Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Athletic's Mike Sando takes us inside the NFL's opinion on Sam Darnold

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

The Athletic's Mike Sando joins Matthew Coller to talk about what NFL Executives and coaches thought of Sam Darnold going into the year and how the Vikings have created an environment for him to win. Mike also talks about what that means for the Vikings' future Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and a very special guest. First time on this version of the show. I think the old ESPN 1500 days he was on. Mike Sando of The Athletic. What's going on, Mike? Great to have you back. Not too much. As I was looking for the link to this, I did find an email from us maybe in 2019.

So we've done this for a little while back and forth. And it's good to be on, especially with the Vikings being leading my pick six column every freaking week here. I mean, what's going to happen? Are they going to lose a game? And I'm going to have to be like, is this the end? Is that my next column? I don't know. It feels like they're in the moment. They most certainly are. And that is the question that we're all asking, Mike. Is this a magic carpet ride? Is this for real? Is this?

And I wrote a column today myself about how almost every Viking season ever. That's been great since the Superbowl years back in the day has always come out of nowhere. So as we do this whole dance of, well, as it could really be like, well, no one, I put Randall Cunningham as the picture. Nobody had Randall Cunningham in 1998 leading the best offense of all time to that point. So why not? It would almost be like the perfect Viking motif to have Sam Darnold taking them somewhere this year. And now that's a great angle. I need to read that.

I'm totally interested. Love the history. What I had looked into for my column on Monday was, hey, who are the teams that fit this profile? And that 98 team came up. And part of the profile was not just starting 4-0 and being pretty dominant. So I wanted those two things. You got to have a good point differential and you got to be 4-0. But then like, what was your expectation coming into the year? I kind of took out those teams that had the 11 win Vegas projection where everybody knew they're going to be good. And then you start getting into the interesting teams. And

one of them was, uh, obviously that team from 98 and then the 99 Rams, you know, who I think were on a different level in retrospect with what they're, you know, what Kurt Warner ended up being a hall of fame quarterback. I don't, you know, Randall Cunningham and Darnold probably aren't going to be hall of fame quarterbacks but um you know those were kind of teams that yeah they started fast and yeah it was real they actually were really good teams i think those rams won 13 14 games the vikings won 15 so they're good i think the vikings are pretty good well all the signs from the nerd stats are pointing to them being good because in 2022, we did this same dance where it was, well, you know, they have a negative point differential

after 10 weeks. I think actually they finished with a negative point differential for the entire season, but they won 13 games and the analytics have taught us over the years to evaluate team strength in different ways. And Aaron Schatz in his DVOA statistic has the Vikings at the top. They're number one in defensive EPA. They're top 10 in offensive EPA so far. But the sample size is tiny.

And of course, the quality of opponent that they've beaten has been remarkable for three out of these four games. But what sample size would you need like how many games what week will you be like okay all right these vikings are really really real uh i think it's more how do things look when it doesn't go your way as well you know i think they've been so dominant on defense that i in fact i wrote today a column about the jaguars at oh and four and I noted that Trevor Lawrence has started 54 games and his start, his stats through 54, like the same as Darnold's through 54. It's kind of crazy when you think what they paid him. But I do think like, like if we, if this season we put Trevor Lawrence on the Vikings instead of

Darnold, I mean, maybe Lawrence misses some more throws cause he's had a little bit of an erratic year, but like they're probably four and oh, and so they're so good defensively that Sam Darnold has attempted two passes while trailing. So I think the, I think we know they're good. I think we want to see how they react,

right. When it's not going as well. And are you able to play your way out of it? And if you can't, that's just the way it goes. That happens to everybody. You know, you, you, you lose a game sometimes you do, but I think that would be a next test of, uh, Hey, you're down seven to nothing. You're down, you're down in the third quarter now.

