Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Athletic's Daniel Popper explains how the Vikings could follow in the Chargers' footsteps

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

Matthew Coller connects with The Athletic Los Angeles Chargers reporter Daniel Popper to break down why the Chargers were better off moving on from an old school head coach and limited quarterback in exchange for Brandon Staley and Justin Herbert -- cough, cough, wink, wink. He talks about Herbert's development and why Herbert vs. Mike Zimmer could end up being a fun matchup and guesses the kickers from the last four years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining us on the show, Daniel Popper. He covers the Los Angeles Chargers of Los Angeles for the Athletic. Daniel, how are you? Are things normal in Los Angeles? Because they definitely are here. Yeah, pretty normal. No COVID incidents to speak of, no lawsuits to speak of. So definitely a little calmer in Los Angeles than in Minneapolis right now.

Okay, I guess we're different then. And by the way, I did check the weather report and I will be headed to Los Angeles where it is going to be 90. Anyway, well, that will be nice for me. But here's what I want to talk to you about, Daniel, is I want to talk to you about Anthony Lynn. I am aware that Anthony Lynn does not coach the Los Angeles Chargers anymore, but that's the point. So here we are in Minnesota with a fork in the road that we've come to, or a crossroads with Mike Zimmer. It's a three and five team. And tell me if this sounds familiar to the Los Angeles Chargers.

They're losing a bunch of close games, right? And they have a coach who is good, but he's sort of behind the times. And they have a quarterback who is limited athletically, though still very talented. Again, tell me if this is ringing a bell. And what I want to know from you is what it has been like to go from that similar circumstance that I just described in Los Angeles, when you had Rivers and Lynn, to now having Brandon Staley and Justin Herbert, and that change and what it's meant to the organization

over the last year plus. Yeah. I mean, the one word I can use is it's refreshing because I'm somebody that believes in math, believes in numbers, believes in win probability models. So it was rather maddening to watch the Chargers make decision after decision after decision that just were blatantly conservative and went directly against what the numbers were showing. I point back to the Chiefs game in week two, Justin Herbert's first start in the NFL, and Anthony Lynn punted the ball on a fourth and one from his own 34 in overtime to Patrick Mahomes. Now, shockingly, the Chargers never got the ball back. Mahomes drove the Chiefs down the field and kicked the field goal, but that's the type of decision that Brandon Staley would never make. He's going to be aggressive on fourth down. Obviously, he leans into the win probability models.

They hired an additional analytics staffer this offseason. They have two analytics staffers now who are heavily involved in decision making. Brandon Staley is allowing them to create models that are obviously proprietary, but they incorporate wind probability on top of, you know, where they're playing the game and weather and field conditions and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All of those things are factored into it. But he's a guy that's going to, if it's, if it's a, you know, within a margin where it's kind of a toss up, he's going to act aggressively every single time.

He's not going to make the conservative decision, even when the numbers sort of allow him to make that sort of decision. And it's showing up. They're winning games as a result. Like you go to the Chiefs game, the fourth and nine that they went for, and I know they got a call on that play from the referees, but that's being aggressive against a team at that point in the Chiefs that had a really high-powered offense.

Obviously they've fallen out since then. But even going back to this game against the Eagles, two fourths and ones on the final drive of the game, they allowed them to hang on to the ball for the final six minutes and kick the game winning field goal. You know, I'm not sure Anthony Lynn makes those decisions. And so it strictly from a number standpoint, they're leaning into the math and it makes a lot more sense from that

perspective. But the aggressive mentality is filtering down to the players as well where they're saying oh man like our coach believes in our offense and it's hard to really put a finger on and quantify what that means but it's certainly breeding a sense of confidence among these amongst these players on both sides of the ball because you know that Brandon Staley is going to be aggressive and that means the players are going to be aggressive as well with With the Vikings, it feels like the exact opposite where they are in every game and they play well on defense, but then in the biggest moments, they seems like they have a tightness to them, or they're just weak enough to allow good teams with good quarterbacks to come

back or playmakers to make plays or something like that, that there's always sort of something in the way. And it's to the point where you would never say, oh my gosh, Kirk Cousins, wow, just get rid of him. He's not a joke. This isn't Christian Ponder. And with Zimmer, the schematics I think are still good on the defensive side. On the offensive side, there seems to be Zimmer presiding over the offense that has been problematic because they are run first and we have to establish the run and we have to run on second and 10 and those types of things. It seems to me like these things are very similar to Anthony Lynn and very much are the way that was always done. And when Mike Zimmer five years ago was in the middle of the league in these things, but there are coaches like Brandon Staley who are taking over with the mentality that has caused them to be pushed down the line. And when it comes to

