Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Star Tribune's Andrew Krammer explains how the Vikings maximized Sam Darnold's potential

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

Sam Darnold has been playing the best football of his career this season. Matthew Coller is joined by Andrew Krammer of the Minnesota Star Tribune to discuss the Vikings maximizing Darnold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar along with Andrew Kramer of the Star Tribune. And no, there will not be any singing on this episode as the Vikings will play the Chicago Bears. Believe it or not, I thought this was the off season with how much we spent this week talking about Sam Darnold and his future. But it is a game for the Minnesota Vikings. I almost said, though, I almost said it's a big game for the Minnesota Vikings. Is it a big game for the Minnesota Vikings? I mean, it's on TV.

That's big. And there's, you know, the season's almost over. It's a football game and everything but as i watch the playoff race play out here i don't know like its implications are enormous on the vikings so is this one that they could overlook that we're overlooking the world is maybe not talking about enough like what's your take on vikings bears yeah as long as you're one game out of the number one seed this is a huge game every game is huge you can't afford to lose a step on Detroit because you need them to lose a step to gain in order for that last game of the regular season to be for the NFC title like they want it to be. And that could be for home field advantage and a buy, the only buy now given out in the

playoffs. So yes, I think this is a huge game. I don't think it's a huge opponent. It's hard to get up for the Chicago Bears, especially when they lose their seventh in a row, the way that they lost against San Francisco. It just seems like a team that's been broken at this point. It seems like they've lost so many of those close games that even firing Matt Eberflus doesn't get them up for a game against San Francisco. So the opponent's tough, but the fact that it's Monday Night Football, the fact that you can't afford to really lose because you can't expect detroit to lose they might not lose once before the the season finale but you can't expect them to lose twice so i think for that sense of really kind of going out there and trying to seize what is a critical step of the playoffs

in the super bowl chase which is the number one overall seed this can be a huge game yeah so the reason it hasn't felt huge is entirely because the Bears have been so bad and so downtrodden, you would say. And also, I don't think anyone, including myself, has really gotten to the point of thinking that they're competing for the conference or even the division with the way that the Lions have been playing. But that's just wrong from my perspective, because the Lions are going to play the Bills and it's going to be in Buffalo. So that's a tough

environment for them to play. They have so many players banged up. And if suddenly on Sunday, we're walking out of that game with the Vikings with a chance to tie them up record wise. And then who knows with the tiebreakers when we get to the end, if the Vikings were to beat the lions week 18, but at very least the door would be opened. If the Vikings had beat the lions earlier this year, then it might feel a little bit different, but the fact that they lost to them, it seems like you're farther behind the Detroit lions than you actually are. So I agree. It's a big game, but let's talk about where Chicago is at going into this game. The quote from our friend, Courtney Cronin asking Caleb Williams about the

seven game losing streak. And he said, it's interesting was the best that he could come up with. And it really has been quite interesting. You got a coach fired an offensive coordinator before that you lost games in every single way possible. And yet, Andrew, whenever the Vikings play the Bears, especially a team that's lost all these close games, they haven't been blown out a lot. They're not just a laughingstock. They were blown out last week, but it's not like that's been what's happened on a week-to-week basis. I'm inclined to sit here and say, I don't know, it's hard to win seven games in a row. And the Bears could be that team that just surprises you by showing up and playing way better than you thought they could. Yeah.

And teams, players always talk about how weird stuff happens in these rematches. Or if you have to play a team for the third time in the playoffs, a division opponent, you know each other so well that we know these Vikings Bears games rarely go calmly or according to plan. Caleb Williams a month ago erases an 11-point deficit, forces overtime, forces Sam Darnold to go 90 yards for a game-winning score. I do think that this could be poised to be a potential interesting game or upset game for the Vikings.

They can't afford to overlook them. They really can't because they're going to know them inside and out. The Bears are going to know the Vikings, and even because they're going to know them inside and out. The Bears are going to know the Vikings. And even though they're coming to Minnesota, Caleb Williams is capable of having an electric performance any given week. He's also capable of looking like a really bad rookie, as we saw last week against San Francisco. So it's kind of this mystery box of you don't know exactly what to expect out of Chicago. But if you're the Vikings, you can't afford to make mistakes that let them kind of stay in games because they could close it. They could win it.

