Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Thanksgiving recap: The Bears did what???

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Matthew Coller reacts to the Bears nearly coming back on the Lions and then botching the end and hurting the Vikings chances for the No. 1 seed in the NFC North. Plus the Packers steamroll Miami Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here on Thanksgiving evening to recap what we saw from the NFC North on Thanksgiving. And it was eventful. It was very eventful. But first, let me say happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I hope you had a very nice holiday sitting around and watching some entertaining football. He said with a very big question mark, certainly not what's going on right now, firing up the show early because the Dolphins are down 27, three to the Packers and the way that they play in the cold I'm just guessing it's safe to go live

in the fourth quarter that they are not going to come back and that the Packers are going to be nine and three when the day ends and that means the Vikings have to continue to win to keep pace with the Green Bay Packers. But of course, we have to react to what happened in the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions game. So questions, comments, thoughts, how you're feeling after today about the NFC North, which has absolutely lived up to its billing this season. I mean, going into the season, there was a lot of talk about, could this be the toughest division in all of football? And the answer has turned out to be absolutely yes, it is. And the Vikings are in quite the thick of a race here with Detroit escaping

against the Chicago Bears and Green Bay blowing out the Miami Dolphins. But let's talk about what happened with Chicago. Number one, the Chicago bears, if they had, let's just say Kevin O'Connell as their head coach, how many wins do they have this year? Is it seven? Is it six? It's definitely a lot more than with Matt Eberflus, who should not be allowed to get off the plane and go back to the team facility and have his key fob work at Soldier Field or wherever it is that they practice when he returns to Chicago. One of the most bizarre handling of an endings to a game that I can ever remember in my entire life. It seemed that the head coach of the Bears, Matt Iverflus,

just forgot what the heck was going on. Maybe forgot that he had a timeout or froze up, didn't know what to do with, do you kick a field goal? Do you play aggressively? Do you what? And not only did Matt Iverflus forget that and run the clock out on himself on national TV in front of the nation on Thanksgiving, but he also, his quarterback, Caleb Williams, lacking in awareness himself, should have and could have called a timeout.

Also could have just got back to the line of scrimmage quickly, thrown a quick pass, scrambled, got down, called timeout, which I think is what they were trying to do. I think what Matt Eberflus wanted Caleb Williams to do was get lined up real quick, throw a quick pass, then call the timeout. Rather than calling the timeout and risk having to complete the ball and then spike and then run in and kick it. I think what they wanted to do was just to get a play completed to get their kicker in his range and then call the timeout so they could properly set up the field goal and so forth. And I think that that is why after the game, Matt Eberflus, who's just lost out there at the plate when he's being asked questions by the media.

I mean, imagine hiring a coach to be in Chicago with a very large media like that, who then walks out and tells everybody, oh yeah, actually I had the right idea there. You guys are just crazy thinking that I may have run the clock out on myself. But Caleb Williams having no awareness and trying to change the play, putting people in motion, like, what are you doing, guy? That's more than just a rookie mistake. That is somebody who doesn't understand what's going on in the football game, and they just completely choked.

And the Detroit Lions get away with a near total meltdown that would have really helped the Minnesota Vikings in the race for the NFC North. So what is your takeaway from that game? Because I think you could look at it a couple of different ways. I mean, number one is if there was any question that Matt Eberflus was going to get fired. I mean, I think we already knew anyway, but he is absolutely getting fired after this year. Caleb Williams remains a rookie. I don't think it should be on him. When Matt Eberflus sees Caleb Williams making a mistake, trying to change the play

with 20 seconds left, you hit the timeout, hit the timeout button on Madden, pause, hit select, timeout. So you make sure that at very least you have 20 seconds left that could get you a completion go out of bounds a completion and then get up there and spike really quick probably takes like what five six seconds for a quick slant route get down run up spike run your field goal team on kick the field goal but having no awareness that his quarterback didn't realize that he needed to hurry up combined with not originally calling the timeout anyway, after they had lost all that yardage, just incredible mismanagement again.

And the Chicago bears remain only a couple of plays away from having seven wins right now. And instead they fired an offensive coordinator. They've embarrassed themselves on Thanksgiving. They embarrassed themselves against Washington and Caleb Williams in the second half of that game played really, really well to bring them back. That will be the main focus. Of course it will.

And it deserves to be, but on the other side of it, something interesting happened in the second half of that game. Number one was that Detroit stopped being able to run over Chicago and just wind the clock out. And the other thing was that all of Detroit's players on defense seem to get hurt. And Miami has just scored to cut it to 27 to 11 and it will be very funny if I started this live show early because I thought the game was over and then Miami came back that would be that would be funny we'll keep an eye on it and you guys can let me know if Miami's going crazy or something but as of right, it looks like the Packers are still with a pretty safe lead. But just going back to that Detroit, Josh Paschal, their edge rusher, he gets hurt.

They've got like their fourth string pass rusher. They got guys in the secondary who are getting banged up and the defense looked a lot more fallible in the second half than it has. And the offense in the second half looked a lot more human than it looked in the first half than it has. And the offense in the second half looked a lot more human than it looked in the first half of that game. And I kind of go back to Detroit and their schedule has been pretty light recently since they played the Vikings and they've got these blowouts and they're more impressive wins than the Vikings had

against Jacksonville for sure, against Tennessee. They really murdered those terrible teams. But here they are in a game against the Chicago Bears, where the Vikings just played the Bears really close. And the Bears had to come back on a watermelon kick on the onside kick. And then the Bears nearly come back and beat Detroit. And common opponent there, plus consider the way that the Vikings played against Detroit earlier this year. Maybe the gap isn't quite as much as it would seem on paper when we look at point differential,

because when both of these teams have played good teams, Detroit has been the winner at the end of the day as they were today, but they haven't destroyed good teams. Detroit has been the winner at the end of the day as they were today, but they haven't destroyed good teams. They've sort of squeaked out wins against good teams this year and blown out the really bad teams. And the Vikings have kind of gotten ahead of a lot of teams or outplayed them and then allowed those teams to stay in games. And when they played Detroit, they got up early. Detroit came back. The Vikings had a chance to still win the game.

They didn't quite pull it off in the end, didn't have Blake Cashman in that one, but played them neck and neck. And it just feels like, and the difference is only one game in the standings and it was almost even in the standings. It feels like the difference in something like point differential is not quite the same difference as it is if the Vikings were

to play against the Detroit Lions in the playoffs and they'll get another shot at them at the end of the season. Maybe it'll mean something and maybe it won't. But as I was watching the second half of that game and you guys know, I think that Detroit Lions team is tremendous. They're really, really good. But on the defensive side, if they don't have Aiden Hutchinson, which they won't, they keep talking about, well, if they make the Super Bowl, so they won't have Aiden Hutchinson again. If Z'Darrius Smith is getting banged up on every other play,

they trade it for him. We know what that's like. When Z'Darrius Smith was a Viking in the second half of the season in 2022, it felt like he was banged up all the time. And then Pascal is their edge rusher. He's pretty good too. And he's beat up a lot as well. Carlton Davis, I think, was either out of that game or injured.

So he is a good player for them. What's his health going to look like? It's not completely settled that the Detroit Lions are the champions of the NFC North or that if they play the Vikings again, they'll just run over the Vikings because they've been better against some of the bad teams. When it's the good teams, it's been pretty neck and neck. Detroit did outplay the Packers pretty well when they were in Green Bay, but now this game against Chicago, ultimately Caleb Williams finds a way to come back on them. And the thing that I really took notice of, though, was Caleb Williams had a chance to win the game

on a crossing route to DJ Moore, who was wide open, and Williams just kind of spiked the ball, just maybe had it stick in his hand or kind of choked a little bit or maybe felt a little pressure at his feet and did not put enough velocity behind the ball. But what I was noticing in this game is man-to-man coverage, and everybody covers the Vikings different than they do everybody else. But twice their tight end, Cole Komet, got called for the illegal pick play, which the refs are now on after last week. And

these guys are not hiding it very well. You're supposed to run by the guy and buzz the tower. You're not supposed to set a basketball pick and throw your body at him, Cole Komet, Brandon Powell, but they're playing a lot of man coverage. And when teams play man coverage against the Vikings, they get thrown around by Justin Jefferson as Aaron Glenn's defense has for a long time. And one of the solutions that he's had this year, early in the season especially,

was pressure being able to get after the quarterback with Aiden Hutchinson, and after the quarterback with Aiden Hutchinson and they don't have Aiden Hutchinson the Lions didn't really stop the Vikings offense when they came to U.S. Bank Stadium what I'm getting at is if this is their defense if it's as banged up as it is and Aaron Glenn hasn't changed the scheme and allowed all those crossing routes, those slants, those unders, those mesh things, if he allowed all those to get open against Chicago and allowed Caleb Williams to come back like that, Kevin O'Connell has to be watching thinking, okay, I know Aaron Glenn's defense and I know how to beat that. And he's done it time and time again, since Aaron Glenn has been

the defensive coordinator of the lions. And another thing that is usually good is if you have top-notch talent, but their talent is a little more banged up. So health down the stretch for the Vikings and the lions could determine that race and just how they play against each other. And maybe at the end of the season, we're talking about week 18 actually meaning something. It feels like we'd already decided that it won't. And then you watch the Lions play a competent team. Okay, I should say a talented team, not a competent team, a talented team and a talented quarterback and talented receivers.

And in the second half of that game, there's guys wide open left and right. Well, who does that remind you of with DJ Moore, a dunes, a Keenan Allen, uh, reminds you of the Vikings with their weapons. So if anything, it gives you a little bit more, Oh yeah, they're human in the first half. It did not look like that. It looked like they're just going to run over everybody. We're going to have that conversation again about, oh, well, you know, the Vikings play the bears and then the lions played them and beat the tar out of them, but they didn't. They looked a lot more fallible in this game today than they have in quite some time because of that defensive side. And also Chicago just did a good job against their run. The Vikings are the number one run defense in the NFL.

