Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - So the Vikings had a tough loss -- what now? How can it be fixed?

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

In the debut of Monday Morning Murph, former Pioneer Press columnist Brian Murphy analyzes a rough 27-24 opening week loss for the Vikings against the Cincinnati Bengals. What does it say about the Vikings' identity as a team and how they need to win games? Matthew gives a crazy stat about the Vikings in games where they allow more than 25 points and Brian talks about what we need to see from the Vikings to turn things around quickly and what makes for a successful season with the NFC North already in tough shape. Visit tickpick.com/insider today and use the promo code INSIDER to save $10 on your first order of Vikings tickets! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Want to remind you before we get started, the TickPick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. TickPick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. Oh, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and we welcome into the show Monday Morning Murph.

This is our debut Brian Murphy, former Pioneer Press columnist, who put out his first column on Purple Insider today. And it was very fun to read you back breaking down Minnesota Vikings football. Brian, how are you? I'm great. I mean, they just make it so easy, don't they? Yeah. If you wanted it set on a tee to drop some one-liners on the Vikings. They really did it for you yesterday. I mean, I will say, Brian, I've never seen a team jump off sides three times on the first drive or really any drive. I mean, that is it's literally the opening to their obituary, right? I mean, how bad can you how bad of an omen can it be when on the very first snap of the

season you commit a false start? I mean, you could hear the eyes rolling across minnesota already and then to commit three more penalties in the opening series uh which portended to what what i think it was 12 accepted was it and 15 overall 70 yards of which were pinned on the offensive line. Every offensive lineman had at least one flag. Most had multiple. And they were false starts, illegal formations, one unnecessary roughness, completely undisciplined. The fact that they were even in overtime just blew me away.

You know, I think that here's what I want to do with this conversation is I want to talk about like what's going to carry over going forward. What's not going to carry over from week one, because it's always a strange week in the NFL and what we should be overreacting sure, like you said, not exactly the feeling everyone wanted on the first play from scrimmage. I don't think that's going to be a problem going forward. I do think, though, that the holdings are going to be a problem going forward because you play Chandler Jones and J.J. Watt this week. And then two weeks from now, you're taking Miles Garrett and Jadavion Clowney like this doesn't get easier for your offensive line and if they're not giving up sacks then they're

holding and tackling the guy on the way there I just don't know what the fix is like a Christian Derisaw getting healthy maybe but he's never played in the NFL before uh they don't have some you know they drafted Wyatt Davis but he doesn't seem to be NFL before. They don't have some, you know, they drafted Wyatt Davis, but he doesn't seem to be ready to play guard. Garrett Bradbury had another very poor PFF grade in this game, so he continues to struggle with guys who push him back into the quarterback. I don't know what the fix is once you get to the point where you see, oh, okay, this offensive line is just really not

going to be better than it was? Well, you know, to quote the venerable and late great Denny Green, they are who we thought they were. I mean, these were the question marks everybody was asking during the offseason before they drafted Darasaw and certainly throughout training camp. How is this patchwork offensive line, you know, 60 under spielman going to protect kirk and make him as comfortable as can be because we all know cousins heaven forbid he has to improvise you know all the analytics point to disaster in the in the making but if he has a clean pocket he can you know he can run and gun out there so i i don't see and and where's the confidence level as you meant you i mean everybody had an awful game on that line i mean rashad hill who obviously

moved outside uh was clearly out of position and being manhandled you could just tell that uh i don't know the end that he was going up against was in his head i mean i don't know how many holding calls he had but he was trying to overcompensate committing the fouls so you got to wonder where the confidence level is with him you got to wonder where it i mean you can almost see on the screen kirk cousins look panicky back there like he did several times uh didn't know whether he was going to get out alive uh and you know mike zimmer never never missing an opportunity to passive aggressively slam us his qb tells the jenny taft on the sidelines at halftime that you know cousins

is holding the ball too long well that may be the case but i think he just sees the world collapsing around him and i also think he he feels like this is a yearly problem here. I don't have a lot of trust. I don't have a lot of confidence in my protection. And I don't see it necessarily changing. I mean, I don't know if there's enough solutions in the building. Again, you mentioned the false starts. In coach speak, that can be cleaned up easily.