They could steal one from you. And as we talked about losing this division game while in the grand scheme of your playoff chase isn't going to end your season, it does put away any hope that you would have with that number one seed. Let's talk about Williams because I left soldier field and got pizza. I think after shocking in Chicago and was talking with Courtney about Caleb Williams. And my takeaway after he played the Vikings was this is not going to be easy for many years to come. He was really good in that game. And he had his terrible moments where he hung onto the ball forever in overtime and got sacked, and there were some throws in there that were just wildly inaccurate, and you go, okay, I'm not really sure what happened there, my friend.

But there were also several breathtaking plays that he had, and when we asked Brian Flores, hey, what did you learn about Caleb Williams? He just smiled and said, he's fast. Yeah, that was my takeaway too. He had not the long speed of Michael Vick, but the acceleration. I don't know too many quarterbacks that I've seen in person, the Vikings play against where the guy accelerates that quickly. They were flying all over the place. Andrew Van Ginkle normally has three sacks in that type of game and never got him. The throw down the sideline was ridiculous for him.

So when we talk about not taking them too lightly, even as bad as it's been going, it starts there for me that Caleb Williams seems like any outcome is possible. The outcome of him just not knowing where to throw the football and being frustrated and confused and looking over at his head coach slash play caller. Like, what am I supposed to do here that's very possible uh him also being so run down by this season emotionally after the whole draft process and everything else that's possible or him being ridiculous and making incredible plays and giving his team a chance also possible yeah his talent

transcends how bad their scheme has been sometimes. And I mean, you mentioned the Ben Ginkle play. That was one where the Vikings, they won pre-snap. They get the free blitzer. They get the free rusher. They beat the protection. They get the free guy and it doesn't matter because he spins out of it, throws the 40-yarder to DeAndre Swift. When they talk about the Vikings, how Sam Darnold's got the talent of a number three overall pick, you can see it. Well, Caleb's, I think just a step, even a little bit above that sometimes with the mobility, the, the elusiveness, the ability to throw on the run with some of the accuracy he's been able to show. It's not always there. It's not always consistent, but it's the

comparisons pre-draft were always Mahomes, Mahomes, right? Well, he also drew some Rogers comparisons with the way he could play off schedule and off platform with some of the throws he can make. So I think that's what scares you is that in years to come, the big question for Chicago is going to be, can you get your Kevin O'Connell? Can you get your Ben Johnson? Can you get your guy that's going to change your quarterback and your entire offense and turn it into this freight train that the Vikings offense seems to be at times? That's going to be the big question, but the Vikings still have to worry in the meantime, because this kid can still run around, play backyard football. You, you bring up the acceleration and how few guys can do that. The Vikings saw back-to-back weeks of those guys

between him and Kyler Murray. Um, and we saw how that was kind of an issue for them. They, they sneak out two very close wins in those games, and they're lucky to do so. But these are the kind of quarterbacks that I think give this defense the most problems, when you can kind of break their pressure schemes and just kind of throw all over the zones of the secondary. And as much as the Bears offense has had games that are totally embarrassing, and they have seemed like they've given up. I mean, at one point, DJ Moore earlier this year just walks off the field. I know there's, Oh, he tweaked his hamstring or something. You just, I mean, how many times have I ever seen a players walk off the field in the

middle of play? Almost never. Uh, that was symptomatic of their culture. What was happening at that moment, the frustration that the players had on that team. So you want to, for one, if you're the Vikings, you want to get them to that that point we get them to that point and get them to that point early shut them down on a few drives and then it's probably they'll turn on each other but they've got the receivers and over the last few weeks kirk cousins got the ball to drake london and darnell mooney and marvin harrison jr moss fabian moreau and allen's had a game, another game. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Keenan Allen was good. The Viking killer and Roma Dunze was good. DJ Moore was good. They have that group of weapons that when teams have brought in multiple wide receivers, the Vikings have really struggled to cover everybody. And they will be playing this game very, very likely without Stefan Gilmore, who we haven't seen practice this week yeah that's going to be a tough blow for a team that needs to run and cover a lot in this game they had stefan gilmore in chicago um and still keenan allen went yard for

nine catches 90 yards something like that i can't remember but um keenan allen always seems to have a massive game against the vikings and it's going to be more of fab Vikings. And it's going to be more of Fabian Moreau. It's going to be more of Shaq Griffin, who I haven't been really impressed by in his season here. He gets beat deep quite a bit and got beat deep again last week. So there's going to be opportunities for Chicago to throw on the secondary if Caleb Williams can break some of those contains that the Vikings want to throw at him and break the pocket. That's going to be, I think, the key component for this.

