Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - POSTGAME REACTION: Vikings no-show in Seattle (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

Matthew Coller reacts to the Vikings' disaster performance against the Seattle Seahawks. 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.

This episode of Purple Insider is presented by Fandul. Is JJ damaged goods now? Well, I think that with J.J. McCarthy, he was put into a position that he wasn't ready for. And that has showed. And I think you have to be concerned that the amount of ass kicking that he has taken this year will be very difficult to overcome. We've seen that from a lot of quarterbacks in the past, where they come into the league,

high expectations, they get their tail whooped, and it's very hard to recover from it. And I think that now we have gone over the line of being concerned about his ability to stay healthy. Because it's not just a random bad luck like it was to tear the meniscus. It's a way of playing football that if you're not, seeing things down the field if you're not going to slide and you're just going to run right

into a linebacker from the Packers and get smashed into the turf or you're going to get run down from behind because you're scrambling all the time like Atlanta and then you're going to get hurt there and then it felt like he didn't know when to scramble and when not to scramble he got hit seven times in the Lions game that was pretty concerning right there so you're starting to worry about his ability to stay healthy now with an entire offseason I think that he is still at the point in his career where he could make big gains. And he has potential and he's got a mentality that makes sense, you know, as somebody who's young trying to get better and all those sorts of things.

But this is, this has been such a beating that it might be difficult to come back from. And historically, these types of numbers on a team like this, usually do not indicate that someone's even getting a second chance. These are much worse numbers than Anthony Richardson had. And Anthony Richardson, after two years, was benched. And when you think about it, it's been 583 days since they drafted J.J. McCarthy. They've got six games. And it's almost all bad, except for a couple of quarters here or there.

That's very hard to bet on. That's what I would say is, like, I think that McCarthy at some point can develop into being a reasonably good, if not very good NFL quarterback. But I might have also said that about Sam Darnel when he was with the Jets. Like, you just don't have forever to wait. And you're a pro quarterback and you're expected to play at a certain level and score a certain amount of points. And if you don't, then they're going to find somebody else. Like, that's just how this league works. So is he damaged goods?

Is he broken? I don't know. I think he's really, really young. And he can have a lot. long career. It's going to take a lot of work in the off season. He didn't have an off season last year. And it's altogether possible that he might surprise us next year and come to camp and beat out somebody and look really good and take a big step forward and they might win 10 or 11 games with him. I wouldn't count that out. But you can't bet on that as

of right now. From what we have so far, we cannot bet on that, that type of outcome at this moment. That's just not what the numbers say. Hanky, thank you so much for the super chat. Appreciate that. I got to tell you the truth. Didn't expect super chats after it came like this. So I really appreciate it because of that. Thank you very much. And all you guys, I mean, I think the chat, all things considered, the Vikings lose 26 to zero. And it's just a travesty. has been fairly reasonable. Let's see. Will Waw 44 Ezra Cleveland and Ed Ingram both playing well.

Yeah, there's a there's a conversation there. There's a conversation there because you're right that by their PFF grades, Ezra Cleveland has been a decent starter. And Ed Ingram has shown enormous improvement in Houston. And I did watch an interview with Ingram. He wasn't very revealing, but he just said something like, hey, you know, sometimes it's just a better fit or something. And I did think about how they've asked a lot of offensive linemen here.

And I wonder if, and at times they've played really well, but I've wondered if the demand of the offensive lineman from the offensive scheme is a lot. I don't, people have asked about the offensive line coach. and I don't like to swim in depths that I'm not comfortable with. I'm not in that room. I don't know how good of an offensive line coach Chris Cooper is. To tell you the truth, I really don't. I think it's really hard to tell from outside.

Those guys know, and that's the only people who know. Every time I chat with Brian O'Neill, I think, man, offensive line play. So complicated. There's so much to it. And if those guys think that their offensive line coach is good, then I tend to believe them. And they're not going to say if they don't. But so I, let's just assume that we don't know about the offensive line coach. We do know that it's years of offensive linemen having a lot of problems in part because of,

I think, the downfield passing game, that it's not made very easy on offensive linemen. and if you look at Houston, they run a lot, play action a lot. They try to get the ball out of C.J. Stroud's hands if they can. And I think that's probably helped. I don't know about Jacksonville. I don't know if Ezra Cleveland's a star or whatever or just kind of a guy in the league. But it's crossed my mind, though, is this a really tough place to play offensive line? And Jackson's been really good this year.

But, you know, even fries is not as good as he was last year for the Indianapolis Colts, is it so much dropback passing game that in today's world, you're just facing a lot all the time at a higher volume. But also, I would throw this out there too, is last year they had injuries on the O line with Derisaw. They were playing very well before when they played closer games and they had everybody healthy. They were playing well.

And that's where I don't want to go into a part where I'm calling out the O line coach, when I have no idea what I'm talking about. Like, I'm not going to do that. they've played well enough when they've been together to make me think it's probably just a good offensive line now they probably upgraded from ingram to will fries and maybe he got better in the same way that sam darnald did but also when you're down two scores all the time your linemen are getting killed and last year i mean that's you know that's another one though like cam robinson last year he had been a reasonable starter for a lot of his career and then just wasn't at the end i

don't know it's a it's a hard thing to figure but i do know for this year the injuries playing with i think they've had 13 different combinations never going to be good with 13 combinations uh at least consistently but and and when you're losing the other team is just doing whatever they want out there so i don't know um that's colifton always apologies if i get your name wrong uh McCarthy has already gotten two red shirt years he's not getting another one Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't think this year could be called really a red shirt year, but last year certainly was. And that's not his fault that he had the meniscus tear, just like it's a bad break to get an ankle injury or, you know, a bad break to get a concussion. But, you know, you are talking about at some point, even being concerned, like put everything else aside.

put aside how he throws the football, put aside eight fall starts and whatever other issues may have potentially being had with the office of operation. But if you have missed this much time, how can anyone go into a season next year saying, oh yeah, he's our guy. We're all set. You can't. You absolutely can't. Trade for Peterman is very funny.

