But the point is that you cannot win football games as a team, even if you have a lot

of talent, even if you have a good defensive performance, which I thought today was, again, like last week, very solid, certainly good enough to win some massive stops down the stretch. Dallas Turner, I thought had an exceptional game in this one. A few, you know, mishaps here or there as you're going to have. But, I mean, if you give up 19 points and three of it is at the end after a 56-yard return, you've done a good enough job to give most quarterbacks a chance to win. if you get even B minus C plus C level play, but it was not that today for J.J. McCarthy. And right off the bat early in the game, he missed a couple of passes and then had the drop. And I don't know what to make of McCarthy and his confidence.

And I feel like we just haven't seen enough from him to know him the way that we've known other quarterbacks through the years. I look at him on the sideline. He's dapping up wide receivers. I think that he has done a good job this year. even when things have gone poorly of coming out in the first week and a fourth quarter drive and leading a game winning drive at that point and then a go-ahead drive here today. So I think there's a resilience about him, but I also felt a little of here we go again

with the mechanics and the actual throwing as he just didn't seem to have a confidence about the way he was throwing the football. Like every time I go to throw this ball, I'm not sure where it's going to land. And as golfers, we understand. this concept. Now, no one's trying to knock our heads off as we're making 80-yard, you know, chip shots to the green. But I think everyone who's played golf has had this type of feeling where you stand up over that ball and you go, now, wait a minute, I'm supposed to go like this and then I'm supposed to turn and then I'm supposed to drop the hand. And it feels like at times

that's what's happening for him. And at other times, it feels like he's speeding himself up so much or hopping, skipping, and jumping up in the pocket so much, where O'Connell did reference the pocket presence as being part of it as needing to just move to get through progressions. And sometimes on one of the interceptions, he basically just ran himself right into contact. And then the throw floats on him. It gets intercepted. So we're getting to the point here now where we can't just say that this game was a, oh, it's just a bad game. Oh, it's just a roller coaster.

usually a roller coaster has to go up and in this case it's only gone up in a few tiny little situations that we have to grasp on to well early in the lions game or at the end of the Chicago game or one drive here but you walk away averaging 4.7 yards per attempt it's nowhere close i think that he does a good job of not completely losing his mind and then melting on at the end because we've seen him come through but at the same time he's got to find ways to get himself back in rhythm in the middle of a game and figure out and identify what's going on to stick with the golf comparison. If you have a day one problem and it's a four day tournament, you better figure it out by day two, not by day four, or you're already missing the cut.

And that's how this game felt for him. I do want to say, though, that I agree with Jordan Addison in that there is four or five passes out there that are there to be made where McCarthy's stat line looks better and maybe his confidence looks better. It is a. really good play for him where he did step up, but it was into wide open spaces. He throws a dot to Jordan Addison, and it goes off his hands in a way we have basically never seen from Jordan Addison. This guy catches just about everything. So as bad as it was and as inconsistent as he's been, I also think that this year on the whole, that he has not got the type of help that we expected him to get at times, whether it was early in the season with offensive line or

this with the drop passes. It needs to be said. You can't just go, well, yeah, they drop some passes. Well, they drop some huge passes that maybe would have extended drives, a third down and two, where it hits Jefferson in the hands. And, you know, I guess we have to ask, well, is it something about the way he's throwing the ball? Is it the timing? Is it the touch on the football is making it harder for these guys? Or was this just a day where everybody's confidence has has been reduced by how poor the offense has been, and then things start to pile on. Yeah, I, it's hard for me to look at the Jordan Addison one and say, JJ just needs to throw a better ball or like, there was a drop by Aaron Jones midway

through the game where it bounces off his hands and I'm thinking to myself, like, that should be caught, but I could say like, you didn't need to rifle that one in there. The Jordan Addison drop was just unacceptable from Jordan Addison. Jay J.J. McCarthy did everything he needed to do in that moment. Like you said, climb the pocket correctly. He didn't overextend, bought himself some time, and fired right down the middle of the field to who we all have talked about, you know, at nauseam. Jordan Asson could be a number one receiver on 20 football teams in the NFL. A number one receiver catches that ball for their young quarterback. And like I said, to his credit, Jordan Addison

owned up to that after the game, said us his past catchers need to be better for the young quarterback, all true. The young quarterback also has to be better for his past catchers because you referenced the first drive of the game. Kevin O'Connell called the great game. People are going to say, well, there was a second and two midway through the game and third and two or he passed on back-to-back situations and then they end up punting. Like, if we're focusing on play calling after this game, we're doing it all wrong. But there was a play call by Kevin O'Connell, an effective one, play action, first drive of the game. Jay Jim McCarthy has a chance to hit Jordan Addison over the top, egregiously underthrows him. And then a couple of plays later,

egregiously overthrows Justin Jefferson. And I think you were kind of hinting at it. Like, did that have a snowball effect the rest of the game? I asked J.J. McCarthy after, did you feel like your incompletions had a snowball effect on you in the aggregate? He said, no, I'm always focusing on the next play. Well, it sure looked like at times when the thing started to kind of spiral out of control, he had a hard time getting it back on the tracks. Glass half full for Jason McCarthy, he has shown the ability to bounce back at some point. We just need to figure out a way to get him back in the rhythm quicker than at the end of the game.

