Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Star Tribune's Andrew Krammer thinks Vikings can beat banged-up Packers

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

Andrew Krammer of the Minnesota Star Tribune joins the show for our weekly hardcore preview of the upcoming Vikings game. Krammer and Coller dive into the reasons, and keys, to Minnesota upsetting Green Bay at Lambeau this weekend. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, presented by Fanduel. Matthew Collar here, along with Andrew Kramer, the Star Tribune, for our weekly hardcore preview. And with this one, we'll have to see who's playing for the Green Bay Packers. They have a quite an extensive list of players who are banged up, but we'll go position by position and look at how these two teams match up, I think outside of the quarterback position is either close or in a lot of ways in an advantage for the Vikings.

But we have to begin with that, Mr. Kramer. It has been an entire week on this show, on every other show. I'm watching NFL Live and Dan Arlofsky's breaking it down. A lot of people, the QB school is looking at it. Everybody trying to figure out, is J.J. McCarthy fixable? What can he do to improve? And this is a very tough defense to try to do it against. also a very tough place to do it against.

We saw some adjustments last week from Kevin O'Connell, some very serious adjustments, I think, schematically. How do you think the Vikings approach this game against a defense that has Micah Parsons and throws a lot of different looks at the quarterback? Yeah, when Kevin O'Connell talks about looking through the offense in J.J. McCarthy's film and trying to find things that are routine, things that they are good at, things that they can fall back on and build a game plan around, I think you look at the other 10 guys against the Chicago Bears and say they ran the ball pretty good against them.

Aaron Jones obviously got some things going, but it was also Jordan Mason, those two runs in the fourth quarter to set up the touchdown. Justin Jefferson blocking Kevin Bayard to the point where he's flexing after that touchdown run because he was so jacked at how that run block, how well it went. And so to me, this group is blocking, running the ball as well as they have, at least last week. I know the Bears are not a good defense, so how much can you take from that? but try to carry it over into Lambo field and try to make things easy on J.J. McCarthy to the point like you got to in the second half against Chicago where O'Connell's saying, I know it's a little uncharacteristic of me to hand off twice right after, what was it, a turnover or big? Oh, no, it was a big pump return by Miles Price that's set up that to play touchdown drive.

Like, that's the stuff they got to get back to right out of the gate. Don't ask J.J. to do too much and try to just lean on a Green Bay defense that frankly has not defended the run as well as they should. with the collection of talent that they have. Yeah, there was a stat out there about rushing attempts over-expected. So is it an expected run or pass situation? And mostly the Vikings chart, you'd be shocked by this, leans toward pass when it is a passing situation. And the chart went down last week

where he was running the ball more in situations where usually around the entire NFL, they would pass it. A good example would be like a second and eight. The NFL is totally past these days, but they were running at times on first and second down. And I think that's the only way to really do it, to try to control the field position, control the clock. And when I reviewed that game against Chicago, I really thought quite a bit about today's NFL with the kick return and with field position and how teams are starting at the 30, 35, 40 sometimes, that it's made it so if you can punt the ball inside the other team's 10, that feels like forever. in a day to score. And I think that even a team like the Green Bay Packers who has been

inconsistent offensively, in the same with the Chicago Bears and even the Baltimore Ravens who have been inconsistent offensively, you can keep yourself in a ballgame without doing a ton of special stuff. And I got to shout out Ryan Wright. I think he's been one of the best punters in the entire NFL this year. If you are getting yards on the ground, playing the field position game, I know it feels like I'm talking about 1992 here, but I think the Vikings have actually done in the last couple weeks and even against Detroit, an excellent, excellent job of doing that. And with a quarterback who I feel like is very wobbly right now, that might be the best you can do is to just try to put him in situations where he's not throwing

