Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - POSTGAME: Vikings collapse against Falcons

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani break down the Vikings' disaster against the Atlanta Falcons and JJ McCarthy's miserable night. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. 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 into U.S. Bank Stadium for the Purple Insider Postgame show presented by Fanduil, Matthew Collar here along with Dane Mizatani, and we have just watched the Minnesota Vikings drop to one and one following a miserable, no good, rotten, awful night here at the Bank against the Atlanta Falcons. The Vikings lose 22 to 6, but it was a lot worse than that. The Falcons completely controlled this game and the Vikings found every single way that they could do something wrong throughout this night. And that is not a feeling that we're generally used to with Kevin O'Connell games. And before we went on, I was saying to you, kind of has the same feeling as that Rams game where everyone walks in the locker room and goes,

what the heck just happened? That's not who this team usually is under Kevin O'Connell. So I'm going to read you, for those who don't subscribe to the newsletter, you might want to. The way that I opened the newsletter recap, because I write during the game, and here was just my first thought as the final horn was sounding. Here's what I wrote. I wrote, no matter how many times you try to prepare yourself for the roller coaster of an inexperienced quarterback, there is no way to process how ugly it can be in real time. And that was tonight with J.J. McCarthy, and I wrote, on Sunday night, McCarthy was welcome to the NFL with a flat-out whoopin by Rahim Morris and the Atlanta Falcons. And I guess that's the thing with J.J. McCarthy, Dane, is that he has never been

welcomed to anywhere any time. He has had so much success during his career that this is a very unique moment for him to lose to the Falcons the way that he did. I want to break down every part of how we got there. But I think the big picture here is that it is when you hear the offseason hype and you see him in preseason and he looks like he's in pretty good control. And then you get three quarters of ugly, but a miraculous comeback at the end, and you go, that's who he is. He's just going to be that for the rest of time. And then when you get hit with a splash of cold water of an inexperienced quarterback who has now maybe crossed the threshold of 800 passes since he was in high school, JJ McCarthy showed his greenness here against a defensive head coach,

Rahim Morris, who's been around the block a time or two, and certainly showed it here tonight. So that is my biggest, broadest takeaway is that we at times tried to prepare you for, there's going to be ups and downs. We had times talked about it through training camp, how up and down it was. But then also we were part of the problem because last week we were in Soldier Field Press Box and we were talking about that's J.J. McCarthy. That's who he is. That's his resilience.

And I think even the excitement of the week made it sound like he's just going to be that quarterback for the rest of time. And I think what we realized after tonight is Kevin O'Connell said it's going to be a process. Yeah. And that process better get on track pretty fast. Yeah, I think J.J. McCarthy said it right too. He said, people told me it's going to be a freaking journey. And it really is going to be, yeah, you saw that in real time tonight. It's not just going to be easy. It's not going to be something where you can coast for three quarters or look bad for three quarters and turn it on in the final quarter and steal a game like you did last week. It's probably a good lesson for Jay J.J. McCarthy to learn early in his career. It's also a good

lesson for the Vikings to learn early in this season. You can't screw around, play with your food and just say, you know what, because we're situational masters, we're going to figure it out at the end. If you play bad, sometimes you just lose flat out. You don't steal it at the end. And I think tonight's a good example. But when you kind of zoom out and look at McCarthy, I think there's going to be a hesitation after tonight to say, well, you know, last week was a, that was a joke. Like, that was a fraud. He is who he is. He's been who he is now for seven of the eight quarters that he's played in the NFL. And that comeback that he led in the fourth quarter was just more on the Bears than it was on the Vikings. And that's where I would push back. Because I think

the emotional response out of this is to want to not quit the guy right away, but kind of back off and say, is this real? Was last week real? I do think at his course. whore, that's who he is. I think he's able to push through adversity to kind of take something that doesn't look good at one time and make it look better down the stretch in the end. But he's not unflappable to a degree. And we saw that tonight. I think there were times he looked shook. There were times he looked off his spots. The offense didn't function over the course of the game largely because of him running the offense over the course of the game. And I think when you see last week and you see how that all kind of came together at the end and it was such

a special moment, this hits like a ton of bricks this week. But this is more of the reality. The highs of last week and the lows of this week. That's how it's going to be this year at times. I don't know what the record's going to end up being in the end. I still would bet on this team figuring it out and being able to play consistently because that's who we've seen them be under Kevin O'Connell. But it's going to be up and down. It wasn't just, oh, clicked in the fourth quarter at Soldier Field, and he's figured it out, we're riding this to the Super Bowl. You don't get to be Patrick Mahomes. Not every team gets to start a guy in the second year of his career and go to the championship game of their league. There's a lot that still needs to be unpacked from this game, so I'm sure