Then at, you know, on your last dying breath, can you bring us back? And he did today. Another thing, glass half full for Jason McCarthy, the kid is extremely accountable. We've covered quarterbacks in this league that after a terrible game, we'll explain it away as everybody else is. fault, but their own. 22-year-old kid, JJ McCarthy, if you want something to believe in after this game, it's he's shown that he has the guts to do it when it really matters, and he's shown that he really freaking cares about this.

He was despondent with his play after the game. Anybody who criticizes the way JJ McCarthy played from, you know, a podcast or a columnist or fans at home are probably going to be less critical of him than he will be of himself the rest of the day. So that is something I think can be a positive. It can also be a negative though, because if you get in your own head, I think that probably contributes to some of the spiraling. So the fact that we are now talking about this though again and again and again shows that it's just a concerning trend. When is it going to turn upward? And it's going to have to turn upward in a pretty dramatic way over the next seven to eight games. Otherwise,

like I said, we're going to have some pretty difficult conversations come the winter and spring. Well, and I think today was probably the day where it starts to turn for everybody in the wrong direction. Because over the first four games, there were a lot of different things you could say about them to make yourself feel better about them. Like, in the first game, Jefferson had a key drop. The routes weren't perfect. It was the first game of the year. No Darisaw. Right. No Darisaw.

And then, of course, the Atlanta game was, well, he had a key drop. kid midway through the week and they had just in school at left tackle, which was a nightmare for them. And they got beat, you know, time and time again up front and that impacted him. And he took a lot of hits. And then even against, of course, against Detroit, he plays pretty well. There was some concerning times with spring throws where we went, all right, well, you know, they got to play from ahead. I think we can see what they need in order to win. But it was his best game by far against Detroit, still finishes with 143 yards, but he looked in control a lot more in that game. And then you get to last week with Baltimore and it's the spraying throws and it's the

struggles with the technical stuff. But you could still get to a point where you say, well, look, he had some good moments in that game. The 62 yard pass to Naylor. He had some tough moments. But he was scrambling to try to come back. It's like desperation. So you're just throwing and throwing and throwing. And okay, that's what happened. Right. He got overanxious. And we were talking with O'Connell about that of, oh, well, you know, when he's trying too hard to win the game, then he loses some of his technical stuff. Okay. All right. Well, four games, and I'm not going to make a big judgment over it.

But now into five games, and we're still talking about how to throw a football, even in situations where there wasn't any pressure. I think that's maybe the most worrisome thing about the throwing is that there has been no pressure whatsoever for the last two weeks. I mean, he has had perfectly clean pockets. I can't remember two throws that were under pressure. There was one that he hung on to the ball for a while and took a hit in the pocket. And I can't remember another one. I mean, the offensive line was marvelous today. And when you get that type of performance, it went through my head that if, you know,

20-21 Kirk Cousins gets that offensive line, he throws for 400 today. This defense for the Bears is bad. And I think that's the other part at the end. I mean, this whole season, they've been bad. They got destroyed by Joe Flacco, who has some pretty good wide receivers. This wasn't a defense you could say, well, you know, the Ravens and they'll throw a lot at you. No, this group is pretty awful. And at the end of the game, they got a couple guys banged up.

And yeah, it's a final drive against a team that can't pressure the quarterback at all. That's also playing three defenders about 400 yards from the line of scrimmage because they're afraid of giving up a big play to Jefferson. I can't really look at the last drive and say, oh, well, see, that's evidence. he's got it all figured out, those are very favorable circumstances, I think, versus this team and the way that they were playing defense. So I think when we got into the second quarter and the ball is still flying all over the place, that you're starting to say, well, how far away really in the quarterback journey is J.J. McCarthy? We already know that they blew the timeline. Like, that's already decided now because they are, for my money, out of any playoff race,

discussion, conversation, don't even say the word playoff if you can't win this football game against the team that tried desperately to give it to you. But even if we're focusing on just entirely J.J. McCarthy and the concept that he has to learn how to, with any level of consistency, just throw pitch and catch is what O'Connell said over and over in the post game. That's really disturbing. Can you get there after now, I mean, you've been in the NFL for two years. I know that it was truncated because of the injury, but you're into a second season here in the NFL and you're not able to make some of these very simple type of execution plays.

That's where the kind of bigger crisis starts to come into mind of, well, did you let this whole thing slip here because you overestimated where he was going to be by now? And how do you get it to the point even by the end of this year where you have any degree of confidence that it can be what you thought it once could be. Yeah, and that's why I'm talking about the difficult conversations that will have to be had. Some might think I'm jumping to conclusions after five games, and I'm not calling him a bust. I want to make that clear.