And now Darnold's kind of got to throw. And maybe he doesn't have as good a protection. Wow, he stepped up and did it. And you'd be like, I think then you'd be like, oh, this is like another level of it, right? I don't think we poke holes in what they've done so far because it was against good teams. And I think Houston is a good team up front uh and san francisco can be too so

those were really good tests to pass for them um and now like i said i think it's just more of when darnold has to play in a tougher environment you know does he rise up then because that would be something i know you're absolutely right as As far as his actual, what would you call game environment? It has been incredibly favorable, even when on the first drive of the season, when they actually got behind for the three minutes and 26 seconds that they've been behind this year, they fumble, but the defense stops the Giants from scoring after getting the ball right on the, you know, right in the red zone. And then they get it back and they take the lead. But I don't think that the defense is really going anywhere and it will allow Darnold to

continue to play largely like this, not for 17 games, not unless they are the 98 Vikings, but the stat that really blew my mind, Mike, this off season, when I was doing my deep dive into every number I could find to try to paint the profile of D this off season, when I was doing my deep dive into every number I could find to try to paint the profile of Darnold was that when he was tied or leading, he was an average NFL quarterback. When he was losing, he was abominable. And I think that part of that is a product of the way that he plays is trying to do a little too much hero ball. And he had to try to play that way when he was with teams that were so often getting behind from the jump, whether it was bad defense, bad offensive line, bad play calling, bad coaching.

And he just doesn't almost ever have to feel that way. And when he's here, We almost saw it in the Houston game when he tried to flip the ball forward. Remember down there? And it was like, Oh, I was, you know, I had like like four games going on so at first I thought it was a turnover you know and I was like oh my gosh Darnold did it it's darn he Darnold did you know and all the quarterbacks when you are under duress sometimes do crazy things I mean Patrick Mahomes sometimes does so I don't think we should read too much into it I think that has to be a a point of a self-awareness for Sam

Darnold and it he seems self-aware. I mean, his comment the other day, yesterday, was awesome. When they asked about the Jets and did they ruin them and is it a way better situation? He said, effectively, I had lots of chances to play better with the Jets. Oh my gosh, this is a guy who gets it. Like he's had a chance to have the deep breath.

And not everybody benefits from that, but I think it's huge. When you look at coaches, I would say this, Adam Gase, good offensive coordinator had a, uh, really bad run with the jets, but got hired right away by a Miami. No, no, no. He needed the two years to go like Sam Darnold did and be under Kyle Shanahan and just collect your thoughts and, and, uh, evaluate your process. Right. But no, you go right back into the fire

and have another experience that's tough. Right. So I think sometimes that time in between we saw, uh, you know, Jim Plunkett a little bit with somebody who just had a horrible experience with new England back in the 70s kids jim plunkett's a super bowl winning quarterback with the raiders but he went to the 49ers he then he got with a good team and they won super bowls plural he won two super bowls as a quarterback who's probably not going to the hall of fame but he had that time in between so geno smith right geno smith uh the time in between doesn't guarantee the success. You have to make the use of it. But I think these are some cases, maybe this is a good item for me

in my pick six column. I like this sort of that time in between sometimes after the failure and what you do with it is probably a great lesson for all of us in life, right? When you stumble and wonder if you're going to ever be good again, you know? Well, I mean, even Steve young, I'm sure it didn't hurt to spend some time in San Francisco and yeah, we're,

we're being old a little bit here, but I think that with Darnold, there are enough examples of guys who struggled at first and then found their way back to success that it isn't ridiculous to look at this and say, well, he could continue doing this and maybe he's just a good quarterback now. And also the crazy stat that I keep bringing up that he's younger than Joe Burrow, which is really wild to think about like how fast he was thrown into the fire in his life. And it was a very hot fire in the worst market for a young

quarterback with a coach that was not someone that was elevating a young quarterbacks. And then goes to Carolina where it's a college coach coming in where Teddy Bridgewater had said that Matt Rule didn't know how to run an NFL practice. Well, welcome Sam. Welcome Baker Mayfield to Carolina. This is so different from an off offensive coordinator who won the Superbowl with Sean McVay and then comes here, got the most out of Kirk Cousins. But what I, what really struck me in this off season though, when you did your quarterback tears was that there were people in the league that still believe this. And so I asked people that I knew that were connected in some way to Sam Darnold. And what kept coming back was, I think he might be able to do it. And his personality