close games and the Ravens handle every situation perfect, well, that's advantage Ravens. And there are a lot of teams in the league now that seem to have that little edge over where the Vikings are. Right. But that's the thing about it is the margins between winning and losing the margins between three and five and five and three are so razor thin that you need to be maximizing every opportunity. You need to be gaining every single advantage that you can gain. So why wouldn't you do it? It comes down to hubris and stubbornness. That's it. Period. Like there's nothing else that you can explain it as it's like, this is the way we've always done it. And I'm refusing to do that. You know, these coaches,

right. We'll, we'll sleep in their offices. They'll work 22 hour days. They'll do whatever they can to come up with the best game plan and the best scheme. They'll do whatever, whatever it takes. You know, Dan Campbell's out here drinking two venti coffees a day to give him the boost that he needs to come up with the correct game plan, right? But leaning into win probability, giving yourself a mathematical advantage, oh, full stop. That's where I draw the line in terms of gaining an advantage. It's asinine. It makes absolutely no sense. And so the Chargers are sitting here comfortable knowing that they are going to have, at worst, an even playing field mathematically with whoever they face and from an analytical perspective like no one's going to make

better decisions than them you know the Ravens for example might make similarly good decisions but they're going to be at least at a baseline level against every single team they play against because they're leaning into the math and because they're making decisions based on win probability models and a lot of these teams the the Mike McCarthy's of the world, the Mike Zimmer's of the world, they're going to have a built in advantage there because they're leaning into the numbers. It's just an easy thing to do. Go hire a couple of 25 year old data scientists, graduates from Yale or Virginia or wherever you want to hire them from and go let them run some models and then lean into the math. This isn't that hard. And the other part of it is, which I think gets lost a little bit,

is it's not all numbers and analytics here. Part of it is Brandon Staley wants to put the ball in Justin Herbert's hands as many times as possible because he trusts his offense. So we can talk about analytics and numbers and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, it comes down to my best player is number 10. I'm going to give number 10 as many times, as many chances with the ball as I possibly can. And, you know, maybe it isn't that same degree with Kirk Cousins, but they got a pretty damn good passing offense this year.

They got two really good wide receivers. Why wouldn't you lean into that? Yeah. In fact, it's become a show thing to say, lean into the Kirk, lean into the variance that goes into sometimes he hits big and sometimes he doesn't. But even then this year, nothing is really working consistently for them. And when they do take more of a pass first approach than they did last year, I mean, last year they were 27th in attempts, despite playing from behind a lot. Whereas this year, the success of the run game has been so much less that a lot

more is on cousins. And I want you to take me back. Anthony Lynn and Phillip Rivers combination was right in the playoff race pretty much every year and even had a very, very good year. But I want you to take me back to where they're defenders of keeping Anthony Lynn, keeping Phillip Rivers. And I know they waited one more year after Phillip Rivers and had Justin Herbert with Lynn, but those two, we go through this a lot with Cousins and Zimmer. Sometimes it's if they just got rid of Zimmer, then Cousins would be better. And sometimes it's if they just got rid of Cousins, then Zimmer would be different. And I feel like there's an analogous situation there with Rivers and Anthony Lynn. Yeah, well, I think there are a lot of parallels because, you know, Anthony Lynn, his background, really, he was he was a player on the Broncos under Mike Shanahan.

And, you know, he won a Super Bowl there is like a special teams fourth running back. But he always wanted to run a version of that offense, heavy play action. You know, John Elway, obviously a very mobile quarterback, like he's the prototype for the Shanahan offense. And so, you know, Anthony Lynn always wanted more mobility at quarterback. And so there was always a little bit of a disconnect there between what Anthony Lynn wanted and what Philip Rivers could give him because historically Philip Rivers hated play action like the the Chargers were consistently among the lowest play action rate teams in the league they move on from Rivers and they finally you know they get Tyrod Taylor obviously a mobile quarterback who who can do the play action rollout game and they get Herbert and they they elevate the amount of play action