He has time to fix this, to turn the narrative around. But through five games, it hasn't been good enough. Everybody would agree with that. I think even the people who want him so badly to be good would agree that it has not been good enough. He himself would tell you that it has not been good enough. He has time. He's not a bust. But he doesn't have as much time as some other quarterbacks might because of the timeline,

because of this roster that is built to win now, because the Wilf's wrote a million checks this offseason to improve the roster because they themselves and probably were told and believed deep down that they this team could win right now you don't get a three-year rampway a four-year rampway like maybe you would with a team that stinks that a team that is completely rebuilding

from the ground up totally blew it down to the studs and is trying to rebuild the foundation no the Vikings are built to win now whether they miscalculated how good this roster could be or not is frankly irrelevant because they have a bunch of money poured into this team a bunch of young guys

now approaching the middle of their careers in their primes that are ready to win now, you don't have two or three years to wait for a kid to be ready. So it does create maybe less patience in the short term than you would have on, say, the Cleveland Browns who know they stink. The Minnesota Vikings expected to be not four and six right now. They expected to be better than six and four right now. So it creates hard conversations when we're looking at just what has transpired over the first month and a half of J.J. McArthur's career as a starter. Sprinkle in the fact that he hasn't been able to stay healthy with regularity,

it just makes it really tough. And today, I think, was the first time I felt like a large chunk of the fan base is starting to get restless, too. And I'm not going to just chalk it up to the booze in the stadium as well. The fan base is starting to push eject. But booze in the stadium matter, and they were loud today. And it was the first, time I felt like the home crowd is starting to maybe a little bit turn on J.J. McCarthy. Again, that does not mean the Vikings themselves have turned on J.J. McCarthy, but it's certainly worth noting that when you continue to play a quarterback as inconsistently as he has, everybody is going to start to take notice. And here we are talking about it again.

Yeah, and inconsistent is pretty polite when you can't even put drives together. You can't complete simple, wide open passes. and you're not just missing by a little, you're not just a shade behind or having someone break a pass up. I mean, you're missing by miles in some instances on plays that are wide open. That one that McCarthy referenced himself

is an easy out route. It is a day one of OTAs. And also, it's a great job by Kevin O'Connell to get a mismatch there for Justin Jefferson. And when we talk about easy button stuff, he couldn't have made it any more easy button. And the first throw on a play action where Jordan Addison is so wide open, on an outbreaking route, that's a simple play action.

That's a Shanahan, Kubiak type of thing. They set up the pass with the run and they run a play action. He rolls out or whatever. He's right there. And he just steps into the ball, lets it go. And it just hits the ground and skips to Jordan Edison. And that's the question of how do you fix that when the accuracy, it's not even really inconsistent.

It's just consistently off. And every once in a while, it clicks in like someone hitting it off the T where they get a drive that goes 300 yards every once in a while when they're hitting three out of five in the woods. That's kind of what this feels like with McCarthy. So then you do get to the point where you're asking, at what point does he need to turn a corner with this? Is it possible to fix mechanics in the middle of a season?

And, you know, O'Connell went back to, while he had really good practices this week, that's not moving as full speed as the Ravens or the Bears or throwing as much different defensive stuff at you. But I didn't even think the Bears did a good job on defense. Probably the worst part of this game is that the line was great. The running backs were great. I will say that I think that the play calling was great in this game. I don't like to fight about play calling a lot. I think it was fantastic.

They ran consistently. Jordan Mason averaged like seven and a half yards of carry. Aaron Jones was consistently getting extra yardage and they played really safe they looked like the Browns with Dylan Gabriel but then the opportunities that were drawn up for McCarthy were there including that pass from the first drive.

I mean last week it was one of those things again where you could kind of hang your hat on well why didn't he run on that particular down and maybe he should have done this and maybe he's putting too much on him well he didn't put too much on him he ran and ran and ran and ran the ball today to his success and did a good job of it and had a lot of very simple stuff, straightforward stuff for

J.J. McCarthy and he simply could not execute it. I don't think you can pair it down any more than that and actually play NFL football. And there was one point where O'Connell in his postgame press conference seemed to get a little bit annoyed when there was talk about the one false start, which shouldn't have mattered if it was a good throw by McCarthy on third down. But he said something to the effect of, yeah, there's teams at a lot of levels that have that cadence. But, you know, we made a mistake. It's like, it's very clear that even this week, they dumbed down the cadence to get it to the point where they wouldn't mess it up today. And one fall starts not that big of a deal. But, like, having to get to the bare bones part of this to set up everything and still score