Right. You're right. The holding, the footwork, the slowness and the confidence. That's going to be a week to week joyride or not joyride, but, you know, scary ride to see what these guys can do. I just wonder if if it's baked in right now into that locker room that there's just not a lot of confidence in the offensive unit as a whole in the pass protection so i'm looking at the pff grades they get them out uh right away now on monday morning for what they thought of yesterday's performance and it's just exactly what you'd think like brian o'neill was totally fine his pass blocking grade was 79.6 now it's on one to 100 scale 65 is about an average performance, or you did fine. Anything over 65, you did fine.

Anything over 80, you did great. So Brian O'Neill, 80, he's fine. Ole Udo, 59. Ezra Cleveland, 49. Rashad Hill, 47. And Garrett Bradbury with an incredible day for a center, 27. He had four pressures allowed which he ought to be paying cousins for lap dances because he's constantly on top of them and not only that but he had two penalties as well and Rashad Hill had three penalties

I mean the Garrett Bradbury thing you're going through his seasons here and you're thinking all right well at some point he'll sort of figure it out centers take a while and then he immediately comes out and like you said is pushed back right away into the lap of Kirk Cousins and when we talk about the unknowns going into the season will this guy improve how will this work out that's one where i think we know right away there's not a whole lot you can do about that so now the question is how do they fix this as they go into a suddenly very important game right yeah i mean they're looking look cardinals look great yesterday against tennessee they're on the road again they're gonna make a long trip out west and if they lose that game

and suddenly you've got seattle coming in for your home opener and i don't know what are they oh and four oh and five against russell wilson who oh by the way torched indianapolis for four touchdown passes yesterday i mean oh and three is very very viable at this point and it could get really ugly really quickly uh i i think that we all read and heard, and you guys have been chronicling, the rising tensions not only between Zimmer and his unvaccinated quarterback, but just with the offense, with whether or not Zimmer has the personnel he wants from his GM. And you can already see the plausible deniabilities and the scapegoating kind of laying the seed work here for everybody's going to have a reason

for why this went off the rails. But the stakes are incredibly high right now for Spielman, Zimmer, and Cousins. The fan base is perpetually on edge, but they did nothing yesterday to talk fans off the ledge. I, you know, 0-1, starting out 0-1 on the road is not usually catastrophic in the NFL. Now you have 17 games, you can even make up for that. But with this team, in this market, with this history, and this this personnel and these people running the show it just feels like there's just not a lot of room for error at all here in the next few weeks right and one of the problems with this game and losing it is that kirk cousins actually played

pretty well and you want to win and give me captain obvious here, but you want to win every game in which Kirk Cousins plays pretty well because there's only going to be so many of them every year. And we just know this. It's just facts of life with Kirk Cousins, right? If your offensive line falters, if you're behind the sticks, you're not going to be able to overcome it with Cousins. We know that there will be some games

where it just isn't there, where the defense is too good or where he just has one of those Atlanta Falcons, Buffalo Bills games like those things are on the way. So when your quarterback, especially in the second half of the game, is mostly good and gives you a chance to win. This is how it's always felt with this team, even going through training camp and preseason is that the margin is thin. So you can't fumble if you're Delvin Cook.

Now, fumbles happen, and that might not have been a fumble, but you can't have a call go against you. And the frustrating part about talking about this team that I'm almost hoping it changes here because it's become like monotonous to go back over these things. And this sort of felt like the game in Kansas city when Matt Moore started instead of Patrick Mahomes, it was like, okay, you should win this game. And Kirk wasn't too bad. And he gave him a chance, but then one thing went wrong and you lost. And you know, now what's like, you just have no ability to kind of make up for these things, which makes me kind of have a feeling of inevitability about this team. Well, think about it, too.

We've talked about it for, yeah, every week that Cousins has been here. Look at his numbers. 350-plus yards, two touchdowns, no picks, you know, over 100 passer rating. And what Vikings fans have been waiting for and dying for is to have the ball in Cousins' hands with less than two minutes, no timeouts in the game on the line. Well, what did he do yesterday? He delivered. Nine plays, 60-some yards, no timeouts, very nervy, getting them down the field, completing a key fourth down, I think it was fourth and four, to K.J. Osborne at midfield to keep it alive,

getting the ball down the field, getting up to the line, spiking it, setting up Joseph's tying field goal. That's a clutch quarterback play. Now, they didn't do anything with the ball, at least on their own offensive series, in overtime, and especially after cook fumbled you know you you could see them i i thought here's what i thought the storyline was going to be joseph comes through in the clutch to force overtime joseph with a chance to win it in overtime he goes wide left that's what i thought this was getting it ends