they're doing and the offense is more in the vision of what Anthony Lynn always wanted. And so you have some parallels there because there does, you know, and you would know this better than I would just from the outside looking in it, there always seems to be some sort of discord between Mike Zimmer and Kirk cousins, Kirk cousins is playing really efficiently, but Mike Zimmer always wants to establish the run. Right. And so there does seem to be some similarities, but even when Anthony Lynn got to move on you know,

the results weren't there largely because of roster deficiencies. The offensive line was a complete mess and injuries, you know, they lose Durham and James for the season and, and, you know, they don't, you know, garner the success that they needed for Anthony Lynn to keep his job. So I don't know, like move on from Zimmer and all of a sudden it gets better. Well, it's really difficult in the NFL in terms of moving forward and making those types of decisions because the grass is always

greener. But the one thing that you can always lend into, which we were talking about earlier is, you know, bringing in a coach who's willing to lean into the numbers because the math doesn't lie. You know, that's the one thing that you know can improve is if you make better decisions, both in terms of your fourth down decision making, time management, all of these things that are easily controllable. And so maybe, you know, if you bring in another coach, at least that part of the advantage game will be, you know, closer to what the Vikings fans are looking for. And furthering the similarities, Mike Zimmer loves the Kubiak offense so much that he brought in

Gary Kubiak and then kept his son here. Those guys are believers very much in that offense, and it maximized Kirk Cousins for a couple of years, but I also think that teams realized, oh, you're going to run the bootleg here on second down and short, and they would start sending their defenders upfield and finding solutions to that and the Vikings haven't really figured out how to counter because it's not Gary Kubiak it's his son calling plays for the first time but similarly when the Vikings drafted Kellen Maughan they talked about well he's got this mobility is there anyone hearing us it's mobility that maybe our quarterback doesn't have,

and we're not going to name names. So it's clear, and I think that that offense is amazing with mobile quarterbacks. I think that's what San Francisco sees with Trey Lance eventually and why they didn't draft Mac Jones. But I want to talk about Herbert because with the Cousins thing, it feels like there's always different offensive coordinators and coaches and you get the same results and there's some limitations there. And if you're a person that believes that the Vikings should move on from cousins after this

year, this weekend is the guy to point over and be like that guy, a big guy. Yeah. There were some questions with him coming out, but and that but he's giant he can move he can heave that thing and he's got guts and it changes your franchise it changes the way people think of the next 10 years of your franchise when you have that guy and there i know are plenty examples of teams who did not get the guy but herbert is the high-end result of going from someone who kept a cap on what you could be to now a guy where it feels like there's no ceiling on what he can be. Right. So my, my response to that is you can get a lot worse than Kirk cousins. Like that's the thing, right?

You can get a lot worse than that guy. And you can look over at the charge and be like, Oh, we want Justin Herbert, but there aren't that many Justin Herberts out there. You know, the charges were earlier in the draft. They might've ended up with Tua, right? And Tua is worse than Kirk Cousins. So you, that's the problem is you have a known quantity at quarterback. The question is, is he good enough to win you a Superbowl? That's really the question that you have to keep asking yourself, but I don't know how many Justin Herberts are coming along. I think the league probably overthought it a little bit and looked at some of his performance at Oregon when he didn't have very talented receivers and he was operating in a run

first offense that didn't really maximize his arm talent and said, okay, this guy's not going to be successful. But the talent itself jumped off the page. And then you dig into his makeup and how humble of a guy he is and the type of teammate he is and how genuine he is and the leadership qualities that people questioned are actually one of his biggest strengths. And I think that's why you're seeing the success, but it's a dangerous game. It's a dangerous game. And my gut says that if you have a known quantity of quarterback that can play at a decently high level, it's not always the correct answer to move on because it can get a lot worse. Yeah, I guess my counter to that would be,

and so what if it does? Because if it gets a lot worse and your quarterback, like Tua, wins no games, you just draft the next guy. And that's hard to deal with because who wants to sit through whole seasons or a whole season of your Arizona with Josh Rosen and go, oh my gosh.

