Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Star Tribune's Andrew Krammer can't wait for Stroud vs. Flores

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Matthew Coller and Star Tribune's Andrew Krammer give a hardcore breakdown of Vikings-Texans Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here along with Andrew Kramer of the Star Tribune inside TCO Performance Center where we are prepared to give you the hardest of hardcore previews to Vikings. I was trying to think, how do I usually say this? Hardcore preview, I guess, of the Vikings and the Houston Texans. So two football teams that feel like they're in pretty good shape, Mr. Kramer. Where do you want to start with this one? Would you like to begin with a very rarely covered subject, which is the quarterbacks? I think so, yeah.

We don't talk often about draft classes and quarterbacks and young quarterbacks. So why not start with C.J. Stroud? You know, that's a good point point is that just like punt gunners, we barely ever get into them. Okay, I'll stop being silly. C.J. Stroud is so awesome. Your take. He is pretty great, right?

I think it was funny listening to Kevin O'Connell talk about and try to mince his words when talking about Stroud because he wanted to praise him while also saying, it's incredibly rare what he's doing. This isn't normal. And while trying to temper the praise as well because this is not normal what he's doing. And Kevin O'Connell has a theory and a way of doing things

with young quarterbacks as a head coach that C.J. Stroud has just bucked the whole trend for. And if you're Kweisi Adolfo Mensah the whole trend for and if you're quesi adolfo mensa it's april and you're thinking of drafting a guy you're telling kevin well cj did it well why do you why do we need to wait why do we need sam darnel why am i spending 10 million dollars when we can draft the guy so kevin went up there and said like look this guy's amazing all these things being very very effusive and then made the point to say I felt he would have been most ready to make an immediate impact um you know to kind of back up his judgment of J.J. McCarthy who started off as number three quarterback here and presumably would have been not the starter week one even if he had

stayed healthy so it's fascinating to see what Stroud has done also as Bryce Young in that draft class is getting benched as Anthony Richardson is losing on the road at Green Bay to Malik Willis this guy's incredible he's an NFL unicorn because you just don't see guys do this very often there's only a handful of examples that we can ever think of Ben Roethlisberger is one of them Dak Prescott but the thing that was similar with those guys is that their franchises were in very good shape Dak Prescott had one of the best offensive lines of the last 20 years in that 2016 season, and Ben Roethlisberger had an elite defense where he had to throw for 120 yards a game and then get them to the playoffs.

And I think they went something like 15-1, and he rarely had to put the team on his back. And it happens so rarely that those are the examples that come to mind for me with someone succeeding quickly. And then C.J. stroud does it you got a theory like what is it now we shouldn't ever talk about him as some sort of underdog that the league missed on he went number two overall so he was a freak level prospect who dominated college football and i'm sure was a five-star recruit to go to ohio state so this isn't some sort of wow they found him

in a cornfield out there in Nebraska that he just knew how to play football it's like no this guy has been on the radar for a very long time but why has it happened so fast for him do you think well you mentioned the good team around him I think that's a huge component of it this was not a Carolina situation what the thought exercise is what would CJ have been like in Carolina when the offense is getting overturned because it may be the coach doesn't get fired last year but the offense still hasn't been great the pieces haven't been great around Bryce Young it's the exact opposite in Houston where D'Amico Ryan's instilled a new culture a new

defense and he brought along an offensive coordinator who's brought the the um san francisco style and bobby slow it coming over there and you've seen it work and that's i think i saw some breakdown of the top 10 passers in the league or something and it was either um in terms i think was epa per play and it was either hyper mobile guys or kyle shanahan mike or gary kubiak guys and those are the systems that are friendly for these quarterbacks that are winning in the nfl right now and so cj found himself not only ready personally and ready for the moment nothing was too big for him as Kevin O'Connell mentioned watching him but he also stepped into a great situation where Nico Collins is developing into a top five wide receiver the dude did nothing at