we'll get into that, but just big picture. I think this was a good learning experience for J.J. McCarthy after last week, which in a way was a good learning experience, but probably this is closer to reality. When you play bad, you lose. So I think the hardest thing for me here is how much do you put on J.J. McCarthy and how much do you put on everybody gestures at everything? You had injuries on the offensive line. At one point, you're playing the third string tackle. You have a backup center, which I think was responsible for the strip sack that really put the nail in the coffin. Not that Juergens did anything wrong, but that Ryan Kelly would have corrected the adjustment on the protection because I was texting Jeremiah Searle's former Viking who does the show

with me just asking him what what do you think happened there and he said it should have been a slide to the other way and that's inexperienced quarterback play so how much is also the coaching which I thought was problematic today at times there were decisions there were things that they did or didn't do specifically leaning on to Jordan Mason for the reasons that you got Jordan Mason. And we had questioned whether Kevin O'Connell was actually capable of just continuing to pound with Jordan Mason. And the answer tonight was not really. And a lot of times where they could have, where it's a fourth and one and you QB sneak, as opposed to using Jordan Mason for this, it's first down at the goal line. And you try some sort of fake handoff rollout thing that he fumbles,

as opposed to using Jordan Mason, who you got for exactly this type of thing. And it's third and one toward the end of the game when it's not over. And if you go score, it's still a ball game and you throw it 50 yards down the field over a receiver who was wide open, but still not exactly the night where you would trust your quarterback to throw it 40 yards through the air as opposed to using Jordan Mason. Also, punting on fourth and one at the end is an egregious decision by Kevin O'Connell. That should be an easy one where if you're going to throw deep on third and one, you have to go for it there the way your defense has been playing and how worn down they are. There was no chance that you were getting the ball back. So there's lots of different

things that we can talk about with Kevin O'Connell, with some of the coaching, with the offensive line that was problematic. Donovan Jackson got beat by a little blitz or a stunt or whatever it was early in the game for a sack. But a lot of this comes down to if they have an experienced quarterback tonight, if that quarterback is locked in, the opportunities are there. There were so many missed passes, the one to nailer sticks out, but also maybe a little bit late on an interception that was thrown, even if they were at the very end trying to come back and you just sail one 50 miles over your wide receiver for an interception. There was a dirt ball on a throw on third down that could have been a key and easy completion to a wide open Justin Jefferson and it was

thrown in the dirt. And throughout training camp, this was the biggest thing that we talked about was the inconsistency with accuracy. But what I didn't expect, Dane, I think what really took me by surprise was when you went through the Chicago game and we all watch back the tape and we all watch back J.T. O'Sullivan and 50 other people who broke down the tape, most people came to the same conclusion that McCarthy didn't really throw the ball away in that first half of Chicago and he made some good decisions and he scrambled at some good times and you thought, well, if that continues, you should be okay. And tonight, I thought that was not there. I thought decisions, timing, operation,

all that stuff. I think that they're going to stick with this mantra of all 11. It's everybody's fault. It's not just JJ, et cetera, et cetera. But for him to take bad zacks, have interceptions, fumbles, fumbling several times just on the snap. I mean, that looked to me like we thought last week he'll get the nerves out of the way and he'll be good to go. Not the case because there was a lot of stuff tonight that was sped up, that was nervous and maybe getting hit off the bat and getting sacked, hurt him. But this team has too much pressure on it. It's too good. And the opportunities are too good with Joe Burrow out, which we'll talk about. And Pittsburgh's not that good. And Cleveland's not any good at all. And then the schedule gets super hard. Like this was a game that if you win,

you feel like you're rolling, and the defense gave them every single chance to win this game. And so I think it really comes down to they're going to stick with that. It's a process. It's not about JJ. We're all going to help him, et cetera, et cetera. He has to be older or more experienced, more comfortable now. It's not, you made this choice to go with him for him not to look like that and not to look like he has in seven out of eight quarters. this is not a situation, Dane, where you're saying, oh, well, it's a process and we're going to work through it and see how it goes in his first year.

They're not in that situation as a team. They're in a situation where they're trying to compete with the Packers and Lions. And the way the Packers and Lions looked this week, this team didn't look anywhere close to that. Yeah, I mean, when you make the decision to move on from Sam Darnold, when you make the decision to move on from a guy who won 14 games to go with this guy. And I think it was the right decision. Like, I think at some point you had to figure out what you had in this guy. But that indicates we believe we can win with this guy now. I don't think the Vikings made that decision this offseason and lied to our face and said,

we're going to win with this guy and really deep down there saying it's going to be a process. No, all the moves they made, it's win now. So they expect to win now with J.J. McCarthy. And I think that's probably where you can look at this game and kind of you can point to this. guy or that guy or the left tackle or the third string left tackle or the backup center. But at the end of the day, like the plays were there to be made by the quarterback and the plays were not made by the quarterback. So yeah, I think that this, when you lose in the way you did on offense, when you look as anemic as you did on offense, the blame goes all

