Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Reacting to Kevin O'Connell's opening press conference as Vikings head coach

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom go quote by quote on new Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell's first press conference. What did he say about Kirk Cousins? How about the timeline to win? What are our impressions of him overall? Plus Matthew updates everyone on jury duty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Folks, before we get into the show, I wanted to tell you that you can save 15% at SodaStick.com by using the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at checkout. That's S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com for your Minnesota sports-inspired hats, hoodies, shirts. Use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at SodaStick.com. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar, Sam Ekstrom, fresh from Kevin O'Connell's press conference, which I was unable to attend because I am juror David Palmer. Today, your jury update is I'm on a real jury, which means I will play a role in determining a man's fate. I don't feel great about that. I'm nervous about that.

And it also means that I'm going to have to be in the courtroom a lot over the next couple of weeks, which I don't know. I mean, when you go into it as a potential juror, you know that this is possible. So I'm on a real actual jury for the Scranton strike. Oh no, I'm not. I'm not. You're just kidding. You're a persuasive person. You know, I think that you'll be able to speed up deliberations if you feel like you've been there too long. You'll be able to get the unanimous verdict. But I will tell you this. I did tell Kevin O'Connell today of your situation. And this actually happened.

I don't think it's a state secret to say we got a little bit of meet and greet time with them. I said I work with a colleague who's at jury duty he says hi he missed being here and kevin o'connell's little anecdote was he said that um when he got asked to do jury duty he was still like young like doing college athletics and he wore all of his athletic gear um to the the thing trying to create like local sympathy like oh this is one of our local athletes. We don't want to take up his time with with a case. And apparently the judge was very unsympathetic to that that approach and said that he was he shouldn't shirk his civic duty for recreational activities. So that's the the O'Connell anecdote to kick us off relevant to your situation. So, of course, I cannot speak about the trial or it will be a mistrial if anyone were to hear me talk about it.

And I do not want that on my back. But I can tell you about one moment. See, when they go through this, anyone who's been through it knows they talk to everybody about like, hey, do you think this or what's your job? What do you do? Tell me more about your job. That's the general things that they say to the potential jurors to try to figure out who they want on the jury. And so I of course was explaining my job. And as we were going to a break, the judge said, well, take a quick break. And if you have any Vikings questions, you can ask juror number 22, like, you know, are they going to the Superbowl next year? Now I cannot again, say what I said in

court because that is supposed to stay in that room, but it is now official court record. The stenographer wrote down what I said about whether the Vikings will win. And I tweeted this out and people had great responses. Like they'd put you in contempt of court. If you said, yes, let's just, let's just say that I followed the evidence.

I'm just going to say that I followed the evidence. So let's talk about Kevin O'Connell's first press conference though. I was able to take in his entire press conference. I just wasn't there, which is you were there. So we'll get your perspective from kind of how it looked and I'll talk about his words, but I want to read verbatim the first question about Kirk Cousins and tell me if this sounds like something I may have said the other day. All right. So of course it's, it's the Kirk question. How's he going to fit? Can you

win a championship? Kevin O'Connell said, I think Kirk has played at a very high level and he's done a lot of really good things throughout his career. I know who he is as a player and I know what he's capable of. And part of our jobs as coaches is maximizing a player's ability to go out every single Sunday and have success. I feel that's going to be an advantage for us as we build our system offensively, make sure we really focus on the things Kirk does well, which I do think there are a lot of aspects of playing the position and help him on a daily basis to connect with his team and lead us and be a quiet minded quarterback that can go play because he's talented enough to go do that, putting him in the best possible situations to have success. Sometimes it reads a little weirder than it sounds.

You're a good podcast stenographer, like referring to the official record. Could you refer also to his response when followed up about Kirk Cousins, when he talked about, he basically said he's under contract? Why, yes, sir, I can. He he said i know he's already under contract and i'm excited to coach him we've already started thinking about how we're going to build those systems for him and our quarterbacks and really the tremendous skill group that we have comma our guys up front it takes all 11 to move the football on offense to run it to it, to score points in the red zone. But I'm anticipating Kirk as part of what we do. I'm just going to give one word to summarize all of that. Non-committal. That's how I would summarize all of Kevin O'Connell's comments about Kirk Cousins. Do you agree? Absolutely.

Exactly as you mock answered it the other day when i asked you i think that was on monday it couldn't have been more verbatim it was the perfect non-answer um and you know he spoke on the radio later in the afternoon that i caught as well and similar hemming and hawing when pressed even a little harder i would would say, on the issue, not willing to say definitively that he is his guy. And that's telling because he's worked with them. And there are, you know, there's number one, there was apparent leaks to these reporters, Rappaport, Schefter, who released that, oh, the relationship is good.