Michigan State what is he doing developing into that but that's what he gets and then they acquire Stefan Diggs Tank Dell is a weapon that they get um I heard that the front office in Houston is is asking Stroud what do you want in the draft and he says how about my my friend Cade Stover a tight end at Ohio State and then it's a backup guy behind Dalton Schultz but he might be the starter in three years and gonna be CJ Stroud's best. So it's an organizational thing around him where they've embraced this guy and he's kind of paid off and paid dividends with every investment they've made. So with CJ Stroud, I think he would have been fine in Carolina. I don't think he would have been this good. I think he's in the category of Alan Mahomes, where he's sort of undefeatable and he would have been through more struggles but it

also would have been much easier to build around him and what I see in Carolina right now is they have I think a decent enough offensive line to succeed and decent enough receivers to succeed not in the same way that Stroud is doing it but as in Bryce Young got broken last year and this is what I want to talk about with Stroud, is that I feel like this is an unbreakable dude who came to a franchise that was down and awful, and it's not like any of these receivers did anything before, and then all of a sudden he's got guys from last year. Now they get digs, of course, but he's got guys last year,

even when Tank Dell goes down, who are rising to the challenge because they have the quarterback. So it's a little bit of chicken and egg. I mean, I feel like if you're a Brown, right, last year for them. Yes, that's what I was trying to think. Like, who was the rando that just started catching passes all over the place? But you think Dave Canales just last year was succeeding with Tampa Bay. Frank Reich had been a proven coach with Indianapolis.

Helped that he had andrew luck right i mean so i think that trying to pick apart offensive line is usually a big deal but then the texans have not had a great offensive line this just might be a guy who understands where to throw the football how to avoid huge mistakes and has an unbelievable arm, like the perfect combination of Peyton Manning-like stuff. I mean, I don't know. What's too far with C.J. Stroud to say it kind of reminds me of someone like Peyton Manning because he's such a savant and he understands the game so well to go along with the physical tools. I don't know if there's any team in the league similar to Burrow.

Burrow's first year was really tough, but as soon as they got some players, he was fantastic. I don't know if there's any situation in the league that to burrow like burrow's first year was really tough but as soon as they got some players he was fantastic i don't know if there's any situation in the league that could have ruined cj stroud yeah if cj were running his own offense like peyton did then we'll get to there but i think with peyton's an interesting comp because you mentioned that you think cj could weather a bad start well peyton did that obviously with the colts starting 1 and 15 and being awful his first season and still was not ruined by that. So you're right. I think when I see Stroud enter the game against the bears, um, would have been last Sunday night or whatever it was. Um, he just looks like you just ice cold behind him. You just don't see anything in his face. And that is something that's always stood out to me when you look at him, because that's not every quarterback, a lot of quarterbacks,

you can see the emotion of what they're going through, what they're feeling. You can see it in Sam Darnold. And that's not necessarily a bad thing if you know how to channel that and ride it, but a lot of guys don't. A lot of guys get in their feelings and get spooked and get worried, and you see Brock Purdy not trusting his throws against a Vikings defense that's rotating late and confusing him with coverages. C.J. Stroud just seems to calmly avoid making those bad decisions when he doesn't

know things and when things go wrongly has an ability to bounce back that's pretty uncanny so the fact that he's mobile too you have to have that in today's game and i think that has just helped him elevate beyond while he's learning the position on the go that's helped him kind of elevate his game so i've noticed that there's a lot of discussion about uh the lack of scoring in the nfl which i think i saw that points per game are down by three so maybe it's only been two weeks and things will open up as we go along here defenses may have made some adjustments also bad quarterbacks will get benched for andy dalton and maybe those numbers will change a little bit but i also think that defenses have gotten so complicated and Mr.