30, 35 passes. I know they did this last week, but I think you go back to a very similar plan as last week and just hope that J.J. McCarthy executes it a little bit better. Well, and just look at what the strength of this Packers defense is. It's obviously their edge rushers. It's Micah Parsons and Rashon Gary. And they can't move Micah Parsons around like they like to unless it's a known passing down unless it's going to be second and 12, third and 10, whatever. And those are the times that you do not want to be in if you're coaching a young quarterback like they are. So to me, this is looking at the interior of that Packers defense. Seeing guys like Corey Wooden, I believe it is, Carl Brooks. It does not a lot going on there. When they get rid of T.J. Slate

in the way they did in the off season. Maybe Van Ness fixes some of that if he comes back from injury, but they were really bad, I thought, against the Giants last week, defending the run. They were super bad against the Panthers when Rico Dowdell went wild at that win for Carolina at Lambeau Field. So it's that simple to me. And when you look at this Vikings offensive line,

they might actually have all five starters on Sunday for the first time, all season. It's week 12, and they might finally have all five starters. The other four guys, not named Blake Brandel, and even Blake a little bit, played very, very well against Chicago. run blocking. Donovan Jackson, who I'm sure you've talked about quite a bit this week, played very well. Seems like Christian Derisaw is finally over that knee injury now, not taking snaps off during games. If Kelly's back in and playing the way that we expect him to, or even 90, 80 percent of it, whatever, this could be the best run blocking group they've had together. And again, against a Packer's defense that I do not think blocks it very well.

I think Edgroom Cooper is a very, very good linebacker, but I don't love Quay Walker and what he's doing this season. And I do think they could run the ball, put those two edge rushers on their heels, and try to prevent the amount of times those guys really get after you. You were looking for Colby Wooden. Colby Wooden. What did I say? Corey Wooten, wasn't that a Viking? Oh, the robot. Yeah, right, that guy.

And I also think one of their high draft picks from a couple years ago, Devante Wyatt, for the role that they're asking him, I think he is not a needle mover for me. and, well, Kenny Clark in that trade was highly kind of made fun of. Oh, yeah, Kenny Clark, your whole defense in Dallas is kind of a tire fire, but this one guy is going to change all of it. Well, him not being here does actually change the math for the Packers against the Minnesota Vikings. And, you know, sometimes in the past, we would see a Gary Kubiak or a Kevin Stefansky attack the Packers with a lot of just running the football.

And we saw tons of, you know, Delvin Cook big games against this team. And it feels like with Jones and with Mason running as well as they have the last couple weeks, especially Jones feels like he's really got his burst back, that they can lean super heavy on the run game here and then try to hit a couple of shots for J.J. McCarthy, build his confidence. I think another thing is, too, for the defense of the Packers, they got hit with some screens last week that really worked for the New York Giants. And I think that the Vikings have done a poor job again for the fourth straight year of,

setting up a screen game. And, you know, they get a swing pass that turns into a run that one time. And it was like, oh, my gosh. But even, hey, I'll give him credit. They had a tight end screen that worked last week, right? Seven yards. There you go. What a play it was. So memorable. It's among all screens for the Vikings that that has to be brought up. But that type of play to try to get J.J. McCarthy going. I guess that's the other question is, how do you get him into a rhythm because I think they've tried just about everything. I am on the side overall of lean into it, throw as much as you want to throw the rest of the season to get him as many reps as you possibly can.

But as long as there is a twinkle of a chance to get into the playoffs, I don't expect them to do that. I think that's much more of a, if you've been eliminated and you're playing the Giants, throw 47 passes with J.J. McCarthy, it's not helping Aaron Jones to get more handoff. But as for right now, if they were to win, then there's still a flicker. And so they probably will try to play this very safe with focusing on the run game. And I think that's what they should do regardless. And I'm not saying that that cost, that they should necessarily cost JJ's development,

but we can argue playing winning football, being an advantageous situation. That's what you eventually want to do anyway with him. Throwing 40 times for the sake of throwing 40 times to get him to do it might not necessarily be productive throws if you're just dropping back on second and 10 and saying, good luck figuring that out in your seventh start or whatever it might be. So I understand what you're saying, though, that to get him in a rhythm, how do you do it? I liked what they did right out of the gate in Chicago. The scripted, and I'm sure Kevin O'Connell will debate what the term scripted means.