around. It is all 11 players' fault. But you brought up just singular moments throughout the game that could have changed the game. And those. plays weren't made by one person in particular, and it was J.J. McCarthy. And he wore it after the game, and he's done enough post-game press conferences. And he hasn't done a lot of losing post-game press conferences. So I think that's something he's going to have to learn how to kind of process that. I think this is his fourth loss since high school. But even after the game, he said it's all on me. And that can be coach speak sometimes. But I think in a way he's, it's right. It was all on him tonight because if he is the guy who he was in the fourth quarter against Chicago, even for

a few series tonight, they win the football game. The game was there for the taking. 226, it doesn't indicate how close the game was for prolonged stretches. It also probably doesn't indicate how much the Vikings got their butts kicked tonight. But the game was there for the taking. If you get quarterback play out of Jay Jim Carthy that I think you expected to get in this moment, you probably win the football game. So you look at this game, and I think there's going to be things that if they can find their groove later in the season, this could be an inflection point of he took that adversity on the chin and he kept pushing forward. But now you have to kind of move forward and respond next week. And yeah, you better win next week because you're going to be playing Jake Browning.

You're not going to be playing Joe Burrow. There's still opportunities in front of you over the next month to take this game that you should have won and you actually lost and make it not. the end of the world, but it lessens the margin of error. I feel like we've talked about this in the past with teams from 2023 and 2024. Now we're in 2025. This loss tonight deleted some of the margin of error you have over the next month because if you start 2 and O and then you play Joe Burrow or the Joe Burrell list Cincinnati Bengals, then you can kind of have a rampway for success heading into the meat of your schedule. You drop the one tonight and I think you look at yourselves and say we better respond next week. I think the main issue is how winnable this game really was,

because the Falcons, well, they ran really effectively, especially from the beginning of the game, and it was kind of shocking to see an 18-yard run, a 15-yard run, whatever it was, 25, and all of a sudden they're on the other side of the field. At the end of the day, you're late in this game and the other team has 12 points. And I know that there's going to be bad PFF grades and all those things for a lot of those players on defense because of how well they ran the ball. But they got stop after stop, clutch play after clutch play. They even sacked Michael Pennix. Penix did not look comfortable at all. That's a hard guy to get a sack. Dallas Turner got one. They got after him a few times where they created pressure and he had a few

inaccurate passes down by the goal line. They could have scored, but they created him scrambling out. and he's not the best, I don't think, throwing on the run. So he did not have a great night overall. That team didn't finish drives. And that was kind of, you know, 20-22-ish, where it was Ben Don't Break. It's okay if they rack up a ton of yards. And it's not. But at the same time, for this individual game, because big picture, very, very concerned

about the run defense. And there were a lot of, I told just so, about Harrison Phillips. And I understand those I told justos for tonight. But that also is one of the best running backs in the entire end. NFL. Still, you're going to face Saekwan, Derek Henry, Jemir Gibbs, who looked just fine today as the Detroit Lions were dropping 50 plus on a bad Chicago Bears team, which also didn't make this look any better to see, oh yeah, the team that you came back on, they went to Detroit and gave up 50. And so that kind of made it look a little bit different than playing a good Atlanta

Falcons team that I expect to be in the playoffs and probably win their division based on what we saw tonight, but it does remove the margin for error going forward and creates kind of a must win type of game for next week. I know it's early, but that's just how the cookie is going to crumble with this season. And so we need to get into some of the details here with the different things that happen outside of J.J. McCarthy. And I think that the hardest thing to pick apart is always play calling. When the team loses a game, it has been my long experience that everyone thinks that they called all the wrong plays. And when they win a game, everyone thinks they called all the right plays. I think with Kevin O'Connell that the idea he was ever going to

just grind away with Jordan Mason for an entire game, like Atlanta did with Bejohn Robinson, I thought it may be always farcical. It was never really going to happen. But to come out and start Aaron Jones and kind of run nowhere in the first parts of the game, after the way Mason played in the last game made no sense to me whatsoever, not using him in some of the short yardage made no sense to me whatsoever. And then some of it of this entire thing is Ryan Kelly going out. It is just in school still having to play left tackle. It is pressure. And it is your quarterback not executing these things. This is why I think that last season actually was so important. It gave us a control. It gave us a, here's Kevin

O'Connell with a quarterback that everyone thinks is really bad. And they won 14 games and he had top 10 statistics. It's very hard for me, even in a game where I didn't love a lot of the stuff that they were doing, to then come in and go, well, he doesn't know what he's doing. He's proven pretty well over a lot of games, and I believe this is now 32 and 12 when his starting quarterback starts, that he can call plays. Now, are there some regrettable plays in there? Are there some times where I just don't fully understand why X, Y, and Z is happening? That happened tonight for sure. But if it's not being executed, then it's because the quarterback and the players are not executing it. We know that. This team has effectively pushed the ball down the field time and time

again. They led the league last year, I believe in 20 plus plays. And I feel like with J.J. McCarthy, in order to create those explosive plays, that ball's got to come out of his hands. And he's got to get a lot more comfortable throwing the football when maybe someone's not wide open. And look, he was let down a few times today by wide receivers. But I think that's the hardest thing from college to the NFL is you have to have the anticipation throws. You have to see it really, really quickly. And I don't think that the eyes were quick enough.