They didn't completely stop the Lions or really stop the Lions at all last time on the ground, but that would be a big factor when they see each other again. I kind of wish it was going to be soon, but it'll be week 18 and we'll see if it actually is worth anything. And as far as the Packers go, I'm trying to decide whether this is a really impressive win where they stand right now up 27 to 11 in the third quarter, whether it's a really impressive win for the Packers, or if it's just

that the dolphins are really afraid of the cold. I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to think it was true. I didn't want to think that. I didn't want to think it was true. I didn't want to think that an actual NFL team as a whole, as a franchise couldn't play in the cold, but it seems to be the case. And Tua has had a good night statistically 21 for 27, but he's missed some open chances. Their defense hasn't played that well. And Jordan Love has been great in this game. 17 for 22, 196 yards, two touchdowns as we speak. Although Miami's getting the ball back. Maybe we'll have a comeback here as we chat. That's kind of what happened the one week with Chicago and the Hail Mary.

I fired up the live stream thinking, all right, well, that game's over. Chicago won. And then, whoa, so we'll keep an eye on this game. I do have a TV down here. It's not on because I was assuming this one would be over, but it is kind of wild that Tua cannot play in the cold, and that was to the Packers' benefit today. And if they win, they'll go to 9-3,

and this race is very much on with the Vikings, the Lions, the Packers. Today's results make you think that it's neck and neck and neck, that the Packers for a minute there kind of looked like they were a little farther away from the Vikings and they might have some bad losses, but they haven't. And they found a way again here on Thanksgiving night to be one half a game behind the Vikings as the Vikings go into US Bank Stadium to play Arizona. And even if the Vikings were to lose, then you're still going to have a tiebreaker with the Packers for now. And then we'll see what happens on December 29th, which I think is going to be kind of the game of the year for the Vikings late in the season against the Packers.

But this is a big one for the Packers to stay right in that race. After today, the Lions feel fairly close to the Vikings, but the Packers feel right on the Vikings heels. And this is fun, guys. This is fun. I mean, of course you'd prefer maybe 2022 where the Vikings wrapped up the NFC North by like October, but to have this race come down to these teams in the NFC, the teams that you know so well, the games down the stretch against the Bears, against the Packers, against the Lions, having so much meaning at US Bank Stadium coming up, the energy in the building, at least two of those games, it'll be a Ford Field against Detroit. But the feeling in the building will be incredible.

And I can't wait for that. I mean, these results, you would have much rather had Chicago come back and beat Detroit because then that would have been the second loss for Detroit, gives the Vikings a chance to stay right with them in the race. Now the Vikings a game and sort of a half behind because of the tiebreaker as of this moment. But either way, these are three really, really strong NFC teams that are going to be racing down the stretch.

So questions, comments, reactions, thoughts. What'd you think today? What's on your mind after watching a day of football, mostly involving the NFC North and the middle game. I have to get off my joke. I have to my joke from the giants and Cowboys game, which was, I can't wait for drew lock to be part of the Vikings quarterback competition next year, along with Tim Tebow, Jim Druckenmiller, Jamarcus Russell, Ryan Leaf, and every other quarterback who didn't work out in the first round. Cade McNown, his name came up from somebody. So we'll see Drew Locke next year. What a miserable football game that was. I hope to

never think about it again. So let's start with Zuma Kev says, hard to imagine a funnier way for the Bears to lose that game. The only thing is, it might not be their funniest loss of the year. I mean, what's worse? Running the clock out on yourself or losing on a Hail Mary because one of your players was taunting the crowd. Tough call. Tough call. Two of the most ridiculous ways to end a game. And maybe there is an interpretation, if we're being fair,

that Caleb Williams, two weeks in a row here, three weeks really, because against the Packers, well, blocked field goal is also a pretty funny way to lose a game. Three weeks in a row, Caleb Williams has put his team mostly in a chance to win a game against the NFC North and has done it with a lot of talent, a lot of arm talent, scrambling, playmaking. I think what we're looking at with Caleb Williams is someone that if he refines the details of his game, has sky is the limit type of ceiling, as we saw against the Vikings, as he demonstrated

in the second half, but how much he can clean up those things will be, you know, coaching who's going to coach them next year. Is he going to be more consistently accurate? Is he kind of a Kyler Murray? Is the ceiling like higher than that? If he had better coaching and they finished off some games, we'd be talking about Caleb Williams with seven wins and much differently than we are with Caleb Williams with four wins. So there is that interpretation from a Vikings lens where you go, it's not really what you wanted to see. If you were the Vikings is Caleb Williams having to click in after he had been so miserable against the Patriots and a couple other games there. Uh,, who's colder, Mike McDaniel or his players?

That man looked like he wanted to go home the minute they arrived. They were playing the national anthem and Mike McDaniel's over there like this. What does he think? A hoodie? I went for a jog tonight as I often do in the cold. I like to jog in the cold. And I had the hat, the hood up, the hoodie, shirt underneath, jacket, shorts, sweatpants. I mean, this guy's out here in a regular hoodie trying to coach this game.

Buddy, have you been north at all? Have you been? Because it doesn't look like you know how to protect yourself from the cold. So yeah, I think, I think everybody from the dolphins looked cold, but especially Tua, who just has had such a hard time with it. He's going to end with a good box score, but what do you make of 22 for 28, 205 yards right now, as they enter the fourth quarter and 11 points. The other thing is too, and I thought this was a good comment from somebody on Twitter sent me a tweet about them dropping the punt down by the goal line. Isn't it better to just not have a guy back there?

And I think the answer might be yes. We see this all the time on those punts that go down to the goal line the guy's often just running away anyway maybe you should try to block it and not try to catch it down there and just let the football take the wheel sometimes it'll bounce that way sometimes it'll bounce that way but you don't botch it but that that guy looked like he didn't know how a football flew through cold air. Just drops right in front of him. He's trying to reach his hands out. I mean, the Dolphins, I don't know.

Maybe what we'll hear is if the Dolphins are going to play another cold game, that they crank up the AC and get snowshooters for when Tua drops back in practice and they shoot snow in his face. I mean, I've seen before where they, when it's going to rain, they squirt the punt returner or something. I don't know. So maybe they need to do that. I it's hard to explain. I mean, Brett Favre was from the South played good in the cold. I don't know. Like, is there, how can a whole team so consistently be bad when it is not warm? I have no idea. Although I guess if they score here,

then things get a little more interesting. Up North says, who is really to blame? I assume you mean for the loss. Is it, oh, Ever Luce? You mean Iver Flus? Ever Luce? Okay, that's good. Who's really to blame, Iver Flus or Caleb? Good question. And I don't know the answer to that because I think it's probably both. So I can't say definitively. I think what Eberflus wanted to do was for Caleb to run back to the line of scrimmage, complete a pass, then call timeout. And what Eberflus didn't realize was that Caleb Williams had no idea how much time was left on the clock and started calling an audible and changing the play. And he's going like, okay, you go over there, you go over there and you're like, dude, what?

Like, what are you doing? I mean, uh, this is a yell at the television type of scenario. The dude you're running out of time. And then even then he still could have saved his bacon with a short pass. If he got out of bounds or an incompletion and the dude throws a deep ball down the sideline, you're just watching the clock four, three, two, and there it is. That was crazy. So I think the answer is both because I like ever lose E, Eberfloose, has to realize when Caleb Williams is over there trying to change the play, there's still about 15, 20 seconds left.

Hit that timeout, and you have a chance. Maybe you could kick a crazy long field goal, or maybe you can throw a short pass and run up and spike it or try to throw it to the sideline and get out of bounds. But he had no awareness. Caleb Williams had no awareness, but who's coaching Caleb Williams. Caleb Williams should know he should be getting in the headset or someone should be telling him you have 30 seconds left. You have to go. And instead he's just meandering around. There's been a lack of

awareness from him. I think all year in operating that offense, but yeah, both everyone, absolutely everyone. Scotty says for having some of the fastest skill players, Miami looks slow. They definitely do. They definitely do. They do not look like that same blazing fast team. And when you look at Tyreek Hill four for 41, he's not a guy that should struggle though, having played in Kansas City. Their top two receivers, Jonu Smith and Devin A-Chain, seven catches for 48 yards. Jalen Waddell has done absolutely nothing in this game. I don't know. I mean, the Packers do have a much better defense. This is something to consider going forward is that the Packers

defense is pretty legit. It's not the gosh, I forget the guy's name now. I've already forgotten it. Who? Oh, Joe Barry, Joe Barry, the Ed Donatello of green Bay, who just seemed to have them play the same coverage every time they do mix it up. They do make it difficult. They can get pressure on the quarterback as you saw earlier tonight when they got a couple of sacks in the game. So they're better than they used to be. But there's just something about it where you look on that sideline. It looks like they have no interest whatsoever.

I mean, I guess I feel this way when I go to California for a couple of days on vacation or whatever, visiting family. And then I come back and I'm like, oh, it does feel a little, a little bit colder, but you would, you just wouldn't think that a whole football team would have this problem. And yet they do. Brian says bears might have a winning record with a better coach. I think the answer is not would, but would absolutely have a better record. I mean, they, if they have better coaching, they win the Washington game for sure, because they don't try a handoff to the guard. Oh my gosh. Can you even think about like, if this was us,

all of us who are mostly vote Vikings focused, how we would be talking about this season. If it, if it was the bear bear season we would be losing our minds every week they tried to against Washington run with a guard although today Detroit and this went through my mind Detroit trying the end around pass with Penesul who now has more time sacked than he has given up sacks this season. Fun factoid for the water cooler on Monday. But is Dan Campbell going to trick play himself right into a hilarious interception or something at the end of a playoff game that causes Detroit to lose? This is why even as great as Detroit is, there are just some things with them where you watch

a game like today where they should have had it in the bag, but they screwed around. They screwed around in the red zone where I feel like Jared Goff is a little fallible in the red zone. Seems like he gets a little bit antsy sometimes and he doesn't have a scrambling element. And you just go, they let Chicago hang around just like the Vikings did. And they don't feel like, like they're perfect. Uh, Eric says today proves the lions are vulnerable. KOC wins that game. A lot to KOC definitely wins that game. If Chicago is coaching, I agree with that. Uh, not that we're

never critical of Kevin O'Connell's game management, because he also has a tendency to play with his food a little bit when the Vikings are winning. But if he was in the shoes of the bears, I think he could have figured out that he at least had a timeout. I think, I mean, that one is any high school coach in the country wins that one. Let me look. I'm curious about how they've played against good teams this year, the lions. So week one, they had to win in overtime versus Los Angeles. That's a good team. Tampa Bay, they lost.