It's not like he writes down 15 and he sticks with it, but that initial menu of plays that he got to for them seemed to be the kind of quick out kind of stuff, the little screens, the run game, that little kind of dink and dunk style, you know, system that should set up JJ to feel good about getting some early completions. You and I talked about before, though, about you feel like more the way to go is getting him into some deep shots early on, to try to vault his confidence forward and not, you know, wait until he's missed some throws and then ask him to start taking some shots. So I do think that's an interesting line of thinking, but that's not what they did. They went into that game last week, kind of dinking and dunking. And then they set up finally a little deep shot

play action to Jordan Addison that fell incomplete. And it did not look good from JJ. And that was right out of the gate. So like, what do you do with that if you're Kevin O'Connell? Folks, this year is that I actually get my holiday shopping going early for all of my friends and family. And there's only one place on the internet that's going to help me best. It's called Uncommon Goods. Uncommon goods makes holiday shopping stress-free and joyful with thousands of one-of-a-kind gifts that you cannot find anywhere else. I just went to their website. I typed in football gifts and let me tell you, so many amazing and unique options popped up. I found helmet-shaped coasters, football bingo, personalized team history books, all sorts of stuff, some of which was really cool,

like college football stadium blueprints that are made by artists. You won't find anything like this anywhere else. That's just for the people that I know, but you can search any type of gift that you're looking for and find something you'll see nowhere else. When you shop at Uncommon Goods, you're supporting artists and small independent businesses. Many of their handcrafted products are made in small batches, so make sure you shop now before they sell out for the holiday season. So shop early, have fun, and cross some names off your list today. To get 15% off your next gift, go to UncommonGoods.com slash Purple Insider.

that's uncommon goods.com slash purple insider for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer, Uncommon Goods, we're all out of the ordinary. If you guys have been wearing hats or trying different haircuts in order to cover up for your hair loss, trust me, I totally feel you, and maybe you've tried different hair loss solutions and nothing works. Well, I've got something for you then. It's called Hymns. Hymns offers convenient access to a range of prescription hair loss.

treatments with ingredients that work, and you can do it in a way that works best for you. Prefer an oral medication or a spray. Do it your way. Hymns brings expert care straight to you with 100% online access to personalized treatment plans that put your goals first. No hidden fees, just personalized care on your schedule. For simple online access to personalize and affordable care for hair loss, ed, weight loss, and more. Visit Hymns.com slash purple Insider. That is Hymns.com for your free online visit Hymns.com slash purple insider. Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral monoxidil and finesteride. Featured products include compound drug products which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety effectiveness or quality. Prescription

required. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. I mean, when your quarterback is not accurate. There's not a lot you can do as a coach just in general because last week they couldn't have drawn up any more wide open wide receivers, but I do feel like you have to keep going back to that well. And the reason I think that is you got to learn somehow, right? And I don't know how else you learn other than just getting back up on the bike, putting a band-aid on the scratch on your knee, and try it again going down the hill. And you might fall again. You might throw another one of those. But if you can't figure out how to hit those, you can't play for Kevin O'Connell.

That is the fundamental base of this offense. And if they're going to figure out if McCarthy is their guy for 2026, you can't just have them run screens and treat it like Cleveland did with Dylan Gabriel, which was, let's just get through this without being embarrassed. And that's not what you're looking for with J.J. McCarthy. This is not like a filler quarterback. This is someone that you still have, I mean, it's only been five. games have hope for turning a corner and then, you know, eventually he can run these concepts

and hit them in rhythm and be a really good quarterback for this team. Until that's off the table for me. Now look, if they were seven and three, then I would say, oh man, like keep it as safe as you possibly can. Hide him. Defense. But I have already reached the point where I want to see O'Connell run his O'Connell stuff and get J.J. as familiar as possible with it. And if you win, you win and if you don't, well, then you're still finding out stuff anyway. But I think that from player number two through 11 on the offense, the Vikings have a, I want to say a pretty significant advantage here, except for against Micah Parsons. And the one big concern I would have in this game is Micah Parsons hitting J.J. McCarthy extremely hard. Now, McCarthy did a good job