B.M says it has to be an easy game plan to play against this team. Play ultra-conservative, kick-field goals, win by three scores. Absolutely. That's why I will always believe, at least to some extent, or at least I think as instructive, is something like quarterback wins. All the time I see, well, don't talk about quarterback wins. But I think, you know, we should always look at it, the record, and then pick apart. how you got there and how much the quarterback was responsible for those wins is really what we're

trying to figure out, right? And this year, the Vikings quarterback play, their record is emblematic of their quarterback play. In fact, it might be even better than their quarterback play. Their quarterback play is emblematic of a team that wins two games. To have four might be an accomplishment for Brian Flores. I mean, the Cincinnati game, I think they were the better team that day. And I might be the only game that they've actually outplayed their opponent all season long other than Detroit. So two games where they, I mean, because even Cleveland, that game, Cleveland was ahead all day. So they, they just haven't outplay their opponents all season long. Their record is emblematic of their quarterback play.

And if you're the other team, you're right. You're absolutely right. Get, get turnovers. Get ahead. You don't have to do anything. What did Sam Darnold have to do today? I mean, was there a single good pass throw by Sam Darnold? Like, I don't think so.

I don't think he had one pass where I was like, oh, there's Sam's arm. Now, he's had a lot of them this season because he's the highest rated passer in the league. But he didn't need any. They were, they had a good game plan against them. They sacked him a couple times. He went to the injury tent at one time after taking a hard hit. But you just didn't have to do a thing. Caleb Williams didn't have to play very good.

Lamar Jackson. I was, you know, just as a football enjoyer kind of pumped up to go see Lamar Jackson. All right, Vikings Jackson, here we go. He didn't have to do anything. I mean, they got a couple of interceptions and he made a throw or two. They ran the ball and they just won the game. You're absolutely right. And that's when we talk about how this has been the most miserable football to watch that I can remember.

That's what we're talking about is, I mean, 26-0. What was it last week, 23 to 6 or something? I mean, my goodness, you're not even coming close. You're not even in games at all. You're right. They could have kicked one field goal and won this game. This feels like when we look at the last five years of bad quarterback to play teams, the Vikings beating the Vegas Raiders, 3-0.

Aiden O'Connell, it's like that. Aiden O'Connell was probably better than what they've had. And it's like that. That's where we're at. Friends of Taz says, did anyone expect the offense to play better today? The defense played awesome. KOC needs to learn to take the points. Well, yeah, I mean, in this situation, it doesn't matter.

Again, I could see an argument for taking the points to make sure you're not the first shutout Vikings team since 2007. I do think two weeks in a row, they've gone for fourth downs when they have their backup quarterbacks. Well, no, they had their backup quarterback in one of the games. the other game they were running on every play to try to not make J.J. McCarthy do anything. You probably actually should take the points, but again, they lost by 26. I mean, who cares? It's, I want KOC to go for fourth downs in general because your season's already over, so you might as well. But that's why I don't even want to, I want to make fun of that play as in nitpicking of like, I can't believe they still won't give it to Jordan Madison, Jordan Mason.

but it doesn't, it doesn't make any difference. As far as, did anyone expect the offense to play better today? Yes, I did. I mean, did I expect it to be wildly better than what we saw last week? No, but I did think that they would at least put up the over under on fan duel for Max Brosmer going into this game was 169.5. And I think I said, well, you know, maybe a little bit over. we were talking about stat lines

and I mean all of us were talking about stat lines that are somewhere in the range of hey 215 yards a touchdown and a pick score 14 points like that's how low the bar is now that that would be an improvement

and yet you know you're talking about you know getting shut out and coming nowhere close to that but I did expect it to look better and I think that a lot of people inside the building expected it to look better But undrafted free agent, it is what it is. It's a really tough circumstance.

And yet at times I still thought that the ball was coming out quicker and decisions were being made better. But then it just went off the rails. KFT says no top 10 corners. Guards don't go in the top 10. Well, they don't need guards. Wide receiver, defensive tackle most likely out of the top 10 maybe linebacker. Wide receiver suddenly becomes interesting because of Jordan Addison. I mean, he was suspended.

And then they had to suspend them for the beginning of a game. They're likely to lose Naylor. The Bucks drafted at Bucca. I think that people would go crazy probably if the Vikings drafted. Who did I have on the board here? Carnell Tate. I do enjoy watching that guy play football. Corner, though, you know, corner is a tough one.

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Don't miss off on this limit. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. Adrian says I don't think we've had a maca. discussion. He was the quarterback coach for Bryce's rookie year. Quarterback coach is tough. Quarterback coach is tough. I mean, that goes under the category of the offensive line coach where I just feel like we're going

way too far. Like the people that we should focus on our, you know, KOC, Quasi, the ownership, their decisions. When we start getting into like, is this position coach good at his job, those guys are doing so much behind the scenes. I don't know of a good way to have. evaluate it. That's something the coach has to evaluate it much better than me. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't connect it to Bryce Young's first year. That was Frank Reich. He was also being asked to play before he was ready, probably because ownership there was desperate to see him. I don't know. But as far as your first round conversation, trying to figure out where this team could go in the first round, DTs are good. And look, you'd love to pair a great defensive tackle with

Jalen Redman, who again today was phenomenal. More Jalen Redmond, man. If this team was good, people would be talking nonstop about this emerging young star, Jalen Redmond. You recovered a fumble. He had some great run stops. He's been outstanding. Can't get any attention. Corner is the one that is just like just glaring to me.

But there are some really good wide receivers in this draft. And your defense is the thing that's good. But the offense, where do you go there? I mean, I've seen people who want Jeremiah Love from Notre Dame a running back. No, I don't think so. you can't do that. Tight end. You've already invested so much in tight end.