They love each other. They're going to work with them. So to have this sort of contrasting those messages, you already see the cracks in this foundation. And it doesn't surprise me, but it all seems to be playing out the way I think that we anticipated, which was don't believe exactly what you hear right now, because the stuff from Schefter, the stuff from the national guys is very much a facade. And even if Kirk is the quarterback next next fall, for whatever reason, I still assume that there are efforts right now to at least listen and call and see what's going on on the market. Well, and that's the thing about O'Connell answering this question is he also had to practice this one in front of the mirror because he knew that this was going to be the quote that gets pulled that ends up on pro football talk and NFL dot com and ESPN dot com that it's going to be Vikings new coach. I love Kirk more than anything on this earth, right? If he said anything hyperbolic or anything committal, that it was going to end up being a situation where everyone like held him to it.

Right. It's kind of like Cliff Kingsbury still gets made fun of for the Josh is our guy. When he said that about Josh Rosen. And I'm sure that Kevin O'Connell was aware that given the situation and the reality of Kirk Cousins contract and where the team stands right now, which by the way, another answer that stuck out that we'll talk about a little later was the last question about whether you can win now or how far away you are. And that was also noncommittal.

I mean, he said, I don't think we're that far away, but he also didn't say I'm already preparing which finger I want my second ring on. Like there was, you know, he didn't,

he, it was very much kind of like, well, no, I don't think we're far away, but, but, but,

uh, and that kind of thing, maybe I'll find, I will, I will add on to that too just because i'm not sure if you've seen the wilfs transcript the wilfs spoke after o'connell and they doubled down on the we want to be competitive messaging which we questioned when they did initially before the gm before the coach and they doubled down on it after, I assume,

hearing the GM and coach kind of give their plans. They're still kind of all in on that. So just a little additional context proceed. But I also think that there's a difference between saying we're competitive and we're competing for a Super Bowl. Because are you competitive next year? Let's say they stay with Cousins on his his contract which i'm going to circle back to with the o'connell comments and they go nine and eight like is there any doubt that they could go nine and eight next year with the offensive players that they have a new coach that leans into cousins and a little more and a defense that can't be worse yeah sure they could go nine and eight i think that's very reasonable. If everyone in the NFC North got hit by atom bombs, uh, or Rogers just left, uh, then maybe they're 10 and seven, but that's not what your aim really is. It's really to build a long-term contender. And the other part of that

is if, if a few things go wrong for them, you're seven and 10. That's kind of what I anticipate anyway. Even if it's Gardner Minshew at quarterback, I would be picking them to go eight and nine or nine and eight with the roster they have. I don't think with Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston, like there's a bunch of these guys where you'd probably pick a really similar type of, yeah, they're competitive. I don't think this is a three and 14 type of roster. You can't have that with Justin Jefferson on it. Two good tackles, a good running back, a good tight end in Irv Smith that's coming back, who I was reminded of by some people on the

Friday Mailbag asking about Irv Smith, that there's a lot of reason to be excited about him coming back for Kevin O'Connell in this offense that generally uses tight ends. But on the matter of Cousins, it's going two ways, the way it looks right now. And Albert Breer kind of added to this the other day. It's either going Cousins plays his contract out and hits free agency again, or Cousins is traded. That's where it looks like right now, because there was a report that came out that Derek Carr is going to get $40 million per year as an extension. I just don't see how this adds up that Kwesi Adafo-Mento would come in and say, yeah, let's give $40 million to this quarterback who not only hasn't won, but also doesn't have the surrounding cast of a complete roster to win us a Superbowl in the next two to three years. When I'm going to be fighting for my

contract extension, like his contract comes up quick in four years. Am I going to lock myself into three of those years with one of the most expensive quarterbacks on a team that couldn't do it before? It just doesn't really pass the smell test so i think if you're o'connell you say i'm ready to build my offense around cousins because he's the quarterback right now and very reasonably could be for the season but nothing in here said to me oh yeah this is our franchise quarterback. We are going forth with Cousins. I am put, you know, chain us together because it's O'Connell Cousins 2022 through 2020 question marks. There was none of that. No, I get the sense that O'Connell kind of understands that there are limitations with this quarterback and it's helpful, that he's coming from a Super Bowl situation

with Matthew Stafford. And I know Stafford has his own limitations, too. But I think he knows what it takes to win a championship. And then you look at it through the lens of, can this guy get us to this place? He would know as well as anybody. And I felt like he was more interested in talking about philosophy, sort of in-game management strategy, but not a lot about personnel. And that's interesting.