last week of getting rid of the football. They blocked it up so well. But in the previous couple weeks he took a lot of hits, including hurting his hand because he stepped up into a throw and then against the Lions, I thought he took way too many hits rolling out, taking hits along the sideline. Are you concerned at all about McCarthy in this situation trying too hard to sort of prove everybody wrong in one game or get everyone's belief back in him in one game and maybe hang on to the ball too long or scrambling too much or something like that? Because I would be a little concerned about that. Yeah, the timing and the clock and the head, that's all going to be so critical. I would be concerned about it, too, because when you watch the Bears game, like,

as you mentioned, they protected very well against Chicago. And Chicago does not have much of a pass rush, obviously. JJ should have known that. Yet even the opening drive, I believe it was, when you have the wheel route to Aaron Jones, that felt like a sped-up read where he just kind of fires that thing out there. And it was man coverage. You love that kind of matchup. Aaron Jones on a linebacker, man coverage. It felt like a rush throw that even Aaron Aaron wasn't ready for is he kind of leaned back for it. And then Jalen Naylor, a little mesh concept, as we'd like to talk about, came open on the other side. And if it's manned coverage, you know if I wait, this is going to be a premier look right here on the other side. Rushes this throw out of a clean pocket to Aaron. And that's the thing. We're like the timing. It felt hurried at times against Chicago. And you look at the stats. They bear out. Didn't get hit a whole lot. Didn't take any sacks. But at what cost, Matt? At what cost? Because there were receivers running all over the field. And that's the thing is that you're going to go into this. game now, and he's been told all week, Micah Parsons is breathing down your neck. What are you going to do? And I'm sure they say it a lot better than I just said it in terms of coaching. But that's what he's

been told effectively, is that this guy is going to be coming after you. How quick is that clock going to be going now when against Montes's sweat? It seemed like it was going pretty fast at times. And that's what I'm more concerned about is how many opportunities might he lead down on the field because he's not trusting Brian O'Neill to hold up against Micah Parsons when maybe he should. if it's Brian O'Neill and it's a chip from T.J. or C.J. Hammer or whatever. The hard part about analyzing J.J. McCarthy is that a lot of times I feel like we will have pretty good answers for what is required to make it work. And over the last couple of weeks, I feel like it's been really hard with those answers because the answer is you just need to hit

the guys that are there. And if you do that, this will be so much better. And also, it needs to be said that the guys need to catch the ball as well. And that's a factor in this game. And I think you can look at some of the throws and go, yeah, that's a that's a PFF drop. But man, that ball was moving. Man, that was a little bit out of the frame. And we haven't heard O'Connell at any point say we need to catch the ball. It's been mostly, yeah, the ball needs to be in the right spots. And he was talking about the touch and throwing at 80 percent to get some balls where they can catch and run with the football. Runner's ball. Runner's ball. Yeah. It has something. And so what I think we need to see here is some J.J. McCarthy resilience. And from the beginning with him, that's a trait that they really liked. He had to battle through the injury. He had to battle through another injury. He comes back. He wins against Detroit. There's tough moments in that game. And he came up with some really clutch plays. It's like he needs to get one. Like he needs to get one of those to get into some momentum there and the throws that he's comfortable with.

but the unfortunate part is that I think the timing has been so off on a lot of these plays that's hard to do, right? So I guess maybe you're looking at how do you make it so the timing is a little bit easier but in some of those plays I don't know how it could be any easier. So I just, that's what it always kind of comes back to is like maybe you should do this or this or this or this or this or maybe he just

needs to make the place. Yeah, how much of it's just in his own head? And that's the thing is that when you go back and look at his success, He was 0 for 5 in the second half until you get to that final drive. And he goes, I think, six for eight for 76 yards, whatever it was. And I think people will instinctively see that and say, well, the bears were just playing soft. It was, you know, kind of an easy, again, not garbage time, but kind of an easier drive for him. And it wasn't.