was a major part of that, that nobody felt like he threw people under the bus or made excuses. And that's what we've really seen here is a very humble approach from Sam Darnold. But I'd love to hear more about what you were able to gather from people in the league about Sam Darnold, but I'd love to hear more about what you were able to gather from people in the league about Sam Darnold, because I feel like from your tears article, there are some people in the NFL going, I told you so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, certainly a couple of years, a few years ago, maybe 2019, 20, I think he was in tier three. So people, there was enough people that at least thought he was a viable starting quarterback. And then that waned some, but it bounced back. I think he had 12 tier three votes this year, which was double what he had before.

And most of the comments in there that I used and most that I got were positive. I mean, look, no one was saying, I love this guy and think he's going to go to tier one, but people were like, you know, I think there's something there. And then at the time I was doing a podcast with Randy Mueller, who, uh, you know, three time GM and really good evaluator. He's actually back with the saints now. But Randy on our podcast was like, I think this guy can do it. I think the Vikings have, uh, shown people how to make this transition at that position

that what they've done with their off season in reallocating those resources elsewhere in the roster uh drafting somebody and then bringing in someone who might be more than a bridge i mean randy was kind of predicting that next off season sam darnold could be a guy with with options that this was a that he had seen enough on film with san francisco even that was encouraging to him the thing i always balance in my mind though is there's a lot of people who like darnold coming out and so they're they could just be waiting to validate their priors like up yep it's there so i try to balance that in my mind too and that's why when i was asking randy it was like okay now what are you what specifically are you seeing right to make sure it's not just, I always liked Darnold.

And so he thought there were things he could see in how he played that were tangible. And I don't know that everybody I talked to has broke down the Darnold tape in the same way, but I think it was a good steer, right? It was helpful and if he were in a terrible situation right now he might not have good results again right and people would be able to criticize him and say he's terrible so i totally agree i just i think like and maybe you could speak to this uh because you've spent so many years putting together the quarterback tiers, talking to people in the NFL, but it feels like more now than ever that what you could put around a quarterback is the determining factor because we are not living in a world where we have these five or six

mega freak quarterbacks who are just running the NFL and then everybody else is hoping to catch fire for a random season. I mean, for most of my life watching football, it's kind of been that way. It's been, you know, Elway in the late nineties, or it was Brady and Manning and Roethlisberger. Wasn't there a stat that they were in the Superbowl every year, except for one for 15 straight seasons or something like that. And then over in the national football conference, Drew Brees, Aaron Rogers, and everyone else is just kind of trying to scramble, but there isn't really that situation now,

other than my home seems almost untouchable. Even if you take away all of his receivers and running backs and everything else. But aside from that, it does seem like the race is in who can build an offensive line to block for Jared Goff, to block for Sam Darnold, who can get enough weapons and just keep stacking them. Like the Vikings saying, yeah, we need a corner, but what about Jordan Addison in the draft? Let's take him instead because our future quarterback is

going to benefit from that. And I think that the Vikings and coaches like Kevin O'Connell, I think the Vikings just understood this. This is going to be the way that we win if we can build this cocoon around our quarterback. There's always been the win with and win because of quarterbacks, but I think there's been a better job of embracing the win with and really finding ways to, to make it, make them look good. Right. And I think in the older way of football, probably, Hey,

we've got our system and you got to run it and you got to learn it. And there's a ramp up period and maybe three years, you know, when I was covering the Seahawks 20 years ago, you know, Mike Holmgren had his system, great coach, great coach of quarterbacks. But he always thought like in the third year, that guy would hit stride and he did it. I mean, he did it with faster than that with Brett Favre and with Matt Hasselbeck within about three years. Matt had been benched a couple of times, but he became a three-time Pro Bowl quarterback who went to the Super Bowl, right? Well, we don't have three years.