He also didn't mention Daniil Hunter on the defensive line. And these guys are smart. I listened to the guy talk a lot today. He's a sharp dude. You don't just forget Daniel Hunter when you can recall like plays from, you know, specific plays on third down during your season, and then not be able to come up to Neil Hunter's name. That tells me something too. So this guy is calculated, smart, strategic in his words. So I don't know if it's reading too much into it or if it's a legitimate takeaway with the things he said today, but I'm certainly willing to read into it and speculate on it and proceed kind of with my same presuppositions that the Cousins thing could be

coming to an end and there could be changes on defense as well. There was nothing that he said that changed my mind about where we've stood throughout this entire thing. I mean, I guess that, you know, sometimes people interpret things the way they want to. And I saw some people on Twitter saying, Oh, see like Kirk is your quarterback going forward based on what O'Connell said. And I just don't, I read it to you. I mean, I don't know where that is in any of those answers. And also, you know, O'Connell might have the opportunity here himself to scout these quarterbacks and interview these quarterbacks at the combine and decide that he wants one. You know, we watched everybody watched. It's unfortunate what happened with John Gruden and what he turned out to be, but the John Gruden quarterback camps, that's like a dream for coaches. You get to watch tape with them. You get to pick your guy and hitch your wagon to somebody that you wanted and Adolfo Mensah wanted to build forward. a lot more attractive of an option than someone who's been okay and competent quarterback that has limitations. I mean, it really is. If you're talking about like a sliding scale of quarterbacks

and the lowest end is like case Keenum, let's just start there. He's like the lowest end guy who can be a starter in the league. And then all the way up to the highest end is is patrick mahomes and if you've ever seen the prices right where they have the yodeler and they have the little man climbing the mountains so let's say it's going up that mountain toward mahomes kirk's kirk stops around jared goff doesn't he like he doesn't stop way farther than Jared Goff and closer to Mahomes. Like the, the plays that Matthew Stafford was able to make in the Superbowl, the no look pass specifically, my gosh, um, are, are closer to the top of that mountain than cousins.

He's probably closer to Jared Goff in terms of skillset and talent, which these guys are, these guys are going to focus on most as a coach. Like, how much do you need to do for him? How much can he do for you? That was always Mike Zimmer's contention about Case Keenum's. Like, he just doesn't really have a ton of talent. And so we're scheming everything to work here, but that's kind of how they've had to do it with Cousins to get these performances out of him. And as a former quarterback who was really athletic and Kevin O'Connell, it's just hard for me to see him looking at this and saying, I just can't wait to have to make everything perfect for this guy,

as opposed to having him bail me out. And I also may have been watching some Malik Willis highlights on a break today from jury duty. There's some impressive stuff in there. So anything else on the matter of cousins from Kevin O'Connell that stuck out to you? Not particularly. No, I mean, I think we pretty much covered it. There weren't a lot of specifics.

It was more that what wasn't said that was interesting. What was said, I think you can sort of, you know, predict. You predicted it. You predicted pretty accurately what he was going to say. There was nothing shocking about that. So I would say let's keep going with the takeaways. And, you know, there will be plenty to discuss with Cousins down the road once we get more information. But no surprises on the cousins

front okay how about this one um it just has to feel unique to be in a press conference with a guy who speaks this way in kevin o'connell that we have covered a head coach that was so old school head coach so blunt not crafty at all with his words. Sometimes I think he thought he was, but he never was. And we got used to that. We got used to there were no lines to read in between. It was John D. Filippo didn't run the ball, so I fired him. Oh, OK.

You know, it's just it was all laid out right there for you with Mike Zimmer. And now this is really interesting to look through with a first time head coach who has a lot to say and sometimes doesn't say a lot in these answers, if that makes sense. And I think is, is a little more going to be, I don't want to say calculated as if it's a bad thing, but a little more able to command what he's saying to control his type of message. And while that might be a little harder to parse through for us, I think in terms of the front door of your franchise, an impressive first act with how he's going to speak to the public on a daily basis. Yeah. I mean, they've now hired two key figures in the organization who smashed the opening press conference out of the park. I mean, I'll say this too, the 30 minutes that he spoke publicly in

front of the media, plus the extra little time we had with him on the side, it was a pretty impressive seduction. I mean, we are all glassy eyed at being with this guy and hearing him talk and him being very, you know, open and honest and, you know, engaging us in conversation, giving us anecdotes about his life. Like that's all very interesting. And you felt like you actually connected with, with the person and, you know, maybe it's because, you know, he's he's pretty young. He's pretty close to our age, actually, which is kind of crazy to think about. But I have cautioned, you know, the members of our beat to that. We might dislike some of the like classic canned answers that he gives at some point. I mean, Mike Zimmer

gave us the viral quotes now and then, and he would let us in kind of on what he was feeling. He would wear his emotions on his sleeve. His expressions would say a lot. We're not going to get a lot of blunt criticisms out of this guy, but I think that if you want to know football, I mean, Zim could talk football too now and then, particularly on defense. I think O'Connell is going to be a football guy as well, I think. And, you know, Cousins is the same way in the right mood. If you get these guys to talk about X's and O's, he might be really, really fascinating with the way that he discusses things. And I felt like Zim or too sometimes on the wrong day,