But in terms of them being able to cover these guys, you talk about Caleb Williams. Well, Romo Dunza is going to be there for years to come too. And the Vikings have no corners under contract. I'm sure you've mentioned this ad nauseum too, like we have, but they have no quarters under contract beyond this year. So the matchups for 2025 and years to come from the Vikings perspective, they still need to fill out the depth chart and figure out what they're doing. Makai Blackman will be coming back. Yeah, hopefully he'll be healthy for the Vikings, but that's still a guy in his second year playing essentially. Dwight McLaughlin.

Yeah, I mean, they're going to have to make some moves there eventually. But when it comes to the Vikings defense, what we've seen in recent weeks, the way I would describe it as gas worn down. And last week we started to see Brian Flores put rotational players in there a lot more than he was earlier this season. Gabriel Murphy gets out on the field with Patrick Jones hurt. Dallas Turner ties his most snaps that he's had in a game so far. And I'm looking at Dallas Turner as a guy where now's the time because you just can't have Granada Van Ginkle playing 60 to 70 snaps every single game. I mean, they've been doing it all year. They're both in the top five in total snaps for that position in the entire NFL. And I thought last week you could see it at times with both of them just like the defensive tackles Jalen Redman might be very valuable to this because the defensive tackles look like

they've gotten worn down as the season has gone along the same way Harrison Phillips has and now this week they're going to have to chase a guy all over the field there's no way around that like that's how he plays and I feel like there's two directions. This could go. We could either be saying if they got to play anybody else outside of the starters, they're going to be in trouble down the stretch and into the playoffs. Or we could be saying, Oh, all of the sudden Gabriel Murphy is the most recent UDFA to kind of surprise us. Uh, and the other part too, is I think that they have no answer when they're missing a linebacker. They just don't have one when Cashman was out and when pace was out, they just do not

have that. Who was the guy? Who was the guy? Eric Wilson. Remember when Eric Wilson was coming? Yeah. Like they don't, they just don't have that. Yeah. That's a problem. They don't, they go and get, um, pronounce his first name for me. Jame davis oh yeah jaymond jaymond davis i'm sorry jaymond i need to put the right emphalosis on the right syllable um jaymond davis comes in and is the you know is the pass rushing guy for pace and he just came off the street essentially the packers practice squad you bring him off of and he's the guy who's replacing pace there's not a pass rusher they trust in that group camus grugier hill is a nice fill-in coverage linebacker, but he's not somebody they want to put in their blitz packages. Brian Awesomewatt can do nothing,

apparently, to get on this defense right now. So I do think, to your point about missing pace, they miss him both as a blitzer, which they've tried to replace with Jamin, and they've replaced, and they haven't found a way to replace him as a run defender, because that's where they really struggled against Bijan, Tyler Algier, James Connor. That's the part that worries me about these potential playoff matchups for the Vikings, or even just going into this final stretch against Josh Jacobs, Jameer Gibbs, Ken Walker, who can do things when he's healthy, although Seattle's line apparently is just garbage. But this defense can get run on. And even when they had all these guys, when Ivan Pace is scoring a

defensive touchdown against the Lions in week seven by the end of it Jameer Gibbs is going if I remember correctly over 100 yards and breaking some big runs at the end they just got worn down in that game and that was off the bye week I think this defense they are much like last season to a lesser extent but they're outperforming. Some of their parts is greater than the parts themselves. And that was definitely the case last year. This year, you're still seeing a little bit of that coach boost, a little bit of that scheme boost that when you face better talent like Detroit, maybe like Philly, if you have to run into Saquon in the playoffs, that's the part that concerns me. And it's not going to concern me against DeAndre