I don't accept the idea that O'Connell forgot tonight how to call plays as much as it was that they couldn't execute them starting with the quarterback. Yeah. However, I do think when you're on the two-yard line, you could probably, probably just run the ball with Jordan Mason. So I think that probably goes back to your earlier point of, like, there were some regrettable play calls, but in the aggregate, you are correct. People are going to point to this game, and because you have a young quarterback who people

have already fallen in love with, the best way to defend the young quarterback sometimes is to say, well, the play caller screwed him. Like, the play caller didn't give them a chance. I think when we go back and watch the All-22, there's going to be some open plays or plays to be made, open players downfield. And while some of that can come down to the pass protection around J.J. McCarthy, I think we're going to watch the All-22, and it's going to show that a lot of this was on J.J. McCarthy himself.

I think his biggest play of the day was Justin Jefferson running wide open over the middle of the field. And, yeah, I think you're right about when guys are open, he's going to hit him. Or he didn't always do that today. But I think you have to get better at the anticipatory throws. I think there were some examples of it today where he looked good with the Adam Thielen out route on third down. The Jalen Naylor out route that got him down to the two-yard line. But there just was too many times where it felt like the pocket was collapsing on him.

And I think some of that is on him. Step up and throw or hit your back foot and fire. And I don't think that was happening nearly enough today. when you go 11 for 21 and with a lot of the I think the yard is 158 a lot of that coming on the 50 yard pass to Justin Jefferson and in a garbage time drive that ended in an interception I think the stats indicate that he wasn't comfortable I think the six sacks indicate that he wasn't comfortable I think sacks are another one where you're going to just blame everybody else oh the offensive line let their quarterback down sacks can be a quarterback stat at the end of the day And I think when we go back and watch the film, it's going to show that some of those sacks were on J.J. McCarthy as well. So I understand and I appreciate what Kevin O'Connell is doing for his young quarterback saying, look, we all have to be better. When we struggle on offense, it's not one guy. It's everybody not doing one thing at the wrong time. And that's been a recurring theme.

but I think he also, it's like the sandwich of words with Kevin O'Connor, if you pay attention, he'll tell you what he really feels. I think at one point tonight, he also said, well, when you have a young quarterback, everybody around has to be doing their job. And that's because when you have a young quarterback, the quarterback needs help. And tonight, I think J.J. McCarthy needed help, but I think he also needed to help his teammates. You know, something else that O'Connell said, and here's where apologies, if I'm talking, out of both sides of my mouth with this. But O'Connell said something to the effect of,

well, we as a coaching staff have to talk about, you know, where McCarthy is at and what he can handle. And my brain kind of goes back to a few different situations. One, this looked like, remember the Josh Dobbs game where he threw three interceptions and they lost to the Bears? Like this was a very similar game to that where only in that game, I mean, I guess they still did here. They just kept throwing. And that was the third and one at the end, just throwing a 50-yard bomb. And look, Nailer was open. It's a good play, but you need to get a drive going for once or even just coming out and not running Jordan Mason. And I know, like, look, we can all say, well, you got strip-sacked. And so obviously you should have run. But at the same

time, it was a 12-6 game when they got the ball at midfield with plenty of chance to go down there. And once again, the guy who's really running as effectively as it gets is not getting the ball there on first down to set the tone. It's like immediately shotgun. You have to adjust the protection. You got to do a bunch of things at the line of scrimmage. And it goes back to asking Dobbs after only being here a couple of weeks to run the whole offense. And we heard this from West Phillips this week where he said, well, he's got to have the full menu in order to really be able to execute everything. And that's a little bit concerning because did they forget just because he knows a lot and can tell you a lot on a whiteboard.

He hasn't played much football. And no matter how many times we said that through the summer, like this is, this is. was always going to be hard for everybody because the hype was just so high with J.J. McCarthy that when it gets knocked down a peg, it feels devastating, I think, to everyone, even though the bigger takeaway is sort of there were going to be times like this. But the one thing that I did worry about throughout the summer was, are you putting too much on J.J. McCarthy? Are you asking him to be Sam Darnold, who was 28 years old and had played in the NFL for a long time? And it also goes back to Kirk Cousins early in 2022, where Cousins seemed

to just be a little unsure with this offense. And there were some strange sacks and strange interceptions where he was kind of looking around not knowing what to do. I think they do need to simplify this offense for him a little bit more, especially if Ryan Kelly is going to be out and a concussion is nothing to mess with going forward, then how many protection changes can you ask for? How many movements pre-snap can you ask for? Last week, they were asking them to time out pre-snap movements. Well, two of the receivers hadn't even practiced. with J.J. McCarthy, which I also wonder about, again, route depths and timing and all these things. Well, Thielen hasn't played here, and Jefferson hasn't played here. And there has not been

a whole lot of reliance on T.J. Hawkinson, which I thought there would be way more. And the near interception looked like he could have caught it, but not getting Hawkinson into a rhythm in this offense has also been a major, major issue. I think this is a drawing board week for the coaching staff to say seven out of eight quarters, he hasn't gotten it. He has not been the prodigy, the, if you've watched The Matrix where he tries to jump the first time they realize he's the one and then they think he's going to get it and he falls. Well, that's kind of what tonight was. That doesn't mean he's not the one.