and there were a lot of bad days, he just wouldn't even engage you on that stuff. Like if you asked about a player, he would say, you know, he's doing good. He's doing the right things. He works hard. But he would never give you anything real. I think Kevin O'Connell is going to give us some real stuff about football, maybe not take us behind the scenes,

maybe not talk about what a guy is doing wrong all the time. But I'm looking forward to picking his brain on football because he seems super sharp, and he comes from another sharp head coach in Sean McVay who it sounds like was incredibly influential. So that piece of it is pretty cool, and I'm excited at least for this honeymoon phase right because everything's new we can do a million different features on his philosophy his background

we can do features on his staff and their backgrounds all of that is good for us so hopefully we can provide a few uh nuggets or two for for the subscribers out there hey everybody i've been making my meals from HelloFresh. And I have to tell you, I cannot make enough of these things. And if I can make them, literally anyone can. With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients, seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip the trips to the grocery store, count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. One of the nice things for me as I'm grinding the football tape

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So I think that as far as how players perceive what their head coach is saying and doing in front of the podium, which, by the way, I mean, they watch their families watch. They have the Internet. Any quote that gets thrown out there that especially is critical of players or sounds like it's taking shots or passing the buck or anything else makes its way into the locker room. And at times with Zimmer, I think that this is one of the reasons that the ship went down as opposed to staying afloat in some of the toughest spots. I looked this up the other day and their record, what was it from weeks 12 to 17, where they were in the hunt the last four years, they went something like 10 and 13. I didn't, I didn't count the one game that, that, you know, was meaningless at the end. So I think it was nine and 13 in games that had some consequence to them. And some of that is certainly quarterback play that drifted off toward the end of almost each season.

But also it was leadership as well for Mike Zimmer, that when things got hard, a lot of times Mike Zimmer made them harder. And with Kevin O'Connell as someone who can dance a little bit better around things and is unlikely to be super critical of his players being a former player. Again, it makes insight a little tougher. If everybody's doing a good job, you know, if everybody's getting compliments, then they mean they all mean less. If Mike Zimmer complimented somebody, he was either really trying to encourage them through the media. That was rare though, I think.

But it usually meant he thought they were good. And this went for other teams too. Like he said about Joe Burrow before week one, the media. That was rare though, I think. But it usually meant he thought they were good. And this went for other teams too. Like he said about Joe Burrow before week one, he was like, this guy is unbelievable. You guys have no idea how good Joe Burrow is. We were like, well, he must be really good then. Because Mike doesn't do this. Like unless he really thinks it, he only says stuff like this about Rodgers and players that he he loves Anthony Barr. I always believed Mike about Anthony Barr, who we'll talk about in a minute. Cause he got named dropped. But, but I always believed him about how valuable Anthony Barr was to his defense because he was so adamant about it. And if he didn't believe it, he wouldn't say it.

So now with O'Connell, I think we will have to parse through a little more of like what's real and what's kind of encouraging. And then we're going to have to kind of play it out as time goes along to start to figure out the nuances of how he talks and things like that to start reading between the lines, which is exciting for us to try to break that down as opposed to, oh yeah, you know, Zimmer's doing the thing again and that's what it is and whatever. It got, it got really stale by the end. So let's talk about the timeline answer. He was asked about, you know, do you think that this team is far away was how it was phrased. And he said, I don't, I really don't. We've talked about that a lot. That's one of the things you look for when you get these opportunities is where the

current team is at. And then obviously what type of plan they have in place to accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish. Now, this answer continues to go on and doesn't say a whole lot, but I think that Kevin O'Connell's answer on this would also fall under sort of non-committal that, I mean, you look where the team is at and there's an opportunity to be good within the next two years. I think that that was a, that was a good answer for him to give. But I also think that there's nothing in there that says that he's unrealistic about where the team is at. He says, well, it's something that I look at and I don't think we're that far away, but there's no real specific about how far that far away actually is. And maybe

this ties these two things together. Cause I know you said that the Wilfs pointed to, Hey, you know, we're kind of in on being competitive, but it ties the two things together of reading between the lines of how O'Connell is going to talk. And it might end up being more about what he didn't say than what he did say. And here, I think all of this to me says a head coach who is realistic about a lot of things, realistic about where they're at, realistic about his quarterback. Maybe that's us looking too much into it because we think that's where they're at, but it matches up with not saying this is a team that's going to compete for the Super Bowl next year. He could have gone in on that and he didn't. He could have gone in on Kirk is my long-term quarterback and he didn't.