You don't have three years to do it. So years to to to do it so what are you going to do to make this guy have a chance right now a lot of times coming right out of college so it's interesting to me that cliff kingsbury the most college offensive coach which has been used in a bad way right oh this college offense even the bangles tv said that has his guy playing great right away right and maybe he needs another pitch or another gear down the road to overcome and go all the way. I don't know. Maybe Jaden Daniels is so good it doesn't matter.

But I do think that you can definitely see that willingness to work with guys. Now, you still have to have a certain amount of talent. Mike McDaniel is turning the dials crazily right now. All motion, all this stuff. He can't do anything because he doesn't have probably a baseline level of talent at the position. You still need that at the position. But I think you're right. We're seeing more of these guys.

And if I were an owner of a team, I'd be saying, how come our guy's not? How come the glass isn't half full with our guy? It shouldn't be half empty, right? What do we need to do to make it half full? Well, and I wonder how you think that this does change how, and I know it's not wildly different. I mean, there's always been situations that have helped quarterbacks. I mean, I mentioned John Elway, but he wins at the end of his career.

They made things so much harder on him early in his career. Another throwback here, but Kubiak and Shanahan come in. They run the ball. They run play actions. I think that the best coaches are finding ways to hack defenses enough. Even the way O'Connell has used play action and screen this year. They have the best screen team in terms of yards per attempt in the league. That certainly makes life easier on your quarterback, but there's so much of a discussion about how defenses are playing offenses and what they need

to do. I just wonder how this is going to continue to evolve this discussion of how much you pay the quarterback, how hard it is to replace that quarterback. There's, there's like a lot of moving parts to the conversation, I feel like. Oh, there's no doubt. And some of these teams draft a guy and then they, uh, it's almost when they re-sign him, it's almost like, Hey, we succeeded. We found our guy and the owners involved too. Right. Uh, I think it's crazy to be prematurely signing these guys to $55 million deals. Like Miami loves Tua, but you know that he's one concussion away from being exactly where he's at, a career crossroads. Trevor Lawrence, you had two years with these guys.

Why do it? Kyler Murray was done super early, right? You've got time. Use it. Easy for me to say because obviously internally these teams feel pressures from the media, from the owner. Do we have our guy? They want to plan for the future.

But I think all of that stuff has to be re-evaluated. One other issue too is the owners are wealthier. There's more money so they can kind of afford to do these things. We've even seen owners get out of those deals, trade Jared Goff or trade Carson Wentz it's like it's not even that big of a deal money-wise where that used to be a real deal breaker so yeah I think it's an interesting time it certainly is and Jared Goff is a fascinating one to me Mike because I went to Los Angeles in 2018 and watched Jared Goff put up a perfect

quarterback rating against the Mike Zimmer defense. And I was like, I'm going to defend this guy no matter what. That was one of the best performances. I remember that game. Yeah, it was unbelievable. Right. And also it was in the Coliseum and they were doing construction. So they put us up in some sort of little house that they had built in the middle of the stands.

It was like watching a high school game from the angle. So to see it all happen that close, which is very unusual for the NFL to see it happen like that and to see how well he played. I was like, I don't know. This guy can do it right. And then he gets traded and then everyone's down on him while he's limited. He's not that good. But I feel like it's not just oh you have to build with

talent but build to the right places on your roster and work to the right things that your quarterback does so what kevin o'connell's doing is he's throwing deep crossers with a guy with a freak arm jared goff's running these play actions and stuff where the timing is important the details are important but he can handle the mental load and they pass protect for him because he can't run. I just think golf is a great example of if you build it right, this guy can be a legitimate Superbowl contender. Yes.

And when he was in the Rams and was that they had a great offensive line and then that fell off and then McVay was getting frustrated, like, right. And he needed somebody who could handle it a little bit better without that. And that was Stafford, uh, who could do that a little more. One of the things I'm interested in is I still think it's the tale as old as time in the NFL in football, you have to make the defense think you're going to run the ball and defend it somehow. Right. And so that some of these, uh, Kyle Shanahan or, you know, uh,

Houston, Miami, uh, they've been able to do that through their personnel or their formations. They use, you know, two running backs or they use super, they make you have a run defense kind of personnel a little bit more on the field. How's Kevin doing that with, how do you think the Vikings do that?