You can't really do that unless you're moving on from Hawkinson, but even then they paid Josh Oliver, which you're not going to run on fourth and one when you pay Josh Oliver and you have a fullback here. And okay, all right, fair enough. Edge rusher, they seem pretty well set at edge rusher, linebacker, I guess, but are you taking a top linebacker on a team like this? That's why I keep coming back to corner defensive tackle as possible if they're cutting people.

which they may have to. Phillips is why was Felton drafted in the third round and never sees the field. Well, they should play him now. Yeah, they should play him now. I was totally fine with Ty Felton. This is, now we know we're in the offseason. I'm fine with Felton developing. Same with Jalen Naylor did that.

KJ. Osborne did that. I don't think that's a bad thing. Califthum, is that how it said? KOC is not a championship caliber coach. watching Shannon today coming up with creative run schemes pounding the rock wearing out the defense can't see KOC ever doing that well one of the reasons you can't do that is because you're almost down immediately but I agree with your point and well look how can you argue that he's in the same category as a Shanahan or a McVay when those guys have been to Super Bowls

the the biggest knock on Kyle Shanahan is that he keeps going to Super Bowls and not winning them Like, well, what a dweeb, right? This franchise hasn't been to the Super Bowl since the 70s. So if only, you could have that problem. Kyle Shanahan's the best of the best. And you're right. This guy, Kyle Shanahan lost. And their schedule has been easier.

They played the Browns today. Like, we don't have to crown them. But they lost what? They're starting quarterback for half the year. Their number one receiver. They're number two receiver. They're number three receiver, right? Pierceall's not playing.

and they're still winning. So, you know, that's when we talk about like, well, this player's out of that players. I'm only, that's the NFL. These games have all, you know, they've all gotten good enough defensive performances. They needed to take two out of four to stay in the conversation for a reasonable season and they couldn't do it.

And they couldn't even come close to it. So look, when somebody has no playoff wins and they are currently four and eight, I'm not going to stand in your way of statements like that. uh let's see friends of tas the seahawks are probably better than every nfc north team that's probably true yeah that's probably true they're a championship caliber team uh randy says who is the scapegoat that's getting fired monday yeah i don't think anybody right now i don't think they would do it now but man you get to some point you get to some point with this I suppose we will, you know, I don't know.

I don't want to go too far with that. If we get to some point, we'll know it, right? You know how I've said this about McCarthy. I said there will be a day where we all just know. That day was last week where we all just knew this isn't working. And you better start looking to next year and who's going to be your quarterback. I think that today was not quite that day with the coach and the GM and this regime. But if there are, if the rest of the season continues,

continues to go like this, where they are just completely unwatchable, if they lose to a bad Washington team at home, if they get embarrassed on Christmas Day in front of the national Netflix audience for all of you sharing your passwords or whatever to Netflix or getting the seven day trial, then we could get there into that discussion of what are the consequences going to be? Because this season having no consequences would be pretty crazy if they end up 5 and 12, or even worse, which is, again, on the table when you can't score a single point today, when you have the best kicker in the world, you can't score a single point. I don't know when you said, did Jefferson declined talking to the media?

I don't know. If you saw that on Twitter, clearly I'm not there today, and it was a great decision for me to save my money. But if you saw that, let me know. I mean, I wouldn't blame him at this point. I mean, look, I'm never going to be in favor of a place. are not talking to the media. Jefferson has talked and talked and talked and talked. There's nothing left for him to say. It is an utter disaster.

Oh, he did. He did have a conversation with reporters and it was taken down. Okay. All right, wonder. Let me know if you see any quotes from that on social media. Ryan Grigson. I don't know. I mean, that's another one. That's another one with like, I don't know. Ryan Grigsaw is the one who found Jalen Redmond. But I don't know about that. Now, could it be Quasi Adolfo Menza? Now, maybe, maybe, I guess we'll find out if it's true that KOC was banging the table to bring back Sam Darnold. And the Wilf's got talked into not doing it because of the general manager and his path.

the results at the end of the year for who's here and who's not will tell us that, I guess, if that's the case. I just, I don't know that we need to be in a spot where it's like heads are, heads or need to roll because this whole thing was set up for 2025 and 2026. I think it's fair enough to let it play out. But as I said, there are realities to this thing. You cannot lose like this time and time and time again and just look around and go. it's fine. Can't do that.

Caleb Downs is who everybody wants. I mean, the safety position, I know that there's a little, probably a little hesitation there, but they need it. They need it. Theo Jackson was out today. Hasn't had a great season. Harrison Smith bound to retire now, I think. So, Christian McCaffrey is the best running back in the league. So I agree with that. Oh, Dallas Turner had over a 90 PFF grade day. He was great, man. He was really good. James Winston. See, now we are at the point where, yes, I will great. your post game or your um i will grade your i was reading the word post game i

i will grade your quarterback ideas so james winston is a c minus idea with a plus entertainment potential c plus as in or c minus as in i don't think that james winston can get you into the playoffs in the nfc north because i think he'll throw 28 interceptions in this system but every game would be a zoo so all right i mean if we're going to the circus every Sunday. Why not? I mean, as compared to where we're at right now with an extreme lack of entertainment value. Will has wide receiver defensive tackle, tight end, and safety. Yeah, wide receiver is interesting because I don't know how you could give Jordan Addison a big extension after this year. Fifth year option, I guess. Let's see. KFT QB coaches implement

the game plan with the quarterback. They don't spend much time on mechanics. Well, mechanics is on, see, this is the thing. Mechanics is on J.J. McCarthy to figure out. Pro coaches, the fact that Kevin O'Connell is doing it feels really telling because you shouldn't have to be teaching someone how to throw a football when they have the expectation of leading a team to the playoffs. So that might be telling there. Lucas, wouldn't you rather lose like that?

that than Blair Walsh missing wide left. Ugh. No, no, I'd rather have Blair Walsh miss wide left. I mean, this is like a deep philosophical conversation. And since I married my first girlfriend, I don't know what it's like to have heartbreak, but isn't there the whole thing of you'd rather have loved and lost than never loved at all? I would rather watch a great football game where a team has a tragic ending than watch nothing.

which is what I watched today. Nothing. It was nothing. I could have, I could, here's the, think about how low this is. I could have just taken the dog to the park and walked around in the snow and played for a while and come back. I didn't even have to watch the game to do this post-game show.

