Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Star Tribune's Andrew Krammer thinks the Vikings are stronger than the Packers

Episode Date: December 28, 2024

We're just under two days until the Vikings host the Packers for one of the biggest border battles in recent memory. Matthew Coller is joined by Andrew Krammer of the Minnesota Star Tribune to preview the massive NFC North clash and discuss why he thinks the Vikings are the stronger team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here inside TCO Performance Center along with Andrew Kramer of the Star Tribune. And Andrew, I don't think we need to try too hard on this one. I think we need to do keys to the game and then what the football game means between the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers. First key to the game seems to be the secondary situation for the Green Bay Packers. It's a little odd over there in Green Bay where it looked like Jair Alexander was on the mend and suddenly now he is not. So it's Keyshawn Nixon. It's Eric Stokes, but it's a different battle between the Vikings and the

Packers if Jair Alexander is not matched up with Justin Jefferson. Yeah, I was actually shocked to find out Justin Jefferson, and we've covered his whole career, so we know this, but he is, and the Vikings are, 0-3 against the Packers in December and January, in part because of games that I think the one Jair had against him that was really good, where he gritted after intercepting a pass, I believe, came in December, one of those late season losses. He won't be out there. The Packers' way of defending Justin will have to change because they've often relied on him to press Justin at the line and then put a safety over the top. Justin will always remind everybody that he is not often left alone on Jair. And he even threw some shade against the Packers this

week by saying, look, I don't care about any matchup. I get hyped for all of them, whether I'm going against the number one corner or Green Bay. So he's not afraid to let everybody know that he does not have a ton of respect for the players that Green Bay throws out there. But Xavier McKinney is still really good, got a ton of interceptions. This Packers defense still has, I think, the fourth most takeaways in the NFL. So even without Jair, who they haven't had for since when, two months ago, he's missed five straight games, got in for a game before that just a little bit. But it is weird what's going on with him.

I think they've been just fine without him, though. How do you think the Packers will defend Justin Jefferson? This is always the number one story going into a game for a defense. Last week, we saw the Seattle Seahawks occasionally leave Justin Jefferson manned up and guess what happened? Touchdown happened on the first time he was man to man, but they were playing their safeties really deep because they were concerned about them hitting on the deep balls. So the adjustment was that they instead threw a lot of underneath stuff to Justin Jefferson. And then a few of those plays ended up popping, including the long touchdown at the end of

the game. But we've seen different strategies almost on a weekly basis where the Chicago Bears almost comically put two or sometimes three guys on Jefferson. Everyone else shredded them. Other teams have said, all right, we're going to try to occasionally let him be one-on-one, and then he ruins that guy's night each time. How do you think the Packers will go about this? That's a great question because the Vikings seem like a team now that has found the answers.

You just brought up all the different ways that teams have thrown different things at them and it has slowed them down. Sometimes it hasn't always slowed the offense down because when the bears hold Justin to two catches, they still let a hundred yards up to everybody else. But, uh, this Vikings team found a way that even when Seattle did the thing that teams do to take him away, which is drop everybody back, always have a safety on each half of the field. Uh, okay. Let's just adjust then a route to the back corner of the end zone and treat it like a fade essentially and just throw it over the top. So it's those adjustment routes, it's those option routes that the Vikings and Sam Darnold with Justin Jefferson

have been on such a similar and same page with. The cohesion that they've built over the course of this year and these wins is really starting to show. So I'm not sure how Green Bay approaches this because I don't think there is a good answer anymore. If the Vikings are willing to throw short to Justin in a way that, frankly, they just really weren't before. They hadn't done a ton of short catch-and-run stuff to him underneath

in a way that they were willing to do against Seattle. And maybe that was a matchup with Seattle's linebackers and their underneath cover guys. Green Bay might not have Quay Walker in this one, and that is going to be a huge absence for them. If they decide to allocate so much to Justin, I like TJ Hawkinson's chances of whoever is going to be trying to guard him. So I'm not sure what the answer is, Matt,

because there doesn't seem to be a good one left. This Vikings team is humming and finding its solutions at the right time, and they are on such a similar page on the field that it's in stark contrast to what we saw last night with Caleb Williams and that Chicago bears team, where you just see that they're never on the same page. No. Yeah.