Flores is right at the center of this, that they're not showing what coverages they're playing at the line of scrimmage where when Peyton Manning was playing, he would walk to the line of scrimmage. The guys would be lined up and he could say, okay, that is a zone coverage. I mean, even you and I, just from covering the game for long enough, we know if a

guy goes in motion and someone goes with him it's man or if he doesn't it's zone but you know who figured that out was defenses and they started going maybe we'll move them but then we'll still play a zone we'll just have everybody else switch the number of checks and changes this was a discussion about blake cashman and what he's brought is he's making calls and checks all the time out there to make adjustments to what the offense is doing so I think the quarterbacks that are thriving are the ones that either have the mobility as part of it uh cannons also helps where they can react a little bit later and still get the ball in there but I also think it's identifying post snap what you're seeing as opposed to just pre-snap which you were always taught as you're coming up as a quarterback and that's what cj stroud i think really thrives in

is seeing defenses post snap so how do you think the battle will play out between flores v stroud yeah this is i think one of the most interesting tests especially when you go back and watch the san francisco game back where trent williams didn't look good. Now I know Pat Jones has made strides and I'm sure he has, we've seen it. Um, but I don't think he dominates an imprime Trent Williams that way. And Trent just wasn't the same. And I think that Niners offense wasn't the same, um, as we're used to seeing and credit to Brian Flores, this veteran secondary for throwing Brock Purdy off. But I don't think they're going to secondary for throwing Brock Purdy off but I don't think they're going to throw off CJ Stroud as easily I don't think they're going to be able to

get to him as easily because Stroud is more mobile makes more plays on the move even though Purdy's capable of that I think Stroud has done it more consistently especially throwing on the run and finding the guys to throw to and just their weapons it's going to help if the Texans don't have Joe Mixon in the backfield. I think that would be a big boost. He mispracticed Wednesday and Thursday this week because their run game has been huge. Whether it was Devin Singletary last year, Mixon this year, they know how to scheme a run game and that certainly helps any quarterback. But I think if the Vikings are to win this, it's going to be a similar game plan with what they did against San Francisco. I just think Stroud is that guy who's more capable of elevating and making transcendent plays

where it doesn't matter what you did post-snap because I'm going to make this play seven seconds long. Well, that's right. His ability to scramble around and throw off-platform on the move is so spectacular. And it was something that just shows you how difficult draft analysis is i was thinking about jj mccarthy for this because all the things they said about cj stroud have just not been true i mean it's just well he can only really be a pocket quarterback and he's not a playmaker and all this like uh i don't know when it happened but it happened probably that uh game against georgia in the college playoff was the first time that people had really talked about it but with jj mccarthy i kind of was

applying some of the same things where personality wise you know i think that cj stroud has this really deep love for football this obsession with football that you see in mccarthy but i also was thinking about how different i felt about mccarthy than when i watched him in college that you see in McCarthy. But I also was thinking about how different I felt about McCarthy than when I watched him in college, that you never really know how someone's going to react to the NFL environment. And I think what we saw from McCarthy was him really embrace it. You got to be a football psycho and you got to, you know, work twice as hard as you ever did in college before. And you have to have this obsession with the game and knowledge and

learning and take this learning approach there's a curiosity about Stroud and McCarthy and we'll get to Darnold obviously but just made me think about young quarterbacks and when you're looking at this guy you go well what relates to other guys to help me understand what works at a young age and I think they do have shades of each other yeah I think it's interesting too Stroud's broken the notion that you have to wait and develop a quarterback. He's broken the notion of the S2 test as some cognitive thing that could really determine who can process in football terms. Because wasn't he supposedly one of the lowest performers in that? And, of course, he's the best processor in that draft class.

I just love how rare this guy is. And he has. It's kind of flown in the face of the common sense or kind of what the NFL would like to do with these quarterbacks, which Kevin O'Connell says, we want to develop these guys slowly and wait. And with him, he's just been able to make these plays on the run where it shows that this draft process, the months that we spend talking about these guys, you really don't know. and when i see mccarthy i see a similar ice coldness behind him sometimes that you see in stroud i just haven't seen it in an nfl game yet right outside of you know the preseason game but bouncing back from the interception playing as

well as he did i know this is weeks and weeks ago it has nothing to do with today but it does have to do with the future uh of the vikings now as of uh for sunday what do you think part of the defense is going to be the most challenged by mr stroud i think it's the secondary and finally i think debo samuel went for over 100 yards brock purdy threw for over 300 they were able to move the ball against the vikings but the third downs um the vikings just owned it against bro Purdy. And I think those third downs, those critical downs, fourth downs are going to be so much tougher against a more creative quarterback. And Brock Purdy is an anticipatory thrower. He's much more like Tua in that sense, where he's really good when things are on schedule. He's better than Tua, I think,