Swift here on Monday night. It's not going to concern me necessarily against Ken Walker, but to finish the division against Green Bay and Detroit and then go into the playoffs against what could be some good running teams. That's the part of this defense that I wonder, are they going to be rested enough? And then are they going to have the talent to put away a top tier rushing attack that you might have to face? And that does, I mean, just to go down the road a few weeks does make me curious about week 18, that if there is not any big thing on the line, they might get an opportunity to rest those players. If there's not though, and they have to play a game for seating or whatever it might be, then you'd be playing Detroit, playing your heart out and then going on the road potentially to play someone like

Tampa Bay. That's a very physical team, not really the outcome you want. The place that I've gotten to with this defense is that there are realities to it, which is you're not just going to blitz everybody and have them fall apart and throw you the football every single time. But turnovers are also skill based. like you have players who could take the ball away players who get strip sacks players who make interceptions when they get their chances some of byron murphy's have been thrown right to him we know that but last week heck of a skill heck of a skill play right i mean so some of these and there's other ones he's had this year where he ran the route for the guy and jumps in and makes a play. So they have playmaking

guys who could take the ball away. They have sack artists who can get to the quarterback and pressure them. They have to kind of hit on those big things because on a down to down basis, they have enough weaknesses that teams can hold onto the ball and move the ball against them. Also, some great philosopher once said, I don't know who it was, said the best defense is a good offense. Who was that? Big if true. Ray Nitschke. I honestly don't know who was the first one that ever said it.

Herm Edwards. Herm Edwards. Yeah, that is true here as well. For whoever was the first one to say that. Maybe you guys in the comments can Google it and tell me who said it. But I think that it is true. And as entertaining as it was to watch Sam Darnold have one of the best games in Vikings history last week, they scored so fast. There's really funny stats about this. The Vikings have, I think they're 28th in plays per drive, but 11th in points per drive, which doesn't seem to make sense, right? Like you

just score quickly all the time and then it puts more pressure on your defense. They do need some steady churn type of plays for the offense. They got those against Indy. They got those against Jacksonville and screwed it up in the red zone. This might be another game where they're saying we need to stay on the field to get this defense arrest. Yeah. And I can't remember in Chicago what the balance was, but Aaron Jones went over a hundred yards rushing in that game. Chicago has not been good at defending the run. Even though Aaron popped up on the injury report this week with a back issue, he was practicing still throughout the week. I would assume he's healthy enough. If he is,

this has got to be a big Aaron Jones game, a big run the ball game, just play action, leverage that kind of stuff, and just control the clock in a way that you did against Jacksonville and a lesser opponent, but you just couldn't finish those drives. So to me, I do think this is a good opportunity for it, but that's not how this offense is built. That's not at least how Kevin O'Connell through 13 weeks has tried to orchestrate it. He's tried to be a hunt the big play kind of offense. We're going to go and win the game on some of these plays here, whether it's the 97-yard touchdown against the Niners way back in week two,

which I was asked on a radio station this week, when did the team believe in Darnold? And I was like, well, that play kind of sticks out to me, one where everybody kind of went, oh, man, this guy really actually can do this. But they've been doing that ever since. They are the most explosive passing attack in football. They hung six 20-plus yard passes on the Falcons. That's the fourth time this season they've done that to a team.

They put up six plays in one game. That's insane from an offense. And that's an offense, too, that's been without Jordan Addison for stretches early in the year. Didn't connect with Addison enough, and now they're hitting on those cylinders with him. So I do think this is a week that you can kind of go back to the mean a little bit, go back to the average of maybe it's not going to be six explosive passing plays, but if it is six long sustained drives that keep your defense rested, you're not having to chase around that chicken named Caleb Williams for 40 minutes in a game. It could help them. And we should mention too, in terms of the run defense,

Kevin O'Connell said this week that one of Vikings fandom's favorite rookies, Taki Taimani, could come back this year. So if he does come back by the end of December or January, that's going to at least be some help for that interior defense. Taimani and Murphy and Redmond and Turner and Moreau, these guys, they're all going to have to be out there and they're all going to have to play a role for them to stay healthy. And I think we're just going to see more rotation, but back to your point about when they trusted Sam Darnold versus when they believed in Sam Darnold is two different things. I think when they trusted him was they started five and oh, and they, you know, he played great in that five and oh stretch. Like, okay, well, this is, this guy's our quarterback.