And I think we've really seen the growth of Sam Darnold with his wide receivers and with this system. And when I look back at, and just out of curiosity, I went back and watched one of the early games this year, just a couple of plays. What did Sam Darnold look like? How different is it? And they still hunt big plays. Of course they do. That's Kevin O'Connell's offense. But what I really noticed over the last three weeks versus at the beginning of the season is it seems like Sam Darnold's decision-making is getting quicker where it's one, two, three, let it go. I mean, there's a few plays in the game where he's just

stepping back first read, throwing a seven yard pass onto the next play. We really didn't see that a lot from him early in the season. There were some plays where he had to wait to see somebody come open before he would let the ball go. And now he is repeatedly throwing with anticipation two spots. There's one I could think of where on a third down, Jefferson ran kind of an outside comeback route and the ball was out of Sam Darnold's hand before Jefferson is even out of his break. And then Jefferson gets out of his break, looks, the ball arrives and he makes the catch. Those plays just didn't exist early in this season. A lot of it was play actions where he had to see someone coming across wide open or

something like that. I think that Sam Darnold, as he goes into this game, even though he played well in the first game against Green Bay, is a different quarterback from even the beginning of the season. Yeah, I don't think there's any better example of his comfort zone and where he's at than the moment where the play or that the speaker cuts out in Seattle. And Kevin O'Connell's just through the formation. And he was on the radio this week saying about how there was five different plays Sam could have gone to. And he didn't pick the one we wanted, but he ended up knowing one in that package to go to. And it speaks to his preparation.

It speaks to his comfort in this offense to do that on the road in a louder environment in Seattle where they admitted they had to learn some things about themselves in terms of the hand signals, the silent counts, some of the stuff they really hadn't had to have done in quite a while because the AFC South doesn't really make you do that. But the Vikings have grown in those tough environments and succeeded, and it's through Sam's comfort. It's him just having that, as they talk about, that quiet mind. It's impressive because this was not we we've said it it's not sam this is not who he was before and to your point about forgetting the past six years with him he's been a completely different guy especially in the last month because i even think back to that chicago game in chicago where they blew an 11 point lead late. He was missing guys early in that game. His progressions were not in tune with the rhythm of the play. He didn't seem to be comfortable or maybe it was going too quick or too slow. It just wasn't in that rhythm. And now everything seems to

be in rhythm. There's a lot of confidence in the way that he's playing. And even at the end of that Chicago game where he leads the game winning drive and then he does it again against Arizona those are the kind of moments then of course the way he played against Atlanta but those are the kind of moments that maybe galvanize a team around a quarterback to where they believe that he's going to be locked in in those moments and then he does it again in Seattle and also the more to use a KOC saying the more time on where I go, maybe we heard that most from Kirk, right? Kirk was a time on task guy. But the time on task has just increased and increased. So you start working with Justin Jefferson all the way back in this offense

and OTAs, and then it builds and builds and it morphs, and they work to his strengths. And now when he walks out there for a drive, you feel like he is in total command of the offense. And it's not just him trying to kind of get through it or get to the right places, but instead he's really in total control. But there has been one thing

that has thrown off that total control, which is pass rush and blitzes. And Seattle, my one question for their defensive-minded head coach is, no blitz? Because we saw even Atlanta succeed with it, Arizona succeed with it, the Bears from time to time,

and they just didn't do it. Seattle. And he was able to have some time to throw. There were some four-man rushes that got through. But if there's one thing, it's setting those protections where sometimes there's free runners at him. And that's actually how he got strip sacked in the first game against the Packers was there was a free runner that came at him. I expect to see a lot of that in this game, that they're going to try to test Sam Darnold's ability to handle those blitzes. It shows how Sam stresses defense, though,

and certainly in ways that Kirk never did, where Kirk could get the ball out quickly, beat the blitz that way, but he was never going to do it with his legs. And Sam is somebody who adds that element. We've seen it, where whether it was a nine-yard scramble on that final drive in Seattle, where I think that was when the headset went out,

or his ability to throw on the run and buy time in the pocket. You have to then question how many guys you send, because if you have an open lane, look, he's not Kyler Murray, he's not Caleb Williams, but he can still get out, and he can get out and throw to guys who are incredibly dangerous downfield, that if you send five or six, you are then taking away, obviously, from what you have on the back end to stop those guys. So I think Seattle made that kind of cognitive effort of look we're gonna just drop back and try to play it keep everything underneath and the vikings were like okay we'll just keep taking those dink and dunks

to jefferson 8 9 10 12 yards and they did it so efficiently and with such great decision making that it makes it hard to defend it makes it hard to go into a game and say this is what we're going to do because the vikings have so many different ways on offense to beat you. And it's not even necessarily Aaron Jones. It's not even necessarily the play action game that this offense is so built on. It's now just the playmaking ability of this quarterback that a month ago, three months ago, we were not seeing this kind of play from him. We've really reached the point where we can say that they have an elite passing offense. It might not be quite at the same level of maybe Baltimore. That's the best of the entire league. But in terms of expected points added, they are fifth in the NFL. And that's when teams don't have an obvious answer against you. As you mentioned, yeah,