up as a tie i thought tie was coming to delvin cook we thought he had solved his fumble problems and look it was a very borderline call uh you know call the fumble on the field fox couldn't find the right angle the vikings you know lost in both of their reviews i mean the first one really only cost them one play and adjust jefferson touchdown it did cost them a key time out but hey cousins overcame that and they were able to tie it to force it in overtime so that's a wash this one again borderline uh but as you mentioned if you put yourself in a position where you have zero margin for error not every replay call is going

to come in your favor what are you going to do about it when it doesn't and the worst possible time to fumble the worst possible time to hand the ball back to the Bengals with obviously their rookie big leg kicker these are the problems that are going to plague the Vikings offensive line play has to be perfect pass protection has to be perfect Cousins pocket has to be perfect. Cook can't fumble the ball. And yet, you know, we may pivot to this in a minute, but I think the only reason we're even talking about the Vikings even being in this game in the second half was because of Zach Taylor's harebrained decision to go for it

on fourth and one at his own 30 with a 14-point lead. Now, I read his quotes. He was looking for the dagger, and that would have been bold. But there was no indication that the Vikings were going to overcome Cincinnati's pass rush. There was no indication that the Vikings were going to score 14 points in the last, you know, 20-some-odd minutes. They just spoon-fed them momentum.

Seelan gets his second touchdown pass. Suddenly it's a game again. And, I mean, we wouldn't have been watching this game for three hours and 40 minutes if taylor doesn't make that decision so in in reality the vikings were gifted a chance to maybe ring out a tie at worst but instead they fumble the ball cincinnati wins and the recriminations have begun already. I thought about that quite a bit, that Cincinnati not only gave them a chance there, but they also gave them a chance with the way that they handled their offense so conservatively. And Joe Burrow said that he had an ankle thing in the second half of the game. So I think they were trying to protect his ankle.

But that's a good break for the Vikings that allowed them to be more aggressive and have Cincinnati have three and outs or very short drives and continue to punt the ball back to the Vikings and give them chances. And it's funny how a game that ends up getting to overtime that you trailed the whole way ends up looking really close like a back and forth affair. And in some ways it was. But the other team kind of said why don't you

make this really entertaining for your fans and if they get you know joe mixon falls down on that play if he lunges forward for the first down it probably is over and maybe we're talking about them scoring on that drive and this is a blowout and this is an even a very close game i mean that decision i thought was uh i know analytics people maybe thought, well, not 50-50. I saw somebody saying like 50-50 with the analytics, but the way the game is going matters. So that's like a broad thing, but the way the game is going matters. Your defensive line is murdering the Vikings offensive line. And if you punt that away, they're having to go 85 yards again or something. And they just weren't doing

that very often in this game until they were down by two scores now here's where I want to draw back to the quarterback though because this is the thing about cousins we always say well you know it needs to be perfect for it to work out and I want to put a specific number on this that yesterday they were in a lot of second and longs, a lot of third and longs, thanks to everyone who is fat on the offense. But Cousins' average depth of throw was 5.8 yards. That was the third lowest in the NFL of quarterbacks who threw more than whatever, 20 passes. The third lowest. He was not pushing it at all and check down charlie right

of course cincinnati is going to be playing back on second down in 20 but it's the nfl in 2021 i mean you so often let opponents dictate what they want you to do and the lack of aggressiveness i thought open the door for cinc for Cincinnati to take the lead early, opened the door for Cincinnati to come through at the end of a half and get up in the game. And I just wonder, can you win a game that Delvin Cook is not dominating the other team? And the answer has turned out mostly to be no. And even if your defense is a little fragile at any point in the game, makes one mistake, has one pass interference

penalty. It just, it just seems to all come apart. And I've got another great stat for you, Murph. The Vikings, when they give up 25 points or more over the last three years are three, 17 and one. And I'm sure you're saying, well, lots of teams are bad in that circumstance, which is true. But league-wide, teams win one in four of those games. That's 14% for the Vikings. The Kansas City Chiefs win more than 50% of those games, and so do the Seattle Seahawks. And most of the good teams win about 40% of those games. So it really shows you, you have to have a great defensive performance. You can't turn the ball over.