And I think that both of those directions for him were the right way to go. Yeah, I agree. And I think that you pointed out soundly earlier that, you know, what it might mean is they're not going to do a complete teardown, which is also probably somewhat realistic. Like they're not going to break it down to the studs, but they probably have a quarterback change. And then, and even with that quarterback change, that could lead you to a 500 record. And that is, I think, competitive in the scope of things. So I'm in no way going down the road of saying that because they want to be competitive, it means that Kirk is coming back.

I don't think that's true. I do think that on an opening press conference, you are not going to say anything but we are going to be competitive. You want to win the fans in the press conference. You want to win the alumni that are in the crowd, the John Randles and Randall McDaniels who were there. Bud Grant was there. You're not going to go up there and talk about how you're going to break, tear it down, get rid of veterans. That's obviously not your line. And for ownership too, I mean, you still want to, I think, maintain the semblance that we are not a franchise that tanks. We are not a franchise that accepts losing seasons. So I get it. I get the approach. I get the PR spin. I still, yeah, I'm not going to buy into anything, but that there are changes coming and that they could still be a decent football team. Like I think the two can still be true.

Okay. So there's others that things that I want to run through of just his answers specifically talking about analytics. I think that he gave a very good answer. That was not the stock answer. It was close to the stock answer, but it was not the stock answer. The stock answer for NFL coaches has become, well, it's a tool.

It's not everything, but it's something that you want to look at, but you don't want to have it look at too much. Cause it'll burn your retinas with numbers. And then all you'll see is numbers. And then you won't know anything else about football that's the stock answer or uh summarized um i i thought that his was better than that i don't want to read the entire thing but your your feeling on like is he uh the wall street coach to go along with the wall street gm i didn't think he went

that far but i thought that i mean he's coming from an organization that has leaned into some pretty analytical things that go beyond just like punting or not punting that go into deep dive on the sports science data that look i mean we never really know about or hear about um there's some articles that were written about it with the rams but i mean they're only going to say so much about how they were doing it. The Vikings have been using tracking data. How much Mike Zimmer cared about tracking data is hard to say. I mean, I got the sense that Kevin O'Connell is very much on board with what they want to do analytically.

Yeah, and he mentioned too that he and Kwesi have had discussions about analytics, and he likes the way that Kwesi presents the analytics to him. So it's been talked about. He's been the head coach for one day. And in their interviews or in their previous conversations, it's already come up. And he sounded extremely receptive to it. And even if Kwesi doesn't want to be labeled as the analytics guy,

I think that it's been broached. And I think that O'Connell understands, like he talked about, you know, having the winning edges, winning like on the perimeters. And I think that that extra one, 2% would be appealing to him. I think that he's kind of all in on the collaboration thing too. He talked about having various assistants for um game management and i think all of that like all of those ways to think modernly about football and and competitive

edges he's definitely receptive to all of it so i'm counting on that to be a thing and whether it plays into like is it whether it's brain and staley level I don't know he did he did speak a little cautiously in saying that you know you do want to use it correctly but um I would I would guess more than than our guy Zim probably and I think he's going to be he's not going to be grudge analytics like the previous regime um that's for sure and I think he's probably gonna use it as justification for some of his decisions that's that I think i think he's probably gonna use it as justification for some of his decisions that's that i think is going to be a key difference as we uh or prepare for the nfl combine which should be fine with the schedule of my trial i shouldn't call it my trial right of someone else's trial of which i am on the jury uh should be fine but it reminded me of the time mike zimmer went to

the podium at the combine and openly trashed his analytics person was just like that's not what anybody wants to hear when all of sports is utilizing every tool that you have in the tool bag including analytics now did you i twitch a little bit when he said balance he was asked about the running game and you can really tell like how just beaten down everyone has been by the previous regime because almost every question has this little flavor of like don't do it though like you know the last guy and the thing he did, you're not gonna, are you gonna, uh, but I thought he gave a very good answer about running the ball and talking about, uh, deception when it comes to running the ball, which is important to create play action

and things like that. He didn't say that specifically, but he referred to deception. I assume that's what he meant and talked about, You have to use your running back skillset and things like that. The Rams, they ran a lot in the golf era. And then with Stafford, they kind of moved away from it because they weren't having a ton of success. And then in the super bowl lost their minds and ran all the time.

And it was completely senseless. But, you know, I think that his answer, it really led me more down the path of being intentional with your running game to set up your passing game, as opposed to just, we need to run because that's the thing we do. Yeah. You know, I think it's, it's pretty, how when games were on the line, close games in the playoffs, the Rams were hyper-reliant on the pass and good at it, too. And they sprinkled the run in here and there, but they were extremely effective at passing the ball. And then in the Super Bowl, they had so many negative runs, and they stuck with it.