You know, it was probably the first week of the season. You could see, all right, he can play that throw that he made down the left side to Justin Jefferson against the giants. I'm sure every player in the locker room was like, okay, all right, we have a quarterback in the National Football League. And wasn't it the back shoulder throw to Naylor the following week? I bring up the 97 yarder, but that wasn't even the throw we all talked about. Because they needed a big drive there to put San Francisco away.

And every time they've needed that, they've gotten it from Darnold. But he threw him a dart that just sort of sent him flying and hit him so hard. But I think the moment they believed in Sam Darnold is a 52 yard touchdown from Justin Jefferson where I think it just happened. I think it just happened. Yeah. I mean, okay. The comeback against Arizona is also really good. Fourth and six. Yep. Yep. Fourth and six. And everyone says, wow. I mean, we could be down two scores in the fourth quarter and have this guy like lock in and make plays like that. But everybody knows in the NFL that if you're going to win anything, your quarterback has to do something astounding, jaw dropping. You can't game manage your way to a championship. I said it last week. I don't have to say it again. You know what I'm talking about. You cannot just in the pocket, whatever, a guy's running right at your quarterback, and you end up with a 52-yard touchdown. You go, what's not possible for us with this offense? Yeah, very few guys can make that to the point where in the media center you're trying to come up with,

how many guys can make that kind of throw? It's very few. It's Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, like the ability to buy that time and make that throw. And that's what leads to the questions of Sam Darnold's future of should they let him walk out the door after seeing plays like that? And if he continues to make them, especially in January, he's going to answer those questions on his own. And it won't be a discussion if he continues to do that kind of stuff. So I think you bring up a good point about when he does these plays in December, it does carry more weight,

not just with fans and media, but in the locker room, in the front office, in the coaching staff. When you can show that I'm down 13 points against Arizona or our protection just got totally screwed on this play and I'm going to transcend and rise above. It makes me think of what Quasey said when they still had Kirk Cousins under contract. I think you asked him at the Combine, how do you judge positional value? And it's something that's always stuck with me when he said, well, I view it as how many jobs can that guy save on a given play? How many people can he make right on a given play? And that's the kind of thing that we have not seen from a Vikings quarterback since when? Uh, sometime. Brett Favre?

Yeah. I mean, and that's not to say, cause look, Darnold could go out there and have a bad finish to the season. He could be one and done in the playoffs, and we're all talking about, remember that run that Sam Darnold went on? It was a long Josh Dobbs. But I don't think that's where we're at. I don't think that's where the Vikings think we're at. They feel like they built something foundationally with him that they're

all excited like we are to see where it goes. And with Dobbs, it was kind of a cartoon thing, and it just was not built to last. And he's quarterback three for another team right now. He'd been cut by a bunch of teams. This is a guy who is a third overall draft pick for a reason. And there's just this very real world that has happened before in the NFL, a number of times where somebody goes through some terrible

situations or wasn't as good as they are now. I mean, Sam Darnold talked to us in the off season about how he had been unhappy with his deep passing. And so he put a ton of emphasis in his deep throwing going into this year. And over the last two years, he also talked about learning from Brock Purdy that you could just play point guard sometimes. And we all kind of went like, Oh yeah, we heard the point guard thing from Kirk for a couple of days, but, but these things, these are real things. His deep accuracy after watching him on tape from when he was with the jets, it's a different person. He is so much more precise with that stuff. He doesn't hop around on his toes and then fling the ball 10 miles over somebody anymore. He stays locked into the ground. It looks like he's just rotating when he throws rather than kind of bouncing and not having his feet set. There's a lot of technical stuff that's better. the internet where someone was asking, I think it was Seth Walder from ESPN about like what

percentage of him would be the same from Carolina or something. And I think that he's just grown here a ton as a quarterback from what I watched even in 2022, where he was pretty good, but he's just grown so much more of the decision-making and that credit O'Connell, Josh McCown, what they have here. And if the receivers are open and can make all the plays, it's so much easier to trust what you're supposed to do on a given play. Yeah. I feel like if you asked Kevin O'Connell, Darnold, you've got them all in the room, all the, the principals responsible for Sam Darnold's rise in Minnesota. And you said, who's responsible for this? You'd have so much finger pointing. Everybody would say, well, it's not me. It's them. Oh no, it's not. It's not us. O'Connell says it's Darnold's rise in Minnesota and you said, who's responsible for this? You'd have so much finger pointing. Everybody would say, well, it's not me. It's them. Oh no, it's not. It's not us. O'Connell