You have to have a great defensive performance you can't turn the ball over you have to have delvin cook running you can't commit penalties or you're just going to get short completions that pump up completion percentage and it's just this is how you have to win end of story that's a lot of you can't right to stack up right one after the other i read i thought one of the stats that was really telling and obviously this was a byproduct of cook not really being able to establish the run early and also the just non-stop uh flag show against the vikings offensive line i think through three quarters their average third down attempt was about third and twelve yes i mean that's completely unsustainable in the nfl you're not going to do anything i think it was like third and 12th. Yes. I mean, that's completely unsustainable in the NFL. It was longer than that. I think it was like third and 20.

Yeah, it was like. Third and 20. Okay, it might have shrank as the game went on. Zimmer said early in the third quarter, it was like third and 20 or something. I mean, you know, that's a death knell. I mean, you're not going to go anywhere. I mean, you're going to be, you know,

trying to get 10 yards and punt. So it did. Again, we all know Mike Zimmer. He loves his running game, right? He loves to think it's 1985 and he's got one of the most talented and bruising running backs in the NFL. So let's exploit them. But when it does grind down, when there are penalties, when there are issues, it literally grinds to a halt. And then you have to pivot into something that you may not be comfortable being which is we need to be a downfield team suddenly well other teams are

going to pretty much adjust to that too and they're going to they're going to taunt you and challenge you to do that and we're still sort of waiting on that will cousins break out with a 500 yard game with bombs i don't know if that's feasible within the system. I don't know if it's feasible behind this offensive line. And I certainly don't. It's never going to happen if you're if you're constantly playing uphill all afternoon. Right. Right.

And if you get ahead in the game and Delvin is running successfully, you can just win. I mean, that. Yeah. Run out the clock and play great defense. And there you go. But you have to get to that point, and they can't seem to get to that sweet spot, that comfort zone, where they're dictating play.

They're dictating the terms. It always seems like the terms are being dictated to them, and that's where they don't always rise to the occasion. So I'm looking at this the way that they started the game yesterday. It was, of course, the false start. First and 15 is a short pass to Delvin Cook. They get a first down. It's a handoff to Delvin Cook. We go to the next drive. It's a handoff to Delvin Cook. We go to the next drive. It's a short pass to Delvin Cook. Like they are not really using Justin Jefferson early in games, which I think is, is frustrating.

What else does he have to prove? Well, and, and every time they get behind, they go to Justin Jefferson and he makes big plays. And I think that, you know, when you look at like,

how can you get the absolute most out of your offense? I don't expect any team in the first week of the season to just come out and throw three straight 50 yard bombs to Justin Jefferson. But I also don't think that the ratio should be three Delvin Cook plays to every one Justin Jefferson play. They're both superstar players. I would never say don't give the ball to Delvin Cook. It's just this team has this philosophy of coming out and throwing the short pass and running the ball and not like you said not dictating terms right off of the the get-go and not taking the shots and not pushing

the ball down the field early and I just don't know how successful that can be when anything ever goes wrong and then you're forced to play from down two scores and so now you're playing quarterbacks Kyler Murray Russell Wilson and Baker Mayfield in these next three games and then you know they go to Carolina before the bye too and I noticed Carolina's defensive line really ripped apart a bad offensive line in New York so even though I don't have much respect for Carolina they at least do have a decent defensive line they drafted a couple of guys high there so this isn't going away and this isn't changing and then so I think we're forced to be in a

position Murph where we're like well what now like what do we say about them now when we think we have all of the answers for this team already in week one but then you have to pull yourself back and say it is only week one so what now like I saw a lot of fire everybody and that sort of thing yesterday. But I guess that's well, that's my question to you is like what now? Well, is Owen one of your identity? I mean, most of the features we saw yesterday and we've just broken down are you could have we could have had this conversation in September of 2020, November of 2019. We could probably go back three or four more years, too, even before Cousins got here. The same issues, not establishing the run, not getting good pass protection, not taking advantage of opportunities, giving things away.