I could have just looked at the box score. I'm like, oh, okay. We're talking about mock drafts, right? So, uh, let's, B.M says, I think Bo Nix is mid, but I'm watching him complete forward pass after forward pass like it is in 1953. Well, look, you know, that's another part of this too is Kevin O'Connell took the lead on that

decision and it turned out wrong. I think we could clearly say it turned out wrong. I mean, Bo Nix was much more of the guy who you could win right now with. I don't think he jelled as well with Bo Nix and maybe he wouldn't fit in the way that they want to play because Nix is in a system where he's playing basically like he did. at Oregon. Get rid of the ball quick, not a big yards per attempt, not zero sacks pretty much. And the occasional scramble and then you play defense, I don't know, that's just not how KOC wanted to play. But, you know, I did like, I did like Bo Nix because of the huge sample

size of him playing. And I thought he was more ready for this team. Vibrant work says Tassum Hill could get Jefferson the ball. Not sure McNabb played this. bad, literally if Taysam Hill was starting, you'd do better. I agree. Yep. Taysam Hill always wanted to be a quarterback, and then I guess just kind of gave up on that, but it would have been better. Let's see, Mel Kill, to be fair, Darnold was terrible.

Didn't have to be any good. They didn't make him. What was he supposed? What more did he need to do? He just handed off a bunch of times through a couple short passes. did Sam Darnold play today? I don't even know. I heard a lot of his name on the broadcast,

but did he have a single play where he actually had to play quarterback? Nobody has. In weeks, did Jordan Love play last week? What did he do? He made one dropback throw where he kind of tossed it up in the air. They won the game.

These teams have to do nothing. They have to do nothing to win these games. That's why it's so horrendous. Anyone know his EPA per play? Yeah, it's, I think if you actually pull that up, your computer just lights on fire. So, the offensive line looks old. Well, the injuries are problematic. The injuries for sure.

Andrew says feel bad for Harrison Smith. Me too. He came back with the expectation they were going to win. Everybody on the defensive side, this is just so tough. I mean, they've had a lot of good performances. you know, here's Jonathan Grinard, I know, has not finished Sacks, but his pressure rate's been really good. One of Dallas Turner's Sacks was because Grinard beat his guy immediately.

When Van Ginkle has come back, he's been great. And Turner has taken big steps and Redmond's been really good. You know, I actually think Javon Hargrave for as much flack as we gave him halfway through the season has really turned it around. And Eric Wilson, I didn't even mention. we're an hour and a half into this. I didn't even mention Eric Wilson. He had a great game.

Eric Wilson's been phenomenal. What a story, right? We can't even tell these stories because what the heck does it matter? That now I'm just complaining. But like this is really how miserable this has been for all of you and for anybody who has eyeballs who's watching is you see how great Eric Wilson is playing. That side of the football has just really come alive. In fact, since Flores moved him to that outside linebacker kind of hybrid role, he's been

great. and, you know, Isaiah Rogers got run over a couple times, but I think overall since that Eagles game, he's been better. And it's been a bit of a tough season for Josh Mattelis, but he had a, you know, past block down today. They did a good job against Sam Darnold, but he didn't have to do anything. Leonard said, I suspect Harrison Smith is one of those veterans

who has trouble letting it go. Well, you know, that's the thing is that after last year, 14 wins, I think he had a lot of fun. and I think you wanted to come back and do it again. I don't blame him for that. I mean, look, I thought the team was going to win 11 games. Vegas had them at eight and a half. I mean, there was plenty of prognosticators that picked them as first or second in the division.

I don't, if you're Harrison Smith and you were looking at this team and you were like, well, look, they believe in McCarthy and his 2024 training camp was good and all that. Why would you think it would go belly up like this? I wouldn't have I mean I didn't think that so and I and he's been okay since he's come back uh who plays center next year hmm um I mean I think you know Brandl has done a lot of good things for this team as a backup type of offensive lineman but you probably have to look for somebody different is that a draft pick it's probably a veteran free agent I don't know who's out there it's probably a veteran free agent um

C-E van C-Van F-X I don't think this Vikings team beats the Jets right now well they got to win they played well Aaron Glenn as bad as it's been over there you know uh Kevin said that uh Jets declined post-game discussion oh okay

all right I don't, I, I think he's reached the point where there's nothing more to say. He said everything there is to say. Normally I would not be very happy with a player for walking out like that. In this case, I, I don't, I don't blame him. I do not blame for that. Because Zincad said Bo Nix had eight years of. experience yeah well that was kind of the point right is they they needed a quarterback right now

and they picked the one who was the most raw that's what they decided to do so uh lucas says it's better to have never loved it all uh will waw says did we know about jj's poor mechanics pre-draft yes yes we did. Yes, we did. The assumption was that they would get him in the building and he would sit a year and they would develop him. And that plan got thrown off completely by his injury. And where they went wrong was that they probably didn't realize that that injury was a full reset. And I said it in the offseason. I said, he's not a rookie. He's had that whole year behind the scenes and he knows the offense and everything else. But the mechanic part of it, you can't fix in my March, April, May, you need a whole offseason for that if you'll ever be able to do it.

I don't know he'll ever be able to do it. I mean, I was watching several college quarterbacks yesterday, the kid from Auburn, the kid from Michigan, if they do the same thing, they just throw the ball 100 miles an hour. I don't know that it's fixable. And they thought that they could fix it. They thought they could work on trajectory and all that stuff. But once the real stuff starts flying out there, I mean, so I think that that was where they really miscalculated. He was improving in 2024 training camp, but it was a full reset back

to rookie mode. And I don't know that they, they realize that. And there's other things that sometimes just can't be fixed. I mean, these mechanical issues were a big discussion point when he was coming out. His, I mean, I looked back to a text of mine with a friend about McCarthy in the draft who, my friend went to Michigan. And we were just talking about him way back then. And I was like he throws every pass 100 miles an hour. We're still saying it 583 days later. He didn't answer the Fandul question of the day, by the way. Vikings were minus 250 to start the day to win six games.