17 points. And one of the touchdowns is just a punt return and then a handoff that Jordan Mason goes in, that is as ugly and as miserable as we have seen quarterback play ever here in Minnesota. And I did ask a couple of colleagues today, how close is this to you know who? How close is this level of quarterback play to Christian Ponder? And the response that I got from my friend John Krasinski of The Athletic, he said, the difference is that McCarthy shows the flashes, that there were no real flashes from Christian Ponder. And I completely agree with that. I think that's what's making this harder, Dane, is that there are flashes and there are moments and you like how he looks with his body language and the way that he's kind of a never give up

and, you know, give it everything you got type of guy. And you know how badly he wants to improve on this stuff, but I don't think that you can just push fast forward on a player's development timeline, which means to me the conclusion I came to walking out of the stadium here today, Dane, was the rest of the season, since you're not making the playoffs is really just press the gas pedal down on j j mccarthy put everything you can on his plate that you feel like you can't today was the hey pair it all down to get a win day i don't even to do that from here on out see where he's at at the end of week 18 because you're all playing golf in the first round of the playoffs which is nowhere near where we expected and yes it was hubris to believe

that you could just quarterback whisper somebody into development and that you could accelerate that timeline and we can go over that a million times over. But the result is this is over. So just do whatever you can to find out what the real answers are on J.J. McCarthy. I agree with that assessment. I think what? We have seven games the rest of the way, right? Vikings aren't going to win seven games and go 11 and 6 and make the playoffs. We'll get to the Fandu a question or the Fandu odds later, but they're probably not going to even sniff the playoffs. So I think that's fair of you to say don't talk about the playoffs. The rest of the way until they prove otherwise.

But yeah, let's put everything on this kid now. Who cares about all running in this situation on third and short because it optimizes what he might be able to do or it takes some pressure off of him, doesn't make him feel like the weight of the world is on his shoulders? Let's see what he got. Because I think right now the next seven games, for better or for worse, whether it would be unfair to not have as much patience as,

some think this kid requires or not. Like, you have to then decide what you're going to do this off season. If over the next seven games, he looks like this or worse or even the same, then I think you have a pretty good idea where this thing needs to go. It probably doesn't even rise to the level of moving on from him completely. But you, if it looks like this for seven more games, probably want to have a legitimate competition next off season. Or maybe you put more on his plate.

And maybe, you know what the Detroit Lions did that one year? And I'm like, I'm not saying they're going to have the Detroit Lions jump. But when they just were terrible, I think they lost six straight games. But there was a turn late in the season. They couldn't make the playoffs. And everybody remembers this. It was Dan Campbell versus the Green Bay Packers.

And Dan Campbell said, we're playing everybody because we don't want them to get in either. and they won that game, and it was like, okay, there's something here. Like, we have the pieces, the foundation. We've seen enough to say, let's keep moving forward with this group. And granted, they had Jared Gough. It's not J.J. McCarthy. But that's the feeling I think you should be hunting with J.J. McCarthy. Let's put a lot on his plate.

Let's see, is it going to get to a level where we can say, okay, we can have a full off season with him and move forward next season and feel good about it. about it. I think the growth would have to be pretty immense to get to that feeling, which is why I think putting everything on his plate is totally the way to go here. Who cares? Third and two, throw the ball. Second and two, throw the ball. Fourth and two, throw the ball. Like, let's see what he's got. I think Kevin Sefer from ESPN wrote a pretty good article this week. It was basically like Kevin O'Connell is developing J.J. McCarthy his way. He's throwing him into the deep end of the pool. Everything that you've seen to this point,

whether it was the back shoulder fade to Jalen Naylor in Detroit on a got to have it play or the third and one deep shot last week to Justin Jefferson on a got to have it play. It's a deep end of the pool. This is how he wants to develop quarterbacks, which is why today was kind of interesting. It was not how you would think Kevin O'Connell wants to develop quarterbacks. It was easy button stuff. It was putting him in optimal positions by totally,

divorcing yourself from the way you've run your offense, a lot of the ways, and it still wasn't good enough. So I'm fine if he wants to revert back to throw him in the deep end of the pool, sink or swim. It's a tough league. It's not fair all the time. I'm sure Trey Lance probably feels like he deserved more time in San Francisco. But you know what? The 49ers were ready to win at that very moment in time, and a guy named Brock Purdy showed up and proved to be a better option. So it's not always fair in the league. And people might think we're jumping to conclusions, but J.J. McCarthy now has seven games if he can stay healthy for seven games to make it so the Vikings have a decision on their hands or so they don't

have a decision on their hands this offseason. It made a lot of sense today to approach it to play to win the game, which was to hand off a lot. And boy, you know, they did really well. I mean, we're talking about 22 carries for 115 yards. I mean, very consistent as well. their longest run was only 16 yards. So they were really overall, very consistent in terms of pounding and getting into favorable situations that we talk about all the time. And they built play actions off of those things. And they did have this sort of, you know, San Francisco type of approach to trying to win this

game, which was the right way to go about it. But now you could just go back to whatever you want to do. And look, you can't do it against the Packers because Micah Parsons plays for them. and he will find his way to the backfield, regardless of your offensive line. But the point just being that overall, in the bigger picture, that you need to do everything you can to have that be your focus, and that is really unfortunate for a lot of players on this team that came here to win, but losing this one, that's the position that you've put yourself in.