It just means that what you've asked him to do so far, for three out of the four or for seven out of the eight quarters, has really been too much for J.J. McCarthy. So I don't know what pairing it down looks like. I have never game planned with Kevin O'Connell, and I don't know how much you can pair down and also expect success. But I will say that what did Jefferson have? Two catches, three catches? Three catches for 81 yards, but 50 of those yards came late or on that big chunk play. Someone's going to jail. That's been my rule. If Justin Jefferson does not get 10 catches or 10 targets at least, then someone is arrested and taken to jail. Justin Jefferson's

got to get the ball in his hands early and often and all the time. These last two weeks. It has just not been enough. And I know he screwed some up in Chicago. But this was, where is Justin Jefferson throughout this game? Why isn't he getting the football? That's something that they really have to deal with for next week. So I know that I just said a lot there. But I do think there's a tonight, the quarterback could not handle it. But now it's on the coaching staff. And if it happens next week and it looks the same and it's the same problems, then I think we're going to come back and say, okay, last week was on him, but now it's on you. Yeah. I think You pointing to the strip sack is a pretty good way of breaking down that very point you made.

It's because after that defensive stop, you're down by six points, you can just run the ball there, and you can take something off of your quarterback's plate in real time. But that microcosm of that moment where you put a lot on his plate, he doesn't get the right protection call, he gets sacked, he fumbles the ball, maybe that can be a learning moment of, okay, we can point to that one moment where we put it all on him and it's not to say that he'll never be ready for it, but maybe he wasn't ready for all of it to be on him in that moment. How can we help him moving forward? And you're right, I don't know what that looks like in the quarterback's room. I don't know how much you can pare down this really complex

offense with all the cans at the line of scrimmage and all the checks that the quarterback's expected to make, but maybe they don't have to make those checks. Maybe some of the time it can just be the coaching staff helping J.J. McCarthy, this is what we're running. Go run it. We're going to put you in a good position here. Go do it. And especially if Ryan Kelly is out, you probably don't want J.J.M. McCarthy making all these checks with Michael Juergens trying to make the protection calls as well. It might just have to be a point and shoot kind of thing for a little bit of this is the play, go run the play that we have schemed up for you. So what is that going to look like next week? I think is the biggest question. into this week of preparation.

They always talk about how they've prepared for the week at hand, and each week they wipe the slate and prepare for the next week. Hopefully the wiping of the slate looks a lot more like simple plays. We've talked about the quick game in the past. I won't go down the road of let's get the quick game going because the quick game can be such a buzzword for just a solve-all for the offense. But I do think quick passes to Justin Jefferson, get him in a rhythm early, can also get J.J. McCarthy in a rhythm early.

You never saw him in a rhythm tonight. And I think what we saw in the fourth quarter against the Chicago Bears is when he gets into a rhythm, it can look really good. He never at one point tonight did I feel like he was in a rhythm. I think there was that stretch where he completed the ball to Adam Thielen and completed the ball of Jalen Naylor. Then he fumbled the next snap because he tried to go play pass when you could have run up the middle with Jordan Mason.

So there was no rhythm. part of that is on McCarthy, but part of that is on the coaching staff too. It's on you to get your young quarterback in a rhythm. If you want to say it's on all 11 in that huddle to do their job to help the young quarterback, then you must also say it's on me as the play caller and us as offensive coaches to help our young quarterback. This is where I'm struggling because last week when they were trying to do some early quick game stuff and it didn't work, we were like, why don't you just let him gripping and rip it. That's what he did late in the game. And now we're like, why didn't you just do some easy pitch, quick game? What are you doing? That's where I come back to,

I think J.J. McCarthy, whether you turned it too hot or too cold, it was not going to be right tonight. And there was panic in J.J. McCarthy tonight. And when you start fumbling snaps on a QB sneak, whatever it might be, and look, I agree with you that Jordan Mason needs to be leaned upon pretty heavily. And I was thinking about, you know, even 2017 season, Adam Thielen brought it up and he said, and we're going to talk about this a little more, but he said that he told McCarthy, hey, one year we started five and oh and missed the playoffs. And the next year we started one and two and went to the NFC championship. Two games does not a season make. And I totally agree. But if you think about 2017 as being sort of instructive of a quarterback that

was not really ready for all the things he was supposed to handle, they ran the ball a lot that They leaned heavily on their defense that year. And then they hit the shots when they were able to create them. And sometimes it was ugly. They had to win a lot of ugly games. And I actually thought throughout this game that eventually it would sort of click and they would have one drive that worked. But you knew it wasn't their night when they got a delay of game.