Not necessarily the football. I mean, obviously, Cook's turnover was at the worst possible time. But otherwise, they protected the ball well. the football. I mean, obviously, Cook's turnover was at the worst possible time, but otherwise they protected the ball well. But they didn't rise to the occasion against a supposedly inferior opponent. And they don't have there's no gimmies in the NFL. We all know that. But there are some wink wink gimmies. And this was one of them. The Cincinnati Bengals, as far as we know, at this point, should not be beating the minnesota vikings the way that they did by watching the vikings implode now you're going on the road against another team that seems to be turning things around it's a long trip it's a tough start to the season there's going to be a

lot of negative energy hanging over the the facility this week i i just wonder where the psyche is of this team and again we don't know because mean, you guys don't even have access to the locker room. Not that that reveals everything, but I'm wondering where the internal divisions, confidences, where's the cohesion, how long that can stay together. Because you've got a lot of external things already pushing down on them. You've got the Delta variant sort of lurking in the shadows. You've got three key players that we know of besides Cousins. We got Thielen and Harrison Smith who are unvaccinated. When is that shoe possibly going to drop?

How is that going to play when it comes out publicly? There's going to be a lot of I told you so's out there. There's going to be a lot of I told you so's out there. There's going to be a lot of a vibe. You know, Zimmer has made it clear that this is a shotgun marriage with Cousins, and the tension is thick. He doesn't waste any opportunity to ding him along the way. How much longer is that going to roll off Cousins back if it even does anymore. I just, the externals are things that need to be paid attention here because you can always say we're going to go into the film room, we're going to clean some things up, we're going to work on crowd noise, we're going to work on the false starts, we're going to work on technique, hands, footwork for the line.

We're going to maybe mix a few more things in here and there on the offense. Defense played fairly decent yesterday but at a certain point there's a lot of other uncontrolled factors that are going to be playing here and oh by the way you've got opponents that probably look at the Vikings now as the Vikings maybe looked at the Bengals yesterday as a vulnerable opponent folks Minnesota football is back and there's no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the internet for Minnesota football tickets anymore, because TickPick, that's T-I-C-K, P-I-C-K, is the original no-fee ticket site,

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Minnesota sports inspired goods. And keep your eye out for our soda stick giveaways. You know, I think if we're trying to find what the answer is to overcome the shortcomings that they have along the offensive line, there are some things that could improve, but some things that probably won't. Like Rashad Hill is not going to become a different person at left tackle. We could see Ole Udo improve, maybe not body slam another guy after a play. You could probably learn from that. We're probably not going to see Garrett Bradbury improve at this point.

Sort of after yesterday, I thought, well, you've had two full NFL off seasons to not give up four pressures and not commit two penalties. And that wasn't Aaron Donald. That was a good player he was facing, but it was not Aaron Donald. So that's not going to change. Ezra Cleveland, I thought, had a very tough day. He might be able to improve arow. He made some great throws, some absolutely spectacular throws, but they also sacked him five times.

And they also showed a little more pressure from other people other than Daniil Hunter, like Michael Pierce getting two sacks and some other pressures that they sent from Mike Zimmer scheming them up and I guess I walked out of there thinking if you are going to survive this early tough part of the schedule which after a loss suddenly looks tough it looked very manageable before if you get the win but now it suddenly looks difficult and especially the way that the three teams that they're playing against played in week one it It's really Zimmer and the defense again. It's kind of on them because as I laid out it, when it's shootouts, the Vikings don't win those games in recent years and they don't have the

offensive line to win those games. They need to be able to run first and put themselves in advantageous situations for the offensive line. So I think it comes down to can you as a defense do enough to slow down Kyler Murray to slow down Russell Wilson to slow down Baker Mayfield and get through this difficult portion of the schedule because after that it's Jared Goff it's Sam Darnold you're kind of back in the game if you can just survive this but I think it it's ultimately going to come down to you know exactly what kirk cousins will give you so mike zimmer they put all this money into your defense

go defense well i think vikings fans got a nice uh look to it what michael pierce could have given them last year yeah that's true yeah i mean i i think did he say he only had a couple sacks in his career or it was a single digit totalit total? Three for his career and two yesterday. Yeah, two yesterday. And he's just a beast. He's reminiscent of maybe Pat Williams and Kevin Williams in the Williams wall or Tony Saragusa where he's kind of a presence and he's a disruption. And he's going to take two guys probably to block him.

Teams are going to try to avoid him. If he can contribute to pressure and sacks and you know daniel hunter it took him a while to show up but when he did show up he also had a big play um i think this is still going to cut yeah like you said it's it's a mike zimmer's team it's going to come down to defense it's going to come come down to pass defense it's going to come down to the guys that he relies on the harrison smith. You know, Anthony Barr, just reading tea leaves, maybe inching closer to returning to the lineup, how effective he will be after a long layoff spanning two seasons.

