Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Dan Bailey decision and Stefon Diggs speaks ft. ESPN's Courtney Cronin

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

Matthew Coller and ESPN's Courtney Cronin talk about what Mike Zimmer said regarding the performance of Dan Bailey on Sunday and whether the Vikings' kicker would be cut. They also talk about Stefon Diggs speaking to ESPN about his exit from Minnesota and how that's connected to Justin Jefferson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, Courtney Cronin from ESPN, and Dan Bailey still as we record this is the kicker of the Minnesota Vikings. So that might change by the time all of you listen to this, but I will just ask you anyway, Courtney, to start the podcast. What are you thinking? You think they cut Dan Bailey or do you think he stays? Given everything that Mike Zimmer said in his Monday day after

press conference um I really do not think that they're going to cut Dan Bailey I think that a they don't have a lot of options be the timing of it like if they're going to do something it has to be done by Tuesday at least to bring somebody in I mean you could always bring somebody in have them go through the protocol and I guess cut Bailey on Friday or Saturday, and then have this guy who probably will not have practiced all week with you because he's still going through the COVID protocols. Mike Zimmer mentioned that six-day window, so that makes complete sense. Like, you have to get somebody in quickly.

So I think all of that said, with the two things I mentioned, and then the history Mike Zimmer has talked about with how good Dan Bailey has been in the past maybe this is just a rough spot um and considering all of those factors I truly don't think that they are going to cut him at this point I think he gets one more shot because truly this team has one more shot like they are a week-to-week team at this point yes there's scenarios where they have to go two and one down the stretch and arizona has to go one of two in order for the vikings to get the number seven seed but you can't look at it that way it is a must-win game against chicago so if that doesn't happen as i turn my email off right

now um if that doesn't happen the season's Like, it just is because it's an uphill battle against the Saints. Who knows what Arizona – your fate's not in your own hands. And I honestly think that, you know, do you really want to turn things over right now to Tristan Viscaino, who's on your practice squad, who the only game action he's had making kicks was in four preseason games for the Bengals in 2018. The guy is essentially not experienced. Like Dan Bailey, you've got to figure it out, and you've got to figure it out quickly.

But if you're asking me right now, I think they're rolling with him going into Week 15 against Chicago. If I were in their spot, I would decide right now, and I think this is going to drive people crazy, but listen to the whole explanation. I would tell Dan Bailey, I don't care if you miss every kick the rest of the way, you are our kicker for the rest of this season. And you've got the rest of the season to get it together. And then if you do get it together,

you're our kicker going forward. Because as you mentioned, his history isn't just okay. It's not just a guy it's one of the best kickers ever and we're talking about two games that have gone horribly horribly wrong for what reason I don't know and for what reason I'm not sure Dan Bailey knows based on talking to him on Friday where he couldn't really give us and he's a very analytical guy couldn't really give us a reason why things went wrong at us bank stadium

but if you're self-aware about where you stand in this world that your playoff chances from you know nbc had the graphic 17 i'm sure espn's are in that same ball 22 right now yeah right you're you are not in a great spot in terms of the playoffs your chances are far against you uh you have to still go to New Orleans and try to beat them. Even Detroit is not rolling over against teams because they're trying to prove it was all Matt Patricia's fault. You're probably not going to make the playoffs. Your kicker is under contract, and he has also been really, really good for you. So overreacting to two very, very bad games that i know you have one job make the kicks my

friend let's go but if you're overreacting to two games you risk some dead cap money in the future if you have to cut dan bailey uh you sign him to a decent size contract in the offseason and you also risk overreacting and then getting screwed with worse kicking there are teams that just bring in one kicker cut them bring in the next kick where you have stability at that position that's valuable to you and I think that it's important to have a bigger sample size on this to figure out whether he just lost it all of a sudden or if it was just a blip on the radar absolutely and I understand this is a performance-based industry your industry industry, my industry, this is performance-based too. And I know it was committed psychological warfare on a rookie kicker instead of talking to him face-to-face instead I say it out in the media, which I'll come full circle here, but like he said that, let me

just give you a little history lesson here. That Friday night game, week three of the preseason 2018 when they play Seattle and Daniel Carlson misses a couple field goals. Mike Zimmer afterwards, you know, they went for two point conversion, I believe at the start of the second quarter, I think it was actually Laquan Treadwell who caught the pass. Nonetheless, he was asked about that post game and he said kind of like, well, you're just trying to practice it there. Like what's going on? Cause it's a preseason. That's a little weird. He's like,

if he's going to miss them, meaning field goals, I'm going to go for two. That is the message Mike Zimmer said in the media in 2018. It was a Friday night. I remember it exactly. I remember going into the locker room, going to talk to Daniel Carlson when we told him this because he had absolutely no clue what Mike Zimmer had just said. And Daniel Carlson was red in the face mortified at this moment and i remember talking

with the source that night who works for the team being like yep this kid is done and what happened not that much longer he had an absolute meltdown at green bay week two of the regular season it's a tie is the stupidest game of all time i think you and I have gone through it on one of our many podcasts talking about the stupidest games of all time. Yes. Yes. And then he gets cut. It was a knee-jerk reaction. I would like to think, given the way that Mike Zimmer has talked about Dan Bailey, has lauded Dan Bailey, I love the kid. He's a good kid. He's a pro. Like he's, you know, just talked about his past success, the body of work. You like to think that the answers that he said about Dan Bailey show some growth in Mike Zimmer as a coach in how to handle kickers because he did not handle that well. Obviously didn't handle Blair Walsh well with the chip shot.