I'm just curious on your perspective on that to be able to have some kind of a threat. Cause they get guys whenever I watch, they get guys running open. Yes. Wide open sometimes. And that's why, uh, people were a little baffled by the, uh, the PFF grade for Darnold this last week. Wasn't very good. It's like, well, when you throw it to someone who's wide open, uh, usually they don't give you as much credit. Well, if you do this too, I did do this before the game, before that game. If you were to watch every throw in rapid succession,

it's a good exercise for anyone to do. If you know that you can do it on the pro, what the NFL plus thing or something, maybe you have another way you can look at the film. But if you watch quarterbacks, all their throws in succession, you'll notice that almost all of them are not remarkable. If we were to go through and say,

if you look at Sam Darnold stats, you would think this guy is throwing laser beams through key holes. Unbelievable. And that happens a couple of times here and there, but it's amazing how you would not look at these, most of these throws, even for a really productive quarterback. In a lot of cases,

you'd run out of highlights. There's just a lot of mundane throws and that's the bulk of an NFL game. Really? And so I think that's an interesting thing. If you were to look at Darnold and compare his stats, how many, how many wow throws are there? There's a few, but there's probably a couple of game, right? Isn't that amazing? No, it really is. And this is actually something Darnold talked about. And I'll answer your question also about the running game, but

Darnold talked about taking this away from Brock Purdy, that Brock Purdy just took what was there for him. And when it wasn't there, got rid of the football and he's, he could take some risks sometimes, but Purdy mostly just ran the offense and didn't try to say, oh, I have to make spectacular throws. I have to make something where there isn't anything just, and he kept saying this off season, it's become cliche, but play point guard, play point guard, take a profit, take a profit. Yeah. Right. And then when you have someone running 50 yards down the field and you can pull out the cannon, then go do it. Or when he can make that throw down the sideline where he essentially just stuck it like a spear into a Justin Jefferson's chest in the end zone, then do it. But I think Darnold has adopted that mentality of trust your coach,

trust your wide receivers. They're going to be there. You check to a play, you follow what you're supposed to do, and there will be open receivers. And I think if you can see the field enough, then you can do this. And he's been doing that. Before you get to the run game part, one thing I noticed today is that Purdy and Darnold number one and two in in most time to throw average time to throw

you wouldn't think that now with purdy he's been running around a lot this year to find guys and doing kind of some some of the things he says he doesn't want to do you know he's throwing some jump balls in there and they've made great catches uh but i think that was interesting to me i know when i've watched journal it seems like he has really good protection and he will stand in there a long time and he's had some run arounds too but that that's interesting to me i don't know what you make of that that they're one and two for holding the ball usually those usually the guys with the longest time to throw are the super mobile guys who can run around forever you know and neither one of those guys is really that yeah i think uh the play action game there is a tie-in that the play-action game

often does take longer to develop when you have those deep crossers, and part of the whole idea is if you are running a play-action, you're freezing the defense, you do get a little bit of help for your offensive line. They also have two of the best offensive tackles in the NFL that have made some great pass rushers mostly irrelevant,

but I might make an argument that the MVP of the first four games has been Aaron Jones. Not only is he tremendous in the screen game, I never thought of running backs as having a specific screen skill until I watched him sift through all the noise and his vision and getting a couple extra yards on those screens. And then the other thing is everybody knows Aaron Jones is back there. And when he reintroduced himself in week one, week two, as getting five yards of carry, I think everybody had to go. All right. Well, Aaron Jones is going to crush us if we don't pay attention to him.