But even with the Vikings, go, oh my gosh. But even with the Vikings, they drafted Christian Ponder. It blew up in their face. They drafted Teddy Bridgewater. And had he not gotten hurt, we might've been talking about Teddy Bridgewater leading the 2017 team to the Super Bowl. You just draft another guy until you find the guy. And here's my question. How many times has it ever worked where a guy just sort of hung around as just the 12th, 14th best quarterback in the league and was paid highly. And then it all just clicked. And then they got to the Superbowl. I mean, it's pretty rare, right? You feel like your fate is stuck in the middle. This fan base in particular has been there for so long and the Chargers were

too, that it's like, am I willing to maybe lose games in an attempt for a year or two to go big and to find the next Herbert? That's if it doesn't go right. I mean, you keep trying, but in particular, I feel like Vikings fans are really in this place where they're ready for something like that. Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. But, you know, the real question you have to ask yourself is, can you win a Super Bowl with the 12th best quarterback in the league? I don't know the answer to that. It depends on, you know, your personnel around them and, you know, primarily how good your defense is. But it's really hard to win a Super Bowl with like the 25th best quarterback in the NFL. And the Dolphins have been looking for a quarterback ever since Dan

Marino. So like there are organizations that have toiled away here looking for quarterbacks, not for years, for decades. And so that's the question you have to ask yourself. And it's really hard. Like it's real. It might be the most challenging thing at all sports to find a legitimate franchise quarterback, to find a top 10 quarterback. Like it's very, very hard. And a lot of organizations have failed to do it over like my entire lifetime. So, you know, sometimes the known quantity is the better route. But I know it can be frustrating, you know, sort of being mired in that mediocrity, like the Vikings have been over recent seasons. Sam Ekstrom here wondering if you're stuck on your company's injury report. In an unfortunate situation like that, it's good to have someone in your corner.

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This is an attorney advertisement from Kemet Sanford and Kramer, yourminnesotaworkcomployer.com. Yeah, and I think when we talk about cousins, there's probably a path that involves, like you have to have a different coach who's offense-focused. You have to get five really good offensive linemen, not two. You have to build, like you said, an elite defense, and then you have to get really lucky. And oh, by the way, the clock's ticking on Adam Thielen and Harrison Smith.

These are older players. And holding all these things together all at once for a year involves a lot of luck. We've seen better quarterbacks than cousins who have better teams than cousins still not be able to get there, like Drew Brees, for example, for a number of years. So you're absolutely right that this is not something where I would say confidently that it's easy. You could just draft the next guy. It's just that when you go seven and nine, eight, seven and one, 10 and six at your best. It's hard to say that there's a formula. And I think that's, what's different is with Phillip rivers. If you get all these things together, it's got Ladanian Tomlinson. This guy can maybe win the super bowl. That was always the

belief. And they got them close a bunch of times with cousins. There hasn't been that example of getting close. There hasn't been a formula and you, how do you get it to click? Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, ultimately Philip Rivers never won the Superbowl and only made one

appearance in the AFC championship game in his entire career. And so we can get into like, you know, was he good enough to win a Superbowl? The fact that he played a long time, 14 seasons as the starter had some talent around him and never got the job done. And so, you know, we can get into the Philip Rivers debate. To me, he just is the way he played the game was too volatile.

He took too many chances and didn't have that elite arm talent. And so as he got older in his career, it led to a lot of interceptions. And he was a big factor in that 2019 team missing expectations. know they had injuries on the offensive line but he made a lot of mistakes and and that's why they eventually decided to part ways with each other because the Chargers felt like you know he wasn't that guy anymore um but yeah I mean quarterback is a very fickle thing and it's it's really I mean fine when you find the guy that's I mean you look at the Chargers right now. Tom Telesco has made mistakes as general manager, but he nailed Justin Herbert. And for that, he's going to be here for the foreseeable future because it's just so damn hard to find a quarterback.

Well, tell me about Herbert, because we should get into some things involving this football game that the Vikings are trying to save their season with. So Mike Zimmer has been historically very good at slowing down and frustrating young quarterbacks. And I'll still put Justin Herbert under that umbrella, though he's emerged and some people would say he's one of the better quarterbacks in the league. But give me like a strengths and weaknesses here. Yeah. So just even over these last three games, they went up against the Ravens, and Wink Martindale just out-schemed them.

Before this win over the Eagles, they really were struggling with their early down offense, and so they ended up in a ton of third and longs in that game, and Wink Martindale was able to express a lot of exotic packages. It wasn't necessarily a lot of blitzing, but you go back and watch the tape. They had third and eights where Wink Martindale had like nine guys in the line of scrimmage and then dropped six of them, and Justin Herbert was flustered.