It seemed like a little bit too long. And then that final drive pass pass pass pass pass and then they hit him with the fourth and one jet sweep to cup and they hit him with i think uh was it a first and 10 maybe or they had a really good run in the red zone they got them down inside the 10 um and and that i think is something that that o O'Connell, um, can appreciate. And, and I'm, I'm trying to be a little careful here because he told us some stuff off the record that I, I'm not supposed to talk about, but I think that he's got a pretty good idea of how he wants to use the running game and that it's got a place, but it's, it's certainly not the quote unquote run first offense. Like he said that upfront that he's going to use a lot of the concepts from the Rams.

He's going to attack defenses. I don't think people need to worry about him over-relying on the run. There will be days when it's not working. He did explain, too, that you have to take what the defense gives you sometimes. That's a thing. If they're in to that, you have to take what the defense gives you sometimes like that's a thing, you know, if they're in a dime, uh, you try to run against that, but I was encouraged about it. And I think he's, you know, he, he spoke highly of Dalvin cook. I think that was the right thing to do.

I don't think you want to diminish someone who's being paid a lot of money to be a leader in the locker room. And, um, yeah, I, I, everything that I heard heard like reading between the lines felt to me like a coach that gets it offensively and who knows like he doesn't need to be told what the analytics are saying about offensive efficiency which again that's going to be different for us it's going to it's going to be different because you know kevin stefanski when he was here he got all that stuff but he was also dealing with mike zimmer over his shoulder with every press conference um and you really felt like you just couldn't crack that nut unlike uh sorry guys i am not actually going to tell you

how i feel about these things because i know the head coach is watching and i was always convinced that we could have gotten more insight out of Kevin Stefanski. Well, maybe that will be the case with Kevin O'Connell without him giving away too many things. But I mean, the reality is when it comes to that stuff, like X's and O's, and I mean, everybody knows it. Everybody in the NFL knows that unless you're saying this is the play we're going to run on first down.

I mean, mostly these are agreed upon things that every head coach is going to be able to watch film and figure out. It's just how you're using it, what tweaks you do to it. And really with the running game, what we've seen by the numbers that I think is really interesting is a lot of running games in the NFL, weirdly, have become more valuable by leaps and bounds than they were just five years ago by expected points added just by the fact that coaches are running at the right times and they're designing their run games to attack past defenses. So deep passing was down this year. I was looking at some stats on this on Twitter. I'm sorry. I forgot who sent it out about deep

passing and how it wasn't as good this year. And you saw this with how teams played against my homes, where they put everybody deep and said like dink and dunk, man, we dare you. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but that opens up the running game. And I think that a lot of defenses are trying to drop back, prevent these big plays and they're lightening up their boxes and they're allowing for the runs. And if you're doing it at the right times, there are opportunities for explosive runs and for successful expected point added runs, which you really have to understand the data to get this. This is the problem is like, guess what miles per hour you're going. You know, if you're listening to this in your car, don't look and then guess, are you right? Like maybe sometimes are you right all the time? No,

like you really need a meter to tell you when you're right. Uh, and that's what numbers can do for you in certain situations. And if you understand those, you can say, okay, actually second and one is a great time for us to run. Second and 10 is not, which it's not always as simple as this, but first down in 10 against this defense statistically does great against that defense. It does not. And like, these are the things that they just really weren't doing. So you can make your offense more efficient by percentage points. I think Stefanski was good at this by percentage points that will matter over a long period of time.

Yeah, I'm going to go back and cite my story from earlier in the week. I wrote about how basically the inefficiencies are that the Vikings offense had is what sort of prevented Justin Jefferson from having potentially Cooper Cup numbers. And I looked at the difference between their target share. And second and long runs were one of the biggest culprits. Because the Rams, like third down, defenses know what's coming. Like if it's third and long, you're not always going to be able to get it to your best receivers. Cooper Cup's targets were low on third down.

Justin Jefferson's were low on third down relative to the other downs. Cooper Cup, though, got most of his catches on third down. Justin Jefferson's were low on third down relative to the other downs. Cooper Cup, though, got most of his catches on second down. Justin Jefferson, rarely. How come? Well, the Vikings had one of the longest, or I'm sorry, they ran it some of the most times on second down in the entire league. It was like seventh. Yet they had a very long second down to go distance. Like the average was long and they were still running it. The Rams, by contrast, had a very short second down to go distance. And yet they still passed it a lot. And guess what? Guess what happened on third down, Matthew? Do you want to guess?