Do they get there? Do they get to six games? Davis Mills worth considering? I guess. Yeah. Oh, I got to grade it. C. I'll give it a C.

I don't think you went a lot with Davis Mills, but you're maybe in the. the race a little. The other quarterbacks are Caleb Williams, Jared Gough, and Jordan Love. You got to compete with them. That's hard to do unless you had Sam Darnold. Then it was less hard to do. But you don't. Nick Mullins, okay, that is, that is a D plus idea. That is if they were tanking. Levi, we need Jeremiah Love. I, you know, that would be a great idea if they ever ran the ball. I'm not so sure that they are ever going to do that. Scott said how many missed important tackles did Rogers have, saw at least four.

Yeah, that's probably the reason he wasn't a starting outside corner before. You're right about that. Like his tackling is subpar for sure. Levi says we all know chaos. He's a good coach. Stop overreacting. Well, there is a, there is a, okay, that's an interesting one. I'll get to that in a second.

Now we're grading QB ideas. Now we're rolling. this is a post game this is how you do a post game folks you just don't talk about the game and then talk about next year's quarterbacks exactly where we thought we'd be on november 30th oh man what was the question shoot now i got distracted because i saw dante more grade please i haven't been huge on dante more um i've never i haven't thought that he was really a first round looking quarterback he's undersized does i mean Oregon kind of spreads the first field. And they have a lot of people running open. And sometimes I feel like maybe it's just me

having Marcus Marriota in my head. He's just not a very big guy. Can he play in the NFL with the NFL size and speed at that size? He's got a really good arm. He's exciting. We need to focus on getting the top draft pick. Well, you know, look, they don't have to do anything different. Just keep doing what you're doing. Um, let's see. Tara, sorry if that's wrong, sorry if it's Tara. My frustration is that they went all in on McCarthy this offseason because it means they totally misread the situation. So hugely not getting a real backup was the last straw after Darnold and Jones leave.

Right, because there are other backups. I mean, so Wentz is a real backup and he went two and three and he played better. I mean, by comparison now to the other guys, he played much better. And they're probably, how many games we got now? 12. They might be six and six with Carson Wentz, which is what I would have expected. So that's kind of an option. I mean, I was for that.

Like, hey, this guy's played in the league before. He's played a lot of games. And what do I usually say? If you're starting quarterback gets hurt, you are screwed. And we don't spend a lot of time on being screwed in the show here. So, you know, all right, Carson Wentz. But I think the first part is misread the situation. in a way that was not just, oh, you know, they thought McCarthy would be a little farther

ahead, but they're only six and six. And if there's so many, there's so many outcomes of this season where I could say, well, you know, wasn't that bad. If they were six and six and they lost 26 to zero today with their third string quarterback, I, and McCarthy had played decently throughout the season, I would say, ah, well, that's what happens when you play your backup quarterback. So on the next week, get well soon, JJ, and start looking toward developing him as much as you can over these last couple weeks. And if we get some exciting moments from him and go into next year feeling good, then, then, okay, not great, but okay, you're not even close to that. You've gotten the worst quarterback play in the league. I mean, you're not even, you can't

even silver line this thing. You're lucky to have four wins. So you didn't just misread it by a little. You misread it by an enormous amount by the Grand Canyon amount. I, that's how much you missed. You didn't miss by inches off the plate. You hit the mascot with how far JJ was along. And, you know, KOC declaring him the franchise quarterback after 2024 camp. I mean, it just shows you how much they were sold on him through that 2024 camp and that's all they had to work with. But it's their job to get that one right and to know how far he was along and to have, as you said, other options if he was not. But that's why that Diana Rossini thing is sticking out to me where she wrote that they felt like,

that some felt like if he didn't play this year, that it could have negative consequences. And I just don't really fully understand what that means. Anthony Richardson, okay. Oh, did I grade Dante Moore idea? Grading a, drafting a quarterback as an idea is going to get a pretty high grade for me. I think Moore is a little on the young side. I'll give it a B plus.

I don't think they can do it, but I'll give it a B plus. for will it happen, it's probably a D-minus. But would I be for it? Yeah. Anthony Richardson is an idea is if, if you're also getting a veteran and if you're quarterbacks next year and what a time this would be were Anthony Richardson, J.J. McCarthy and I don't know, a veteran starter, Jacoby Brissette, he played well today.

Jacobi Brissette, I think. I was only watching on Red Zone. And Max Prozber? Okay. It's got a, he can't be the only answer. So just as an answer, then I'll say, I don't know, maybe a B, but as the only answer, that's not a good one. Would I believe that Troy Aikman through fewer passes than McCarthy in college?

Would you believe that Troy Aikman played 40 years ago? I mean, come on. Oh, man. That's, you know, that's when you know it's gotten pretty low. That's when you know it's gotten pretty bad is for a few weeks there, I was getting the John Elway didn't do well in his first year. Yeah.

35, 40, 45 years ago, that's probably true. I am old enough to remember these guys. The Dallas Cowboys when Troy Aikman took over were horrific. Troy Aikman is also the number one overall quarterback and had an arm of God. So it was a little bit different, a little bit different. He threw as nice of a football as anyone has ever thrown. Joe Flacco is an idea is probably a C plus. Desmond Ritter is the best quarterback on this team.

Big Bear, Big Bear, Big Bear 7347. You're right. holy cow you're not wrong you are not wrong you are not wrong i don't even know what to say after that that is absolutely true can't wait for warner and oh solven to break down this game those guys have they have they have they have lives man you want them to be happy those are good guys those are good dudes i've actually written stories on both of them or with both of them They're good people. They don't deserve to break down that tape.