If you go back and watch it, Dennis Allen mixed some things up, blitzed him. At one point, there was an edge blitz. He didn't even see. He gets drilled in the back as he dumps down to T.J. Hawkinson for 21 yards. There was another throw he made in that drive against pressure where he's seeing it. and he throws it. That's the kind of stuff he just was not doing accurately or on time the rest of the game. How does it get to that point where suddenly he feels, I can just let this all go and just play? It's not like Kevin O'Connell was calling that simpler of an offense. I did not see that anyway. These were still concepts he had to kind of

check through and get to his right read against a defense. So to me, this seems like it's as much in McCarthy's head, because when he was asked after the game against the Bears, what was different? Like how did you put that together? His first words I don't know. Like, it's just in his head, and he's got to find a way to find that calm. And I don't know how much more coaching or completions or easy throws are going to get that unless he just wakes up on Sunday morning and feels it within himself, which is where he needs to get to. I reached that point this week where I thought, everybody knows, including J.J. McCarthy, from the way that he talked, what needs to happen. Now it's either going to happen or it's not. I don't think there's much more left to debate over, is it this scheme?

Is it too complex? Is it that they're not running? Is it this, this, this, this, and this. It's really on his shoulders, and it's either going to sink or swim. But I am a little curious, though, because you bring up that final drive, if there is something to running some tempo early on. Like running, we don't ever really see this in the NFL, but O'Connell has done it from time to time where they run a no huddle out of the opening script.

And I would like to see that this week of get a short completion. then everybody get up to the line of scrimmage, get him in the shotgun and have him kind of just cooking right away, maybe built some confidence that way. I could see that happening. But this is not an easy defense to do it against when you consider Jeff Halfley and how good he's been with their secondary and with the amount of looks that he's going to face. And that's where I think the true test is going to be is that Halfley does not show you where rushers are coming from and doesn't declare the coverage right off the bat. And that's something that Dennis Allen did last week that seemed to throw off the timing was you'd see those rotating safeties. You'd see, oh, this looks like it's going to be covered two.

Oh, it's not covered two. I think that every team now understands that that's what you do against a young quarterback is you start to mix those coverages and don't show them early on. So the battle there, I mean, this is going to be one that either swings us back on the side of, hey, this is something McCarthy can build on or it's going to be another. a long week for everybody. Let's go over to the other side of the ball. You know, there's a lot of attempts to make Jordan Love a debate quarterback. You know, any quarterback without a ring who's pretty good and then has his bad moments as a debate quarterback, Dak Prescott, is he actually.

Joe Flack of Elite. Exactly. This has been going on forever. Anybody who's Eli Manning, anyone who's like really good but is not perfect and, you know, Manning won his ring and then everyone decided he was elite, which he was always good. but not maybe at the top, top level. The point is that, you know, Jordan Love, to me, falls in that category of very, very good quarterbacks

who on a given week can be fantastic or can struggle, which do you think we see from Jordan Love this week? Boy, and we've seen that variance from Jordan Love, we've seen against Brian Flores, and just their two years of going at it with Brian's two years here. So I don't know, because there are moments in games where you're watching them against Cleveland, you're like, and I know Cleveland's a good defense,

but you're like, what is going on here? And then you see him yesterday or last week against the Giants, and it looked phenomenal. There were plays he was making where he couldn't even step into throws, and he was making them into pretty tight windows that it was impressive. He can, when he puts it together, it really flows, and it looks great. And it looks good for the non-traditional play action system Matt LaFleur likes to run. We heard O'Connell talk about it this week, because O'Connell runs more of the quote-unquote traditional play action system. But it's a lot of RPO's gun runs.

It's a lot of stuff that goes horizontal, sideline to sideline, and tries to make it easier for the quarterback that way. But when they don't have the deep threat, like they haven't had this season, when Jaden Reed goes out early in the season like he did, and Christian Watson has only come back recently and been an impact player. And Matthew Golden, the first round pick, has not been exactly maybe what people thought right out of the gate. That does seem to limit what they can do in terms of explosive plays. Like, this seems to be an offense with Jordan Love and Green Bay, where if they're not scoring on 8, 10, 12 play drives, they're not scoring very often. And that's why Josh Jacobs' health is so important. That's why the Tucker

craft injury was incredibly huge for that offense because he moves the chains almost every time he wakes up. So what can love do without him? It looked great against a giant secondary that doesn't do a whole lot. It looked great against a giant's defense that outside of their front line doesn't do a whole lot. I think Flores is going to pressure him, is going to force the issue. I think this is a less mobile version of Caleb Williams, but in terms of Jordan, somebody who's, you know, more adept at surgically taking you apart downfield. I just don't think they have the horses a wide receiver that scare you a whole lot. So to me, if I'm looking at this,