at creating off schedule. However, they're on schedule quarterbacks. And Stroud's that guy who just seems to be able to do both in a way that very – you mentioned Josh Allen. We obviously see Mahomes do that. Lamar, MVP-caliber guys can do that. And so I think that's why this Vikings team is going to be stressed in the secondary where you're going to have to cover longer than you're used to covering because Dallas Turner's hurt.

He had a pretty big brace on his right knee, wasn't at practice today, so he might not play. And if it's just Pat Jones, Van Ginkle, and Grenard, that's a lot of firepower for them. But in the fourth quarter, those legs are going to get heavy chasing Stroud around. This is where Patrick Jones might have to carry it on. And not only that, but Jahad Ward has been big for them so far, and I didn't really see that coming, to tell you the truth.

But he has been a big addition and goes under the category of now when they sign someone, I'm just going to assume Brian Flores saw something, even if the guy in the past that doesn't have been a big impact, Bobby McCain, MVP, exactly. Someone could be 37 years old and have never had good numbers.

And Brian Flores signs, I'm going to be like, great signing. That's, that's who you want. That's just, I don't know. It's not the Chris Herndon's of the past where we went, really, is that who you want on your team?

But they do have enough depth at that position. The corners, you're right, have not been vertically challenged much, and they were talking about this after the game, that they haven't allowed any big explosive plays over the top. And, of course, that's what every nfl defense is trying to do and the pass rush has a huge amount to do with that but this team has some very exceptional wide receivers collins and dell are great deep wide receivers and then digs is doing his underneath thing how do you feel about digs's role in in how this fits in and if he adds

something a little more dangerous because someone is going to have to guard him underneath yeah that's what i'm curious about and honestly the vikings underneath coverage you talk about the over the top stuff that's been great um but their underneath stuff has been just as good josh metellus blake cashman have made so many plays diving on some of these hook and under routes and And that's going to be huge, yeah, against a guy like Stephon Diggs. Because the Giants tried to do that with Malik Neighbors a little bit. The Niners tried to do it with Brandon Ayuk, and it didn't really work at times.

With Juszczyk, with Mason out of the backfield. And there were just incredible pass breakups that we've seen these guys make in the middle of the Vikings' defense. So they're going to have to play incredibly well against Stephon. Nico's the guy, though. I mean, 250're going to have to play incredibly well against Stefan. Nico's the guy though. I mean, 250 yards to lead the NFL in receiving through two games. What is he? Six foot four.

The stuff he can do is just incredible on the field right now. And he's become a technician in a way that I never saw. Certainly when he was in the big 10. So for him to be that guy, that's the guy that they're going to have to have a Malik neighbor style game plan for. And what we saw from the Vikings in week one was it was Stephon Gilmore shadowing Malik neighbors on almost every down. And the only time that I think Malik's first big play, if I remember correctly, came when Gilmore didn't shadow him for some reason.

Big 25-yarder in the middle of a zone off of Shaq Griffin. So I think they're going to have to have a similar plan where it's a lot of Harrison Smith and buying him over the top it's a lot of Stephon Gilmore getting in his face pressing him trying to slow him down giving that pass rush enough time um because yeah this and then oh by the way Tank Dell might go 75 yards you know I don't remember maybe you can come up with an example another time where one guy was added to a defense and changed so much how i felt about the defense than stefan gilmore when they signed him of course you're going to kind of go well you know what does he have left and so forth but my research on that found that if a corner actually gets to that age they usually play pretty well uh but most corners don't get to