Now, we do need to talk about a lot of other stuff that happened in this game, because the Chicago Bears gave them so many chances to win the game. late in, I guess it would have been early in the fourth quarter where they decide to pass three straight times in a position where they're up, I believe it's 16 to 3. And look, if Kevin O'Connell had done this, we would have been losing our minds. Ben Johnson, for most of the game, had a great game plan. He ran a lot and he worked Caleb Williams in some simple situations. He had some really nice escapes, kind of Houdini acts at times to get away from some

rushes. But I thought, especially in the second quarter, to start out the second quarter, where they have this eight play drive, there's a play action to a third string tight end or something. There's a swing pass out into the flat. They did a great job of controlling the game in a lot of ways and then kind of lost their minds a little bit in the fourth quarter thinking they wanted to put the dagger in the Vikings. Then the punt, Miles Price, who just continues to be a special player, finding ways to get a huge punt return. He had a huge kick return that was called back by a holding, but even several other good kick returns on the day. And you just can't ask for anything more from them there. But I thought with the overall approach, Chicago did a good job. But when we look

at the end box score for the Chicago Bears, and, you know, they ran for 140, but it took 3.6 yards per carries, a lot of pounding and pounding and pounding away, 193 yards passing on 50% completion percentage. I think this is where, if you, and the defensive room, you got to look around and go, what else were we supposed to do today outside of maybe that one long drive? But it overall was a really good performance by the Vikings defense. For sure, for sure. The only thing that I think they maybe regret is there was like a botched handoff with Caleb Williams and DeAndre Swift.

You go back and watch the play, it looks ridiculous because Jay Ward is trying to dive on the ball. He accidentally kicks it like 10 more yards. I think Roman Dunes ends up jumping on it. That one would fall into the category of weird-shaped ball, like bounces happen and fumble luck. And if the Vikings recover that, the game probably does look different. But overall, the defense did everything that you could have asked them to do, except for maybe sat Caleb Williams more than two times, but that's a lot of Caleb Williams. It's not running into the backfield against Jared Gough and being a little ahead over your skis and him just ducking out of it.

I know it was a good play by Jared Gough two weeks ago, but that's when I think Jonathan Granard makes that sack nine times out of ten. Today is like Caleb Williams is a Houdini in the pocket, and that's just what you're going to have to live with sometimes. What they did do is they got him off his spots. He was awful today, too, 16 of 32, looked uncomfortable. His biggest gains, I think, were largely because Ben Johnson drew up the perfect play. There was an all-out blitzed by the Vikings, and Ben Johnson drew up a perfect Luther burden screen that went for a gain of 16.

I think they did the same thing with Colston Loveland for a gain of 25. So if you're the defense, you can't do much more than you did. Like outside of maybe Isaiah Rogers having another pick six, unless you're scoring points, like what else could we ask from the defense on this day? There was, I thought to myself, after the Vikings scored with 56 seconds left. Oh, great. Too much time. The Vikings are going to give up some chunk plays and everyone's going to blame this game on the defense. Well, we don't have to do that because the special teams, that is one that I think we maybe didn't focus enough on in the first five minutes of the show. But again, I stand by the fact that they deserve to lose this game. And in a way, it's better they did because we actually got to talk about what matters than J.J. McCarthy leading an incredible comeback. But that is a... unbelievably glaring error by the Viking of Special Teams unit to allow a 56-yard return to Devin DuVernay in that situation. Can't happen. We'll talk to Matt Daniels on Tuesday. I'm sure he'll say the same things. You'll have to go back and actually watch the film to figure out who its responsibility it was, who stayed out of their lane or who got two over their skis on that one.

But defense did everything it could. Special teams, I know they broke down in a terrible moment of the game. They also gave you a huge spark to get you back into the game with Miles Price's 42-yard return. So when you talk about complimentary football, I couldn't have asked much more out of the defensive unit. Special teams, some good, some bad. It still falls on the offense at the end of the day. One thing that we do have to bring up, though, overall is that if this season was going to go the way that they needed it to go, then it was probably going to require a couple things. And one was the defense forcing turnovers.

And I have long been a believer that you can't really predict from year to year about what types of turnovers you're going to get for kind of a wild man. Caleb Williams does not throw a lot of interceptions. And he did not throw any interceptions today. They did have the one fumble, but that was totally self-inflicted on Chicago. It wasn't something that the Vikings were able to cause. It looked like for a second that they had maybe recovered a fumble on a, I forget who caught the ball and dropped it. Maybe it was Roma Dunezay. I don't remember because it didn't count.

It was just an incompletion. So there's been some bad breaks. Go back to the Chargers game where it looks like it's a pick six, but then it turns out that it's not a pick six. This has not really gone their way overall as a defense. It's just the sheer number of turnovers last year that they were able to create. They led the entire NFL and interceptions, and they played a ton of bad quarterbacks.