Davy says, a guessing that when Darnold and Jones left, they chose McCarthy as a stopgap until something better. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can't do that. They fully believed in J.J. McCarthy. Otherwise, they had different ways. I mean, one of the ways, if you really think about it,

now I haven't brought this up because it seems a little ridiculous and it would have gone over so badly. But, I mean, one of the ways was they could have traded J.J. McCarthy. So there were multiple outlets, out what am I trying to say multiple different paths to having not him as your quarterback this year and one of them was actually trading him in a terrible quarterback draft for a first round draft pick or more and instead they decided to and look I'm not saying they that I suggested that I never suggested that my suggestion was to franchise tag Darnold and to develop McCarthy so you actually know what

you have they didn't do that now they're foreign but this was never a stopgap situation. This was a guy that they called their franchise quarterback after he got hurt in 24. So pizza guy, Mani, I don't see this team winning any more games this year. Yeah,

Mani picking the schedule. Wow, that one has gone in quite a way, hasn't it? McCarthy and Richardson can compete to see you as the lower completion percentage. Is it McCarthy right now, lower than Richardson? At least for the first six games, I think it is.

Timothy, we got to start with the O line. I mean, what more is to be done with the O'Line? I mean, you need a center, but you have Darrisaw, Jackson, fries, and O'Neill. There's nothing more to be done. They need to be healthy. Vibrant says if KOC leaned on KOC's evaluation of J.J. McCarthy, how would you weigh how responsible quesied out Fomense is. So that is a hard thing to pick apart.

That's why I've usually just said everyone is responsible because clearly KOC was the point man on the decision to pick McCarthy. And I would have let him too. And I said it. I said it. In fact, when I was expressing some skepticism about McCarthy, if we just want to go through the whole history

because I'm not that busy right now, I don't have to fly home from Seattle. If we want to go back through that, I expressed skepticism about McCarthy. My biggest issue was sample size. I just didn't have much to work with. I didn't know what to do with him. He's so young, he threw so few passes.

There wasn't a lot of history there. That's what I lean on. When I'm doing these conversations and, you know, all the sorts of opinions, it's always going to be driven a lot by the data because I wrote a book on it and I've always done that, right? That's how I do it. I don't think I'm a scout or anything like that. I don't pretend to be. It's just I look at the data and then I mix that with what I see and

we go from there, right? But every time that I mentioned this skepticism about McCarthy, and there was mixed in, by the way, skepticism about all the quarterbacks, Jaden Daniels got himself killed every game and look, he's hurt. Caleb Williams flopped around on the bench. um, Drake May was a wild man with the football and Michael Pennix had injury problems and didn't throw over the middle of the field still happening. And, uh, Bo Nix only through screen passes. Like all, everybody had that. But with McCarthy, the specific, the specific concern was about his experience. And his team not really needing to lean on him and just does he know how to play quarterback? Has he done enough of quarterback playing? Because we had seen a couple other guys like Tray Lance and

Anthony Richardson just be in over their heads. But every time I brought this up, I went back to, hey, if KOC is in on this guy, then, all right, let's see what happens. There's nobody I'd rather trust more. And there's no such thing as a quarterback whisperer. There's no one who's perfect. And you can make a mistake there. It happens.

You can go for a more moldable quarterback and you can mess it up. And I'm not saying that it's over with J.J. McCarthy, by the way. Like, let's just be clear. that he gets this offseason, he gets a chance to develop, he gets a chance to compete next year in camp. I'm not declaring it over with J.J. McCarthy, just to be clear. But that's where anyone can be flawed when it comes to quarterbacks. Anyone can make mistakes when it comes to quarterbacks. I think the more egregious thing is that if you are the general manager, and I don't know how this all went down behind the scenes, because those are conversations that are just

happening between these three guys or whatever number of wills, we're there. We'll, maybe it's four, that when they have that discussion of, do you want a franchise tag Sam Darnold? Is it, who is the one saying, don't franchise tag Sam Darnold? Who's the one saying JJ is far enough along? What here, we've seen enough from JJ. And the other part of it too is, were you really sure? Because you did talk to Aaron Rogers and how far did that discussion go or were you just rolling the dice because if you're just rolling the dice man you rolled the dice with some some kind of big risk here and it is come up is snake eyes the right term i i don't know dice games but maybe that that's the right

term uh maverick how would you expect to win a super bowl with a quarterback like mccarthy well the idea was and i think we've seen this that mccarthy's raw talent his actual arm strength, his actual mobility. Those things are very, very high. So it's sort of like Richardson or Lance where you're betting that if it ever clicks, it's going to be really good. But it hasn't remotely gotten there. Skull, Seattle, thank you so much for the super chat.

Really appreciate that. Again, I'm shocked that anyone would want to super chat me today, but I really appreciate it. That's funny, Scott. Did someone steal the Jugs machine? I do, I do feel that way for a couple of these games where it's like, if you could just get a catch there from Addison, just get a catch from Jefferson, get Max Brosmer a first down. Just get him a first down. Maverick, he doesn't have armed talent. May has armed talent. Okay, so fair enough. Arm strength. Arm talent is what Julian Sayan has, where the ball glides through the end.

air and perfectly into the midst of wide receivers. Kurt Warner has armed talent. Drew Brees has armed talent. You're right. You're right. We shouldn't conflate the both, but arm strength, his ability to throw it super hard. Like, he's got a big arm. And, but those are raw things that have to be molded.

And sometimes they don't work that way. But fair enough. KFT, it's obviously he should have been taken in the second round. It is obvious now. Yeah. Hunter wouldn't blame you if you moved from Minnesota and started covering a new team. Well, you know, it always, it's always possible. Christopher says, clean house, so many mistakes.