that age so most of them do fall off but if you've gotten to the your mid-30s like terrence newman you must be doing it on maybe athleticism that's left over from when you were elite and he was elite as an athlete gilmore when he came out but also the intelligence the toughness the preparation all those different things i was talking to brandon powell in the locker room and i just asked him like, what does Stefan Gilmore do to let him still play at this age? And he said, he knows your routes before you run them. He is so good at reading body movement. He reads route combinations. Patrick Peterson did the same thing. The athleticism might not be top notch, but he still has such great instincts and all that many hours and hours and hours that are built in that he is still

a very good player if they were playing a Caleb Evans or Fabian Morrow I would feel different about this defense because I would know that they had a weakness that opponents could take advantage of and Patrick didn't play under Flores here right and he left after 2022 yep yeah I would have been interested to see how Patrick would have played under Flores um here because I think Gilmore's they're getting more out of Gilmore than they got out of Patrick and Patrick has his own defender he transitioned because he's primarily man transitioned decently and actually made a lot of plays that 2022 season but yeah Gilmore two games in they just put him on Malik neighbors and he kind of shut him down and there were times where they sent Malik neighbors on a go and they would

just trust Gilmore to be the only guy on that side of the field. Daniel Jones is really bad at football. So I understand we can't take a ton away from that. However, you're seeing him get in his face and get in receivers faces and already to be trusted with a number one assignment like that says a lot. I do think it's also noteworthy that when he came here, Brian Flores

had a good anecdote where he had mentioned that they called like a check for a blitz and we're going to send Stephon Gilmore on a blitz. And after the play, he made the crack Gilmore cracked. I'm not here to blitz because he's not. And also he needs to be healthy. And the fact that he's in his 13th year, same draft class as Harrison Smith and playing the way he's playing in coverage, you got to keep him healthy. I think a team that beats this Vikings defense is going to learn to run on the perimeter run at these older guys in the secondary and try to get at it that way because if you make Gilmore tackle then you might slow him down a little bit folks U.S. Cellular noticed that the way we use our phones has gotten ironic.

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Visit uscellular.com slash built for us to get started. Right, and really, San Francisco, they put them in a game position where they were not able to continue to run even as much as and they ran a lot but they would have run even more had they been leading uh but the fact that they were chasing from behind it was almost like the vikings could say well we're okay with you running and getting five yards and five yards and running out the clock because you're behind uh but you're going to have to create explosive plays if you're actually going to be able to beat us.

And they couldn't. They nickel and dimed, but they did not create big explosive plays. And I think the same thing goes for the Texans who do not have healthy running backs, and that could be a major problem for them because that is what Brian Flores, I think, wants you to try to beat him with. Go ahead.

We've got some fat guys in the middle, and we're just not going to make this easy for you. And I think there has been a trickle-down effect because if you don't have a Gilmore and it's a Caleb Evans on your top receiver, then it doesn't matter what you do elsewhere. They've got that matchup they could try to take advantage of. But when you don't have one that is obvious that you can go after,

and Shaq Griffin, I think, has been the best version they could have asked for so far, then it's all coming together. Health is of course a big deal for this with Sam Darnold. How much do you want to react to what happens this week regarding Sam Darnold? And I mean, either outcome, if it doesn't work out very well, if it's just okay, if it's very good, if it's absolutely awesome, you as a very rational gentleman, how much weight do you want to put on what happens this week? Yeah, I was thinking about it in your monologue there, and I don't know because what we've seen has been so impressive, right? What we've seen, 97-yard touchdown, making some mistakes

but bouncing back from them. You know, Fred Warner is probably one of the five guys in the league who makes that interception. That just does not happen very often. So that one I'm not, you know, taking or putting too much on Darnold, but the one in New York was bad. And you're waiting, I think if you're a skeptic like I have been, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. You're waiting for him to kind of crumble and make the mistakes that lose you games. But he's won now. He just beat an NFC opponent in

a close one score game. Could have been a two score game, but they won that one by. So for me, I don't want to overreact too much. If this goes wrong. I think the only way it becomes overly concerning is if this is a 40 to three Dallas Cowboys style beat down that the Vikings have lost before when they were a good team in 2022. So that's the only way where if you see that, you're like, oh, I didn't know that was in this team. I didn't know that was in Sam Darnold to come back out of him. Here it is. I think that's the only way that this becomes overly concerning. If he makes a bad decision on third down at the end of the game they lose a tight game you're thinking this team is who we thought they were they're a plucky bunch of upstart retooled uh retooled roster that's

coming for the league and trying to compete with the journeyman quarterback I think that's what they are and and they've gotten the best out of their talent so far and I think they're going to make it competitive on Sunday. So last nine starts for Sam Darnall, going back to the start of 2022. And statisticians absolutely hate numbers like this. I want you to guess, though. Don't think about his record too hard. His record in quarterback rating, his last nine starts.