says it's Darnold and Darnold says it's not me. It's them. You know, you would have everybody deflecting, but the truth is in the middle, it's all of you. This could not have happened without all of these things coming together without them even necessarily trading for Cam Robinson and piecing together. If David Questenberry were starting the last four games, where are they at? Maybe the Arizona game is not a win because of the protection problems or whatever. There's things that you had to have happen. Justin Jefferson being the best person in the world at what he does. Addison coming online and that connection happening. And above all, it's the coaching. I think that stuff, we're going to give Kevin O'Connell and everybody will give him a ton of credit for this, but it should not be undersold how important it is that the system he's in.

He would not be the same guy, Sam Darnold, if he got signed by, even if it were the Carolina Panthers or the Cardinals right now, where it seems like, man, maybe they're figuring something out. No, this would have been a team that was not ready to rehabilitate him. This was a roster that was ready to win at the position, and he walked in, prime of his athletic career, ready to learn. And he did. And he was coming off a year in San Francisco where he had a year to sit and learn some new things. Would he have been the same guy if he came straight from Carolina to here? No, exactly. I don't think so either. I think it took

an additional year of like sitting and growing much like a Jordan lover, JJ McCarthy, when they come out of the draft had to do. I think that is so pivotal for guys. And the coaching is just the system is so huge, too, because in the NFL, all these guys are so talented. It's why every freaking game is one score, because the talent level is not that different. What's different is Shane Waldron's not telling his guys to read here when you drop on your third step and then read here when it's your fourth and read here when it's your sixth. He didn't do any of that, apparently, according to guys who were over there. It was very haphazard, bad coaching. He gets fired. Caleb Williams looks better after he leaves.

That's what happens in the NFL. There is a wide coaching gap. There isn't necessarily a wide talent gap. And so for Sam to land here, for him to pick here shows how smart he was. And it shows how the Vikings have what they thought, which was a system that was built for a guy to walk in and succeed. And it's going to, it's why it's going to continue the very intriguing conversation of, is it the system? Can they do it again with JJ or somebody else? Or is it Sam? And this is going to be the guy from here on out? Yeah, we should do this. Rank these things.

How much responsibility would you give? Because for me, number one, it's Sam Darnold. It's Sam Darnold, number one, because he took the coaching. There has been no arrogance about this guy at all. He came in willing to learn, not concerned about the McCarthy element that they were going to draft a quarterback. They were straight up with him when they started that we believe in you for this year, but we're going to draft a quarterback for the future and let's all just see what happens. And maybe we can get you a payday or whatever, or sometimes God changes plans and you're going to be here or whatever. But that was, they were honest with him from the upfront,

but he, I mean, I think handled that situation so professionally and learning the offense and doing everything he could in training camp OTAs. We just, we have to wait for him forever each week because he's the last guy off the field. That's just a real thing. Like that's how hard he has worked at this, uh, throughout the season. And you can't change unless you want to change or unless you want to learn. And the way he responded to the Jacksonville game was just incredible comes out of that. He's not pointing fingers. He's not blaming other people. He just changed things that weren't going well and made adjustments. And I thought even by the next week against Tennessee that he played totally different football and then sustained that through the rest of the way. That's been so impressive. But even at coach of the year,

Kevin O'Connell totally deserved. Number 18, man. Number 18. Yards don't begin to tell the story of what Justin Jefferson does for a quarterback. It just doesn't even start there. You have to watch the other team just push everything his way all the time. And when they don't, he roasts the hell out of them and then gets a bunch of yards and touchdowns and things like that. But the fact that you have everybody else available on almost every play because everything is directed at Jefferson every Every time in the red zone, they're just putting two guys over there. Somebody else is open. Addison gets three

touchdowns that I don't know that there's any other player in the league who does that to defenses like Jefferson does. And that makes life a lot easier. Yeah, I would, I would argue, I would put O'Connell above Jefferson on the ranking of who deserves most credit because I think, I think Justin Jefferson, you can't one for one replace him with anybody. But there are more near his tier in the NFL than there are coaches near O'Connell's tier in terms of offensive coaches, I think. I think you can put in a CeeDee Lamb. I think you could put in a Tyree Kill. I think you could put in, look, I'm just saying there are talents that you can scheme around. No, no, no, no.