That's their only loss. Against Arizona, they won by seven. Vikings, they won by two. Packers, 10. Houston, is that three? Oh yeah, the five interception game. And then Chicago by three. So when you think about it, I mean,

Seattle, they had a pretty good blowout earlier in the season, 42 29. I remember that game that, that, yeah, they blew them out that night, but they've had a lot of these big wins against Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Tennessee, Dallas earlier this year, where they just destroyed them when Dallas couldn't play defense and all their players were hurt when they've played better teams. It has been pretty close. And that's why when you say Detroit isn't unfallible, I agree. I agree that it is that they're not, they're not infallible. They are strong, but they are not infallible, especially with some of the injuries on defense and their defensive coordinator wanting to play man coverage all the time that's just a good matchup for the Vikings uh Scottie mind-numbingly dumb final 30 seconds the double down uh during the press conference was absolute cinema and

that's what if Matt Eberflus wasn't going to get fired before which he was maybe that way if they win though if they win and then beat some teams down the stretch, it's always possible. They could have had him stick around. Uh, but him not taking any responsibility for it is wild. I mean, that really took me back to kind of the Mike Zimmer days. There was a game. And if someone remembers it, let me know what it was where Kirk cousin said, it wasn't his job to call timeout. And that was one of those peak where with Zimmer, they would screw up those two minute things all the time. And then KOC takes over and suddenly Kirk is good at the two minute, who knows? But they would mess those things up all the time. And it always seemed like the quarterback and

coach weren't on the same page. And that took me back to the Zimmer and Kirk kind of whose fault is it anyway, type of post-game press conferences. Joel says unrelated, who is the most important coach not named KOC? Is it Flores or McArdle, McCown, someone that the Vikings need next year for JJ? Oh, well, yeah. I think that there is a little bit of a message there in your question, which is that Kevin O'Connell gets all the credit as he deserves as the head coach. You're always going to be the guy that gets all the credit when your team wins. But Kevin O'Connell has put together one heck of a coaching staff. Chris Cooper is a good offensive line coach. Keenan McArdle might be the best in the world at coaching. Keenan McArdle might be the best in

the world at coaching wide receivers. Brian Flores might be the best in the world at calling a defense and teaching a defense and evaluating defensive players. And Josh McCown, I mean, he has come in and seemingly been an incredibly valuable resource and a guy who knows Sam Darnold from the past and had a relationship with him. And he'll be very important for sure to JJ McCarthy in the future, assuming that they're going in that direction. But I think it's really the entire staff that he's put together and it's never talked about, but at the end of Mike Zimmer, Andre Patterson, who's a lifelong defensive line coach is is trying to be a co-DC. And you have every Kubiak known to existence because they just seemingly couldn't find other offensive coordinators after Kevin Stefanski was hired away. were able to find a better assistant coaches and retain them as the Vikings have been able to do

with that coaching staff. And that's a, that is a big shout out to the head coach and the environment that he creates because he's able to get these guys and keep these guys. So you have an elite receivers coach and we see receiver development here. You have an elite backup former quarterback who's on the same page as far as a coach, as far as someone you'd want in the building. And then maybe the best defensive coordinator in the league. It's a major factor for why they are where they are. And that's why when people thought they were going to win six games, I kind of kept going back to coaching staffs like this. Don't win six games.

Not unless your quarterback gets hurt. They just don't. Uh, zoomer Kev says, uh, I did see that it took 20 seconds to get the play to Williams. Then he audibled and realized there was no more time getting the play in another.

Just talk about the coaching. Getting the play in is a huge disaster. Uh, horse feather says Jimmy Johnson ripped the coach for that one. That was irresponsible. Just talk about the coaching, getting the play in is a huge disaster. Horsefeather says Jimmy Johnson ripped the coach for that one. That was irresponsible. Not calling a timeout when his quarterback looked flustered. Totally agree. You have to have your eyes on your own quarterback. What else are you looking at?

Looking in the stands, looking at the traducing. Like, what are you looking at? Who else are you watching other than your own quarterback? And you're just asleep at the traducing like what are you looking at who else are you watching other than your own quarterback and you're just asleep at the wheel this guy is so bad so bad uh luke says do you think the bears will fire the head coach mid-season i don't know but i don't know how you don't i really don't uh and uh cory says how out of touch is eber flub with the situation and his post-game speech with a post-game speech to me okay he messes up in epic fashion maybe you could tell your employer hey our quarterback is supposed to get the playoff he screwed it up not us and maybe

someone would believe that but then you go to the podium and take no responsibility whatsoever as the head coach of the team who has now botched how many late games? Do I think they will? I don't think so. Do I think they should? Yes, I do think they should. Maxwell says pretty tough schedule for Detroit down the stretch. Let's have a look.

See who does Detroit have, uh, the rest of the way I am curious about this. Let's see. They have, Oh, you are right. You are right. They are going to play green Bay Buffalo at Chicago, San Francisco, Minnesota. We'll see if it matters. It's, it's not over the NFC North. That's my big takeaway from today about the lions is it's not over when they have the injuries, the way that they do in their secondary on their defensive line. It's not over in the NFC North, But of course, the Vikings have to win against the Arizona Cardinals.

That seems like a pretty important detail that they have to win and they have to keep winning the rest of the way. They're not going to win the North with 11 wins. They probably have to have 13 to even have a chance. Let's see, Mike says it reaffirms Caleb Williams going to bring tough competition for years to come. Totally agree. Totally agree. I think that's good. I think that's fun. I can't wait to go to Chicago every year and see the Vikings defense play Caleb

Williams. But if you're just looking from the trying to win perspective, you want him to look way worse. You didn't want him to look this good. You probably knew that he was going to, but you didn't want him to look, you know, you didn't want him to look like this. If you're just looking at it from a maximizing Vikings win standpoint from a, Hey, you have to play good players in the NFL. If you're a good team, you shouldn't be afraid of them. Let's all have some fun watching football. Caleb Williams is going to be a fun watch. For the rest of the time, the Vikings go against him.

And if it ends up being a Aaron Rodgers versus the Vikings type of thing, where sometimes he gets you, sometimes you get him, and they're always great games, that's kind of what I'm looking forward to the rest of the way, because he looks like he's going to be flawed, but also extremely entertaining. Jay Garrett says, I don't know how much longer the Bears players can keep hitting their heads up against the wall when they can't trust their head coach to make good decisions. This is a good point because even after the game, when Keenan Allen says after the game that the players played well enough to win, wow, I mean, you got to fire your coach at that point. They've called him out how many times?

What is their ownership doing sitting on their hands to this point anyway, when the players are pretty consistently calling him out after every loss. Gus Buss, how are the Vikings going to handle Trey McBride? This could be a little trickier with Ivan Pace out. Not that he's the type of guy that is covering tight ends one-on-one, but just another cog in the machine. The Vikings will probably handle him the same way they deal with everybody, which is they blitz a lot and they try to cover zones, cover areas of the field,

and then leave some other areas open and hope the quarterback doesn't find it. So I think that they don't look at it so much about one wide receiver, one tight end, but more of in a spatial type of way in a, all right, we're going to blitz. And, uh, Jamin Davis might be a guy who plays like, I don't know. I don't know if he might be active or not. He's a blitzer. Uh, Kamu Grugier Hill is going to have to play a lot.

Josh Metellus is going to have to kick it up with the blitzing. I assume they're going to go after Kyler Murray in a similar way they did Caleb Williams and just say, all right, if you make those throws fine, but you probably won't. It would be hard to repeat for a quarterback to do what Caleb Williams did against their blitz scrambling around like crazy. So I'm guessing that they're going to rush them a lot and then try to keep McBride in front of them. That's another thing that the Vikings try to do a lot, which is keep everything in front.

And so if you're getting eight catches from McBride for 65 yards, well, you're totally fine with that. But what you don't want is Harrison getting down the field or Michael Wilson getting down the field. Two good players. Wilson has some deep ability there. Let's see. Horse Feathers says, how much do you think Lamb being out affected the game of the Dallas and New York Giants game? Can we just not?

I don't want to talk about it. That was horrible. It was so bad. But Dallas is kind of hanging around. They're hanging around. Tom Brady, you guys were right. I hadn't watched much Tom Brady because I actually don't see a lot of the broadcasts. I'm usually covering games, so I only see the national ones. Bit of a tough listen, Tom Brady. Maybe he'll get better. Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll just be Tom Brady, so they keep him there. But at one point, he talked about how Mike McCarthy was just the most wonderful coach ever. And I was just kind of scratching my head a little, but yeah, lamb being out affected the

game. I think Dallas would have blown them out, but I just, it was nasty. It was a nasty game. It was so ugly. Drew Locke's just getting beat up back there. Also, Tom Brady mentioned wanting to give drew lock a purple heart, which is just not very appropriate to say that considering what a purple heart is just, I don't know. That game was everything about that whole thing was bad, except for, um, Tom Brady pretending that he liked the Turkey leg. That was kind of funny. But aside from that, that was pretty rough um yeah those teams are just not really worth uh discussing yeah best yes the best nap you've had in a while that is a great way to describe that football game once it got ugly i watched uh planes trains and

automobiles i'm just gonna be honest with you i didn't want to watch that game anymore. And it was worth it. It was worth it. Uh, let's see, uh, Jay Garrett, if Caleb, uh, gets the right head coach, he could be a problem. However, I don't think Chicago is a desirable destination. See, I know what you're saying there, but I also know that if I'm Ben Johnson or I am Cliff Kingsbury or any of these quarterback bros, I'm watching Caleb and I'm saying, if I can get my hands on that, and Jason makes a good observation here, Caleb will definitely be a problem when he stops self-sacking. You're right.