And that's another thing too. Like when last week they're talking about the operation. And here's, I think, the frustration of this game. Last week it's like, man, that operation getting in out of the huddle, getting the checks right, getting the protections right, we've got to do it. And then you come out in the next week, and it's the same problems. Only this team has a real franchise. Like they've made mistakes, and they've had bad seasons at times,

and they have Kirk Cousins standing on the sideline, making $40 million. But Atlanta has a real coach, and they have a real defensive coordinator, and they have real players who a lot of them are quite talented, as we saw tonight. This is not some joke team like the Chicago Bears, where you can just mess around and come back. And I think that they really paid for all of that. So on the defensive side, just to go over there for a bit, I thought that the inability to stop Bichon Robinson

was something that you could have anticipated with this defense when you brought in Javon Hardgrave and you brought in Jonathan Allen and the sacrifice you make there is that you can pressure the quarterback. And I thought that tonight that it really showed the sacrifice they decided to make. Whereas last year, they couldn't pressure the quarterback with four and they could stop the run. But they were also ahead in so many games. And that's where I think that the

yardage is not going to truly tell the story, that last drive, seven minutes of just handing off time and time again. I didn't have a huge, huge problem other than, yeah, some of the tackling's got to happen. But if you're going to ask your defense, and this is why I hate separating offense and defense into like two wildly different statistical categories for teams because they impact each other. If you're going to be on the field for 100 plays in two weeks, your defense is not going to have good numbers. They are going to get run over at times. They are going to get worn down at times. And so I thought overall they pushed a lot of good buttons and were really, really good against the past. Did they allow maybe one explosive pass play today to Drake London? I think there was one

All night, if you're going to allow one good pass play to the other team all night long, I'm okay with the running back gaining five yards of carry against you, but you have to do your job on the offensive side. At the same time, and this is where we should go with, I think, all these discussions. Where do we put the concern about a lot of stuff? Van Ginkle's not out there. Cashman's not out there. It's going to be a long time for Cashman.

We don't know when Andrew Van Ginkle is going to come. back. The D-line was getting so gas that they're playing Elijah Williams, which congratulations to him on playing his first game in the NFL, an incredible accomplishment, but that's not somebody that you want on the field at this time. I think the concern should be extremely high for this team getting banged up and they are older. We've talked about that a lot and being on the field forever in these first couple of weeks and the cumulative effect of that because I really thought that you saw it at the end of the game. Yeah, I think when you look at the defense and how they have in the past worn down, this was a good example of, it felt like at some point,

unless the offense shaped up, it was only a matter of time before Atlanta delivered that knockout blow. And I think because of that, you saw certain elements of the defense struggling at times down the stretch. I think they were tired. But I think when you kind of zoom out and look at what this defense looks like in its current form with the injuries that have already started to take place, it does give you some pause of it could get kind of ugly at some point down the road when you hit that meat of your schedule when you're playing against Baltimore and all the other teams that are coming into your building and you have to play against Detroit and you have to play against Green Bay. If you're already starting to get a little banged up,

I think we talked in the offseason about how all of the moves they made were with the caveat of this is a really good move if they stay healthy I think we've seen now at least early on and it's on both sides of the ball but since we're just focusing on the defense when you're down Cashman, when you're down Van Ginkle when you're down Okuda thank God Jonathan Gernar got up today

because when he went down I said oh no like this could be really bad it's already starting to look like a house of cards and then you can't afford to lose a Jvon Hargrave and you can't afford to lose a Jonathan Allen so I don't know the biggest hot area of concern is for me

other than just it feels like they are one big injury away from being in big, big trouble. They were down Jeff Okuda today. I thought if there was one player you could maybe afford to lose and I didn't know this until

Eric Wilson stepped up. Maybe it was Blake Cashman because Eric Wilson stepped in, he's done a good job. But if you lose one of your big heavy hitters up front or you lose a Grenada or you lose a Van Ginko long term, I think the defense has shown, like, as good as they were tonight, there are going to be times where they hemorrhage yardage,

and that's not always going to be a way to just kind of bend, don't break. I think some teams will just run right through you. We've seen that at times in the past, too. So it's hard for me to analyze the defense, and it kind of broke my brain talking to Josh Mattelis after the game, because if you talked to him, you would have thought they gave up 50 points. He said, unacceptable, we can't do that, we have to be better, all the things you would expect Josh Mattelis to say.

But I walked into that locker room thinking the defense couldn't have played much better than it did, given how much the offense struggled. But when you look at the big picture, there were areas from this game that if they continue to show up down the road, they won't be close games. So here's what I want to do to try to properly contextualize what we're talking about here for all the things that went wrong in this game. Let's do a no concern, a little concerned, or very concerned with the different things that went wrong. So let's go back to the quarterback and J.J. McCarthy with the execution, just the general execution of the offense, meaning how you do or don't get a delay of game, the protection calls, the running of the offense, not even the throwing. We'll get to that.