some of those blitzes work, but if they don't, it's a 52-yard touchdown to Justin Jefferson. And Darnold has really made teams pay for whatever type of strategy they've tried to go against. But there is a factor in this game that we must discuss, and I'll bring it up on every show all week long. I think you probably know what it is already. The interior matchup in the offensive line. The Vikings interior has sort of held on for dear life recently. I thought Blake Brando played better last week. Dalton Reisner has solidified the pass protection at the right guard position, but Garrett Bradbury has struggled in recent weeks and they're facing a team that always finds a way with Kenny Clark, et cetera, to get a push

up the middle. How much of a factor do you think that will be? I think it's a huge factor. I think the Packers, if we're talking about how are they going to approach this, how are they going to cover Jefferson? It might just be to overwhelm this offensive line in a way that you tried to do when it was Kirk Cousins and just kind of live with the consequences of Darnold running or throwing on the run. Maybe you try to bait him into some bad decisions that he has not been making over the last five or six weeks when he

has just one turnover. That's his fault. This Packers defense is very opportunistic. They get him through pressuring the quarterback and causing tip passes, causing interceptions. Xavier McKinney has obviously been amazing for them on the back end, and they pieced it together at corner. So I do think the offensive line is the concern because I don't even think Cam Robinson played that well. And I think he's been kind of up and down in a way that you think, boy, if it was just Christian Derisaw still, how much more quieter and better could Sam Darnold be playing in there? Because I think it was that touchdown, the game winner to Jefferson. I think it was Cam that gave up the initial pressure that forced sam to step up um i thought blake brandel has been very up and down you mentioned

bradbury it speaks to their other issues at guard that we don't talk about him more you would think that a center who was a first round pick who got paid to stay here um would have kind of progressed and been better this year but i feel like last year he was more consistent for them, especially when you had a more stable quarterback and Kirk back there in terms of immobility, not being able to move around. So I do think Garrett has kind of flown under the radar in terms of a concern. It makes you wonder in the offseason, how many questions are they, how many spots are they going to have to address here?

Because they probably need to address both guard spots too. In middle of the season i thought he was playing well uh brad berry at least by the numbers he had been pretty solid middle of the league in terms of the pff pass blocking grade but in recent weeks i think the matchups have gotten him as they so often do and that's why we see the ups and downs because it's usually based on how his opponent plays and who his opponent is. And last week, the Seahawks put one of their best guys right over top of them and just went after that matchup all day long. And opponents know at this point where the weak point of the Vikings offensive line is. But I think that they have survived and their quarterback has allowed them to survive.

Because when the guys get beat or when there's pushback into Darnold's face, he is so good at not letting that impact him. He's had guys standing right in front of him and just thrown over them down the field for completions. And it hasn't been a massive factor. Darnold is also one of the best quarterbacks this year in the whole league under pressure. And I think sometimes that stack can be a little factor. Darnold is also one of the best quarterbacks this year in the whole league under pressure. And I think sometimes that stack can be a little random. Somebody throws a ball up for grabs under pressure and it works, but I don't think it's been random for him. I think he's really shown an ability to navigate the pocket and make plays out of structure.

When you're asking to do that against a very, very good defense, it's always a little dicey, but you feel a little bit safer than you would have in the past with an immobile quarterback. If your interior offensive line is struggling, he's not even putting that many passes in harm's way. Like you look at the turnover worthy play percentage tracking stuff with PFF and it's, it's been very good for him ever since the October, early November kind of rough, basically just the Jacksonville game. Since then it has been very good for him. And that speaks to how he's navigated this pressure because he's had Christian Deresop or none of those games that we're talking about. They've been able to piece

this together protection wise. It's not just Darnold. It's also the protection plans that they go in with. I remember when they lost O'Neal for two plays, whatever it was when he banged his knee up the first time. What game was that? The Bears game? Bears game. Yeah, when he got like leg whipped or whatever. That next series, they were so quick to adjust on the fly. The coaching staff was that Darnold throws, not the next series, the same series. Darnold throws a touchdown to Jefferson without O'Neal on the field, and they had a protection plan. Boom, right there. They double the right tackle, help him out. Darnold's got more than enough time to free up Jefferson. That's coaching and that's not necessarily Darnold. So they've got all of these things

working to help him in those spots. And of course, when it comes down to it, he needs to make a lot of key plays under pressure. And that speaks to the comfort. You can only do that if you're so comfortable in what you're doing. You're not flustered. It's night and I keep going back to the Bears. It's night and day to what I just watched from Caleb Williams and what I keep watching with him. Yeah, that's disturbing if you're in Chicago to have a guy who just doesn't know how to play quarterback right now. 67 sacks is approaching David Carr territory, but that's somebody else's podcast. So when it comes to the Vikings offense, I'm going to throw out two players that I think are very, very important in this game.