We're not sure, but I think these are key players. These are where the investments were made. This is where the commitment was made. It's where the coach's mindset and heart is. You're right. There's going to be a lot of the vikings are going to succeed it's going to be 21 14 16 to 13 these are the kind of games that they're going to have to win and oh by the way uh we didn't really get a chance to talk about him much but i don't know you got to feel a little good about greg joseph

rising to the occasion huh i mean here's a journeyman. Again, I was preparing for the calamity to come, as it usually does in the kicking game. But he steps up and just drills, not once, but twice, after the Bengals successfully iced him or tried to ice him and sneak it in before the kick went off. So he nailed that field goal twice at the end of regulation. They were trending toward another defining moment for Joseph in overtime, which I think would have been the ultimate.

Look, there's still 60 more games for this to go off the rails. But I think that was one area where Vikings fans were holding their breath and probably Zimmer as well. That was resolved. How about your new punter coming up big and keeping the ball pinned deep, especially with that kick in overtime, I think it was about 63 yards. So special teams look good. So, like, you know, it's not like the leaks were everywhere on the ship.

There were just two of them. Everybody knows where they are. Everybody's been spackling and duct taping it for a long time, and it didn't hold. And that's where this is going to play out week by week by week until something really dramatically shifts that narrative. How about your new punter is not a line that I expected to hear from Brian Murphy in our first Monday morning Murph, but the special teams is better.

The defense, one of the issues with defense in general is that it's weak link. And we saw this yesterday. They got a lot of good performances on defense, but one guy, and it wasn't only Bashad Breland's fault. They ran for 149 yards too. So, you know, it wasn't only him. And Michael Pierce even said after the game hey they brought me here to stuff the run i didn't do a good enough job of that we didn't do a good enough

job of that but overall you saw this defense is going to be much better there's no question about it it's just what the weak links are enough of a crack to open the door to where it's not going to be 2017 there were stretches of offense in 2017 where they weren't good and it didn't matter they won a game in Atlanta like 13 to 9 or something and it just didn't matter because they shut down Atlanta's offense with their number one defense and that was it and you can win when you don't play well I don't think they're going to be good enough to win when the offense doesn't play well but I do think they're going to be good enough to win when the offense doesn't play well, but I do think they're going to continue to be good. If Bashad Breeland can not have that day over again, where by the way, he had a 26 PFF grade.

That's about as low as you're ever going to see a cornerback ever get. He was targeted eight times, gave up 107 yards, two touchdowns, and had the key penalty. So that was about the roughest day you can have if you're Bashad Breland. But aside from that, I think we saw a lot on the defense that Mike Zimmer was getting excited about throughout training camp. And it's a healthy defense. To me, that's the path. It's just you can't put yourself behind in any way if you're the offense. And now we're talking about a team with the second most expensive salary cap hit for its

quarterback. And we're saying, well, you've got to stay ahead of the sticks with the run game and you've got to play defense. And it's just a weird place to be as a franchise. And I think that that always gets highlighted after a game like this. When you start the season, a game you should have won or, you know, opponent that isn't all that strong that we all wrote down W's is like, where are you as a team when you don't win a game like this? Now, on the other side of the coin, there's some other teams. And I just wanted to get your opinion quick before we wrap up about the NFC North, which, oh, oh my gosh like what happened everybody's in first place

right everyone's taught well technically the vikings are in first place because of the point differential and the strength of opponent uh but what what did you make of the packers just getting absolutely demolished well i was kind of interested i i was really impressed with what uh aaron andrews was able to get out of rogers finally a little bit of truth, even though in the pregame interview, I don't know if you saw that or read some of the text on that, although, again, it was classic passive-aggressive Aaron Rodgers. I didn't really want to make a big deal in the media about this, but your handlers certainly did,

and they made it clear through the leaks what your problems were. I think that's hanging over that franchise right now. I think the fan base is ornery i think the management coaching staff are not thrilled with how that played out uh over the offseason and he looked awful yesterday now there were several reasons he looked awful uh but that pick as they were driving in the red zone you know terrible pass um i don't was it adams that he threw behind i can't remember who he threw behind on that last pick there. I just – I don't – you know, so you know there's a lot of hand-wringing going on in Green Bay right now. Detroit, I don't know.