They gave up a decent amount of pressure in that game. And so you look at that game and you say, okay, what does Mike Zimmer do well as a defensive coordinator? You know, Brandon Staley said today he might be the best third down defensive engineer in the history of the game. Right. And so if you're trying to get Justin Herbert, create that kind of flustered quarterback that he was against the Patriots and the Ravens, you've got to throw a lot of disguise at him. And he saw, you know, when he was in position to make plays, there's a ton of pressure on him. Now you go into this Eagles game. Jonathan Gannon plays a ton of zone and the Chargers sort of knew what they were going to get. You know, the Eagles entered the game with the lowest man, man to

man rate of any team in the league, any defense in the league. And so Justin Herbert was like, okay, I'm going to get a lot of cover two and a lot of cover three. He knew what he was getting and he was able to be precise and really have a tremendous game. Now I see a lot of parallels between what happened in that Ravens game and what could happen in this Vikings game. And so if the Chargers sort of regress a little bit in terms of their early down offense, and they face a lot of third and long, just something that has been a detriment for them this year. You could see Mike Zimmer have one of his quintessential Mike Zimmer games and really disrupt Justin Herbert with some exotic third down look. So I think that's a key going into this game. Yeah. And you also mentioned the Keenan Allen is a little banged up in this one and this is a shortcoming of the Vikings

is that their cornerbacks are banged up Patrick Peterson is out and if there's somebody Herbert can rely on in the clutch and find someone in clutch situations like Lamar Jackson did last week or like Cooper Rush did the week four that's the counter to Zimmer's defense but I agree that with Mike Zimmer and this is where we talk about you saying that oh man if you get rid of cousins then who knows what you could do at quarterback well I say the same thing about Mike Zimmer where the analytics point is made here all the time but if you move on from Mike Zimmer the next guy might not rank in the top five and third down defense every single year and might not scheme

as effectively and those types of things. And that's what I think is a great battle by the way. And this is what's unfortunate about this week is being so crazy and everything's marred our discussion because I love that. I think they're Herbert versus Zimmer and these receivers and the fact that the Vikings are now without Neil Hunter and not being able to get after quarterbacks in the same way, it really puts a lot of pressure on Zimmer to scheme stuff up and to confuse Herbert. I think this makes it for a great football matchup. Yeah, it's fascinating. And that's really where Herbert has to take the next step, right? Is can he go out there against a really good defensive mind and continue

to play at the same level because that didn't happen in the Ravens and Patriots game and um you know the other the other factor in this is there's sort of a recipe developing for how to stay close with the Chargers they have a porous run defense and so opposing teams are just trying to play ball control run it down their throats, and they're doing it effectively. They lost the time possession battle to the Ravens by more than 16 minutes. They lost the time possession battle to the Patriots by close to 10 minutes. And so, and Mike Zimmer loves to run the football. I know he's not calling the plays, but, you know, he's pulling the strings there as the head coach. And so you could see a situation where, you know, the Vikings are running the ball effectively. I know they don't have a very

efficient running game this year, but they still have Dalvin Cook the Vikings are running the ball effectively. I know they don't have a very efficient running game this year, but they still have Dalvin Cook, and they're running the ball effectively, and you limit Herbert's opportunities. And so the margin for error offensively has been razor thin for the Chargers in recent weeks as teams have really controlled the football. They only got seven possessions in that Eagles game. They were able to be really efficient. But say Mike Zimmer is able to stall a couple drives with some exotic third down looks,

and all of a sudden, if the Vikings are able to run the ball effectively and control the time possession, you've really limited the number of opportunities that Herbert has. And that's certainly a game plan avenue that I could see Mike Zimmer exploiting heading into this one. And you make a good point about the Vikings offense. It has been, as we have said in the media, much maligned on the offensive side. But it all sends the running game. It has been, as we have said in the media, much maligned on the offensive side, but it all sends the running game. And if they can run effectively, that's where I think you could be looking at some type of shootout. The one thing is, I don't know how you feel about this. Tell me how you feel about this in general. We make a lot out of distractions

as journalists. When there's something's going on, we say, ah, distraction, I see it. But I think this is for the Vikings though. You have COVID outbreak, you have Delvin Cook's issues, you have Mike Zimmer under pressure, you have a lot of pressure on Clint Kubiak. I just feel like these things add up. In your experience, how do you feel about that? Yeah. I mean, all of these players and coaches are human beings. So to say that they can compartmentalize this stuff entirely is just false. Like they're all human and they all are experiencing the same emotions that we would expect them to. But what I will say is it can kind of go two ways, right? And this is what I've

experienced in my time covering the league. Stuff like this can either be a detriment and a team can fall apart or the pressure can galvanize everyone, right? And create an environment where the players are just playing their asses off and it leads to, you know, a big turnaround win. But it absolutely is a factor. And I don't know how much it impacts a running back, but a whole team having this being at the center of the NFL media world over something that is not regarding their football team's game, I think is very tough.