I like what the front seven is doing for the Vikings, even if Jonathan Grenard does not play, I think Dallas Turner can continue what he's doing from a pass rush perspective against a Green Bay offensive line that has certainly banged up. This also feels like, as I was watching the game back, the interior for the Packers has been a bit of a struggle for them.

Aaron Banks has been a disappointment, which I think we all kind of figured there was some overpaying going on at the guard position. Sean Ryan got crushed last week by Dexter Lawrence, but still was back in the lap, as you mentioned. And this feels like a Jonathan Allen slash Javon Hargrave and Jalen Redman. We should be talking Jalen Redmond every week now at this point. Those guys as having all the three of them on the field a lot over the last few weeks has been a complete difference maker and they've done a lot of dominating. And I think that they can do that against this team as well. The concern that I would

though is I know you mentioned like there's not really a deep threat. They've got a lot of injuries there is when teams have beaten the Vikings, they've done it a lot down the field. And Isaiah Rogers last week I thought had one of his better games, but Caleb Williams will not hang in and try to hit the deep shot. He will bail off of it, run, scramble, throw the ball away. And he did that a ton in that game where Jordan loved because, I think it's because he's so huge. Maybe I don't know if it comes through on TV. He's walked by us before. And like, holy cow, that guy is enormous. He can stand in the pocket and wait, sort of like Sam Darnold would, wait until someone is right in his lap and still let it go 30, 40 yards down field. If he can hit some of those shots to go, because if I'm them, I'm thinking, look at what Philly did, look at what the Chargers did. They got one-on-ones and they took shots. And this safety unit has also not been what it's been in the past, not really anywhere close this year. So if I'm them, I'm trying to take advantage down the field. It's really, can they get the time to throw down field? Because we know that Jordan Love can make that happen if they do.

I don't think that little screens are going to destroy this Vikings team. Because I think they've been pretty good against those last few weeks. Yeah, Blake Cashman's been playing phenomenally. I think even Eric Wilson, when he's replaced Ivy Pace, has just been incredible in that spot. And that's helped the underneath stuff kind of shore up. They've tackled better than they tackled to the start of the season. That also helps that because you're right. Like the M.O., the offenses come in here.

I think Blake Cashman, after this last game, said, offenses against us just want to run right into four-minute mode. They want to hand it off. They want to do short, quick, conservative passes. They just don't seem to want to absorb a whole lot of risk against us. And the unspoken part that he's not going to say is that the Vikings' offense is not doing a whole lot to force the defense to get to see some risk, maybe some drop-back passes on first down. If the Packers are going to approach it that way, oh, I guess I should say I wonder how the Packers are going to approach it.

Will they say, you know what? No, we're going to max protect and just try to throw all over the yard because we saw Jalen Hertz do it a few weeks ago against this defense. They just don't have an A.J. Brown right now. They don't even have a Devanta Smith. Like, I'm not too afraid of these Packers' wide receivers. And that's the thing that I have to wonder, who were they throwing it to? Is it Dantavian Wicks?

Is it Romeo Dubs? Like, okay, I just don't see the burner who's going to take the top off of a, I don't know, a quarter shell that still manages a five plus, you know, blitz rush because it's coming from wherever. Like what Flores did against the Bears, he does it so differently every week that we know. What he did against the Bears was this total corner vice kind of blitz plan that we did not see from him before. He's going to have something new against this Packers defense that they're going to have to adjust to. And how Jordan Love and Matt LaFleur adjust to it will tell the story. Will they go multi-tight ends?

Because they've got blocking tight ends. They get some big dudes. No longer is it Tucker Kraft who can just create yards after catch. but will they try to lean into the run? And the health of Josh Jacobs matters here, but I think Matt Lafleur has always had an interesting run game. It's just this year it has not been as successful. The O-Line has had injuries.