If you're Cliff Kingsbury or you're Ben Johnson or you're Bobby Slowik or whatever other hot candidates going to be out there for an office of coordinator, you have to be thinking, if I can have Caleb Williams, as opposed to this clown show, we're going to win a lot. So I think that makes it a good destination. And also if you're the coach who goes into Chicago and makes the most out of a quarterback, yeah, you're going to be a legend there. I mean, think about Ditka and how beloved Ditka still is, no matter what, all times there, you win in Chicago, you're going to be a legend. I think it's an okay destination because you get a built-in super talented quarterback who isn't awful.

A lot of times if you take over a quarterback that's young, he's been awful and he's gotten his coach fired. Kind of like Dave Canales going to Carolina where Bryce Young was horrendous. He wasn't just like, oh, look at this wild kid running around like crazy and doesn't know how much time's on the clock. It was like, he was taking over a disaster, but whoever goes to Chicago will not be taking over a disaster. Uh, red star. I have a nice, uh, winter apex, Miami dolphins jacket. Gotta say though, the gear let's, let's give the dolphins their due. They're not coming back in this game, by the way, it's 30 to 11. Let's give them their due that hoodie. That was way too light for the degrees outside that Mike McDaniel was wearing. Pretty sick, pretty sick. I would wear that. Uh, that's, that's pretty good. They have good stuff. Those 90 starter jackets were incredible.

They've got good stuff. Osmotic 74. Imagine if the Bears had a real coach and a half decent O-line. That would be a scary team instead of a powder puff they can't win. Yeah. And that's the thing. And I sent this out on Twitter yesterday or wait, what day is it? Earlier today about the bears and Vikings fans watching the bears and lions. Like, are you thinking, well, you know, the, like the lions look failable. So that's good.

But Caleb Williams also looks really awesome. So that's bad. And yeah, you're right though. They, that, and that's what will make it an attractive job for somebody who takes it. Liam Cohen is another guy who could potentially go there. It, I think it will be a job that gets a lot of attention because if you do get a couple more O-linemen and you do teach Caleb Williams not to take sacks on himself. And you do clean up the culture of the organization, which suddenly, because I cover KOC, I believe in way more than I used to. But this, I mean,

talk about culture. When the Vikings have lost bad games, the players don't run up to us reporters and start trashing the coach. That's never happened as long as KOC has been here. It happens every week in Chicago. It tells you exactly how they feel about him. And that was kind of happening at the end of the Mike Zimmer era with the, what was it? The culture of fear and all that sort of stuff. You just haven't seen anything like that here. So if they can find a culture coach, you don't see it in Carolina with Canales. You don't see it in other teams that are mid that have good coaches that maybe are struggling a little bit, but in Chicago, they clearly have

had enough of Matt Eberflus. If they get a coach who can establish a better culture, maybe put in an offense that makes sense for his quarterback and not have to have somebody else do it in the middle of the season, they are going to be very likely a good team down the road. That's just the reality. I think if you're the Vikings, you've prepared for that with your timeline and your cap space and your quarterback and all that, but there's going to be challenges there. BAS Dry Doc says, if JJ pans out and reaches the level that we hope, Love, Goff, and Williams all stay and become stars, how crazy will this division be? I know. That's what I was thinking about today.

It's already crazy because Jordan Love, I think we can talk about at this point, he's got 274 yards, two touchdowns. He's good. He's not infallible. He's good. Jared Goff is not perfect. He's good. He's not infallible. He's good. Jared Goff is not perfect. He's good. And Caleb Williams, it might be the same thing where he gets sacked and throws picks or has crazy mistakes and is also a very, very high end quarterback. JJ McCarthy might be that way already. Sam Darnold this year has been a top 10 quarterback by every metric.

Do you want to be in the worst division or the best division? For quality of football games you get to watch, for juice, for energy, for excitement, for meaning, I'm taking the talent. Give me four great teams and let's fight it out. But for the best record, think about how New England got all those 13 win seasons and 12 win seasons playing Buffalo with JP Lossman, the Jets with all their mistake quarterbacks, Miami as much of a mess as they've been throughout the years. Maybe it's not so grand, but it does put the pressure on KOC and Kwesi Adafo-Mensah.

You better build right. There's not going to be a lot of room for error here. Uh, Osmonix says, uh, safe to say the Lions look extremely beatable after not being able to put away the worst team in the league. Well, they're, they're not even close to the worst team in the league. Uh, Chicago should have seven wins if they had even a halfway decent coach. And we saw it last week. Chicago's a good team.

They're a talented team. They've got great receivers. They've got a decent running back. Their defense has some quality players over there, linebackers, Jalen Johnson. They could get after the passer a little bit. So they didn't, it wasn't that. They put away the worst team in the league, which is Jacksonville. They ran away from them.

They crushed the Titans, but it's a little more relevant to how they match up with the Vikings for how they played the bears. I think, does it matter more to you how both the Vikings and Detroit played Jacksonville or how the Vikings played Detroit and how Chicago played Detroit? And they, they just allowed them to stay around in that game. That's the biggest thing that I was looking at saying, hey, Detroit is very strong. But now how many games against good teams have they

kind of barely got away with the win against Houston? There's a few others so far this year, early in the season against the Rams at the beginning of the year. It's the nature of the beast. And Daniel brings this up. NFL experts pile on the Vikings for barely winning games, but hype up the lines when they do. Do you see media bias? Well, I wouldn't say it's bias. I would say it's buy-in. Think about when you come into the season and Detroit is talked about, and deservedly so, as the best team in the NFL, and then they have some blowouts.

They've got the best point differential. They've got one of the best offenses. They've got a really good defense as far as numbers go. I think they're not perfect, but their defense has a lot of good numbers. They're blowing some teams out. They're winning close games that even when they don't play well, and they are a Superbowl favorite from start to this point. So when they do stuff like that, when they overcome something, they are going to get the benefit of the doubt

because they were expected to be there from day one and their roster build over years suggests that they should be here. Whereas the Vikings expectations from the beginning matter. They matter with Sam Darnold. They matter to the analysis. Of course they do. Sam Darnold's never been good before, and then now he's good. So you're going to question that more than you're going to question Jared golf. Dan Campbell's team is one play away from going to the Superbowl last year. So when they are now, what is this? 10 and one, how, what is it?

Nine and one, 10 and one. Uh, when they reach this point and have the best record in the NFC, then that's to be expected based on what they have. Whereas the Vikings, it seems, is it fluky? People are going to ask. Now, when you look at the actual overall numbers, top 10 offense, top 10 defense, and I was looking at Ben Baldwin's analytics site that looks at expected points added. And if you remove the garbage time, so when the Vikings don't have a 90% chance to win, they're right there with the best teams in the league remove the garbage time, so when the Vikings don't have a 90% chance to win, they're right there with the best teams in the league. The garbage time is actually where they've

screwed up the most for the Vikings and they haven't put some teams away and they haven't run away from bad teams. But I don't think the gap is, is super far between them as it may appear based on some destructions by the Lions against teams that just have no business on a field with them where the Vikings have not. But yeah, I also think when it comes to the experts, the national analysts and things like that, they've mostly just ignored the Vikings. I don't see any discussion about the Vikings at all. In fact, Daniel Jones was probably the most talk I've seen about the Vikings on ESPN, Fox internet from national people all season long. I mean, there was when Darnold got to five and oh, there was that very brief is Darnold the MVP. And then after they

lost the game, everyone's okay. And they've been out of the discussion entirely, which is fine. If you're the Vikings, you're okay with that of not being under the microscope every single week, but they mostly have been in power rankings. There's a website that does composite power rankings, takes a bunch of them, puts them all together. They they're like seventh. They're just, they're just existing in a space where everyone kind of looks over at them and goes, Oh, you know, that's cute. Sam Darnold. Hey. And, and doesn't say much more about it because it's not controversial. And Kevin O'Connell has been able to create this universe where it's not controversial. If they had a receiver going to Twitter every two seconds,

or if they had people fighting on the sidelines, or a coach saying controversial things, or somebody trying to run a pass play with their left tackle and talking smack and being a big psycho, then they probably would get more attention, but they're just not a needle moving team on the national level because they're a little surprising and there's nothing controversial. And that's what they do on, on TV. They want to talk about the jets. They want to talk about the bears. I mean, what a day for ESPN for tomorrow.

What a day, every single show can just call for Matt Eberflus to be fired. They've already written their script, a big market team who sucks. Oh my gosh. It's perfect. They don't have to work at all. They just turn it on and just trash a big market team, say their coach should be fired and go home. I mean, it moves the needle. It gets people worked up. And that's what the focus has been so much on this year has been the Lions are cool and the best, and they are cool and they are the best. The Kansas City Chiefs, because they barely eke out games too. And are they a little flawed? And then it's just mostly focused on the Jets, the Giants, the Bears, the big market teams who

are bad. So if I mean for you and I, that's none of our concern what their agendas are for discussing the NFL because we could do it here together and have a lot of fun and dive into this nine and two football team. But it has been a little fascinating for me that you have the surprise team of the NFL that has blown away preseason expectations by week 12. And they can't buy discussion on ESPN. They couldn't create sponsored content to go on ESPN. The only way they could get there is by having Daniel Jones get signed to the freaking practice squad.

That's crazy. That's crazy. It's 30 to 17 now Packers. So we could safely say it's going to be a good win for them. Aaron, my buddy, Aaron, what's up, buddy? A great musician says hard to believe that the bears are the same team that scored 11 points in 22 seconds last week. Yes. And no, uh, because they had the furious comeback right against the lions. And you saw how Caleb Williams could play in those circumstances. He could move the football. He could make plays with his legs. He could throw the ball downfield. I mean, it was, it was excellent how he played all the way until those stupid last 30 seconds. He almost won that game in miraculous fashion, the same way he almost won against the Vikings. So I wasn't really that shocked to see him do that.