So I have one more thing for you. Do you think, who do you think will win this football game? That's always a question. Who will win? I feel like they really found a rhythm offensively last week. The games against the Ravens and Patriots were really concerning in terms of, okay, what is this offense? Why isn't Justin Herbert continuing to improve?

They have these issues on the right side of the offensive line because of injuries where they have two backups in there and Michael Schofield, a right guard and stormed on a right tackle that are, they're just a mess. How do they fix this? Like, how do they fix this? I need to see it on the field. Like how, how are they going to get this offense back on track? And they did that in the Eagles game. And I know the Eagles defense has struggled against quality quarterbacks, but I mean, they didn't punt in that game. They didn't turn the ball over in that game. They put up 445 yards of offense,

nine different receivers caught the football. They, everyone was touching the ball and they were able to find a recipe to improve the pass protection with quick game with quarterback movement and then with max protection. And then also with just guys playing better. So it seems like they found a recipe there offensively. Okay, this is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to alleviate the pressure on the offensive line. This is how we're going to get Justin playing in the rhythm and timing of the offense. And you saw it come to fruition.

And so all the players are saying, like, this is the first time this season where it's really clicked for us offensively. And with the playmakers that they have, you know, between Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, Austin Eckler, Jared Cook, Donald Parham is even playing at a high level at tight end. Like if they if this thing starts clicking, they can be one of the most explosive offenses in football. And it seems like they're heading in that direction. And I'm always going to bet on efficient offense heading into a game. I'm taking the Chargers by 20 in this one. I could be completely wrong, and I have been completely wrong. I took the Vikings by 20 against the Lions, and I was wrong about that. I just feel like everything is adding up.

And like you said, the offense there, the Vikings defense playing 98 plays last week. It just becomes very tough. 98. Good Lord. That's a lot. If you play 75 on defense, it's a lot of plays so let me ask you this though just before we go how long have you been covering this team the chargers when did you start covering them i started covering them in 2019 so philip rivers last season was

my first season okay so i have a fun trivia question i hope you could still do it because i i thought maybe you your time there went back a little farther. But the Chargers have become famous for the number of kickers that they have had. And they have had 10 different kickers kick field goals for them since 2017. How many of those kickers can you name since 2017? 10. They have had 10. They've had 10 different okay well let me get

let me go backwards so dustin hopkins yep tristan viscano uh yep michael badgley correct um the guy that's on the falcons now young young host young host soon am i pronouncing that correctly what is it young hoku that's who you're thinking of young hoku yeah uh nate was nate still kicking in 2017 he was not no in fact he was a kicking consultant for the vikings in 2018 so he's retired okay so that's that's four of them oh uh tai long has kicked in games. Yep. Yep. You got it. Yep. Tie long. You are only missing number four, five, seven, eight, and nine. So I think you're five. You're missing. One was from 2019 that you haven't named a former Viking. What? Oh, I thought that actually kicked it. Oh no, he was injured. So they must've brought somebody in for a game. I will give you a hint that if I'm running after you, what am I doing?

Chasing me? Oh, Chase McLaughlin. Yes, yes, yes. That's right. All right, I'm going to cap it there because I'm not going to be able to remember the rest of them. Six of them? Well done. You got six of them.

You have Donnie Jones. Did you say Caleb Sturgis? Travis Coons and Nick Rose. Those are the kickers since 2017. I'm happy with the six. I totally spaced on Chase McLaughlin though. So that's like five and a half because he gave me a hint. Yeah, disappointing that you spaced on Chase McLaughlin,

former Viking, for such a game where he gets revenge against both teams. Daniel Popper, The Athletic, you're a great follow on Twitter. And for people who want to check out what's going on with the chargers and to just follow your work in general, go check out Daniel Popper. Awesome to have you on the show again. And I hope that you come say hello to the press box. Are we like on the other side of the universe or something in this

humongous stadium? No, I'll come over and say, hello, I'll come over and say, hello, no doubt about it. I got to say hi to our athletic guys as well.