And any time a running back carries the ball as much as Josh Jacobs, a lot of times the following year, they don't have quite the burst. They get banged up. That's exactly what's happened. I actually think that Wilson has looked better than Jacobs this year because he looks fresh and Jacobs looks like he's a guy that carried the ball a ton last year.

But when I look at the Bears game, the defensive performance, the thing that we didn't talk about much because the quarterback may have dominated some of the discussion was that eight-minute drive that Chicago had. And I thought, wow, like Ben Johnson, you really got it right with this. They ran play actions and they hand it off and they brought in big personnel. And, you know, when the offensive lineman comes in the game, he rubs his belly, which is extremely funny to me. And I don't know if we've talked enough about how funny that is. Like, like, that's the way you have to declare yourself. Who can't, who did that? I love that.

Like, that's the funniest. The competition committee was like, we're on one here with this one. We got this one. That's just tremendous. But will we see some of that? I mean, they're a little short on the offensive line, but will we see that? Because you're right. There is, I think, a blueprint to attack this Vikings defense, which is the short passing,

tons of handoffs, and then every once in a while, take a deep shot with maybe two wide receivers and see if you could beat Isaiah Rogers, Byron Murphy, Theo Jackson, Harrison Smith one-on-one, and that's worked for a lot of teams, but it doesn't work if they don't run the ball successfully. And overall, I think these last several weeks, they've done as good as we could have asked them, considering the teams they're playing, Ben Johnson dialing up the run game, the Detroit Lions with Jemir Gibbs, Saquan Barkley, and Derek Henry. These are a murderer's row of running teams who they've mostly shut down. Are we confident that they do it again here on Sunday? Yeah, I like the matchups because

This offensive line the Vikings are facing in Green Bay is not, as you mentioned, it's not that great. Elston Jenkins is on IR. I think Sean Ryan took over at center and did not have a good start last week against the Giants. Javon Hargrave had been playing well up until I thought last week was a little iffy, but they still put Redmond in there with Jonathan Allen. They get Levi Drake in there. They've found some things that work on the interior. And they've really leaned on a bare front that's even put all four of them on the field at the same time with the two edge rushers. They'll do that in between the 20s. at times on first down if they feel like they have to. And it seems to have worked. And then moving Eric Wilson on the edge has worked as well at times. So I think they're starting to find some things. I think Dallas Turner played pretty well against the run as well against Chicago.

I don't know how much that'll translate. But I do think their ability to come together to stop the run better works. And Cashman talked about it too in terms of like Chicago threw some stuff of them that they weren't expecting. We know Ben Johnson's a big counter team, but then they started doing some weak dive stuff

that got by us. and they adjusted to that. When this defense works, that's what they do. They are very good at sideline bench adjustments. We're not going to wait until halftime. That's an over-cliquet kind of thing. On the run, on the fly in games, they're very good at adjusting to these things. And we're seeing it now that Andrew Van Ginkle is back,

now that they've got Cashman in there for the past month or two that they've had them in there, that's what this group's supposed to look like. And I think Hargrave playing the way he did, at least in Detroit and against Baltimore, I thought was huge for how that front looked. So the Green Bay Packers are six and a half point favorites on Fanduil. I will tell you my prediction first. I say that the Vikings will cover and the Vikings will win. Wow.

And here's what the score is going to be. 17 to 16. They will win on a missed extra point by the Green Bay Packers. The kicking advantage here is enormous for the two kickers. And if we're going to be talking about two offenses that struggle and it's a real battle and it's push and pull, I will take Will Reichard all day long. This is like famous last words, right? At Lambo, but he has been fantastic.

The kicking for the Packers has been very inconsistent for them. And it just doesn't feel like this game has any chance at all to hit the over. I just think it's going to be an ugly kind of gross battle in a cold day at Lambo that ends up with the Vikings having slightly more talent and a better kicker. Is that a hot take to pick them for this one? I don't hate that at all. And I've been walking around TCO Performance Center this week, muttering to myself since nobody will listen, the Vikings are going to win this game.