One is super obvious, and one is maybe less obvious. The super obvious player is Aaron Jones. The revenge game playing against the Green Bay Packers, but against the team that you know can control the football. The Vikings did do a good job in the first half against Seattle having some longer drives. And I think they're going to need that again. That's kind of been recently more and more keys to the game, but this team with Jacobs, their short passing game, they can really hold onto the football for a long period of time. And the other guy is Josh Oliver because Cam Robinson has not been a great run blocker. Brandel's maybe a little better last week,

but it's been up and down for him. We know about Reisner and the run blocking struggles at times. Oliver's the best run blocking tight end in the entire NFL, and this is the type of game where you could try to take advantage of him versus some of their linebackers, Quay Walker being out. They're playing some smaller linebackers, and they just need the heck out of him for pass protection, for running the football with Aaron Jones.

I think that he suddenly becomes really, really vital in this matchup with the Packers. Yeah, I think time of possession has to be, to your point, it's got to be on Kevin O'Connell's mind quite a bit. Because when you think about through these eight games that they've won in a row, Sam Darnold has had five drives in the fourth quarter that give them the lead that they ultimately won. So it goes down as game winning drives. And you think of the spots they've been in, tied 21 all against the Falcons, which it ended up being a blowout. The Cardinals were up 13 in that third quarter and they had to come back from. What was the theme of those two games?

They ran on them. They held on to the ball and they were able to tire out the Vikings defense enough to keep that game close, not give enough possessions or too many possessions to the Vikings. And that's what Kevin O'Connell wants. He wants a high play count. He wants, it may not look like it because they throw the hell out of the ball sometimes and it's always 50 yard bombs, but they want to get that high play count up. They do want to try to stretch some of these longer drives together. It's just not the way they play all the time. But I do think the confidence in Sam, the running game that they have,

it sets up well, especially against a banged-up Packers defense, to try to give them a taste of their own medicine. Josh Jacobs leads the NFL in first-quarter touches. You see that on every broadcast the Packers ever play and you know what's coming. So try to play a little bit of that similar game and bleed out or try to suffocate their offense a little bit. Do you feel like sometimes early in a game, the Vikings have kind of a balanced look with Aaron Jones play action off of it, and then it gets away from it a little bit as the game goes along. And I think overall, I remember looking into this first quarter, second quarter,

third quarter scoring with a KOC. You'll not be surprised that it's evened out over a long period of time of him coaching. So I don't think there's anything really to that opening script KOC thing, which is kind of not really how it works anyway, but that's not the point. It feels like when I'm watching what they did against Seattle last week, they ran the ball pretty effectively. They played off it effectively and just seemed very sharp to start the game. And then as the game went along a little, it felt like they kind of forgot about that part of it or let the other team slow it down. And in the middle of the game, I just feel like this is a KOC nuance to his play calling. If the first down run goes for two,

it is definitely a longer pass on second down. I mean, almost guaranteed. Or if there's a first down pass for seven yards, second down is a longer pass, almost guaranteed. They usually don't want to run even on second and short. I just feel like he loses the thread a little bit throughout a game when it comes to the running. And I'm not saying like run the ball, run the ball, not when you have the fifth best passing game in the NFL, but maybe there needs to be the proper attention to it in a game like this and balance with it in a game like this.

I've had fans, listeners, readers ask about that and say, is this style of play going to be a play style? Kevin O'Connell likes to say, is that going to be a concern come playoff time? And I guess to the point that you're making, O'Connell does have a propensity to lean away from it too quickly if it's not working. I think he's got enough body of work from this team to maybe not always trust it in short yardage or goal line. It hasn't always worked out for them. I think it was that Falcons game or one of these games where they ended up rushing for a couple touchdowns at the end and he was like, this is what we really need. Like that's how desperate they've been to close games out by running the football, by running into the end zone.