Look, there's no one for one. Jamar Chase is the closest thing, but there is no one for one. And then Jamar actually might be, but it's to me is those two. And then the rest of the NFL, I just think there's, I'm on Ross St. Brown's there's, there's number ones on every team, most teams that you can do things with. There are not offensive coordinators. There are not play callers with the emotional intelligence, with the quarterback intelligence that Kevin O'Connell has. There are very few guys in the league who can run offenses like him. I think of Andy Reid.

I think of Kevin Stefanski, I would put in that mold. Who else? Oh, Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay. Like there are a handful of them. But to me, I think if you were to pair Darnold with any of those top 16, 15, whatever wide receivers you want to put, it is lesser than Jefferson, but I would take him with O'Connell in having similar results to what they've had. There is no question though, Jefferson has a gravitational pull that is unlike any player in the NFL. Defenses treat him like

you would treat a Patrick Mahomes type person at quarterback. That's how elite he is at what he does. I get that. But I just think the coach and what the coach has done for the quarterback's confidence, what he's done for his ability to just be that resilient, steady person, the way that O'Connell has been behind the scenes for three years in Minnesota. I think that pairing of Darnold and O'Connell is the most important. Here's where I would lean toward your side on this uh i also don't think o'connell could do the stuff that he does without number 18 but i'd like to see him with cd lamb i don't know but pretty good from day one kevin o'connell convinced everyone, including us, that he believed in Sam Darnold, but also was drafting his future franchise quarterback.

And we listened to him talk about it. We're like, oh, yeah, OK, I buy. I buy. I buy that he thinks that Sam Darnold can be great. He sold us on it at the beginning of the year. And then when we saw him in OTAs and mini camp and training camp, and he's out there ripping passes to Jefferson and they're destroying people and all that stuff in practice, you go like, okay, okay. All right. I can buy that Sam Darnold's going to be way better than he's ever been. And I think that that permeated the whole locker room, the whole franchise that when he was saying it and saying it and saying it,

and then it showed immediately that giants game was so huge because the first impression for everyone was like, Whoa, O'Connell was right. This dude can play. We can win from them. You just felt it in that locker room. Like how much energy there was to the team right off the bat. The first impression of Sam Darnold, even his first preseason game, he comes out and makes like three or four throws on his first drive and everyone's looking around going, well, is this, is this going to happen right now? And I think that his way of galvanizing people, keeping Justin Jefferson from getting impatient when he's not getting the football, we don't see him run to social media. We don't see him throwing his arms up in the air or quitting on his team or anything like that.

We see him throwing blocks in the fourth quarter of a game where he's got two catches as opposed to that, even though he was frustrated. He's still, I mean, compared to what we see from it, right. Compared to what we see from other receivers, that communication factor with him, that belief factor that he's able to create the coaching staff that they've put together. It truly is a perfect storm where you can't really separate the different pieces because if somebody else, another receiver was being treated that way, are they handling it the same way? Justin Jefferson has handled it this year. That's a really hard thing to know. Yeah. And there's just, there wasn't any other situation this past off season, like Minnesota's

where Darnold could have walked in and had this kind of impact. I want to give Darnold all the credit in the world. And the biggest credit I would give him is that he wasn't ruined by his past experiences. I think that's the thing that we're all human, right? We all have traumas. We all have things that we've went through that stick with us that shape who we are moving forward there are no or there are fewer career traumas as traumatic as getting drafted by the new york jets getting kicked around for three years by that media by that city by that organization that is so poorly run and kept hiring bad people uh to to tell him what to do and then his leading receiver was i don't even remember robbie and Anderson slash Robbie Chosen. Oh, Robbie Chosen. Quincy Yunwa, I think, was still around there.