Analytics lost. Chris. Analytics. What? What about this was analytics? I think that's actually the most disappointing part of Cuecy Adolph. Fulmenza and his regime is that can you use your finger to point to the analytics for me? Can you, can, if I gave you a little stick, could you show me where on the analytics chart

you sign Jonathan Allen to a huge contract? What is, what about this? What about analytics would say give away all your draft picks? What would? Where are they? They have been about as traditional about this as it gets. And I think that's actually, I mean, I do think that they've built a really good football team doing it. They've built a good defense that can give Seattle fits and give the Bears fits and stop the Bears run game for the most part that's been dominating.

And they slowed down the Ravens and like they've done a lot of good things on defense. They've made a lot of good signings. And they have built, I think when healthy, a very good offensive line, they've got a, about as good of weapons as you can have. They've got a good kicker and punter for goodness sake. Ryan Wright is killing it today. He's had a lot of reps. Maybe that's why he's better this year.

He's had a lot more practice. But I can't say that this is an analytical approach. Show me with both of your hands. Hold them up to the screen and direct them toward the Adam Thielen trade being analytical. There's nothing analytical happening here. They don't even make, they're not even one of the more analytical teams in in-game decisions, I mean, when they, when you look at the charts and stuff that show like the teams that are doing it when the computers say that they should, they're in the middle.

It's not an analytical team, man. It's not a team that's built on the data because you know what the data would have said? I'll tell you what the data would have said. And it's that kind of day where I'm willing to tell you what the data would have said. The data would have said if it was truly an analytical team. And I know the owners are the ones who. wanted it this way. And I don't know what Quasi Adolfo meant to want it because I can't speak for him. They would not have tried to win 13 games in 2022. They would have gone the same path

as a lot of their brethren like the Chicago Bears who are at the top of the NFC right now. They would have stacked a bunch of draft picks and tried to hit on a bunch of young guys all at the same time to maximize rookie quarterback contract or rookie contracts, not just at the quarterback position, right? They would not have, and I loved his game today, trade it up for Dallas Turner. That is not an analytical move. That move got killed by every person with analytics to the point where I was like, guys, okay, we get it.

It's not an analytical trade, but let's not hold it against Dallas Turner. Let's let Dallas Turner develop. And now that take looks pretty good. But I just am going to need you to direct me as somebody who has covered the analytical world in the NFL. for the last 10 years, and again, wrote a book about it, show me all, show me. Do they have one of the bigger analytics departments in the league?

I don't think they do. Like, I just, I know that that was his background, Kwasi Adafo Menza's. I don't think they've taken an analytical approach to this aside from the rookie contract, but that's not analytical. That's just common sense that a lot of teams have had success going for the rookie quarterback contract. I think what they did from a front office perspective is they said,

we are going to swing big. That's what this came down to. We are going to swing big, which means if J.J. McCarthy is good. We will have a chance to compete for a Super Bowl. But we probably won't be able to put enough around Sam Darnold if he's on the franchise tag to compete for a Super Bowl in 2025. I think that's what it came down to.

to. And I mean, I think the NFC is so flawed. The Rams, who I declared the best team in the league, of course, I spend the whole week being like, yeah, Rams, man, no one can beat them. And then the Panthers beat them. So the NFC is so flawed that they probably, if you take 40, well, yeah, take 41 million, you can find it pretty easily. Jalen Redmond instead of, you know, or Harrison Phillips, keeping him instead of Jonathan Allen, bringing back Aaron Jones, as much as I respect that man. It's been a zero as far as what it's produced.

You know, Byron Murphy hasn't produced to the level that you expect. Like a lot of the money has not turned out to really make as big of a difference as they expected. They swung big, and they all had that in their minds. If we coach up J.J. McCarthy and he is good right away, we will compete for a Super Bowl just like San Francisco did with Brock Purdy. and they missed. I just don't see it. See, the NFC is strong with a lot of teams that are good,

but I don't think that it has any team that's mind-blowing. Like, as you saw today from the Rams. The Rams are really good, though. Super Bowl or bust is how you could frame what they were trying to do in these two years. But here's the problem with that, is that Sam Darnold, and again, I know, there will be parades in downtown,

Minneapolis because you never get to celebrate real championships here unless it's the links, but even that was a long time ago. You never get to celebrate real championships here. So you have to have fake ones like when Sam Darnold ultimately gets eliminated. But the thing about Sam Darnold is that he is settled pretty nicely into this second tier type of quarterback with Dak Prescott, Jordan Love, Justin Herbert. And I know how many rings do those guys have? But every year they go into the playoffs, every year Jared Gough is in the playoffs.

getting another swing at it and leading top offenses and whatever else. So if that's what you passed up on, hoping for better than that, like, well, that's a, that's a miss. But for sure, that's what they tried to do. 0-617. Did anyone in the front office think about what would happen if they swung big and missed? How are they getting themselves out of this situation now? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm sure that I'm sure that there was.

was some world during training camp where there was a conversation somewhere in a hallway or something. Now, it got a lot better as training camp went on, but there was a, there was a moment there where they had two or three really bad practices back to back to back. You went like, is this going to be bad? And I mean, it still ended up being bad, but it got so much better as it went along that there was confidence. I'm sure that there was some discussion of, hey, if we're going to go down, go in flames, don't go down with... you know, eight and nine or nine and eight or something, which I guess is what, I don't know why after darnal won 13, 14 games and through for 4,300 yards of 35 touchdowns, you'd be like,

I don't know, we're probably mid, but maybe they thought it was the things around him. And I praise them for this, so I have to stay with that, which is the things that had plagued them for a long time, interior O line, interior D line, they invested in and running back. They invested in that stuff. So they did use that money to do that this offseason. But, I mean, that bar was really, really high for McCarthy to reach to even be anywhere in the ballpark of Darnold. And even Darnold's performance turned out to be not quite good enough. I mean, that's a reach, which does come back to, it does come back to, you know, the approach that I said was not analytical, which is not having a lot of draft picks.