You want to guess what happened on third down? The Rams had the shortest third down to go distance in the league and the vikings had the third longest so you can see the two strategies like polar opposites and how that played out for those teams um that's just one way the vikings can quickly become more efficient and i don't know how many more times i'm going to get to be on the second and long soapbox which has been sort of my my political platform for the last two years. So it feels good. I don't know how many more of these I have,

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job with manscaped. Yeah, I know. I was just going to say that we're going to have to find new ones. And if they get a good right guard, I mean, do we have to shut down the show? Like what, what do we discuss if they, if they pass on second and 10 and get a good right guard? I mean, I don't even know anymore. But so I wanted to ask you about the the defense um that is part of his comments and it was a long answer about ed donatel and they named the coaching staff

i am not going to go through every coaching hire here i did get a text from jeremiah searles who will be back on the show soon uh jeremiah saying that he liked the offensive line coach hire, which I believe him. I believe literally no one on offensive line, anything except for like when it comes to coaching it, how it's done, except for offensive linemen, because anybody who claims to know that's not an offensive lineman, I mean,

you better be an offensive line coach basically. So apparently Jeremiah likes that. But Ed Donatel on the defensive side, people ask about the 3-4 thing. There's really no such thing. In the Super Bowl, Raheem Morris did a brilliant job of mixing in five-man fronts. And it was like a 5-1-5, which was really interesting. Like all of a sudden, they've got the two outside linebackers rushing. And it helped create one-on-ones for Aaron Donald, which he really interesting. Like all of a sudden they've got the two outside linebackers rushing and it

helped create one-on-ones for Aaron Donald, which he demolished. I think that the biggest Ed Donatello thing is going to be getting some interior pass rush because it's just so valuable in this type of system. But I mean, you need corners, you need pass rushers, interior defensive ends.

There's a lot of work to be done there. You mentioned that he didn't name drop Daniil Hunter, did name drop Anthony Barr. Do we really make anything of that, though? I mean, you do. You're saying that you think it was intentional. I am not 100% sure there that it is or that it was just like thinking on the fly of like who gave us problems or who did we prepare for Anthony bar, Eric Hendricks,

Harrison Smith. But it might be, it might've been an intentional, um, leaving off of Daniel Hunter. Yeah. I mean, he,

he, he's prefaced it by saying we have towns at all three levels. So I assumed he was going to go down the three levels and say, Harrison Smith, Eric Hendricks, Daniel Hunter, that would have been the same. Also like not true.

Like they, it's just that they, they don't even have any corners. Like they're all free agents. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's like,

that's like saying that safeties and corners are all the same and you have one, like the secondary is all one entity, which is, yeah, it is not true. So I assumed he'd go down the list. And I guess to include someone who is a pending free agent,

maybe you still take a little bit of ownership of that player or maybe he's had discussions. Maybe they'd like to offer him a one-year contract and see if he'd like to come back. I do think that because of the way Barr played in combination with his injury, I think that he's someone that is intriguing, but not someone you would want to invest long-term in.

So you might offer him a one-year deal and say, hey, would you like to see this thing through in Minnesota? I would guess he would say no, but you might be interested in that. So maybe that's a player that they would like to retain. But not mentioning Daniil Hunter, who I think should be the first guy mentioned. I mean, he's probably the best. You know, he's 28 years old or about to turn 28, I think.

That is the foundation of the defense as far as I'm concerned. But no, he talked more about, talked endlessly about Harrison Smith. a lot about the linebackers doesn't mention to Neil Hunter real like really that that's hard for me to believe that that's an oversight um but he seemed you know he did mention that it's about multiplicity in the defensive fronts and he he kind of mentioned the three four almost as an aside and I think that. Like, I think that as offenses get more diverse, defense is going to have to get more diverse too. They're getting more position lists. And the Vikings even started messing around with this last year. I mean, they had some three-man fronts. They had some five-man fronts, I think. I think they had

several that Paul Gunther helped them draw up and Patterson and Zimmer all worked together on it. So this year it'll be Petten and Donatel and all those guys. I am 70% sure, though, that the Hunter slip was intentional for whatever reason. Maybe it's because of the uncertainty. Maybe not that he's absolutely gone, but because they don't know and they don't want to overcommit. That could be. That could be. I mean, because unless he gets asked specifically about Daniil Hunter, he doesn't have to say anything. It's not like the Kirk Cousins situation where he does.

I would take it a little less than 70%. I'd say coin flip because I just don't have a great feel for Kevin O'Connell yet when it comes to these things. But maybe. I mean, maybe that's part of it with the Anthony Barr thing. I still, I don't think he's going to be back, but there is a case. It's not a great case, but there is a case to give him an extension because he's got the void year and that's really not good. It's just dead cap sitting there and you can't do anything with it. So like, would you rather extend him and have him here?

But I just can't make that work out. I think it's probably better, especially with the injuries he had last year to just say, okay. But when he got a name drop, I thought like, oh, Anthony Barr. Okay. I had already counted him off the roster. So last thing that I wanted to talk about, I just wrote down a bunch of topics from this press conference and it was play calling.