Six and three. OK, so you knew his record. I didn't. I guessed it because I knew he had won a bunch at the end in carolina okay that is his record okay um and then you want to ask the rating passer yes quarterback rating since 2022 i don't think it's that great i would guess 95 97.5 okay okay yeah that actually is pretty great yeah because it oh yeah you're right and for him especially um well we just don't have too many guys putting up 112 quarterback ratings like aaron rogers anymore i mean 97 would probably put you in the top like 10 yeah this year the way passing games are right now yeah and i i know why somebody would hate that stat because it stretches over three different teams in three different

years and there's so much context lost on all of that but that just shows that this guy can step into different situations and be manageable and that's what they need when tj hockinson comes back this offense is going to be that much better they don't need him to be a hero and you've spent the offseason talking about how this guy has sucked at playing hero ball trying to be the hero when they're down and trying to will a team to victory and sam has put notion to that by saying that i learned the role of a quarterback in San Francisco from Brock Purdy how to be a point guard how to manage games so that's all they need and I think he can be that it's just you're waiting to see if he can be consistent because you've seen the six and three stretch but I think that included when one of those wins was when he passed for 45 yards and threw two picks yeah it's actually really funny because the previous week he played great and they lost because their defense gave up a ton of points.

So it sort of evened out there as win-loss record tends to do over a career. It can be a little wonky there. But I guess my point is that in real earthly time, it has been a long time since the guy's been terrible like he played really well at the end of 2022 save for that weird game where he threw 15 passes and they won uh but other than that he played really well in that stretch then he goes to san francisco and he wins a job which is part of the whole confidence of sam darnold winning the backup job there against someone that the team had drafted number three overall and then when he got into a random game that they were losing he played pretty

well and then his start went just fine for them at the end of the season he comes here he has two very good games so now you are building up it's been a long time since the 2021 Carolina Panthers happened for him and I think that it's building on itself. And when there's all these, if you just sort of said, hey, there's a bunch of buckets you can draw from in football that build up your quarterback. So two offensive tackles that are really great. There's a bucket I'm going to draw from.

Although Brian O'Neill had something huge on his arm today. I'm a little concerned about that. The elbow, this giant elbow pad. Anyway. I could tell you about it. Oh, yeah? Yeah, he's fine. It's big.

He had an MRI. It was all good. Oh, he's talking about it? Yeah, he played through it. He said he took a shot in practice last Wednesday. You're right, though. It's the same elbow he had an issue with in 2019 and 2020, but he said this is a new injury on it.

Oh, okay. Well, he's playing Daniel Hunter, so. It does matter. You're right. It does matter a little. And Ingram, equally sized brace on his tricep. Yeah. Yep.

He doesn't need anything else to happen to him. Did that happen when the 49ers guy threw him? Or anyway, that's not the point. We shouldn't obsess over guards when you have a good offensive line, finally. Anyway, tackles that can slow down brian burns and uh nick bosa the two highest play paid players in the league okay there's one bucket uh coach who believes in you and gets wide receivers open with his route combination there's another bucket running game there's another bucket the best

wide receiver on earth there's another bucket i mean he just has so much here and i think that what was hard to figure out even through training camp was is he so lost as a quarterback that even all that can't do anything uh i mean rick meyer is the one that for some reason because i'm old comes to mind of teams kept signing rick meyer because they thought oh yeah like he was a top draft pick he'll be fine and it never worked out for him it's been tried many times let's pick up the guy who didn't work out somewhere else but in this case it is very rare that you can draw from every one of those buckets and a defense that makes it so if you screw up they're gonna get a stop on the way back that's what makes me think and the growing sample of him playing better going back to Carolina that there is not a cliff to fall off now there is I