Yeah, I know two days later he walked that back, but you still said it in the heat of the moment. There were some subtle shots at Kai Forbath. But I think with Mike Zimmer, what he said today in that talking about this whole thing that I prefer to address the team about these things as opposed to throwing it out there in the media, he learned his lesson from 2018. He certainly did because you cannot handle kickers. They are the most fragile position. It's like a closer in baseball.

Like you, those are the one guys you just cannot mess with mentally. You've got to be, they have to be mentally tough, but you can't throw them off. It's just one thing that we know about, you know, with that position.

And I think he's learned his lesson with that. But I say all of that to say, like, how do you know that Dan Bailey is not broken I think you've got to give him another chance because two games does not define an entire career it really doesn't it sucks because a lot of the times it comes down to wins and losses uh you don't talk about the kicker typically unless they like boot a 60 yarder game winner game winning field goal in overtime to win you the game or you they miss four kicks like there's very little gray area to why we ever talk about special teams in a large

scale uh manner and it's because of good or bad and that's how we judge kickers in this league but i don't think it's completely fair like i'll be the first to say it i mean yeah he lost on the game and he completely broke the you know the team's confidence yesterday because of going for it however many times on fourth and long. That doesn't do him any favors being like, yeah, they don't trust me. They're going to go for it on fourth and 13 here and Kirk's going to get sacked. But if it's beyond that, if it's three straight games of misses and everything else, and if it comes down to the fact that you left 10 points out there because you're a kicker, if that happens again, then there's no excuse. But I think the timing of it, I think the COVID protocols and getting guys on the roster, it's not just as simple as it was before to hold workouts,

but they're probably going to roll with what they have, and rightfully so. Dan Bailey has been in this league a long time. He entered yesterday as the sixth most accurate kicker in NFL history. Something like that tells me he deserves another shot. And I even look at someone like Steven Gostkowski, who really struggled in the first half of the season for Houston, and he's only missed one field goal in the second half of the season and made every single one of his extra points.

I think a lot of times these guys are the great kickers ever because they can resolve their issues and they can get over their bad games and their problems and get back up on the horse. And we've seen a lot of kickers who are on that greatest of all time list bounce back after they get cut. I believe there was a game where Mason Crosby missed three or four field goals in one game, right? And they didn't cut him. They stuck with Mason Crosby and he continued to be good. I think even in that Daniel Carlson game, Mason Crosby missed a couple. So even the best are going to have a down year. They're

going to miss field goals. Dan Bailey in his first year here missed a couple, and we were wondering, all right, 75%, that's not very good. Is he going to bounce back? And then he was fantastic. And then all the way through this recent stretch, it might just be kind of the randomness that even the greatest three-point shooters on earth can miss threes sometimes. Even the greatest golfers can miss putts.

I mean, it's just kind of how sports work and if you cut really good players every time that happens then you're often chasing your tail and you're not wisely using your money now that could go completely wrong if they stick with it with Dan Bailey and they could lose the next three games all on missed field goals I don't know and neither does Mike Zimmer and that was one of his points to us is like, you just make a decision and go with it. But I think the wiser, the more shrewd decision is let's find out if this guy's your kicker next year too, because he is under contract to be your kicker. Right.

For a long time. So knee jerking to two games is probably not the best idea. The fact that he reiterated what he said about hey if I cut every player who had two bad games we wouldn't have anyone well that kind of points to me that they'll keep them but I guess we'll probably find out by maybe I would assume by Wednesday morning because think about it like Tuesday is six days away from the game um against Chicago and if you like i could see a situation where they sign somebody to the practice squad um and use that person throughout the week find out you know get them in find out like what you know i don't you got to even look to see who's out there right now i mean i'm

probably pretty slim pickings at the moment right um but making a here's the thing i wrote this in my analysis yesterday and i followed up with it again today. Making a change like this all of a sudden doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a complete fix. Let's not forget some of the events that may or may not have led up to this. Austin Cutting was cut a few weeks ago. Why would they just randomly cut a long snapper who was in his second year with this team still on his rookie contract? If there wasn't an issue with the snapping delivery, right? I mean, yes, the guy was on the COVID list and all that. And I know he, you know,

I think he missed a game or, you know, whatever. Actually, no, he didn't miss the game. He just went through the COVID protocol and couldn't practice with the team that week. What have you? But they clearly cut him because they wanted to upgrade that position. And as I asked Marwan Malouf, the special teams coordinator, last week, I mentioned, like, was veteran experience, you know, important to you? Because Andrew DiPaolo is, like, 32 or 33 years old.