They don't have a ton of rushing touchdowns or rushing success always in those short yardage spots. So I think he's got a reason to lean away from it. It's just then it puts that pressure on the quarterback. It puts it, it all comes back to Sam Darnold. And this is not a team or an offense that's going to use his mobility as a direct weapon. It is only going to be off schedule. Has, have we ever seen a Sam Darnold on schedule run? They don't do that. They haven't built that into the offense. It is only going to be off schedule. Has we ever seen a Sam Darnold on schedule run? They don't do that. They haven't built that into the offense. It's not something this system, we even saw with Dobbs, it didn't always look comfortable when they tried to do it. So it's just not part of what they're doing. And so it's going to have to be on him to create off schedule with that

mobility when they don't run the ball so well, or when he's not calling those runs. Cause I do think when it push comes to shove the better running teams end up succeeding in the postseason not just because of weather games but often because you can control games more that way and it takes the risk or minimizes the risk in a lot of these games i think that's uh true true ish like it's definitely for a team like San Francisco. I'm more true-ish. Well, San Francisco has made a lot of hay out of that. At the same time, if we look at what correlates most to teams that go to the Super Bowl, it's their passing efficiency in the regular season. Passing is always going to be the thing that drives you there.

And I do think when the team gets to 13-2, top 10 offense, top 5 passing offense, that some people on the internet might want to look themselves in the mirror and go, you know, maybe the coach does know how to call plays. I don't know, maybe better than you do. So I like, I don't know. It's more of an observation about him through a game that I think that other teams know, if you can slow that down, they're not going to keep fighting with it. They will shift into more of just pass, pass, pass mode, which has always been, uh, with KOC. Now on the other side, we have a big sample size now of Jordan love as a quarterback in the

national football league. And I hate to say it friends, but, um, I think he's pretty good. Yeah. I think he's pretty good. Do I think he's far? yeah i think he's pretty good do i think he's far do i think he's rogers no i don't think that he is at that level but uh the way he's played in the second half of this season the way he came out of that injury and even just after the vikings game the way he fought in that vikings game to almost bring them back we have seen arm talent execution locked in with receivers and coaches. He's just a really good quarterback who was not intimidated at all by Flores' defense or U.S. Bank Stadium last year, but it is a different defense that he is facing. Very, very different personnel

and a healthier personnel for the Minnesota Vikings. So how do we feel about the Vikings defense matching up with Jordan Love? Yeah, I think Love has been exactly what Matt LaFleur and this Packers offense needed. He looks like a guy who obviously was brought up slowly, learned how to play the position, and never had to figure out while he was running around out there. But he's this unique blend of Favre and Rodgers where he can have some incredible cerebral moments, some incredible accurate moments on the run, even just flick of the wrist type stuff, and then also make a crossbody interception that loses you a game. They lose the opener against Philadelphia, albeit in Brazil, on an interception he throws, I believe, late in that game. He made three interceptions

in the Vikings' 31-29 win back in September at Lambeau field. He will give you chances to take the game away even more so than Sam Darnold's been giving teams chances to take the game away. So I like the Vikings chances better to succeed against this Packers offense. If they can stop Josh Jacobs, if you can prevent, if, if Ivan Pace is enough, Jalen Redman, they're going to have so many reinforcements back for this game. That is going to be the key. It's the reason why Brian Flores talks ad nauseum about him at his press conferences. It's not so much about the Packers passing game. It is that running game. And so Love will make some plays on the move. I think Geno Smith is like a diet version of what they're going to see there. He's going to run away from a lot of sacks and a lot of pressure. It's going to drive you crazy that

the Vikings don't bring him down every single time, but they don't have Christian Watson presumably for this game. Jaden Reed is incredibly dangerous and they've got Tucker Kraft, somebody who they brought into the fold is quite a versatile threat for them downfield. But I still think that this Vikings defense is set up to win against a team that is going to be relatively beaten up in certain key spots, including missing an offensive line starter in Elshin Jenkins at left guard. They confused them a lot in that first game at Lambeau Field. They were able to get some pressure, confusing the running backs in protection, the tackles in protection. I just like Flores' chances of doing the same thing. And not only is Ivan Pace a really good run defender, he's an incredible

blitzer and they're going to get him back into a lot of the things they like to do with him and I think he's going to be a headache for Jordan Love okay here's my concern though Bo Melton is still on the team that guy didn't he go off yeah yeah out of nowhere and we were looking up on the like who what number is this fella what the Bo Melton he's still out there uh jordan love's ability to avoid sacks is truly remarkable he has only been sacked on eight percent of the times he's been pressured which sam darnold's been sacked on about 23 percent of the times that he's pressured that tells you about his elusiveness and all he's also a huge guy like i don't know

how well that comes through on TV because basketball players don't even look that big on TV. And I promise you they are enormous in real life, but Jordan loves like six, four and 200 and what 30 pounds. And he moves really well. And he does get rid of the football when you create pressure. So we saw that from Gino Smith, the pocket navigation, and then getting rid of the ball escaping. But they also did a tremendous job of pressuring Geno Smith. And every quarterback is worse when they're pressured and is more likely to make a huge mistake when they are pressured. So I'm very curious to see how they create that, where they bring it from, how they create the confusion. I'll tell you somebody who's been really great at this the last few weeks is Josh Metellus.