And you just see eyeballs in the backfield on Aaron Jones. The other thing is too, you talk about the the protection they've done some great things with him the weakness is on the interior so instead of chipping the edge they will chip the interior which I I don't remember seeing too often and he will throw he is a small man and he will throw his whole body into a defensive tackle this guy has brought toughness favorable situations because he runs attention from the defense and for Darnold to have him there I think makes life so much more calm because he always knows he has one of the best running backs in the league that is really interesting because yeah I just need to reorient my thought then around him as that type of a back I think you make a great point because because i there's a short list of backs that are

like that in the league you know i think derrick henry's obviously one but he's more of when he's in the game he's more of a runner you know he's not much of a pass catcher i feel like marshawn lynch was somebody who just by his presence there created matchups for Russell Wilson down the field because people had to respect him. So if Aaron Jones is in that category, you know what that's like. I mean, Adrian Peterson was one of those guys for years too. So, um, however you can make people be afraid of the running game, it really, really helps you. Right. I totally agree. And the other thing is too too i know that there was some studies looking at quarterbacks still succeed with play action even if their running game isn't succeeding yeah but

i think it's important that if aaron jones gets you six yards on first down you can run or pass on second down and i think that we never really thought of it too much in terms of how many runs slash past situations can you create for your quarterback? This would be something, maybe I'll have to try to work on this. Who has had the most favorable first and tens second and fives or less third and shorts where you can do either one, because I feel like the Vikings have just lived in that. I mean, they, they got a third and 14 the other day, but there hasn't been too many times i can think of where darnold has had to straight drop back read the field deal with the blitz bearing down on him make a play there just hasn't been that many snaps where he's had to do

that no that's what i'm talking about without trying to diminish what he's doing but even sam is saying look i'm not they're not this is what it should look like when it's good and it's easy for them i i think that's the play action thing. I remember that. I remember 15 years ago noticing that I was covering the NFC West then, and I did a piece on how, look, the Cardinals play action was totally effective, even though they rushed for negative two yards today. And so we, you know, that's been kind of a thing, but I get it.

I'm not going to refute that, but would you rather have, uh, be running play action when you're running games working great or not? And then different, there's different types of play action too. Like, are you really, are you in the shotgun and doing the half wave as the guy goes by and no one's really worried about it? Or are you under center and you're briefly turning your back to the defense with a whole array of runs that could be come off of this, right? I would think those types of nuances within it have to make some kind

of a difference in the effectiveness of your play action. So I get that stat. I was on that stat, like I said, many years ago. But I think being an effective running team still would would be a good thing right right yeah no i think it well and another example when the vikings couldn't run in 2016 sam bradford still had good play action numbers because it does have to draw the attention of the defense. I just think that there's probably moving parts that are hard to capture there. And the thing I noticed is just the eyeballs of the linebackers,

the eyeballs of the defenders. They have to spend an extra beat looking back like, is Aaron Jones going to get that ball or not? They have to lean forward and create a little bit more space for it. It's like EPA is wonderful. I love it. I use it all the time. I understand it. But it doesn't fully value. I love it. I use it all the time. I understand it,

but it doesn't fully value the running game because every play should be a pass then. Right. There's no situation where EPA wouldn't say you should pass the ball. Does anybody think that Sam Darnold should pass the ball in every play? No. Right. I've always said, it's like, it's like we are most efficient when we are awake. Do you want to be awake 24 hours and never go to sleep? You have to exhale when you breathe too. You have to sleep. You have to hand it off.

And all of these things, the stats don't always just account for it. So that's just something I take into account when I see any of that stuff with the running game in particular. The running game is a little bit of a mystery in terms of how to value it, what its true value is. It's different than just what the stats say to me, more so than passing. I think in part because we don't have the other world that we we've never the coaches know that you can't pass every single play. So we never see that stat of what it would look like. And I think, I suspect what it would look like is shooting three pointers is great, but you can't shoot a three pointer every play. You have to have an underneath the basket presence, even if that's not the same as the efficiency of shooting a three, this kind of actually even applies for like Kirk cousins. His quarterback rating was something like 107 when he was playing for Kevin