Okay, that sounds good. Well, thanks again for all the time. This was fun. And we'll do it again, man, whenever these two teams match up or when we just want to talk football in the offseason. Sounds great. Thanks for having me. Folks, have you ever thought about taking a bike to work but figure it's too far or that the hills are too steep? Or heck, who wants to show up to work covered in sweat? Well, that's why you need to check out the electric cruiser bike from my friends at Boogie Bikes. The Boogie Bike gives you all the experience of saving gas, getting outside, and feeling the wind through your hair. Say if you have a haircut like that Green Bay quarterback. But you don't have to be an Olympic cyclist in order to get all those benefits. The Boogie Bike has a strong yet quiet

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Check them out today. Okay, I promised you guys that I was going to stick with the final drive idea, where at least once a week or so, I give a couple of takes from around the NFL because there's just a lot to talk about. And I feel like with all the Vikings madness, I can't cover it all. So I'm sticking with it. And this is the second week of our final drive. So this is five takes that are about two minutes or less. So I can, you know, manage the clock and such something that the Vikings don't always do. So, all right, let's get a start. Our first two minute take on things around the league. And maybe there could

be some Vikings in here as well. Aaron Rodgers is penalty for not so much lying about his vaccination status, but not sticking with the NFL's protocols for unvaccinated players was less money than the NFL fined C.D. Lamb for not tucking in his jersey. Now let's think about this. Somebody brought it up, and I think it's fair to at least talk about, is Aaron Rodgers not doing what he's supposed to do with the protocols versus the way the NFL handled Tom Brady and deflate gate. Now, I don't think it was right for Tom Brady to have a dude who he called the deflator go into a bathroom and deflate footballs and make them easier to throw. I don't think that was the right thing to do for Tom Brady, but they acted like it was legitimately Watergate.

It was just this insane investigation by the NFL. They never really found true evidence and still suspended Tom Brady for, I believe it was four games. And with this Rogers thing, our friend Kalen Kaler, who was just on the show the other day, tweeted out more evidence that had come from Instagram of Aaron Rodgers breaking the rules. And he gets a fine that is the equivalent of you taking a penny out of your pocket and throwing it in the Mississippi river. That's the, what this level of fine, I think it was 14,000 and change for Aaron Rodgers, which is nothing to him at all. And why the NFL does this, where certain rules apply to certain people, certain rules apply to others.

And they treated this Rodgers thing, him not taking the protocol seriously, as if it was no big deal. And here's the juxtaposition with the Vikings having a player in the hospital who has COVID and is vaccinated. So this thing still serious enough to do that. And here's Rogers doing whatever the heck he wants and gets fined $14,000 way to take it super seriously and treat your stars just like all the other players NFL. Okay. This is a Vikings take, but it's, you know, kind of goes along with some other ones as well. Jeremy Fowler and Dan Graziano produced an article about coaches on the hot seat.

And guess who's there? We have our first official reference now to Mike Zimmer being a coach on the hot seat. We can say it, everybody, as if we haven't been discussing it for quite some time on the show. But what you haven't really seen until now, until this article, maybe if you were a Vegas person, if you were a gambler, you would have looked at the odds for coaches to be fired before the season. And you would have found Mike Zimmer's name on this list. But aside from that, I haven't seen any other reporters, insiders, those dialed in mentioning Mike Zimmer among

the coaches that could be on the hot seat. So there are some other teams that we could talk about here. Vic Fangio in Denver is one of them. They're hanging around 500 right now. They'll probably end that way, 8-9, 9-8, which would be an improvement for what Denver has done. But Fangio in Zimmer-like fashion always seems to be on the hot seat and then pull off something like he did last week against Denver. Matt Nagy, or I'm sorry, against Dallas. Matt Nagy, of course, gets a reference here. And Kyle Shanahan, Brian Flores, Zach Taylor also end up in the conversation. Now they also bring up the idea that maybe Bill

Belichick, Bruce Arians, Pete Carroll, those guys could retire. So that's not exactly hot seat, but it is interesting to think about if that possibility were to come to fruition, that those coaches who have been in place for a while or are older, could open up some pretty nice spots for new coaches. Also, Dan Graziano says he doesn't think that the Giants are going to give up on Joe Judge. And Jeremy Fowler said that he doesn't think that Carolina is going to move on either. So I think, I mean, of all of those, Joe Judge should be the one that goes. But if I were to guess, Zach Taylor with a collapse and Brian Flores, I don't know how they could continue to go forward with him.