Metellus was phenomenal against the Seattle Seahawks. He played like a star in that game. And I would say the same thing for Chicago. Now it feels like with Pace back, he's freed up even more to rush and line up in different places where he was kind of locked into that linebacker spot the last couple weeks. It was incredible, I thought, what they did even with outpace in Seattle where Flores puts in almost a 4-3 kind of looking alignment. He puts Metellus at one outside backer, Cashman to the middle,

Dallas Turner on the other side. And when Dallas gets his interception, it was Metellus blitzing off the one edge. They drop the edge rusher, and they blitz the guy you think they would drop. Geno's running for his life when he throws that Aaron pass to Noah Fant. The Dallas played perfectly in terms of his spots, where he was dropping, how he aligned with the leverage of the target. All those things that they talk about trying to grow with him. If you've got another versatile guy like that who's capable of doing stuff like that in

Turner, it just adds another piece that confuses quarterbacks. Then when they're under pressure, they don't exactly know where to go. Yeah, that's why I like the Vikings. Chances being at home too. Jordan Love is going to have to deal with the noise at U.S. Bank. That place gets loud and it has been getting loud so many times this year. The three o'clock start might lend to some more libations before the game, kind of liven up the crowd a little bit. So I like, again, I just like the Vikings chances of succeeding against love. It's just a question of, to me, Josh Jacobs, because this team has been run on before

they've been run on even with Ivan Pace before. I think, I think it was the Detroit game where Jameer Gibbs had some big runs late. So that to me is always going to be the biggest thing about this matchup. That's a good point about Gibbs and Gibbs had a big explosive in that game. And I think that you can survive if you're talking the body blows for this team with Jalen Redman potentially coming back, that would be big for them. Cause I think those DTs that are so important, they get worn down as a game goes along. But if you have Redman, a little more rotation in there, even Levi Drake Rodriguez stepped in for a handful of snaps last week at the goal line and did a pretty good job. That's, I think you can deal with the fours, the fives, the sixes from time to time from Jacobs,

but you can't give up the big ones. And this team has had a bend, don't break. And it's done pretty well at that. Uh, I think, uh, it's opposing teams have the lowest percentage of drives in which they've scored on against this Vikings defense, even though they have been destroyed in the time of possession from time to time, but you get a missed field goal, which they did a couple of times against the Packers, or even giving up a field goal these days is just a win on a drive team start at the 25. The kickers can kick it from the logo. They need like a first down and a half to get right. So, so, so that kind of thing okay well they're gonna run they're gonna run they're gonna run what you can't let them do is get big runs or plays off of those runs second and ones play actions things like that and something to keep an eye on that i'm curious about jacob's

average is almost 10 yards of reception this team is brilliant when it comes to screens passes to the running backs when i watch it i'm like can you just copy that or is that hard to do or whatever but matt lafleur really understands the moving parts to using the running back to his maximum probably goes back to some of his roots being in in the shanahan type of system and the vikings are really good at pinning your running back in your backfield by forcing the pressure looks, confusing you pre-snap, making you adjust, making you bring a guy in. It's going to be just a matching of wits to see how the quick games for LeFleur, because there's a reason why LeFleur is in the name with Kevin O'Connell and George Seifert of the only coaches with two 13-win

seasons in their first three years, because he is incredible as well. And that quick game that the Packers have, the horizontal way they stretch defenses and get the ball out, they can do that as good as anybody, and that's going to be a way that they might try to counter the Vikings' pressures because I did not know that about Josh Jacobs, that it's 10 yards of reception. That's got to make you wonder if Blake Cashman's not just following him around the entire game.