So you have to do that also in part because you don't have a lot of young players. There's a lot of money that's been spent. But yeah, I mean, did they think of it? They probably thought of it and thought it was impossible because they're them. If we just got, how many times did you hear it? If they got that much out of Sam Darnold, what are they going to be able to do with McCarthy? How many times did you hear it? Well, it seems at least they thought they could get a lot out of J.J. McCarthy.

Now, I also think that they felt like if it failed, it could fail quickly. and then, and so your, your question is, how do they get themselves out of it? The answer is that they find the next Sam Darnold. That's the answer. They have to find another, look, McCarthy deserves, he is so young, he deserves to compete next year in training camp, and he might have some good games here. He might have a good game against Washington. They're horrendous.

He might have a good game against Dallas. Their defense has gotten better with Quinn and Williams, but it's still bad. he might have a good game in New York. I mean, that one could be lots of fun. That one could be 34, 31, right? But those are teams that are awful. And I think the evaluation has reached, like, we're not really changing much about the evaluation after this.

And if you do, then it's very flawed. You've reached the point where you have to decide today, you're looking for another quarterback. So if they get another one for next year and that veteran allows McCarthy to have another development year, which I don't know, but Jordan Love did it. If that quarterback fits really well with the offense and they're back on track, well, then maybe you're back in competition. I mean, we've seen this happen enough times.

I'm going to keep throwing out names. Gino Smith is one that got torched in the comments the other day. I'm like, I don't know. Gino Smith won 10 games two years ago. uh right now we have an offense in name only yeah that's for sure he is not a cuby whisper that's because there is no such thing he's a whisper they just don't listen it's because it's not real it's it's because you can maximize what you do with the quarterback but no one is made of magic if you have sam darnold and he's throwing the heck out of the

ball and he's seeing the field and he's thrown with anticipation, he's tough his nails, and he's a playmaker, and I don't know, that sounds like a quarterback you might want, then you're good, and you're the quarterback whisper. But if the quarterback can't see the field, take sack constantly, is hurt all the time, and doesn't have anything more than a fastball that he throws, there's not a lot you can do as a coach. So, anyway, Jerry says, disgusted that they went all in, not knowing the cards that they had.

Let's see, learn, learned to something. Can't predict that McCarthy was going to be hysterically bad. No, that's true. That's true. Anyway, we've probably reached the point where I don't want to use up all the things I'm going to talk about this week, eh? because I feel like there's going to be a lot more discussion. So there's your post game show. Gosh, it just has gone in a way that I never would have dreamed.

Let me end on that. If you didn't answer the Fanduel question of the day, are they getting to six? How do they even get to six? Before today, they were minus 250 on Fanduel to get to six wins. I've been reloading it to see if that's changed yet, but I haven't seen. And maybe they have better things to do.

Probably have better things to do. So minus 250 to get to six wins. Are they getting there this year? Are they getting to six wins? I'll close on this, though. This is the most shocking result that I can ever remember. And I now have, what, 10 seasons covering the Vikings since 2016 of making a preseason prediction,

although I got here very late in the process. So I can't say that I did for 2016. For 2017, I remember picking about 10 wins. I would say almost every year, I've been somewhere in that range of nine wins, 11. I don't think I've ever expected the 13 or 14 win season. I think every single year it's probably been somewhere between 8 and 11 wins. Last year, I think I went with 10. And I was like way over the Vegas number.

And I kind of felt like, am I taking a little bit too much of risk here? I have never missed by this much in this direction to go with 11 wins this year. And what keeps boggling my mind is when you go over the players and you go over the names and you go over the resume of the head coach. How did, how are you four and eight? How did this happen? But if there's something you want to hold on to, guys brought up Kyle Shanning. hand he had a four-win season that's how they got nick bosa that helped and i think that at very least they are trending in the way to get a potentially franchise changing player and even

dallas turner for all those people you can't draft or whatever a dallas turner gave you a swirley today because he was excellent and he's been uh doing a lot a lot better developing imagine imagine a 22 year old developing so it can happen i like where they're at with donovan jackson as well. The health is concerning, but it's been bad breaks, you know, a wrist, an ankle. I don't know. Those are, those are tough breaks for alignment, but he's looked promising. And Addison, after today, like, where are we even at with Jordan Addison? That's another question for a day for sure, but anyway, with the talent that they have and the resumes of these players, Jefferson, best receiver in the league, Addison, 900 yards and 10 touchdowns, write it down,

roll out of bed. Even Naylor had a breakout-ish season last year. The offensive line, huge money investments, right? Really, really good players. And the coach of the year last year, coach of the year. And he had a good case for it in 2022 as well. And now they can't even put up a point. They can't even kick a field goal. I never, I never, because that's how,

we're talking about the analytics. Like, that's how you do it, right? You use history to try to project the future. No way did I ever think we'd be talking about unwatchable, pathetic football. And even this week, when we talk to Brosmer and talk to his teammates, you're like, okay, maybe there's something there. Maybe this will be, maybe this will be fun. Maybe it'll look better.

And he walks out of there with four picks. I still think Max is going to have a good career as a probably likely as a backup quarterback. I don't think we can just say, oh, this is it for Max Brosmer and never, never see him again. He can, you know, he can continue to be here. But that in that situation, that environment, the lack of offensive line and as far as the play calling and et cetera, I don't even know. At this point, I don't even know. So there's your, there's your epic, lots of ranting, lots of future talk post game. I hope you enjoyed it. It's a little different from what we've usually done but there will be there will be a handful more of them there will be five more but what this

was today future discussion who's responsible how they're going to get themselves out of this oh there's a lot more to come there so thanks everybody for watching and listening hopefully this helped you a little bit with your rage after watching today or your apathy because it does feel like it's about to get a little dramatic in here. So thanks, everybody, for your time, for you those of you who are reasonable in the comment section. There was actually a lot of you today, so I really appreciate that. And we will talk to you all very soon. We'll have a roundtable tomorrow night, try to figure this all out. Thanks, everybody. Football.