Matt Nagy will entirely depend on what happens down the stretch. Okay, I mismanaged the clock. I went over two minutes there. PJ Walker's going to start, everybody. We'll deal with this one in one minute. PJ Walker, XFL. We have had on this show a little bit of XFL talk when it existed and a former XFL coach who coached P.J. Walker. That was A.J.

Smith. We had him on an episode last year. That was fun because he's a really analytical and smart coach. He's good to talk with. And he was a huge fan of PJ Walker. Walker dominated the XFL, never lost the game in the XFL. He goes to the NFL, gets a chance last year when Teddy Bridgewater was out, played okay. He came in in relief of Sam Darnold earlier, did not play all that well earlier this year. And now he looks like he's going to get his chance to start for a few games in a row. A P.J. Walker story of him going from the XFL after being Indy's backup to start for Carolina for a few games here is why I love secondary leagues. Anybody who grew up with the original XFL remembers the Tommy Maddox story of him winning the MVP of the XFL, then going and starting for the Pittsburgh Steelers and succeeding as their starting quarterback.

P.J. Walker is a better quarterback than Sam Darnold. He might be bad too, because I'm not certain that their offensive coordinator, Joe Brady, is any good in the NFL. And so Walker might struggle or he might just have a tough time. He runs around and makes plays and that's not always a great model

unless you are really great at that. But I'll be interested. have a tough time. Like he runs around and makes plays and that's not always a great model unless you are really great at that. But I'll be interested. I'll be very interested to see how PJ Walker does. It has to be better than Sam Darnold and Walker and Darnold. No objective analysis would find Sam Darnold to be better than PJ Walker. I think as a quarterback in terms of what he can do is talent Walker's small NFL sample versus Sam Darnold's big, bad NFL sample. And yet it tells you something just about the bias with the draft status. When someone is drafted high,

they are considered to be great and coaches can fix them for absolutely ever. And if a guy wasn't drafted high and he played in the XFL, then he can never play no matter what, unless the other guy gets hurt. So good for you, PJ Walker. It'd be fun to see. All right.

Dane Brugler has released his 50 top 50 players for the first time since before preseason, I believe his first 50 prospects. And in case you were wondering, the first quarterback is Matt Corral, which comes in at number 16. He's from Ole Miss. The next highest is Kenny Pickett at 27. And then Malik Willis is 33. He's the guy from Liberty who's very athletic, big arm, that kind of thing.

Just in case you were thinking about the skull searching that we did last year on the show, where we looked at all the prospects for quarterbacks. This year, they don't rank as highly as the quarterbacks ranked last year. That's all I can say. Matt Corral, Kenny Pickett, Malik Willis considered at least for right now the top three. That doesn't mean that none of them will move. We've seen a lot of movement each off season or into the bowl season when somebody finishes strong, they get a lot more attention. And so these three in particular will be really interesting to watch, especially if things

go sideways for the Vikings down the stretch. All right, one more. Odell Beckham, at least as of the moment that I'm recording this, has narrowed his search to only a couple of teams that he might think about signing with. And I will throw it out there, despite the possibility of old takes exposed of having this blow up in my face and be totally wrong, that no matter where he goes, it's just hard to see him having much of an impact. I don't think Baker Mayfield is a great quarterback, but I think if you run the routes you're supposed to run, Baker Mayfield will throw you the football and you can make some plays. I don't think he's so bad that you can't succeed with him.

It's not always going to be perfectly accurate, but if you do it the right way, it'll probably work. If he goes to Green Bay, if he goes to the Saints, if he goes to whoever, the Chiefs, it's just hard to see the old version of Odell Beckham exploding onto the scene and taking things over and dominating. Right. But I did want to say the chiefs being on the list. I think what we see with Kansas city is just how much of a difference it makes when you have multiple good wide receivers versus when you have just one. If they, when they had Sammy Watkinskins they had another guy who could get open in big situations

he made a lot of plays and now that it's all the attention on stopping tyree kill from going deep opponents are just able to slow that one guy down and travis kelsey is a good player but he's not a deep threat at all and this is where i feel like Patrick Mahomes, his biggest deficiency is, is that his other wide receivers aren't just not great. I mean, they're extremely poor and cannot get open versus man coverage. So if there is one scenario in which I could see Odell Beckham having an impact, it's the chiefs because the rest of their receivers are just stupendously bad. All right. That is our final drive. And I know that I probably went a little too long on a couple of these and mismanaged the clock, but that's how it goes. So appreciate you guys all listening as always. And we'll be back soon on Purple Insider.