This is how this works. This is one that they win. It's just how this works. You think, oh, McCarthy's down. He sucks. He's a bust. What are they going to do with this kid? Then he walks into Lambeau and goes 3 and O in Division Road games.

It's not scientific. It's just how it's been. Like, 2020 was this way. They were one in five. We were like, oh, man, Rogers is going to put up 700 yards. And then it was super windy. Couldn't throw the ball. Ball. I don't know.

Packers have lost some bad games this year, too. And I think they've lost three or four games where the opponent didn't even score 20 points. Yeah. Like they've lost games where their defenses had to be looking at the offense, being like, what is, what is, how are we losing to Joe Flacko right now? Which almost happened twice to the Green Bay Packers this season with two different teams. I think the Vikings have a good shot to win this game because of the matchups that we've spent a half hour talking about. I will pick them to at least cover that spread. I don't, you know, and I have picked them to win on other podcasts, so why not stick with it?

But I'm going to say it's a higher scoring game than people think. I keep saying this. It didn't happen last week. I said, this is the Vikings week. They're going to get some takeaways. And then Caleb Williams said, I'm going to drop a handoff and still get it back and show you. How about this week? I think they're finally going to get maybe a forced fumble something.

I just think I'm going to keep calling my shot. This is finally the week they're going to get a key takeaway on defense that helps this offense. I think McCarthy looks better. I think he hits some deep shots that he could not hit that were, as we mentioned, wide open against the Chicago Bears. I think they'll find some throwing lanes again against Green Bay. And I think the key, though, is going to be that they run the football. They ran so well and blocked so well against Chicago. I think they try to carry that over, and I think they do. And I think that is why this ends up being a close game that they have a chance to win. I think what I want to do just based on where the season is at is try to make

absurd calls and see if we get one right. Okay. I'm going to throw this out there. Jay Ward gets the key interception. Jay Ward? Jay Ward. Yep. Jay Ward.

Hey, Brian Flores said he wants to play him more often. He, the last couple weeks, has gotten a handful of snaps. I don't know if they feel about Theo Jackson the way that they felt about Theo Jackson early in the season. I'm going to say Jay gets more playing time. Something happens. Ballons up in his hands. Jalen Redman strips.

sack. Okay. That's what I'm calling. I'm calling Jalen Redmond strips. I just think it has to be a fumble because right now this defense is not producing the tip passes, the plays on the ball that you want to see. I do think it's a personnel issue as much as it's an opportunity issue, which I keep talking about. But yeah, I think they stop the run and finally get a strip sack. Let me ask you one more fan duel question. The Vikings are plus 175 to win eight games. Now I know you're not a gambling aficionado. That means they are not favored to. win eight games. Do you think that they can get there? Four and six, are they going to win four of their next seven? No. Okay. I don't. I don't, and I'm only saying that because of the quarterback. This team is talented enough to do it, but can I say that J.J. McCarthy will be consistent enough in games and then week to week to win more than he loses the rest of the season. I would not put any money on it. After they win 34 to 31 next week, you're going to say something. Totally different. I'm going to come back and be like, yeah, Super Bowl.

320 yards, four touchdowns for JJ McCarthy. We did take his over last week, and it worked, right? He did hit the over last week. Hey, how about that? That's absolutely true. Anyway, well, nobody knows nothing, and we'll see what happens. It's always weird in Lambo. I made a comment to a Viking veteran.

I said, can we just keep a normal football game in Lambo? And he said, what does it normal mean? I'm like, you know what I mean. Every time there's Achilles is, and there's, ties and a plane slid off the runway seven studs i just i don't want to hear about any of that mutinies player oh yeah players being like i'm not going to run that coverage let's let's not have any of that nonsense just have a normal football game and then no one you have to say did you see the game did you see the game hey mike what about kell and mom oh that's right that was there

too garrett bradbury catching a 20 yard pass did you see yeah and i see him every day in practice. A lot of stuff happens at Lambo. We'll see what happens this time. Thanks, Andrew. Football. A ball.