Stefanski run the ball play action. His rating went down with KOC, but they threw the ball 250 more times. And you saw that as volume increased efficiency decreased. And I think that is the same thing for anybody who's going to lean heavy on the pass game so i guess my question is when darnold does have to throw more than 28 passes does he retain the same level of efficiency well probably not because that will happen in the context of we hey the defense probably knows we

have to throw a little bit more right that there's a tipping point in a game in the second half where it becomes 90% pass, you know, if you're down by enough points. And then it just gets hard for everybody. You know, there were certain times when Tom Brady would throw 60 times in a game by design or whatever, probably a lot of short ones, get it out. But that's a high-stress situation for everybody. And the offensive lineman, the quarterback, it's just hard to keep that type of an efficiency over the course of a

game and not have the diminishing returns. Right. And Brady could handle the mental load of 60 plays dropping straight back. I don't know that you want too many guys handling that either. I want to ask you a question that I have personally avoided a lot when fans have asked me about the future with the Vikings at their quarterback situation. They were incredibly impressed with JJ McCarthy. Kevin O'Connell declared McCarthy the future franchise quarterback when he got injured. Sam Darnold's playing pretty good. It's a complicated world out there because

you talk about paying people and that diminishes your roster but if the guy goes a certain distance in the playoffs and puts up certain statistics how can you go to a young quarterback it's a very complicated situation we may have on our hands mike it really is it's really a fun one uh i agree there's a point in the playoffs where there's a point of no return isn't there like some people might right right now in week five you might say well he's got to win the super bowl but okay that's a really high bar what if he uh you know just what if he finishes the season with uh 40 touchdown passes and eight interceptions i'm not saying he is, but let's just say he had that type of a year with, you know, 4,000 yards and,

uh, they lose in the NFC championship game. Everybody's rolling. We got a great thing going. There's a great feel with Kevin. I mean, that's just the way it goes, right?

You can't start over. Would you start over? Cause you got, you've got jj still right it's not like you'd have to lose jj you wouldn't have to trade him you wouldn't have to like him any less but if it was really on fire with darnold more than just darnold gets a nice payday somewhere else as a bridge starter, right? Probably a good problem to have. So a lot of football to be played,

but I don't think you'd just go to JJ just because you have to evaluate what it feels like. There is a little bit of history in Minnesota on this, where 1999 Jeff George, a former first round bust comes off the bench goes, I think seven and two, seven and three goes to the playoffs beats the Dallas Cowboys in a playoff game has a shootout with the greatest show on turf Rams loses that game. And they decide they're going to go to Dante Culpepper, which maybe at the time I wasn't there for that in the media, but maybe at the time there was

like, what are they doing? Why are they going going to call pepper george just played so well and then call pepper comes in with moss with carter with everything set up and plays phenomenally well so i think the bar does have to be really high because if you get to the first round of the playoffs you lose you're a 10 win team okay thanks for the memory sam this was really fun but jj mccarthy is. At the same time, with young quarterbacks struggling, do you want to risk? Because their roster is not young. Their roster is actually all veterans. So do you want to risk having growing pains for JJ McCarthy

with a bunch of veterans? I think this situation will resolve itself and you'll know. The Jeff George one, Jeff George was a certain type of guy that wasn't a great leader and wasn't necessarily the best teammate and it was a stretch of games. I think this would be a different thing where J.J. hasn't even played and Darnold would start the whole season. So you'd have a whole year and you

don't have to make it, you don't have to move off of JJ. Now it depends what Darnold wants. And, you know, Darnold, it'd be interesting decision for him too, right? Because, uh, would he be willing to stay for, uh, not breaking the bank type of a deal because he's got such a great thing going, or is he going to go to the big what would be the what would be the market for him outside of this right so a lot of moving parts man a lot of moving parts yeah it's so interesting uh just one more thing for you uh we kind of play a game each week on the show where we talk about how many teams we think are better than the vikings now in week one we thought it was probably quite a few in week two. We still thought it was quite a few week three,