And as much as Caleb Williams didn't have a great day today and has not been the mega star, he was projected to be. Like, he's still a pretty good quarterback, and Lamar last week is a great quarterback, and Jalen Hertz gets argued about, but has a Super Bowl ring so he can say whatever he wants, right? And Justin Herbert. So they've played a lot of quarterbacks that maybe don't give you the ball in the same

way as some guys that they played last year, like Will Levis, for example. And I think that's played into it. I also think that the safety position and Cam Bynum was a big part of that. And today we saw a mistackle of Colson Lovell. then that also might have changed the game a little. And that's, I think what it all comes back to is that when you have a quarterback who's struggling as much as J.J. McCarthy is, then every drop, every kick return, every miss tackle, every time that they ran the ball and held onto the ball for a single drive, it just kills

you every single time because you feel like the margin for error is so small because you're not going to be able to get on a roll and score points and respond consistently. And if you can respond and with your quarterback, you're not that worried if they get one good return or one good drive or something like that. And then amplifies and magnifies every mistake by everybody else on the team. And then you get to the end of the game and you go, well, it's this person's fault. Is that person's fault? But if your quarterback isn't on point, everybody else ends up having to be almost perfect. And they were not on defense.

And I think we are seeing some of the issues with the safety position, which is being. attacked pretty successfully. They did run the ball consistently at times against this defensive front, but I didn't want to point out that I thought Dallas Turner had the best game of his career. We'll have to look at what the grades and the pressures and things like that ultimately come out to be. But I asked Dallas after the game about playing for Grenard instead of Van Ginkle. And he didn't go into great detail about I don't think he wanted to say it too much, what I'm going to say, which is, I think he's more of a Grenard than a Van Ginkle. And that's the side that he played during college that Jonathan Grenard position.

And he looked really comfortable rushing from that side. He was either pushing Caleb out of the pocket the other direction or got the one sack, but had several other pressures, had him wrapped up at one point. He escaped out of it because he is a madman. But this was the Dallas Turner that we were expecting and looking for. And I think for maybe, I wouldn't say the first time, I thought he was really good against Cincinnati and that game didn't matter so much. But I think one of the first times where we saw him look like a star type of pass rusher. And I don't know what kind of problem that creates.

It's like he needs to play the position that Grenard plays, but Grenard plays there. So what do you do? But the last couple weeks, I think that he has gotten together a little bit more had the sack last week that was negated. And I thought coming into this game, well, if they're able to attack him, you know, it could be a long day. And they were not really able to do that. Yeah. Who says we're all negative? Look, this is positivity.

Dallas Turner, I agree. Like, he was all over the field today. And I think when we go back and watch the film, he'll be all over the film, too. He finishes with seven tackles, a TFL. It was early in the game. I remember the TFL. He read the screen perfectly to Luther Burden. He was just right there.

to stick them. Probably should have had another sack. There was one where he definitely had Caleb Williams in his grasp and somehow Caleb Williams slithers away. But yeah, you saw Dallas Turner show up time and time again, actually finished a sack late in the game. That was the same drive that Andrew Van Ginkle had a sack and that's when things started to turn.

I think, yeah, if you're trying to hold on to something from today, it's that Dallas Turner, people want more out of him. He gave you more today. where does that land him when Jonathan Gernard is healthy and back from his shoulder injury? Maybe Brian Flores looks at this tape and finds more ways to get him on the Jonathan Grenard side or use him more as a pass rusher. I know they desperately wanted to be a dropper like Andrew Van Ginkle, a Swiss Army knife who can do both, probably because they traded a lot to go get him.

But you know what else is valuable? Someone who can just pin their ears back and go get the quarterback on the ground. So maybe this tape will show, okay, here's a little bit more what he does well. We can still try to mix in the drop coverage here and there with him. But let's try to just hone in on, let's go get this kid some confidence. He is a sacker of the quarterback. And I think we saw that today. So that is something else to feel good about amid a bunch of things to feel pretty bad about.

Still don't think the bears are good, I think, after this game. It feels like the team that goes to the playoffs and immediately gets waxed because they've been a little fraudulent all along. Well, it sort of speaks to what I'm talking about, that the things have not gone the Vikings way in ways that we've seen in previous seasons, especially 2020. The Bears are having a 2022 Viking season. That's very clear. Their defense is not very good. And they're winning on last second field goals and winning on last second, a kick return. And that's something that would have happened to the 2022 Vikings, just last second game after last second game.

And unfortunately, you have to put the Vikings in this category, beating bad teams is another part of it. But they are en route to really compete for a playoff spot. And the bottom line, the Vikings are not. And yes, on Fandul, I was going to ask you, bigger picture here, the Vikings are now plus 175 to even win eight games. And after today and not being able to beat a team that I consider to be pretty meh, and they really looked like it, can the Vikings win eight games? And now is that sort of the new bar toward if McCarthy can win eight from here total, then I guess he'll have to have played pretty well the rest of the way? And that feels distant to me when you have two of the best defenses in the NFL coming up on the road over the next two weeks. This is the make or break.

To me, this is the make or break stretch because later in the season, you've got Washington, horrible defense, Dallas, horrible defense. The Giants are banged up and they're just not that good. So there's going to be opportunities there for them to have some good games and for the quarterback to get back in place. But these next two games could break someone against two of the best defenses in the NFL. But at plus 175, do you think the Vikings get to at least eight from here? I don't.