I was just sitting there thinking this guy, when he figures it out are going to be pretty darn good. Donovan says the bears never got the lead on us. Therefore we were in control. Oh, of course. Yeah. And that was the weird thing about analyzing last week's game was that the

Vikings were ahead the entire time. They controlled the game the entire time. And then it was two minutes where they come back and score 22 seconds to tie the game. And now I'm sitting here thinking, wait a minute, do I have to criticize the way they played today? Because overall, they outplayed the Bears on offense and defense and were ahead by 11 with two minutes to go and should have been able to close that game out, if not for a watermelon kick, as we learned this week. That's what the onside kick was called. with two minutes to go and should have been able to close that game out if not for a watermelon

kick as we learned this week that's what the onside kick was called so i still looked at that win as being a a good win for the vikings because of the way they played for all but the special team stuff at the end and especially the way sam darnold played the way sam darnold has played the last two weeks is elite level. I'm not guaranteeing he's going to play that way the rest of the season, but he has played the last two weeks. When I look back at both games on tape, I'm thinking this is one of the best quarterbacks in the league.

That was not the case coming out of Jacksonville. If you're curious, somebody asked me in the Friday mailbag, the written version comes out every Friday. If you want to go over to purpleinsider.football, you can check that out tomorrow morning. The first 11 games for Kirk Cousins with KOC versus Sam Darnold. Cousins had an 88.6 quarterback rating. Sam Darnold has 101.3, I think. 101 point something. Interesting. Better team this year, I think. Better offense. Addison, Hockinson's here the whole year. But the first 11 games of Sam Darnold, significantly better. Darnold by PFF ranking seventh best. Kirk was 15th best through the first 11 games of both of their 10 years under KOC in

this offense. Now, another factor is KOC has been a coach for three years in 2022. He was not a coach for three years. It was his first time as the head coach. Just interesting. Just wanted to point that out, uh, real quick, by the way, before I continue to answer your questions, want to get to some pick'ems on Underdog Fantasy. We always do those Thursday night with Manny Hill, but I wasn't going to make Manny work on Thanksgiving. Hopefully he's having a great time with his family. So I want to go over a couple of these for the higher or lowers on Underdog Fantasy for Vikings and Cardinals. Under fantasy, a sponsor of this show, the easiest place to play fantasy sports, fastest growing app in the industry. Here it is. Uh, it is, it truly is the easiest place to play. I mean that like I can play these in 30 seconds.

Uh, the pickups are super easy. That's what we love here on this show, but there's all sorts of fantasy games that they have for every sport across the board. Sign up with the code PURPLE. It helps the show. That's important. And also you get a special pick and first-time deposit offer. Up to $1,000 bonus cash.

Must be 18 or older. Terms apply. Concern with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. So here's what we got for the higher lowers, and I'll get back to your comments in a second. Justin Jefferson, higher or lower lower 78.5 receiving yards. I mean, we're banging the higher here, right?

There's no question after last week that Kevin O'Connell is going to show up as a man on a mission to get Justin Jefferson the football after last week. I personally don't think that he has to because if Jordan Addison goes for 160 and Hawkinson goes for 100 more and you score 30 points, well, that's fine with me, but you know that you want your best wide receiver involved and it's better for your offense overall if that's the case.

So I will go higher than 78.5. When it comes to Kyler Murray, this is an interesting one. 218.5 passing yards against the Vikings. I will go with the higher on that. I think he will be able to throw the ball against the Vikings. I think there'll be from behind and they'll have to throw the ball a lot. So I will go higher on Kyler Murray, 218.5 and Aaron Jones, 65.5 rushing yards. I am also going higher on that. And one more TJ Hawkinson, 39.5 receiving yards, absolutely higher. So all the hires going into this game on underdog fantasy, again, the promo code purple is the best way to play along with me. And let's see if I put in a $5 to win 30, that seems, that seems like my level of risk,

right? It's that easy. So anyway, uh, let's see. Osmotic says, how can you argue that losing six straight? Isn't the worst team? Uh, yeah. I mean, when you're talking about Chicago, no, they're not, they're not the worst team. Yeah, no, definitely not. I mean, Jacksonville is definitely worse than the Chicago bears. And when you're talking about losing six straight, how many are on the last play of the

game? They have played close all of those games. They should have won them. They're not, they're not the, the, the worst team in the league. No, I mean the giants that was hideous today. Uh, Nibos four 20. Uh, the only team that is super scary right now is the Eagles. I don't disagree with you there. You could argue that the Eagles have steamrolled some lesser opponents, but I think the Rams are still a pretty good football team. The Eagles are scary. Here's the concerning part for the Vikings, for the Lions and for the Eagles. Think you know what I'm going to say?

It's the fat guys up front. These teams are very good. And the Vikings, they get their pressure with Jonathan Grenard and they get their pressure with blitzes. And Grenard was moving around a little in the last game against the Lions and did really well, had a really good game. The Eagles have two great tackles. They are able to run the ball, which no team outside of the Lions and to some extent the

Rams, but mostly the Lions has been able to run the ball against the vikings if you can't run the ball against the vikings then you get put in position to face all those blitzes but if you can run the ball then you can run play actions then you're in favorable situations down and distance wise then it becomes a lot easier for opposing offenses the vikings being the number one defense in rushing. That's another thing that we don't really discuss a lot is those defensive tackles, how great Jonathan Bullard has been this year. And Harrison Phillips has had a much better season this year. Jerry Tillery has been a good addition for them. They've just been excellent against the

run. Ivan Pace being out as a factor in this, he's been really good against the run. Are they going to be able to make up for him? Jamin Davis, maybe he can, maybe Kamu Grugier-Hill. I just worry about that a little bit because he's undersized, but he is going to come back according to KOC that Ivan Pace will be back by the time they get to the point where they could play Philadelphia in the playoffs at some point, depending on how the bracket works out or the Detroit lions. But those two teams, because of their offensive lines would be the most concerning, uh, versus the Minnesota Vikings. Definitely. Let's see. Uh, Jason says they took three North teams. You should watch, uh,

this to see how bad, uh, it can be. I assume you mean, uh, like, uh, Chicago being the worst team in the league.

Yeah. They're, they're not, they're not the worst team in the league. No. Uh, let's see. Blunts and boobies.

Okay. Says, uh, what Thanksgiving dish could you live without? I'm not a cranberry sauce guy. I had a very standard type of Thanksgiving dinner, turkey, uh, sweet potatoes, stuffing. It was diet Coke today, not diet Dr. Pepper because it was was on sale i'm not a very adventurous uh eater to tell you the truth so whatever you like you like i'm not gonna argue with anybody over food

but what you know what whatever you like is fine i just am not a cranberry person sean says detroit's wide receiver williams is very talented too bad for them that he can't stop himself from doing dumb stuff that taunting penalty was so dumb. Jameson Williams. That's when we talk about the lions looking a little fallible. That's what I mean. It's not that they don't have the talent. It's that stuff like that seems to happen. And as funny as it is for them to run a pitch play to their tackle, and it's hilarious. And congratulations to Penny Sewell for getting that play because there's not many tackles in the world that would ever get that football, but that's ridiculous and idiotic. Are they going to do something that is ridiculous and idiotic in a playoff game? Or is Jamison Williams going to hurdle someone and get hurt?

I mean, what he did today is unbelievable, jumping up over the guy. But if he falls on his collarbone and breaks it because he's trying to show off and do something nuts, and you mentioned the taunting penalty, he also seems to get suspended every so often. They have little things that you think could crack the foundation to what looks like by far the best team in the league. And we do have a ways to go. Think about this.

The Vikings get to the bye week, that first five weeks. It felt like it took forever. It felt like it was a whole season in itself, that five weeks. There's longer to go with the rest of the season than it took to get to the Vikings being 5-0. And so there is a ways to go for Detroit, and they have a lot of prove-it games down the stretch. If they mess around, they could lose a couple of those. Mike says, nightmare scenario, Belichick goes to Chicago. Yay! Is that true? Is that true? Are you afraid of Belichick goes to Chicago. Yay! Is that true? Is that true? Are you afraid of Belichick?

Depends on if he brings Josh McDaniels with him and his coaching staff. Is Belichick washed or did it just kind of fall apart in New England? He's, what is he, 74 or something? He's, maybe, maybe. If I'm Belichick, I like the media. He's doing a great job. I love Belichick content. I see it come up on YouTube all the time or him on TV. And I mean, he's a very insightful, very, very thoughtful. And he'll take little jabs at people. He's really good. Him and Nick

Saban, both, they should just do a show where they talk ball, uh, because he's good, but it, would he be the scariest coach for them? Or would it be someone like Bobby Slowik? Because he's worked with CJ Stroud. I know Stroud's taking a step back this year. I think their offense just doesn't have as much to work with after Diggs got hurt and their offensive line has been a little messy. Maybe Stroud trying to do too much, some close games.

But that type of offensive structure and coaching to a young quarterback is very effective. Oftentimes, uh, Zoomer Kev says, I think Caleb Williams is the hardest I've seen a quarterback throw against the Vikings this year. Oh, all the talent, all the talent, all of it. He has scrambling ability, explosiveness. He has velocity. It's really just that he is so young. He is 21, I think. Maybe he's going to turn 22.

He doesn't have any pro experience other than what has just happened this year, and it's been with bad coaching. And you see some of that there, the inexperience, not knowing how much time is left on the clock, that he doesn't have time to change the play. And then you see some of the bad coaching when he takes sacks that he doesn't need to take. And you also see the Vikings where after the Jacksonville game, Kevin O'Connell talked about meeting with Sam Darnold and sitting down and having a long conversation about getting back to that game manager in a good way, type of approach, which he had been using early in the season where he's Sam Darnold has had about three or four throwaways where just the play's not happening.