that number reduced. And some folks have that number at nobody at the moment. Where should that number be? How many football teams are better than the Minnesota Vikings? So let's go neutral field, neutral field. They're the teams you're playing. I would say if they were playing Kansas city or Buffalo or Baltimore right

now in the AFC, they might be an underdog. And in the NFC, I don't know that they would be against anybody. Is there anyone in the NFC that you would say would be favored over Minnesota neutral field today? The only thing would be if san francisco had everybody san francisco would be yeah san francisco might be still you know would people think that hey they beat him but but san francisco would win two out of three i mean that's possible but put it this way if you could trade besides

let's just say going to be with kansas city in my home but like if you could be a different team right now who would you be that's if you i mean if you could transfer your loyalty if you were if you could transfer your loyalties seamlessly that doesn't work here you know a viking fan isn't going to do that but like who who has it let's just quote jim harbaugh who has it better than us would you rather be washington right now if you could be any team league right now would it be washington would be minnesota what's kind of the i mean maybe if jayden daniels is going to be that good all the time we don't really know i would probably i would probably say washington because of that

because there's a future there that you're going to have that opens up a five-year window to potentially win a championship with a guy who's kind of a freak so that's pretty good but if we're talking about in the context of just this year though just right now this 2024 season i mean at this moment it's hard to figure out in the nfc who you would rather be. Maybe Detroit. Detroit's probably the team. Maybe Detroit, but yeah, maybe Detroit. I think with the Vikings, there's always that feeling of you're not sure where the ceiling or the floor is. It's kind of exciting. With Detroit, I think we kind of know what they are,

which is good. Or it's exhausting. That could also be maybe for Vikings fans. They just thought, is it exciting? Or is that their entire history as a team? I don't know. It sure is fun.

It's been fun. By the way, I found, uh, I found a story from the 2000 star Tribune about, uh, yeah, uh,

make no mistake. The Vikings wanted Jeff George and Jeff George wanted to return. Yet the Viking ship carried a budget limited by the salary cap, a young quarterback. This is Kevin Seifert, by the way, pegged for duty no later than 2001, and a pair of fallbacks named Rick Meyer and Bubby Brister. How could they not move on when you had Meyer and Bubby Brister there? So that was it. They said they wanted him back, but I would say wink, wink at a certain price. They didn't have to have him. So a little history. Well,

you know, Kevin Seifert does get hoodwinked sometimes by that coach speak uh hey laugh my buddy yeah i know well he's my locker mate if you will in the tco performance center so say whatever you want about him you know say whatever you want about him did you know that he's a huge weird ale fan did you know that weird ale yeah weird al singer weird ale no yeah no i do that i knew that because my youngest son is his same sort of sense of humor so i went with my youngest son years ago to a weird al concert in seattle and sent uh you know sent to seaford yes i didn't know seaford's definitely weird how can you not like weird al do you like weirdo i do actually the reason this came up uh it's in conversation somehow and now kevin and i next year are going to a weird ale concert so that's that's so great kevin's kevin's great man

is it we worked together for years at espn and i was buddies with him even before he went to espn when he was at the star tribune so that that's great. Yeah. Weird. Oh, weird. Oh, you can't, you can't go wrong. The humor is great. Yeah.

I mean, I think he's a fascinating guy. I guess he graduated high school when he was like 14, not Kevin, but I weird. Yeah. Yeah. And so he's like actually a genius,

but he decided to do this. I don't know. He's got to be a genius to be able to do this. I mean, come on. He's been doing it for like 40 years and he's, he's old, but he's not as old as you would think for how long he's been around. Isn't he like early sixties or something?

He is. Yeah. Kevin's going to love that. We talked about this on the show. Anyway. So for non Weird Ale fans, I'm sorry for the end of the show, but Kevin has been a great mentor to me having him here in Minnesota. So it's awesome.

But I really, really appreciate the conversation. I feel like we could talk quarterbacks and history for a really long time, Mike, but your quarterback tiers are awesome. Your weekly column is an absolute must read at the athletic Mike Sando. An honor to have you on, man. Thanks for coming. Hey, thanks. Let's do it again.