mean right now he's one of the best quarterbacks in the league but I don't think that cliff is coming as long as all those things stay intact yeah and I think one of the biggest components is the confidence from the head coach right in the play calling from o'connell that trusted voice in his ear and that if something does go wrong he's not getting uh the riot act read to him he's not fearing a mistake and and we see coaches who put that fear in their culture of fear you say we've seen that it was interesting i heard a story recently remember jalen redmond getting thrown out of practice in training camp um the defensive tackle um he went inside to the locker room was fearing at the time that oh god the coach is going to come in and just destroy me for this i'm i'm a

you know nothing defensive tackle trying to make the team and apparently o'connell walked in and just said i'm not mad at you we just got rules just don't do it again and kind of walked away just didn't like that's how o''Connell handles these things when it's, you know, the other coaches would handle things differently. And key mistakes by quarterbacks in critical situations of games, we have not seen him get on whether it was Kirk or whether it's Sam Darnold or Josh Dobbs last year. He doesn't rule with an iron fist with these guys. And I think that matters when they're talking about kind of managing the psyche

of Sam Darnold, when Josh McCown talks about that, when O'Connell talks about that, they're all doing everything that they can to kind of be mindful of his mindset, whether it's going over plays he didn't do well after wins or when they eventually lose a game, why they lost it, and if he played a part in it. I think that is all such a key component aside from the tackles, the wide receivers the defense it's that he's kind of got this wind in his sails that's pushing him um that really not every quarterback gets i also feel like it was really important to

have the first game go the way that it did and small samples etc but o'connell showed trust in him right away in that first game, even when they were ahead. And I was saying, Kevin, can we run the ball here? Why are you throwing an interception when you're up in the game against the Giants when you just run the clock out? They went for it on fourth down in that game. They threw a 44-yard pass to Justin Jefferson in that game.

And something for athletes, athletes coaches even us as we evaluate stuff we got to see it work and once you see it work and it worked in practice but once you see it work in a game there's a little bit of a you know what the next time he dials up that 50 yard bomb I'm confident that I can make that throw and that Jefferson's going to bring it in, which will, I mean, just what an astonishing event of human athleticism with Justin Jefferson running by leaning on the guy. As I watched it over, I just, what an unbelievable route. He kind of leans on the guy, snaps back into the middle of the field, how anyone tracks a football at the speed that he's going at and just brings it in as if nothing is even happening. I mean, I don't, I have no idea how any of this works, but he's the

greatest in the entire universe. So I guess that's how it works. But when you can see a man do that with the football you threw, you gotta be like, I'll do it again. I would feel, I would feel that way. And I just think all of these things have come together. And the other thing is, too, you're the quarterback, so you should do it all and you should make everybody better. In this case, it has to be everybody else pumping him up. Yeah. And Chandler being somebody that a defense can sleep on and get burned for sleeping on him, I think is huge for this or for this offense, because they haven't had that depth. They haven't had even last year, we saw one game with Chandler. It was the Bengals game where he had that kind of impact, but for him to go for 82 yards, for him to step in when Aaron Jones got hurt,

and you could tell the Niners weren't treating him like Aaron Jones, and they got burned for it. And I think he can create. And Kevin O'Connell called Chandler. He said he's just different. And that's pretty high praise for a running back who was a six-round pick and just a guy who was kind of on the scrap heap for a while here. So who's going to win this football contest? I keep picking him to lose, and I think I'm going

to do it again here. I'm not going to do the thing where I pick a different just, you know, just to kind of cover all my bases. No, I'm going to pick him to lose. I'll stay consistent. I just think C.J. Stroud is going to make it tougher on this defense. I think it's going to be a very close game. I think these are, they're worthy of the Texans. They just showed that last week against San Francisco. So I wouldn't be shocked if they won this game. I just think that some things are going to go their way that haven't in the first two games. They haven't had a whole lot of bad luck. So I'm picking more on the side of the quarterback being great and the fact that right now this Vikings team is kind of riding a high that it would be very NFL to kind of undercut it.