Just throw it in the stands that have been great the last couple of weeks. And it probably saved him from making mistakes. If he gets a coach, Caleb Williams, who can teach him when it's time to say, uncle, all right, this play's not going to work, throw it away or whatever, check it down. Then he can be a pretty good quarterback with the talent he has. The accuracy for general straight drop back stuff is going to need work. He's not that tall, and I think sometimes doesn't see things down the field all that well, but he's got a ton of talent. He definitely does. Timothy says, back at USC, Caleb hasn't shown ability to win a big game.

Could be a coincidence, but definitely a tad concerning. Uh, yeah, I don't know. That one's that's always tough because when Peyton Manning came out of college, that was his reputation too. Cause he had thrown something like five interceptions in a big college game. And then his first couple of years, they screwed up in the playoffs and it was, ah, Peyton Manning. Hi, you're not that good.

He was, yeah, Peyton Manning. Hi, you're not that good. He was, yeah, he was. So I don't know that trying to put that on somebody is difficult, but as far as the awareness thing, that was also a Justin Herbert problem coming out of college, awareness of the clock, awareness of what was going on. And the only way to get better at it is by having good coaching and getting reps. That's really the only way is to just have game after game after game, uh, of, of just getting reps where you're playing in those big situations. So I think he'll probably get it. I was more skeptical on Caleb Williams before I saw the Vikings against them. And after I saw him against the Vikings, which is usually the way I have my true test, I can see, I can be in the stadium. I get the feel for the quarterback, what he's seeing

down the field. It's hard to do on TV. I was pretty sold on how good he can be. It's not a guarantee that it'll be great, but it's, you know, I'm pretty sold that he could be a good quarterback with the right circumstances. Uh, David says, sent a message the other day. I wanted to repeat that repeat that. I wonder if there's a possibility over the next several weeks, if we get Jones involved in a red zone package, like fields in Pittsburgh, I don't know if Daniel Jones will be active for any of the games going forward until maybe a playoff game where he could be the backup after he learns the offense. I suppose that's possible because the red zone offense has been so bad and he is a good runner. Maybe they would do that, but he's got to learn how to play here first because he's going to be one play away from being on the field. And that can't happen for at

least a few weeks. They would need at least a few weeks in order order to be ready for, uh, him to be even the backup. Cause right now, uh, Nick Mullins has so much experience as the backup that he could come in anytime. Uh, the black ale Bundy what's with you guys names tonight, uh, says, uh, what's crazy is that before the season pundits and the media had more faith in eberflus and the bears than they did in koc and the skull idiots that's why they play the games black ale bundy that is why they play the games but you're right i have found that to be dubious myself because i remember having a conversation with Aaron shots before the season, the analytics legend. And I asked him, Hey, how do we project what Caleb Williams is going to be? And he said,

we can't. I said, what if you had to? And he said, I won't because I can't. And that part of it, we at least had a sample size of Sam Darnold playing good before in 2022 and with his brief time with the 49ers. So we could point to, all right, well, this guy, if he plays like he did in his most recent sample, he could be pretty good. But I think that they missed the coaching element of Flores too. And the fact that the Vikings would have a top five defense, I was projecting more of a top 10-ish. It may still end up that way with the quarterbacks they're going to face going forward and without Ivan Pace, but maybe they just didn't factor enough what coaching means to the NFL.

There are 12 teams to 14 teams in the NFL who have coaches who know what they're doing and everybody else is bumbling around. The Vikings have coaches that know what they're doing. And when you get in that club, you try to stay in that club. You try to stay in that club as long as you can. Pittsburgh has always understood this. Don't ever let the noise get to you on Mike Tomlin because he's always going to give you a chance because he's one of those guys, one of those 10 to 12, 14 coaches, probably more like 10 who really know what they're doing. KOC is there. So that's why I had the Vikings winning three more games than their projection, I guess, two and a half. And then they've already met my expectation for this year and are going to

go behind it. But you're right. Iberflus, what did he ever show to, for them to believe that he would make the most of a rookie quarterback? Daniel says, Darnold has less passing yards than Kirk, but beats him in almost every other stat from the 2022 season. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of that is that Darnold early in the season, they blew people out. So he wasn't throwing that much. Yeah. They're blowing out the giants. So you're running in the second half of the game. Same goes for the Packers. I don't know what it means. He's got more weapons than Kirk did. Kirk had a fading feeling, had no tight end for the first 10 weeks after he gets TJ Hawkinson. He's better because he had that no running game that year in the second half of the season,

had a running game early on in the year with Delvin Cook. So maybe that's a little more equal than I'm giving it credit for. I think that this, I think that Kevin O'Connell's offense is a little more built for a Darnold because think about where it came from, came from Los Angeles, came from Matt Stafford. Is this not a Matthew Stafford type of season for Darnold? He looks like him. He's a huge dude that does crazy stuff, has a wild arm, makes mind-blowing awesome plays, super frustrating bad plays, takes more sacks than he should, throws more easy picks than he should, but also fires it into tight windows. I cannot say enough how wild that throw was from Sam Darnold to Jordan Addison. When you look at it on tape,

when I saw it in person, when you see it on TV, that's not a throw Kirk Cousins can make this laser beam right over the head of the linebacker leading him perfectly. I mean, it's kind of built for a dude who has a monster arm. And I think that Kirk Cousins was a little hesitant early on in his time with KOC and he, and they started to learn each other by year two, by the way, cousins, 2023, first eight games are excellent. His whole first eight games were really strong. Maybe the first game of the season, they didn't get on the field much and they got behind against the Eagles, but he played great 2023. And I also think that KOC refined his offense. Maybe he put too much on the plate of everybody to start and he's learned to pare that down.

You're seeing a lot of play action from sam darnold which he came in and didn't run a ton of play action for kirk cousins which kind of threw me off a little bit when that first happened so uh mustin sir says i'd love them to face atlanta in the first round but it seems they may be going on a spiral, letting Tampa Bay come back. That is something worth watching. I agree that Tampa Bay has a pretty easy schedule. They've got Carolina twice. It's not a tough schedule going forward. Whereas Atlanta, it's a little bit harder, including coming here. I think you would rather play Atlanta if you're the Vikings, because what Tampa Bay has is Vita Vea. They've got some good defensive players. They've got a good defensive coach in Todd Bowles where

Atlanta's defense is a disaster. And all day, you're going to take the Vikings against a disaster defense all day. Sean says JJ higher for yards and 75 higher on passes for Murray as they keep him mostly contained as well as shutting down their running back. So that's a big factor right there is that I don't think they're going to be able to consistently run. So they're just going to have to throw with Kyler Murray all day and hit the higher. So that's, that's what I'm putting in. I'm going all hires on underdog uh david says the vikings have always been besmirched by the media no matter the decade it is nothing new people the media hate the perceived perennial losers no one has consistently got um yeah so uh

gotten to the precipice yeah you're right're right. That's true. That no, definitely no team has gotten to the precipice more than the Vikings. You know what? I don't think that it's that national media hates the Vikings. What national media is looking for is who moves the needle to a bigger audience. Then what that usually centers around is if you've ever heard the old journalism saying, if it, if it bleeds, it leads, That means that if it's controversial, that's what you're going toward. If it gets people worked up, if everybody has opinions on it, think about this. And I know this myself. If I had spent last year saying to you guys, they should trade just to Jefferson. He's a diva. Get rid of him. Do you

guys know that my YouTube views would have been twice as high? Absolutely. Now that's not the truth. And I view my job to tell the truth. The truth was always Justin Jefferson's amazing. It's a great teammate. It's a great player. They're going to sign him. They love him more than anything. End of of story but a lot of people wanted to make that into a big argument and you know why because it moved the needle and that's the only thing jefferson's been talked about for in a year because it doesn't matter what record he sets or how good he is that's not exciting that people don't get upset over that they get upset over they get worked up and opinionated over

trade proposals, over calling people divas, people yelling like that. What are you going to yell about as the Vikings? A really cool story of Sam Darnold having a renaissance here. Does that get people excited from coast to coast where they want to chime in, where they want to comment on the video, where they want to get super worked up? No, it doesn't. But for us here, we're not looking for that. We're looking for nuance. We're looking at Vikings Cardinals, which is not a game that is going to move the needle

a whole heck of a lot. Although I think there is a good crew of broadcasters coming in for you guys, but it's not a game that they're going to preview and talk about all week because it doesn't have some big thing on the marquee. It's not Manning versus Brady, Mahomes versus Allen. They have a quarterback who has been steady and consistent and good and has not trashed the New York jets. If Sam Darnold came out and hammered the New York jets and said, screw them. Like if you guys have seen the AI Sam Darnold that like talks trash, uh, if he had said, screw them, or I hate that we're bringing in Daniel Jones, then people would talk about Sam Darnold all the time. They're just not a controversial team.

I don't think that's hate. I think that that's just business. I think that their business revolves around talking about the Jets and Giants being disasters because everybody has opinions on it and it's the biggest fan bases. That's why Chicago screwing up is going to be a really catnip type of topic on a national level.

But luckily we don't do that here, here I'm reporting and opining to you guys based on what I learned from reporting on the team, which I hope is more enjoyable than another long conversation about Aaron Rogers on TV. Daniel says Murray's last two games against the Vikings. He had three touchdowns, two picks in each game, but put up 300 yards passing.

Those were against no Flores defense. Yeah, I don't know. Like it's the hard thing to figure out with a quarterback like Murray is, are they going to get to him or not? are they going to get to him or not? Are they going to get to him or not? If they get to him, then he's going to have a lot of trouble. If they don't get to him, then he's going to scramble all over the place and make great plays. But a lot of Kyler Murray this year has become, he throws, he makes wild throws. Do they get caught? That's been a lot of Kyler Murray.