I don't – I mean, it was very exciting what they were able to produce there in the fourth quarter, but ultimately they lost that game extremely early. The Bears and Andy Dalton, I don't know. I don't see that – I don't see much there. Granted, now they're out in L.A. Rams are obviously psyched to have Matthew Stafford and also have that defense and have a full stadium. That could be one of the biggest home field advantages in the league. Again, it looks like it's all there for the taking. So maybe the Vikings can afford to get this mulligan out of the way uh it is week one we may be just kind of laughing about it uh when the leaves turn and the snow

flies but if every team is going to have a mulligan in week one well then maybe the vikings could join in and have that feel comfortable in that however the stretch coming up as you mentioned at arizona home against russell wilson home against baker mayfield who even though they lost last night or yesterday to kansas city i i take that guy in a knife fight any day so i i feel like this has the potential as everybody says early on oh and one shouldn't be a reason to panic but this oh and1 feels decidedly different because it can snowball and also the way it happened I was actually thinking about this yesterday that

if the Vikings switched results with the Packers I think there would be more there would be more freak out there would be oh my gosh we got killed by the Bengals but in a lot of ways it would be easier to just write off and say well look you know you clearly weren't ready and you got blown out and things went wrong fast.

And that happens sometimes in week one. I once witnessed the Buffalo Bills beat the New England Patriots 31 to zero in opening week. And Tom Brady eventually raised that Lombardi trophy at the end of the year. So like that, it happens all the time. There's just a weird, bizarro game, and okay, well, I guess you just write that off and move on. It almost felt worse to have a chance to win it after playing as poorly as they did and then not coming through with that than it would have to just, like,

well, this game was a wash and there's nothing to even talk about here. So it will be very fun to track with you all season long, Murph. And I'm glad to have your columns on Purple Insider. People can go to purpleinsider.substack.com to check that out. We'll be doing this reacting after every game here on Monday morning. Murph, aren't you excited, Brian? I am. And I even got in a WKRP in Cincinnati reference today.

And I was worried, like, you know, that's a 40 year old sitcom. I don't know what the average age is of your audience. I hope they get the reference. I saw that you did. So maybe there's hope. Oh, I knew it. Yeah, I knew it. Yep. Turkeys cannot fly. No, they cannot. So I was actually going to ask you one more question. I'm sorry if you have to go or you have something to do today.

I do, but I'm good. Okay. I work for you now, Collar. I know. I know. So you're on here as long as I make you. For obscene amounts of cash that I'm just heaving in the air and you're picking up off the ground.

What should people want out of this season when we talk about it like this? So everyone loses in the NFC North and last year's NFC East sort of flashed through my mind. Like, oh man, like what if everyone is sort of fighting each other with, you know, pool toys or whatever in the streets over getting to eight wins or something? Like, is that what you're looking for? Is it like win the division even if it's eight games is that a successful season like i started to think about that like what is a successful season well it's a successful season is a playoff berth no doubt what i want to see though is clarity can you succeed in this league with kirk cousins as

your quarterback can you succeed in this league uh by to the run first? Can you win in the 16 to 13 fashion of, you know, three yards in a pile of mud? Can you do that in 2021 NFL? Can you have an old school coach and a longing kind of a general manager who's dying to, you know, shape his legacy and maybe get this team back to the Super Bowl for the first time in 45 years. Can you do that? Can you win with Cousins? Can you satisfy a fan base that is conditioned for collapse all the time? Yesterday, all it does is fuel that anxiety so that's what i think i i want to see is is this going to work with this quarterback in this regime and this scheme on both sides of the ball can that succeed yeah and if it means nine wins or ten wins okay fine now you're there what are you going to do when it matters i think what you need is clarity if you get nine and eight

or eight and nine, you don't get a lot of clarity. You get a lot of muddled picture and then you got to make more decisions on the future. And that's that's going to be on ownership. So I think what you need is you need a successful playoff. I would say maybe a division win would help. Ten wins would certainly set a tone, maybe get a home playoff game, or just 5-12 and blow it all up. But what you don't want is that mediocre thread down the middle where you're still left with a lot of unknowns going forward. Right. It's either do or don't.

Win something or... Burn it down. Give us the answers to what this team is going to be going forward. Yeah, that's right. Great stuff, Murph. Great to catch up with you, and we will do it again after Arizona. Thanks, buddy. Can't wait.