And I think people are going to say, oh, look at you flip-flopping again. Every week's a roller coaster with you. It's true. Like, it's a week-to-week league. And each win, because they only get 17 of these things or loss, because they only get 17 of these things, matters immensely. When I said, yeah, I think they can win eight games last week after the loss of the Raven. I was baking into that equation that they beat the Bears who I think kind of stink still. Well, if you didn't beat the Bears who I think kind of stink still, do I think you're going to

beat the Packers on the road? No. Do I think you're going to beat the Seahawks on the road? No. Can I guarantee you're going to beat the commanders at home? No, I can't, I can't guarantee that either because this is a team. I know that Bears record says they're seven and three, and I know on this podcast, we say you are what your record is. But, I don't think they're better than the Vikings top to bottom. I think the Vikings have a better roster, but today the Vikings did not look like the better team. So what does that tell you?

It tells you maybe I'm flawed in my evaluation of the Vikings compared to the Bears. It also tells you that the margin fair is so, so small because of the quarterback play, that if they don't get perfect play across the board or they don't get improved quarterback play moving forward, you cannot just pencil them into beating a team that you would perceive is worse than that. So I don't think they're going to beat the Packers. I don't think they're going to beat the Seahawks. If I had to guess, yes, they're going to beat the commanders. Yes, they're going to beat the Giants. Maybe they even beat the Cowboys. But again, that's on the road. To get four more wins, you're going to have to surprise me at some point. And if you do surprise me with an upset victory,

like we saw in Detroit against the Lions, it's why they play the games. We don't know each week who's going to win the games. It's why the league is as good as it is. But they would have to surprise me. think in order for that surprise to happen, it would be because Jay J.J. McCarthy took a step forward because we will look back on a game and say, yep, that was the time that he took a marked step forward in his development. There's not a lot that suggests that that's coming around the corner right now. So until I see it, I have a hard time finding four more wins on this schedule, especially after dropping a game like they did today. Yeah, I think it's almost impossible to find that unless something really truly clicks in for J.J. McCarthy and then the corner is turned and

all of a sudden he is a complete and finished product. I don't know that that is very likely based on what we've seen so far because we're at the point where it's hard to say we've seen a single section of four quarters, even if you add them together at the end of this game, the beginning of that game of any, you know, how like you could take sometimes a baseball season, And a guy hit this in October and the first September. And then into March and, oh, in his last 50 games, he's whatever, you can't even concoct a time where J.J. McCarthy has put together four quarters. And I don't know how you're going to beat better teams, even if they are flawed teams.

I don't know how you're going to beat better teams, save for trying to do it like today with a pot return and with a defensive performance. But as far as I'm concerned, none of that really matters that much. it would be nice for him to win some games, but also it could give you the wrong idea if you win some games where it's 17 to 19 and you're completing 50% of your passes. So enormous, enormous changes have to happen with McCarthy himself. And this is the hardest part about analyzing it is. It really just comes down to one guy. I mean, the receivers we've seen, they have a great, great history of success, not their best day today. The coach has won 14 games and 13 games in seasons.

The receivers are open. The plays are there. The offensive line is doing a great job. The guy has to be the guy or you're not going to get even to eight games. I think if they do, then there will have been an enormous change. Let me finish the show on this, Dane. So we were asked probably, I'm sure you were on social media. I've gotten some messages about it of what we did not see from training camp or, you know,

from McCarthy through mini-camp OTAs, whatever, to predict that it was going to look like this. Because I remember saying to you maybe after the joint practices that I felt like what those made me feel confident in was that it wouldn't be horrible. And so far, that confidence has not been backed up. It has been horrible by any standard, any standard. I mean, I looked up some, I shouldn't even go too far down this road.

I looked up some quarterbacks that didn't work out over, four or five games that were much better than this through the first couple of games of their careers like this is this is catastrophic uh so far so what did we miss and i think my answer to that is number one man if i could only just know all the NFL results then i wouldn't have to work um i would just illegally gamble in um Croatia or whatever uh from uh some online site but that's did you know Croatia big in the illegal game no it's sorry Croatia I don't know what country I'm thinking of. Costa Rica.

Anyway, the point just being, we never know the results. But we really never know when it's someone we haven't seen before what it's going to look like when the other team is game planning. And when the speed is so much faster than a practice. And the unfortunate part for J.J. McCarthy is that he couldn't spend all last year practicing. And that he also couldn't or didn't really play in the preseason because the preseason is a joke now. I think this has had a legitimate effect on quarterback development that they are kept away from preseason games, but also why would you put them in there? When it's only third teamers for most

teams, they don't take it seriously anymore when many years ago teams would play their starters and second teamers for the entire game and you could get real legitimate reps. This is the problem with trying to develop McCarthy on a different timeline than the team. I think that the bones are there for this kid to be good. But how do you get him there? you just don't have a lot of practices and you just don't have a lot of game reps that you can even try to simulate for him. So I think that was what it was for me. And I just kept leaning on while their coaching has accelerated quarterbacks before. The receivers have elevated quarterbacks before. Once the line gets healthy, it'll be good. And everything was there today. And none of it was