But the just general execution of the offense, no concern, little concern, or really concern? Little concern. Like, it has my attention. Like, this is two games in a row now where I think it's looked a little clunky early on. And I think it might rise to the level of very concerned if Ryan Kelly is out long term because there's already a lot on his, on Jason McCarthy's plate as we've talked about. And if he has to have more on his plate because you don't have that better in center, under under center or that veteran center snapping you the football then i think your head could start

to spin it could get everything kind of out of whack just in terms of how you get the play call in your head how you deliver it to your teammates and how you get everyone set up pre-snap so i'm already a little concerned but i think that could rise to the level of being more than that i'm going to go with really concerned because it has been so problematic for two weeks for almost all of the two games and even i can't even say in the comeback against the Bears that the second half was even completely clean. They had the issues with a lot of details. And I think that I'm sure receivers have run wrong routes. And I'm sure blockers have made a lot of mistakes. But when you're talking about the basic stuff of taking

the snap, which didn't happen correctly on multiple times, that's where you start to get very concern. Shifting a protection to a free rusher or realizing where the free rush is going to be. what Jeremiah texted me was that it was just like what happened to Anthony Richardson in the preseason where he got hurt was he just didn't realize that he was responsible for a free rusher and he ends up getting hit and then everyone goes well what's that tackle doing this clue we know that Brian O'Neill knows what he's doing but he's going to do what the protection call is and if you're McCarthy and you're responsible for the free rusher you have to get rid of the ball so if he's not even identifying the right blocking schemes and he doesn't have Ryan Kelly who I think was doing a lot of that work last week I'm going to go very concerned. How about the actual throwing of the football for McCarthy? Because I'm going to go somewhere in between a little and very. There were some really good throws tonight, but there's also been a lot of throws, a lot. I mean, how many balls is he thrown overall?

Total attempts is probably 43. What do we think the actual accuracy of the 43, like, how many would you say are accurate out of 43 passes he's thrown in two games? I'm going to go with like 20? That's nowhere near. as good as it was in training camp, which again doesn't give us all the answers because the other team is not your own team and they can hit you really hard as he found out tonight. I might even push it to really concerning. I think I might go really concerning the accuracy of J.J. McCarthy. I will go very concerning just in the terms of the examples or the categories we're giving.

No concern, little concern, very concerned. I would be very concerned with the way that he's throwing the football to this point, just because you can be a touch-off in the NFL, and it can be a pick six the other way. I think we saw that last week. But the interception that he threw today, that's just you've got to throw that a little more outside, or it's going to get intercepted. If he throws it a little bit more outside and it's an all or nothing ball, the Jalen Naylor, it's either an incomplete pass or Jalen Naylor catches it. He's late on it. He's a little off. He's a little inaccurate and it gets pretty good play and pretty unlucky because the defender actually rolled onto Jalen Naylor. It was so the ball didn't get to touch the ground and then he rolled on to the

field before he rolled onto the boundary. A lot of things had to go right for that to be an interception, but in a vacuum that was just an inaccurate throw and the only reason it was able to be picked off is because it was an inaccurate throw. And you can go down the list. The deep shot to Jalen Naylor late in the game. Sam Darnel makes that throw. I'm not saying J.J. McCarthy needs to be Sam Darnold because he's not 28 years old and grizzled and bend through the highs and lows of being a quarterback in the NFL. But Sam Darnal makes that throw. The throw to Justin Jefferson, the dirt ball, like you can probably go back and watch.

I think he gets hit low. You still have to make that throw. You have to make that throw on third down. And all of these throws that I'm going back in my head now and as my memory jogs, they're just not being made because of the inaction. That's always, I think, was going to be an issue for Jason McCarthy as his inaccuracy. I think we talked about that when he was drafted. I think you asked the question, can you get more accurate?

If you're not accurate by this point in your life, can you just, how much more accurate can you get? And I think with him, like, he's going to improve, but I think this is always going to be a little bit of an issue for him over the course of his career. And if it's a long career, I think at some point it will, he'll be able to over. overcome his inaccuracy. But in terms of just this season and just like the next month, yeah, I'm very concerned about the accuracy. No concern, little concern or very concerned about Kevin O'Connell with a quarterback who has not been able to handle everything that has been on his plate so far, the way that Kirk did in 23, the way that Sam Darnold did last year for the most part, for most of last season, and his ability to

adjust to that. No concern. I think. he'll figure that one out. I think there are ways in which Kevin O'Connell can be stubborn and do things his way. But I also think he understands, and we talk, he talks about a quarterback's journey. He understands where J.J. McCarthy is at in this, and he understands how important he is to the quarterback journey going the way it needs to go. I'm not concerned that he's going to be able to look himself in the mirror and say, I need to be better for this 22-year-old. It's kind of his superpower. We just, joke about it. He's a quarterback whisper, but he is. He knows how to handle these guys. He's been in their shoes. I'm not concerned as far as him being able to self-correct and help his guy maximize his potential in the short term. I'm going to go a little concern. I'm going to go a little concern because I think that the only time we saw a quarterback play like this, aside from, you know, Darnold in Detroit or whatever, but a big picture for long stretches, we haven't seen it too often was really Dobbs, Mullins,