No, that matchup, and it really does feel like two heavyweight prize fighters, but it feels like if they were both coming in with a bunch of knockouts, no times that they've really been knocked out. You think about the losses for Green Bay, they could say the same thing as the Vikings. Their losses have been against all good teams. The Vikings two losses are against two teams that look like they're going to be in the playoffs in Los Angeles. And then of course, with the Detroit lions and green Bay's lost two of their games to Detroit, another one to the Vikings, and then the opener to fill it. I mean, they're right. So these, these two teams are as even as it gets to the point where the Vikings are plus one 20 and the Packers are plus one 26 on the season. It is really that much of a margin. So let's talk about what it means. We know what it means from

the playoff picture, the Vikings, when they have a chance to go to Detroit and take the entire conference, we know that. And if they lose, things become much more difficult for that, and they would need a lot of help. But I think vibes here are just as important when it comes to how they play. If the Vikings have a no-show, the confidence in this team's chances in the playoffs is going to go down significantly. I just remember that so distinctly from 2019.

Even though they were a good team and had a good record and all those things, top 10 and points for and against still, we came out of the game and went, it's just not good enough. I don't know. I think that because they haven't played a great team in a while, good teams like Atlanta, like Arizona, like Seattle, but not a great team in a while. This is a huge litmus test for the Vikings. Yeah. 2022 as well. I remember, didn't they get blown out by Green Bay at the end of that year? And it was like, boy, they've won a lot of these close games, a record at the time that I think the Chiefs have now tied. And even then you're thinking, it's just how good can this team be? Name a game though, that the Vikings have not been in. When you say a no-show, have they done that at all this year?

I mean, their only no-show was a 12-7 win against the Jaguars, and they still ran like 40 more plays than the other team in that game. I wouldn't call that a no-show. I understand it was three interceptions that took a lot of points off the board, but that was not a no-show because it was 400-plus yards. It was just such an incredible performance from everybody else except for Sam Darnold, including John Parker Romo or Parker Romo. Sorry. I do think though that the Vikings are not going to no-show. I do think a loss

could make week 18 meaningless and it could put an entire damper on this. It absolutely could. I just don't think there's a chance they no-show. That would be such a thing that we have not seen from this specific group. We've seen it from the Vikings. We've seen it from the Purple Helmets, just not this exact group. So I don't think that's going to happen. I think worst case scenario, they lose a close game. You question how far this team could really go. You go into a week 18 game that's probably meaningless because Detroit would presumably win on Monday night. And you're feeling really bad about yourself until you go on the road and beat Tampa or whoever it's going to end up being. Well, that's what I was going to say. Is it overstated, though?

I mean, I think that, of course, it's a put it on the marquee game. This game got shifted to 325. The nation is going to be watching and all that. It's a huge game. But because we love these big games so much sometimes we do make it this is a referendum on who you really are as a national football league team and i don't know how much that's ever really correlated to the playoffs of like these one specific island type of games judging well can you really win in the postseason?

I don't think they do. I don't. And I think we just won't know. They could beat Green Bay. They could beat Detroit. They could get the one seat. And I'm still going to be sitting there waiting for that divisional round opener going, what are we going to get out of this Vikings team, out of Sam Darnold?

I really don't know because you could go look back at the Chiefs. They win the Super Bowl last year. They go on that miraculous run. They had so many embarrassing losses during that season in moments that you would thought this team's cooked. This is not going to be a Super Bowl champion, but they still managed to do it because of their quarterback, namely, but also their team was just really good, and they had some bad moments.

I think the Vikings are not going to be judged by their worst moments in Jacksonville or L.A. or wherever you want to call them this year. I think if they lose on Sunday, it shouldn't be judged by their worst moments in Jacksonville or LA or wherever you want to call them this year. I think if they lose on Sunday, it shouldn't be judged by that because we've seen what they're capable of. We have to judge them by their entire body of work first and foremost. And that's a team that wins close games. It finds different ways to win in ways that I haven't seen a Kevin O'Connell team do yet in terms of the multitude of ways they can eke these games out. And that's why I think Vikings fans, even with a loss, shouldn't lose all that confidence. And to answer your question, I do think it is overstated.

Yeah, I mean, you're still talking about that worst-case scenario. They won 13 games this season, but the way the season ends, our friend Patrick Royce, he likes to tell the story of 1987 because, of course he does, and how they lost a couple games at the end of the year and he wrote a column this team can't make it they're they're toast and so forth and then they came out and smoked new orleans and then anthony carter against san francisco the playoffs are a different beast but from the perspective of just the playoff situation for the vikings i think there is something that's very important here,

which is that if you're playing Detroit, see, there's a scenario that I really don't like, which is beating the Packers and then going to Detroit and losing, because then you will have lost to Detroit, and you have to go on the road and play somebody else, and you've had to play all your starters. It's probably better, And you can't really choose this, but it would be better to lose against green Bay and then just have the week off essentially

against Detroit. I think O'Connell might play starters in the first part of the game, but it would be silly to play them for the entire game with nothing on the line. If you beat green Bay, you have to beat Detroit. Otherwise you're going to be, you know, you're going to have your ankles bitten and all that stuff. And then after then go on the road, the last time they faced the lions, they go on the road, they lose to Los Angeles.