There were folks. Now, look, I like the fact that Vikings fans could figure out a way to freak out over just about anything. But the hasn't called plays for the Rams thing was probably like a step over that line. Like we have a lot of fun with it. We have fun conversations with the fatalism of Vikings fans. It can be, you know, it can be really like just, you know, good discussion sometimes. And especially when Vikings fans are figuring out the funniest possible way that something could go wrong.

That's good. But there should be no concern in my mind that he has not called plays. And I think as far as next year, he calls plays and manages the game at the same time for the first time ever. And that's fine because unless they hit on every draft pick, that is immediately amazing. And the signings are great and whoever is playing quarterback is just marvelous and they go 13 and four they're not in a position where i think like oh no the coach has to have it like down pat like there is space here for kevin o'connell to learn how to be a head coach who calls plays and manages a game. I think those two things are very, very difficult, but he'll have time to figure out how to do

them. Like if he makes a mistake with game management in the first three weeks, like don't declare him Zimmer. Don't say, oh no, you've got another, like, you know, if the play calling in the second half isn't good enough, if it's Clint Kubiak esque in the first three, four weeks, don't call him Clint Kubiak. Like he will have time and space to figure these things out. And it's not the first time he's ever gotten on the headset before. Um, but I, you know, interesting enough that he said he will be calling plays and head coaching

yeah well i think that when you when you look at the candidates for that offensive coordinator job which are west phillips and thomas brown i mean that i is the two ram staffers yeah yeah pretty sure they don't have experience either like i think that he knows that he's going to be flanked by another kind of young, fairly unexperienced right-hand man. And they, it's not like Pat Shermer is his offensive coordinator. You know, he didn't get, he didn't get, he got to have Donatello on the defensive side. He's not going to have a seasoned offensive mind as coordinator. He's going to have someone who probably, you know someone who probably will fit with his ideals and someone he's familiar with and friendly with, they have good communication with, not someone who's coming in with their own ideas. So there's no one on that offensive staff that's probably better equipped to

do it than the guy who was on the same headset as McVay. And the anecdote that I've heard is that O'Connell was able to chime in on those play calls as well, like even in the Super Bowl. So I think that and he did it in the preseason, I believe. Like, I think he's got some enough experience to where you can believe that. All right. This has worked for other young offensive coaches. Why can't it work for this guy? And, you know, it's not like you know everybody is going to struggle at this is the this is the common practice this is the best practice for these

new coaches right i mean it's rare it'd be rare if he didn't so let's let's just let this play out i'm with you and uh and there's no need to panic right if he did something like hire daryl bevel to call his plays, then I'd be like, what are we doing here? Right. I mean, this is, this is how you want it. Like, this is why you hired someone from the offensive side of things was to come in and design your offense, call your plays.

And there probably will be bumps in the road, but you have to allow him the time to do that, which I think is fine and will be something that we're looking at in the first few weeks and how he grows and develops as a head coach slash play caller throughout. But I will just have to end up yelling at clouds for the longest time. I did an article with an offensive play caller about how this all works. And what he told me was it is a group effort. It's the whole staff. It's not one guy.

Like one guy calls in the play, but the whole staff designs the game plan and they have every situation. Here's our plays for second down and short. Here's our plays for third and long. Here's our red zone plays. And you're, you're picking from a group of plays that everyone has decided are in the game plan. And the players have practiced throughout the week.

This is not Madden where you're like, or if you're me one play i use one play every single play in madden and then adjust the routes based on the defense and win all the time so it's not like that uh and that but it will be an adjustment for him that we're going to be watching throughout so uh kevin o'connell will talk next at the combine which appears i'll be fine to be watching throughout. So Kevin O'Connell will talk next at the combine, which appears I'll be fine to be at, which is great. And until then, Courtney's coming up on the show tomorrow and I'm going to study my law books. So you're going to have the breakdown on the website of everything Kevin O'Connell said. I'll have a column a little bit later, Friday mailbag at the website and things like that. So thank you your time sam and thank you all for listening to

this full breakdown of one man's press conference it's good times this is all interesting everything the man says is interesting all of a sudden it's like by the end nothing mike zimmer said would be interesting unless he dunked on a third round pick backup quarterback and now everything o'connell says is worth reading into so um enjoy like like you said, the honeymoon here because, you know, the first offseason of a coach, there's just so much to take in. He's whining us. He's dining us in Punta Cana right now. We are enjoying our time together.

I mean, this really is about after this is settled, should be the most relaxed Vikings fans are until they trade cousins and then they'll freak out again. So we'll see how it goes, but Sam, thanks for your time. Thanks for everyone who listened and we will catch you tomorrow.