He scrambles around, makes crazy throws. And if it gets caught, then it's great. And if it doesn't, he scores six points against Seattle and loses. They have to go, they had to go to Seattle, I think right last week, and then come all the way out here. It's going to be tough for them. But if his big plays do click, he's very dangerous. It's an odd team because you can't really put a finger on them. They've been good defensively at times. They've been horrible defensively at times. They've been good offensively at times.

They've been horrible offensively at times. So which version of Kyler Murray shows up for the underdog fantasy thing is a little tricky. BAS dry dock. There is room for Jefferson, Addison, Hawkinson, Jones, all to get a hundred yards each game. Yeah. Yeah.

You're right about that. After what happened last week. I don't know if you can repeat that game after game. That's for sure. Oh man. Let's see. Oh gosh oh gosh drove down to I assume you mean Minneapolis today and missed the first game did anything happen oh yes sir it did oh yes it did is certainly did and to tune into any show tomorrow and you're gonna get the whole recap of the last 30 seconds. What a mess.

Zaqua, I think. Zadarius has been a great addition for the Lions. I think he had like eight pressures today, although the Bears O-line isn't great. Zadarius is a great player. Yeah, a ton of respect for Zadarius Smith. He is a great player. He is banged up a lot. That's the thing.

And they don't have a great offensive line. He is banged up a lot, but when he's playing, he is pretty dangerous. Jason says, heard Gabriel Murphy was claimed, but can't confirm. Have you heard anything? I have not. I assume that they'll be announcing that tomorrow when they announce the waiver claims. I wouldn't be shocked if he was. It's just hard with a guy like that because I know they like him. They really like him. But where can you put him? He's been on IR the whole year.

He had a really good training camp, but he only played like half of training camp and then got hurt. And if someone does claim him, I wouldn't be shocked, though, because he had great relative athletic scores. He had great production. It was weird that he was not drafted and the Vikings got him an undrafted free agency. They probably didn't expect someone like Bo Richter to be good. And that would have been a guy when they put Bo Richter on the regular roster. I'm sure they thought, well, you know, we'll be able to cut him in a few weeks and move him back down. But then the guy's making plays every week.

So what do you do? It's such a stacked, uh, it's such a stacked room that sometimes that happens. You hate to lose him for the future, but there's not much you can do there. And I, I would have suggested it if another team called me and said, should we get Gabriel Murphy? This doesn't happen. But if it did, I would have said, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Claim him. If you're a bad team, go claim Gabriel Murphy. Wouldn't be surprised if he goes to Carolina where, uh, you know, where they just picked up a Caleb Evans, Teams who are bad and need to be thinking about the future,

go pick up guys like this who have talent. Let's see. Avi with the Super Chat, thank you so much for that. Anybody who wants to jump in with those, I really appreciate them all the time. Thank you so much. Given the choice, what would your preference be in making the Vikings a better team, interior D-line, secondary, or beefing up the offensive line? Well, I mean, there isn't really any option today to do any of these things.

You are who you are. So let me say that. And when they go forward with the cap space they have, assuming they're not going to extend Darnold or franchise tag him, they will be able to improve all those things. Although nuance wise, you could franchise tag him, sign big free agents to contracts with small cap hits right away. Like they did this year with Van Ginkle, Cashman and Grenard, because they're paying 40 million to the quarterback position just to kind of clear all that out. But as far as philosophically,

if I could wave a magic wand and say, one of these things gets to be great, boop, I would go secondary. I love myself a great interior defensive lineman that can get after the passer, but this interior line's done great. They really have. When you're number one in the NFL in run defense and you got three run stuffers up front, they're doing the job. The Blitzers are getting home. Jonathan Bullard's moving bodies. So is Harrison Phillips, who's playing probably the best football of his career. So I'm okay with the way they've played on the interior D line. I also think the offensive line is good. Now with Cam Robinson, with Cam Robinson, I think it's a good offensive line.

When you look at where they're at, and I know some people will not accept this no matter what happens, they're always going to say the offensive line stinks no matter what until they give up zero sacks, zero pressures, and run for seven yards a carry. But when you look at the metrics and then watch other games around the league, the Vikings are top 10 in run and pass blocking. They're not perfect. Derrissaw's not there. He was for most of the season.

But with Cam Robinson in there, they're a good line. They're not a perfect line. They don't have five all pros, but they're a good line. So I would leave that mostly. I mean, if I had to pick one thing, the secondary is what concerns me the most because of their limitations for the types of coverages they can play. They just can't man up somebody and trust their guys.

They have to always be sitting in zones. They have their corners, Gilmore and Murphy, have one of the lowest man coverage percentages in the entire league. So everybody kind of knows what they're going to do coverage-wise. It's one of maybe three or four different options. And then they'll mix in something that confuses the opponent a little bit or is a look at the line of scrimmage that changes with Harrison Smith.

But it's always got to be on deception. Byron Murphy's had a good year. I think he's had a really good year. I would extend Byron Murphy with the way that he's played the football and made game-changing plays. But if you could add just one more person to rotate in, you're not always asking Stephon Gilmore to be there. That's probably what I would do.

Great question. Great question. Preston, knowing the Vikings history, why would anyone want the Vikings to play Atlanta and Kirk in the first round? Because they're the weakest team. I mean, think about their wins. Like they had that completely ridiculous win against Philadelphia where the game was over. And then they came back kind of like Chicago almost did to the Vikings. They have the worst defense. Can you outscore Atlanta when you have the number one defense in the league

and they have the number 30, whatever, 32, or one of the worst defenses in the league. Your quarterback's playing better than their quarterback. Your weapons are better than their weapons. They love Drake London. I'm sure he's wonderful. He ain't Justin Jefferson. Darnell Mooney's fine.

He's not Jordan Addison. Kyle Pitts is not TJ Hawkinson. So B. John Robinson is what? Is he as good as Aaron Jones? Probably. But Aaron Jones is much more experienced than him. And then your defense is way better. It's a big mismatch.

Tampa Bay is more scary because their quarterback's kind of wild. Also, you know, Kirk's not making plays. Their quarterback's kind of wild. If they get, will they get Evans back? I'm not sure. Maybe if they get Evans back at some point, but they, uh, I haven't paid attention. He might already be back. I haven't paid attention to Tampa Bay much. But their defense, Vita Veya, can shut down the run. He's going to pick up Garrett Bradbury and throw him at Sam Darnold. I would be concerned about that. Great defensive tackle, good defensive mind. That's what I would be more concerned about than Atlanta.

They can't pressure the passer. When Sam Darnold's not pressured, he just destroys everybody. Sean says, Darnold, and even more so, J.J. McCarthy, fits KOC's profile of a quarterback matching his directing deep balls. Darnold has more speed, less hesitancy than Kirk. Oh, yeah, well, for sure. He has more everything physical than Kirk. Kirk might have been more accurate on mid and short.

Yes, and Kirk was better at picking things apart. He was better at dropping back one, two, three, bang. You could ask him to do a lot of different things that maybe Sam Darnold, you're trying to limit it a little more, but in a way, don't you think it might be good that KOC had to limit himself a little? It seemed like he was trying to do too much with Kirk early in that season. And Kirk was kind of moaning about it throughout training camp and early in that year. And he kept saying, I'm not playing all that good. And he kept saying, well, we're still getting used to this offense. It's almost like Sam Darnold not being as experienced and probably just Kirk. This is one of his biggest strengths, understanding and being able to handle

such a mental load. It might be better. It might be a good lesson for Kevin O'Connell long-term that you don't have to have six different things tagged to every single play that you could just go run a fricking bootleg and throw it to somebody. Uh, Oh gosh says, so, uh, how did the wolves fix themselves? Well, that is a different podcast. My friend, Dane Moore, Dane Moore is my guy. If you guys, if you don't know the Dane Moore NBA show, check out him. He is awesome on the wolves. That's not my territory. I stay in my lane here. My thing though with the Wolves is. There is something I can make a correlation with the Wolves to the Vikings. 2018.

The Vikings think that they can bring in Kirk. And he'll just plop in. And everything else will be the same. And they'll just go back to the NFC Championship. But this time Kirk will outplay Nick Foles. That's what they thought. And it didn't work that way because you can't chase last year. So maybe they were thinking with this, well, if we drop in another three point shooter and we drop in this guy with, I don't know a lot about Julius Randall's game, a little more edge or something than Carl Anthony towns. Well, it'll be better.

It'll be better this time. If we add in one more three point shooter, we add in this guy with a little different skillset, but maybe what they missed is that Carl Anthony towns is a pretty good guy. And I think having a pretty good guy in that locker room was helpful, especially an older brother type to Anthony Edwards. Now that Anthony Edwards has, and again, listen to Dane Moore, not me on this, but now that Anthony Edwards has the franchise on his shoulders, check out his demeanor.

It's very different than it was with Carl Anthony Towns, even through thick and thin, because Town towns would take so much pressure from him now it's all on anthony edwards and he's like crapping on the fans i don't know maybe he's not ready for that uh sean says media centers uh do cater to large fan bases bigger names bigger quarterbacks they are also more fearful of those fan bases being ticked off. I don't know. I see. I think it's the opposite. I think they want those fan bases as ticked off as possible. That's, that's where I think that they, they like that because that gets more attention that gets more interaction. I mean, I think there's a lot of things in media that are done that way. What makes people upset? Let's go with that. Cause that's going to get the most comments, the most interactions, the most clicks. That's why I

use the example of Justin Jefferson. I have to go into the Vikings locker room and talk to Justin Jefferson. So I wasn't going to make videos that were disingenuous garbage and lie about him for clicks. And I'm not saying that like all media is doing like lying, but I'm not going to take some crazed angle to try to get attention because that's not what I do here. That's not why you come to me. You come to me because I cover the team like a professional reporter. And I go into the locker room and talk to players and talk to the coach and have sit down interviews with him and things like that. So I'm going to be much more of detailed, much more of let's cover all the aspects, all the nuances of this football team and every dynamic I could think of from every angle I could think of. Right. And when I know for a freaking fact

that Justin Jefferson is not going anywhere, I'm not gonna make a video telling you maybe it'll happen because I can't lie to you like that. But if I did, it would get more attention. And I think that that theory is used a lot of times and we're maybe talking about ESPN here, but I think we're all of the national media. They know what names Aaron Rodgers, Chicago bears, Caleb Williams, New York giants, that

they know which of these names and teams move the needle. And the Vikings are not one of them. And the more people get worked up over the bears or over the jets, they're going to pay less attention to a team. That's just been, been riding high and has been, and has been smooth sailing. The most,

the, the most attention the Vikings have gotten was the, are they for real in 2022? And then Josh Dobbs, since KOC got here, I think you'd rather have it that way. So it's not a criticism for me. It's more of an observation

about how the mass NFL media kind of moves around and points its lasers at things where it always seems to be which big market is going to hell is the biggest needle moving topic. And as you mentioned, big quarterback names, which Sam Darnold isn't. A nice story of Sam Darnold connecting with his coach.