You don't want that scenario to happen again. I was going to say, this all comes down to how much you believe the lions curse, how much you believe that. Yeah. The, the stat, I don't know what it's like now,

but at the time when the Vikings faced the lions, it was Oh, and five, the teams that had lost to them, how they did the previous week or whatever. Or even it was just maybe played them. I think it was just played them. Wow. So if you believe in that, I get what you're saying. I do think there's something to just continuing the momentum. We've seen enough teams over the years. I don't know the numbers. I haven't run a study, but I think we've seen enough teams over the years that take that season finale week off,

they take the bye week, and they're just not the exact same after two weeks off. And so one week would help certainly the Vikings. And I think the Lions are a type of grind of a game that, yeah, you're not going to necessarily be at your best coming out of a kind of drag out, punch out game in week 18 that you're alluding to. Yeah. And I think it's just hard to go on to Detroit, play a very stressful game and then go and play another one at Tampa Bay or wherever else. I think that, well, my only anecdotal evidence recently is 2022. They mostly took the final week off against Chicago and we're fine in the playoff game. The defense was exactly who they usually were, but the offense played fine in that game and just wasn't enough for old daniel jones current viking yeah that wasn't rust on on chand and sullivan that was no was that donatello it just that's what it was uh they certainly didn't

take the extra week to scheme anything against the giants that week but in 2019 the vikings rested their starters and then went to New Orleans and upset the Saints. So I don't know. There's probably no rhyme or reason to that. But being healthier is better, I would think. So Vikings win this contest or no? What do you say? Final prediction.

I keep picking the Packers wherever I go. So I'm going to pick the Packers here. Even though I just said I like Brian Flores versus Jordan Love. I like this game being at home. I like the answers the Vikings have found to get the ball to Justin Jefferson. The Packers are beat up. But how many games go exactly like we think? How many games flush out the way? Yeah, that's exactly what I thought was going to happen. Almost never. So I'm almost just going against my intuition and thinking the Vikings are going to roll here and saying Green Bay is going to win a close one.

It's going to be tough. And Matt's best case scenario is going to play out in terms of losing. They're going to lose right away. My only reason for picking Green Bay would be that they have messed around a little bit in some close games and gotten away with it against Seattle. I thought they were the better team against Seattle, but they still had to get away with it at the end, get an interception and against Arizona. They were not the better team that day had to get away with it.

If you mess around, you will find out against the green Bay Packers. I think that it's gotta be a more complete type of game from them than it's been in some of the recent weeks. So I'm leaving that door open. It is as coin flip as a coin flip. I know that's like, I know it's been in some of the recent weeks. So I'm leaving that door open. It is as coin flip as a coin flip. I know that's like, I know it's a cop out,

but it is. I was not, I could pan of the crowd and pick Vikings, but I didn't. I'm sorry. Well, I was on green Bay radio not too long ago and I picked green Bay the same way you did.

Like I don't last second field goal by Mason Crosby or something. It turns out he's got a radio show now on that station. So that's why I said that. But right though, like some kickers kicking for the logo for this game. Yeah, that's the best I can do. I agree with you there. I do. And at this point, I could see a path to a Packers victory. It's not that far fetched. I think the Vikings are the better team, but we've seen better teams lose individual games. But hey, are you picking the Packers then?

I don't know. Oh, okay. Because you wanted to pick a Seattle win the week before. I know. And then I did the same thing. I was like, I don't know. It's Seattle still. I think the Packers are playing so well recently. But then if I pick the Packers on a Green Bay radio station, then pick the Vikings here.

Like, what am I doing? You're at least honest about it. I don't know. I don't know. Vikings. I don't know. I don't know. Vikings. I don't know. Who do you want to pick? Put it in the comments.

So we get lots of comments. Who you pick for the game? I don't know. Yeah. I just thought, yeah, here's what I'll say. Either team. It is so equal. Could win the game.

Yeah. And I can't wait. It's just, this is the most exciting game for the Vikings in a really, really, really long time. So I'm pumped. Football. Football. It's going to be fun. Thanks, everybody, for watching slash listening.

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