I'm concerned about D'Amico Ryans because I think he's very good at his job and his ability to scheme, the blitzes he might send at Sam Darnold and what type of answers I mean they've just they've played two quarterbacks without a lot of experience so this is a little different but they looked so nasty against the Chicago Bears and yet there's something that's pulling me toward picking the Vikings and you know what there's no consequences whatsoever for making a pick so i'm i think i might go three and oh here in very close fashion how about this will reichard will the thrill i love it thrills the fans at u.s bank stadium with a 54 yard field goal to win by two points over the houston texans one thing that we can say is that when I just said that

and you didn't roll your eyes and you're like, oh, maybe that'll happen, that says a lot about where this team is at and what they've shown over the last two weeks because just a few weeks ago, as everyone was picking the schedule, you're just like, loss, loss. I mean, they could have easily started one and six with the schedule that they have, and now we're talking about, hey, you know this Super Bowl contender in the AFC they're coming here and you could probably beat them yeah and it's

not like CJ Stroud just lit up the Bears so I do think this could be a relatively low scoring game that is a defensive struggle that the Vikings do make Stroud look a little mortal I just think that in those critical moments he's going to be able to transcend at times and make that kind of a play. So D'Amico Ryan's is a great point. You think back to the defensive coordinators they faced. It was two new ones in San Francisco and the Giants in terms of where they had been at and a guy who was promoted from within in San Francisco. So, yeah, I think this is going to be probably one of the best defense defenses they've seen. And probably when you look out their schedule the rest of the way, one of the one of the best that they'll see the rest of the way too i i think i i know i'm going a little

slightly irrational but the factors that are outside of the control of cj stroud being joe mixon being hurt i think that's a big element if they can't run the football and that's what bobby tries to build everything off u.s bank, for someone who's never been here before, might be difficult. That affected Purdy. Yeah, yeah, and Purdy had even been here before, but I thought it was louder. Am I making this up?

I thought it was louder in this game than it has been in a while. I was shocked at actually, yeah, how loud it got in some of those moments because there was a lot of red in the crowd. It was very much a mixed crowd. It wasn't 50-50, but I was still shocked loud the vikings fans who were there got it and that it's just it must just be a venue where you can maximize your noise unless they're pumping it in like the old metrodome oh well that would be against some rules and we would never accuse them of that i wish they would pump the fire back into that dragon but all right uh tennessee lost it for us you know what i think it was is the way they were playing i mean sure okay so maybe 10 of the crowd is too drunk to

understand what's going on but the other 90 of vikings fans they know what they're seeing when i mean when they're pressuring purdy when they're making stops when their guys are making plays there wasn't a feeling in the building of oh man they're probably going to blow this not with the way the defense was playing there is something about defense in a crowd when you see that other team suffocating and struggling and your guys are making plays i think that amps them up in ways that the vikings defense has not really come through with much in the last few years it's kind of wild too this vikings defense does not have star power they don't their star power is from the 2012 draft class um they don't have it so the fact that they're so fun to

watch speaks to what brian flores is doing speaks to the personality speaks to i mean whether it's the celebrations whether it's josh metallis's energy ivan pace like there's so many fun guys to watch on this defense not to mention the pass rushers and van ginkle what he does every other play um it is it's i think you're right i think the crowd would probably kind of um see themselves and that kind of kind of you know react to that certainly because you come to expect a big play rather than expecting that you're going to give up a 20 yard pass to mike white or something as was happening in 2022 anyway well we'll see we'll see what happens. That was rough. I'm just going to roll with it. I'm just going to roll with picking the Vikings 24 to 22. Sure.

That sounds about right. Scorigami. Andrew Kramer, Star Tribune. Matthew Collar, Inside TCO Performance Center. This is really fun. And guess what? We'll do it again next week. Ooh, Packers next week.

That'll be a good one. Football. Nah.