It's just, it's not really gonna do a lot of attention. So I get it. If, if the whole, uh, if the whole thing was to make the absolute most money and most attention. And that is what you're trying to do on a national level. Then you would focus on the people that move the metrics. And if the Minnesota Vikings don't move the metrics, they're not going to talk about them. But all I, the way I look at it is that's great for me. That's great for me because we're here together having a great discussion about the Minnesota Vikings. So good for me. David says Murphy was promoted to the active roster on Monday.

Why would they cut him loose to put Muse back on the practice squad? They've spent this time developing him. They haven't spent much time developing him because he's been hurt. So I don't know if they've had any opportunity to develop him at all. He's been on injured reserve. Yeah, we just haven't gotten answers on these things because they happened the other day from Kevin O'Connell and we had to waste 14 questions on Daniel Jones. So, and then they made these moves after,

then we didn't don't have a press conference with him. I guess it would have been Wednesday. We don't have a press conference with him today because it's Thanksgiving. So tomorrow we might get some answers on some of the movement. It also could be that the Gabriel Murphy hype was based on a couple of good practices and they didn't think that it was as good as expected, or they thought they could get him back on the practice squad. I don't know if he's been picked up or not. This is just, it happens sometimes. And with Muse back on the practice squad, that's probably a big part of that is they need him for game day to be able to elevate him with Josh Oliver hurt, which seems like it might be a multi-week thing. Preston says,

how does a head coach just watch 33 seconds tick off the clock at the end of the game. I have no idea, buddy. I have no idea how that happened. I was, I usually don't have any sort of reaction to things physically while watching football games. I sit there. If I'm watching a national TV game on my couch, I like have Twitter open and now blue sky. If you want to follow me over there and I'm just looking,

I'm watching the game. That's how it usually goes and taking notes or whatever. If I'm going to talk about it, I jumped off the couch and my wife heard me yelling from upstairs. I was yelling at the television. What are they doing? What are they doing? What are they doing?

As the clock is going off, I'm screaming at the television. What are they doing? What are they doing? What are they doing? As the clock is going off, I'm screaming at the television. How are you letting the clock go off? I have no idea. One of the biggest meltdowns that I've ever seen. Let's see. Oh gosh. Hear me out. We don't bring back sam or daniel jones instead we sign jamis winston no extremely hard pass no thank you i'm good no that's fine i do i don't need that do not need that in my life thank you sean as far as our o-line you may find as we transition from darnold to mccarthy that he gets rid of the ball faster. That might be true, but it also might be that Darnold is not supposed to get rid of the ball faster because when you watch some of these plays and there's these long developing routes and you can see it, if you get the NFL plus thing and it's expensive, you should actually subscribe

to the purple insider newsletter and just read my film study each week, purpleinsider.football. That's a good idea too for subscribers only. The film study, one of the things that I do for subscribers over there on the written side. But if you watch those tape clips that I show, oftentimes long developing vertical routes. And what KOC is doing is he's sending a lot of guys deep and then a couple of routes underneath and clearly he's trying to take full advantage of Darnold's arm and he has the guy has played great

but that requires him to stay in the pocket hold on to the ball and what Darnold does sometimes too much is he'll hang with it and Kirk would would do this. Not enough. Kirk would drive. I think KOC a little crazy because he wouldn't let it rip when he wanted him to where Darnell will stay with it, stay with it, stay with it, and then let it go. Uh, Rob says is our secondary, a concern being the team that gives up the most passing yards per game in the league. Well, some of that, some of that Rob is that they've been ahead a lot. So they're going to give up a lot of yards. Like teams are

going to have to throw all the time. If they can't run at all, then they're going to have to throw a lot. And if they're losing by two scores, they're going to have to throw every time. And it does seem when the Vikings are up by two scores, that their defense in prevent mode is not very good and has allowed multiple teams now to move the ball down the field in those type of circumstances. They don't just shut them down when they're up by 14 points. We know that we've been over that. Uh, but the secondary is a concern for me. It is. You can't just line up and stop people one-on-one in man situations. The league does play mostly zone these days. It's just too hard to guard these wide receivers one-on-one. There's too many bunch formations, motions that you can't just line up and play them. It doesn't work that way. But they don't even have that option if they want to

on this team with this secondary and Shaq Griffin has had, I think a tough time in recent weeks. There's no fallback option. Fabian Morrow, Dwight McClothern is inactive most game days. So yes, the secondary remains. I think my biggest concern on the entire team, maybe Cam Robinson's foot worries me a little, but I think it's on the entire team. The one unit where if they play really good receivers, they're, they're probably going to get beat at times.

And they rely so much on the quarterback being confused rather than being able to actually stay on their guys. Jonathan says, do you expect to see Jamin Davis in the mix on Sunday? I haven't told, I, you know, I thought it was, um, said differently, but I think it is Jamin is how you say his name. Uh, let's see, is he going to play that? I don't know that we may find out Friday if he's going to play, but they might have to, they might have to just have a package of plays for him. I don't know when he's getting here.

Daniel Jones was getting here until Friday and it's Thanksgiving week. It might have to wait until next week. I looked into a Jamin Davis today though. And just, if you're curious, they tried to move him to edge rusher in Washington because they have Bobby Wagner and Frankie Luvu, uh, two really good linebackers and it didn't work out. He's not really an edge rusher. He's more of a blitzing linebacker. So this could be another

good find for the Vikings. I think it could be a good fit when he was a blitzing linebacker last year, he was pretty good, uh, at least by the PFF metrics at actually blitzing linebacker last year, he was pretty good, at least by the PFF metrics at actually blitzing. I don't think he's a cover linebacker or he's a Van Ginkle or he's a Cashman, but if he's just a sort of single-minded, this guy's going to come in and rush the passer and stop the run could actually work out for them. Brian Flores knows what he's doing. When they sign a guy, I just assume it's going to work out good. James, what do you think of Blake Brandel's play at left guard this year? I think he's been okay. It's been average. I would say if you look over his PFF grades for the year,

you have about half of them are pretty good and half of them are kind of tough, but none of them are horrible. There there's very few times where he's just been blasted. And that's the biggest thing. Is he just moving bodies like an absolute beast? No, I don't think so. Is he totally shutting down everybody that's rushing the passer? No, I don't think so, but he has been reasonable. He's been reasonable. Uh, and that's all, that's all you're really looking for is can he be an average guard? And if you have no massive weakness, which I really think is the Vikings right now, when Cam Robinson's healthy, there's no massive weakness. Bradbury's improved enormously. Reisner's been fine. It hasn't been good,

but it certainly hasn't been terrible. And that's what they were looking for. That's the same way I look at Brandel. It hasn't been awesome, but it definitely hasn't been terrible. And then Brian O'Neill is just elite. All right. Last question from a must insert. Is there concern that Marvin Harrison might completely torch the secondary? Interestingly enough, let me pull this up. There is a discussion happening on the internet. Now he's 22. Let's remember that about Marvin Harrison. Was he over rated because of his name? So this year, Marvin Harrison has two 100-yard games. One of them is when they blew out the Rams,

but he has two 100-yard games. That was really early in the season. His most recent was against Miami on October 27th. The last three games, 34, 54, and 47 yards for Marvin Harrison, and he has his longest catch since the beginning of the season is only 25 yards. He only has one catch of 25 or more. Yeah. One catch of 25 or more since week two.

He has really not been a huge factor for them. 36 catches for 546 yards on 66 targets. Was he over rated? 36 catches for 546 yards on 66 targets. Was he overrated? Maybe because of his name. It's a really good prospect, but may have been a bit overrated. Is it possible that he could torch the secondary? Yeah, it is possible.

They just, they're just going to be a little bit boom or bust sometimes because it's going to depend on how much that defensive line can do. And I don't think that Arizona has enough weapons to throttle them, but we saw it last week from Caleb Williams. If, if the receivers are playing well for the other team, they can beat this team. So yeah, no, I agree, Rex. I'm not saying I'm overlooking him. I'm saying it's kind of interesting that recently he just hasn't put up big numbers in a few weeks and has not been a deep threat really at all. So of course they're not overlooking him, but he hasn't been the impact player that maybe people thought. Okay. Well, it is after 11 o'clock on Thanksgiving evening. So I'm going to call a night. I got to work tomorrow. I'll be out there at, so I'm going to call it a night. I've got to work tomorrow. I'll be out there at Vikings.

I'm going to record another podcast, the Hardcore Preview with Andrew Kramer tomorrow. We'll be recording that tomorrow morning, so we'll have that for you in the evening on Friday night. Thank you all. What a great crowd on Thanksgiving night. I really appreciate all of you coming to talk football, Vikings and Bears meltdown and the Lions and all that. What a day. It's always a day of football.

So make sure also that you're subscribed and you tune in after the game from US Bank Stadium. Myself, Dane Mizzutani from the Pioneer Press. We will be in the press box about an hour and a half after the game ends because we go down to the locker room and then we come back and react from inside the stadium. So I look forward to doing that on Sunday. Great day of football. Thanks so much, everybody, for joining. Really enjoyed this chat and we will talk to you all very soon. Football.