I think he was leading receivers at some point. They did not have a lot is the point. And for him to get through that and still be this guy, and Matt Rule in Carolina, not even to mention. And to come through on the other side, that's the part where Sam, there's nothing that could replace that part of him. You can't coach that you can't put that in somebody he had to show up here this offseason in march sign that contract and have

that in him and if he didn't this was never going to work i yeah i think that what we've learned about sam darnold because he rarely shows it outwardly he doesn't go up to the podium each week for us with press conferences looking to bare his soul or get us to understand who am i who am i really zoolander fans will appreciate the who am i i don't know i have no idea uh but he has a he has a ton of heart and courage and i think that was something he was drafted on that they saw that at usc that he could fight through just about anything and still give his team a chance to win at the end of the game. And what he's shown through this entire journey is a lot of heart because a lot of guys, they may not quit as in like leave the league, but they essentially quit after they lose starting jobs. They don't go to San Francisco and be ready to play when he was asked to play

there. They don't go and make a strong impression on San Francisco, which I think was influential in Kevin O'Connell believing that. So that's why to me, he's number one. And also he's got, he just has this monster arm and this great athleticism and all those things. Like he has the true talent of a franchise quarterback. That's why he was drafted to be one. And you don't make those throws to Jefferson. You certainly don't make the throw to Addison down the sideline while the play is collapsing on him. The touchdown to Jefferson that's a routine red zone touchdown is a laser beam. He deserves all the credit for the work that he puts in

and the talent that he has and who he is as a person. I think it's all come together. But if he loses against the Bears, they should trade him for picks. It's all over. Fire everybody. They're not going to lose to the Bears, they should trade him for picks. It's all over. Fire everybody. They're not going to lose to the Bears, are they? It's hard to win seven in a row. This is what I keep going back to,

is there's no reason whatsoever to think that they lose to the Bears. It's just hard to keep a winning streak like this going. So what do you think happens? Yeah, I think Sam Darnold is going to have to continue to play at the level he has because I have a hard time seeing Caleb Williams not making this a show. I have a hard time seeing the Bears lay two eggs back-to-back weeks.

I think this is going to be something where they sat and watched all week how bad they were, and they're going to come back against the team that they know really well that they just saw, that they just took to overtime. They're going to have confidence coming into U.S. Bank Stadium on Monday night. So facing a confident Caleb Williams, you as a Vikings offense, as you mentioned, Matt, a great defense is a good offense, right? Yeah. So a great defense can be a very good offense. And I think staying on the field, Aaron Jones running the ball, Sam Darnold continuing to not turn the ball over. That's your recipe for success. Don't make this harder than it needs to be. Control the ball, score over 25 because that should be enough to put away this team. I think they win. I just think we have yet to see a game outside of last Sunday where they

haven't made it harder than it needs to be. It feels like we're going to head back to that. There is a little bit of concern about the way the teams have blitzed them successfully. They have really had a lot of communication troubles up front, getting those protections set and those blitzes. And if you're always asking Darnold to either run away or you're always taking sacks, that can make things dicier than it needs to be. But I don't think that the bears are as good as Atlanta or Arizona, but they're still, they're still like ish, like still in that ballpark of those middling teams that are just not horrific and have a decent amount of talent that can

make plays. You got an upgraded quarterback this week though, over last week. For who? For you, for no, I'm saying the bears, the bears are bringing a better quarterback to us bank than the Falcons just brought. Oh, oh yeah. Well, look at the way that Kayla played last week against San Francisco. I guess I'm thinking of just against Minnesota.

Yeah. How he played against the Vikings. Right. Well, we'll see how it plays out. But I think this is closer than it needs to be. But the Vikings will find a way to work it out on Monday Night Football. Of course, I will be there. And you guys, you have some sort of podcast, too.

You guys try and digital media maybe at the Star Tribune. Access Vikings. Download it. Check it out. and uh we'll be uh oh me um after our 19 employees are done getting the car wash on the podcast i mean i've only brought you on every single week to promote the excellent work that you do and should I get lucky enough to drop by? I mean, I would be honored. So we'll see. Stay tuned. We'll just see.

But we'll be, myself and Dane Mizutani will be in the press box doing the, it's going to be late, but you'll be there. So anyway, this should just end because we got stuff to do. We'll see everybody later. Football. Football.