good because we can't predict ball, I guess. And the only thing we can do is continue to let us get the entire picture before we do start using certain words to describe or even to say, well, they need to do this next year or they need to target that quarterback or this or that. I still don't think we're there yet, but this was to me a very big step in that direction for just about everybody. Yeah, I think what I missed maybe is just that when you take a step back from the NFL over the course of the life cycle of a year, you kind of forget, even I, forget, like, how much different the speed is in the fall, in the winter, than in the

spring and the summer. And I saw improvement from the spring to the summer. And I saw improvement from the first day of training camp to the last day of training camp. And by God, he was great in the one joint practice when Kevin O'Connell, I think, legitimately game planned for it. So there were enough pockets where I was like, okay, I see it. All right? He ripped a ball over the middle here. the inaccuracy, I will say, was on display throughout training camp. Right. We talked about it. There were balls that were flying all the time.

So maybe it should have been a little bit more sight to be seen in real time. But I think I underestimated how he would respond when the dial got turned up to 11. I thought a lot of the things that we're seeing would translate to from the practice field to the playing surface at US Bank Stadium or any road stadium. and it hasn't and maybe that was naive of me to think that this kid who has shown growth every step of the way would then be able to then just jump into NFL speed and be ready to play at an NFL level. I think that's where I missed it. I think I thought it would translate a little bit easier than it has.

I think he probably thought that. I think the Vikings probably thought that. I think Kevin O'Connell, Quasi Adolphamenta, the Wilfs. I think Justin Jefferson, Aaron Jones, go through the list. Christian Derrassad, Brian O'Neill, everybody on the defense, I think they thought this kid has it. He's shown flashes. It's going to show up on game day. We know it.

And it hasn't because it's just different. And that's just the truth of the league is that in order to get experience, you have to continue to play football on Sundays or Mondays or Thursdays. But again, going back to what we've talked about now at length on this podcast, some teams don't have as much patience. as other teams have. So J.J. McCarthy now has seven games to prove he's worth moving forward with into the future. Right. So I think what you said there about the improvement, consistent improvement, would have been something we would have expected, but also we could maybe still think is possible. And when he now has more games left to go than he's played so far, talk about small sample size.

It really isn't anywhere near what we need to know about. him it's this is very disturbing uh for sure it is but it's also not enough yet to say and where it gets much bigger is if he plays in some games really well and then other games looks like this and you get to the end in year and you go i don't really this is where carolina is with bryce young he threw for a million yards today and just last week i was like okay they got to be done with Bryce Young after this. And then he thought, ah, but not today, this is how hard it is to figure out quarterbacks in the league because from week to week it goes up and down so much. So five weeks from now, we might feel very different. If he has a response against Green Bay, a great

defense, we might start to feel like, okay, that's what you were looking for. And that's why it feels too early to me to say, oh, everything that you saw was wrong. Everything that we saw has not come together as fast as we thought or as fast as they needed. And I think that's where the crisis for fans comes in is you see that this team is good from player number 52 to 53. Is it amazing? I don't think so, but it's good. And when you can't get reasonable quarterback play and you don't win, it just feels so, so, so much worse. And you also need to see the other parts of it, not just in the tiniest spurts of, well, there was one drive here. There was one quarter. there. I mean, you need whole games of this quarterback looking like he could be a QB1 in the

NFL. And the fact that we haven't seen it yet, I think has made this a lot harder. But we can also only work with the information we have. That's another part of it. It's like a lot of it was good, but a lot of it also the critiques that we had during training camp practices, not so sure that people were listening closely for those all the time because of the amount of hype around J.J. McCarthy. but this team and this franchise bought fully into the idea that he could quickly accelerate and then that they could win games like this. I think that was another part of it too that when they were doing their calculation, they thought we're going to have an elite defense. We're going to lead the league in turnovers. We're going to be able to just get McCarthy to keep the train on the tracks enough and you can pull out some victories and then he'll play well in certain games, add it up to 10.

It's a great season. And when you don't get that other stuff, the receivers are going to catch the ball. They didn't. When you add up all those things, the offensive line is going to stay healthy early in the year. It didn't. The defense had its struggles early in the year. When those things happen, you end up at four and six with, I think, one of the more disappointing seasons so far that we have ever covered for this team. So we go forward on to Lambo for next week.

and then we'll see where this whole thing takes us. Dan Mizatani, Pioneer Press. We will be in Lambo for sure reacting to that. But this feels like if there was any win to put in the sales, that just went out. That even if Cairo Santos misses the field goal, at least you'd be saying, well, it's a cramped race.

And well, maybe they can grind out wins. And well, maybe they've found the formula. But a kick return from Duvernay put all of that. to rest. So we go for here, mostly just focused on what the quarterback is going to be in the future. Thanks everybody for watching slash listening. And, oh, it's going to be a week. So we'll catch you later. Football. Football.