and I know those guys are not comparable to J.J. McCarthy. He's so much more talented than them, but they had weaknesses and shortcomings, and it felt like the gas pedal just kept getting pushed down, and instead of trying to mitigate them, maybe it made them the best and worst versions, the best Dobbs and the worst Dobbs. And I guess I'm wondering if Kevin O'Connell,

it's going to be boom or bust with how he wants his quarterbacks to play. And that was a lot of Sam Darnold last year. It was a lot more boom. But when it went bust, it went really bad bust. So I'm going to go with just a little bit because I think also when you talk about, hey, around a young quarterback, you all have to have your details right. Well, that includes, as we talked about, some of the situational stuff that went wrong tonight. And I think to me, the most egregious is just not giving it to Mason at the goal line when you're at first and 10 or first in goal at the two yard line.

and you have that guy and you have an offensive line that's built around a little more power. You've got, I think Kelly's still in the game at that point. You've got a guard, a center, and another guard, that there's a lot of investment and a lot of strength and a lot of size in those guys. And you decide to get cute with it. And get cute with it has been one of the biggest criticisms of him over his three years here. And I thought that there was some of that tonight. I thought there was some of that in Chicago. And I'm just not sure when that shuts off because he said in Chicago, well, you know,

I've got to look at myself and sometimes lean more on Jordan and Mason, and then he didn't really do that tonight maybe as much as he should of, considering how J.J. McCarthy was performing. So I'm going to go with a little. The Fanduil over under for this season was nine and a half. I said 11 wins. You may have said 17 of them. So I guess you're wrong after today as we were going into this.

I'm not going to change right now. This is a bad game, but I also think that we, are so much prisoners at the moment. The Detroit Lions played the worst game you can ever play in Lambo and then put up, was it, 51 or 52 points today against Chicago? That's the National Football League. Russell Wilson looked like he should be in the XFL, and then he throws for 450 yards.

This thing will whip you around like crazy. So I'm not going to change. I am going to say in the bigger picture that I have these concerns. I have concerns about the injuries. I have concerns about the adjustments. I have concerns about the accuracy, and yet I still think that they have enough talent and talent coming back in the form of two star players in Derisaw and Jordan Addison in the coming weeks, and the defense played well enough against an offense that has a ton of talent, that I think that they will figure out enough to win games here going forward and ultimately be that team that we expect them to be. But I do think my confidence level went down in that tonight over these last two games. confidence level in them getting to 11. I've still got the bar there, but I am not as confident as I was at the end of training camp. How are you feeling?

I think I sat there in the TCO Performance Center media room and I looked at the camera and I said I'm not a coward I'll pick them to win 12 games still I think I'm cowarding out I don't think this team's going to win 12 games but you said the Fandu over under was nine and a half I think that's still I mean it's a solid line that's why they make them they're good at it but I think I would still take them to hit the over

and I think a big reason for that is look at the schedule the next month everything that the team want to accomplish is still in front of them if they can just beat the teams they're supposed to beat. You're supposed to beat Atlanta, but Atlanta is a team that is on the upswing. They have one of the best running backs in the league. Michael Pennix did not look the part tonight, but I think he's a great prospect who has a potential to be a really, really good quarterback in the NFL, and they invested in a pass rush, and it got home tonight. The teams that are you're facing, now you're going to face a Joe Burroughless Cincinnati Bengals.

Aaron Rogers, that'll be a game. Aaron Rogers led Pittsburgh Steelers team and whoever is going to be, Dylan Gabriel might be playing quarterback by the Browns by then. You can bank wins. If you just take care of business, I think the Vikings will be favored in each of the next three games. If you win those games, you get to four, you get into the buy, and hopefully by that time things start to click. We are prisoners of the moment.

The way we've talked about Jason McCarthy, I think we've bounced around quite a bit tonight. and I think because we're trying to process in real time. The truth is he's probably going to look like this sometimes and he's going to look like he did in the fourth quarter at times and the hope would be by the end of the season, it looks a lot more like he did in the fourth quarter in Chicago than it did tonight. So I still think I'll take the over on the nine and a half,

but I think I'm chickening out on the 12th. It's going to be a freaking journey. That is what J.J. McCarthy said. And that's what we can guarantee for the 2025 Minnesota Vikings. I'm not sure that we could guarantee anything else as of right now and what we saw here tonight at U.S. Bank Stadium. But it is a long season left to go. We'll be breaking it down after every single game.

So thanks everybody for watching the Purple Insider Postgame show presented by Fanduel, and we will catch you all again very, very soon. Football.