He's been doing this a long time. They have one of the oldest kicking operations, a.k.a. the most experienced kicking operations in the NFL. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it's all smooth. It's a rhythm you have to get into, like snapping, holding, kicking. It's all like, you know, it's just this locomotion that maybe it's not completely as well-oiled as it needs to be to be effective in games. Like, it's not – I would doubt, you know, I would doubt it's all on Bailey.

And the one thing that Malouf said last week I thought was interesting, I went back and I tried to watch it, but it was kind of hard for me to tell because I'm just – I don't know what I'm – I don't really truly know what I'm evaluating, unless you can truly see, like, laces out or things like that. But he said that it looked like he was kicking too high on the ball when some of the misses that he had against Jacksonville. I'm curious what he'll see this time because it is such a temperamental position. He wasn't kicking in elements.

It was warm weather down there in Florida. I don't know what it is, but I truly think that you cannot make a knee-jerk reaction here because Mike Zimmer learned from making a knee-jerk reaction after the Daniel Carlson situation and how that played out certainly it played out well because it brought them Dan Bailey but you can even go back to my goodness you can go back to what happened with you know cutting Kai Forbath because he missed five extra points in 2017 and trading up, trading up in the fifth round to draft a kicker and going through that whole charade of training camp for a guy that made,

we talk about overbought here until it blew in the freaking face, but let's not forget about Kai Forbath and the kicks that he made from 50 yards out multiple times in the Miracle game to keep that team alive. And then they cut him? Somebody brought up to me today on Twitter, because I wrote an article, just kind of about how this has been their Achilles heel. And how fitting that the kicking game is what's plaguing them right now. And this has always been the thing. You know, if they don't cut for bath, if they have playoff team in 2018, potentially because you probably aren't tying that game against green Bay.

You don't have that situation going into week 17, where you have to have a muscling game against the bears. I mean, I can play revisionist history all day, but that's the one position I think that you really can't knee-jerk reaction to, especially with this much on the line going into your final three weeks. Got a great holiday deal to tell you about from SodaStick. If you use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER15, you can get 15% off your purchases during this holiday season when you buy two items or more.

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no matter who you go up against, unless somehow you magically face one of those NFC East teams. But I'm not convinced Washington wouldn't beat them, because Washington has one of the best defensive lines in the NFL, and they scored two defensive touchdowns yesterday, and I think they would do that against the Vikings. And this kicker thing is always fascinating, and I enjoy talking about, you know, do you cut the kicker? What's wrong with them? Is it Zimmer's fault? Is it the special teams coordinator's fault?

It's really kind of a fun game we do. But you should be upset more that your team allowed Kirk Cousins to be pressured 24 times and pressured Tampa Bay three or four. I mean, it shows you how big, and this would actually factor in for me on a kicker decision, how big the gap is between what you're able to do in the trenches, especially with the defensive line pressuring, versus what good teams are able to do and how much that hurts your ability to stop anybody from doing anything. I mean, you can do the little math and say, well, you know, they gave him field position

on this and they missed this field goal and that would have changed whatever. Here's the reality. Whatever situation you presented Tom Brady with yesterday past his third drive, he was scoring. I mean, he was moving the ball at absolute will. And I know the referees helped a couple of times, but are you going to tell me that if you make those field goals, Tom Brady doesn't play a little bit differently and just scores touchdowns on you? He probably does. If you don't pressure

him at all, he scores touchdowns and you didn't. And that's kind of bottom line for this team is not strong enough to make any noise in a playoff because that's their main problem and will continue to be their main problem. And I look at yesterday, the interior offensive line, PFF grades, the pressures allowed. Ezra Cleveland got crushed yesterday as a guard. And here we are again with Dakota Dozier is the worst graded guard in the league. I mean, there needs to be some sort of wooden spoon award for having the worst left guard in the league three years in a row.

I mean, that's almost impossible. That's like how the Vikings set some sort of weird history each week with field goals or with allowing back-to-back touchdowns to Carolina. You deserve some sort of weird award for always having the worst left guard in the entire NFL. I mean, so there are a lot bigger issues that cause them to lose that game and to cause them to take themselves largely out of the playoff race yesterday that go well beyond your kicker. So you might as well just stick the kicker in there and

see if he can do it. Yeah. And I think that there's something too, to be said about what happens when, you know, I think it kind of goes hand in hand. Like when your kicking game is this bad, it's forcing you into some unconventional and potentially disastrous situations. But when Kirk Cousins is sacked six times because the protection is so bad, I don't know if there's anything that you could have done because it's just like it's such a domino effect. He sacks this many times, but, you know know when you're either moved out of field goal range or you're putting field goal range and then Dan Bailey can't make the kick and then when you're mounting a comeback you take up eight

minutes and 33 seconds on a drive when you're down 23 to six it's like a that's the amount of time you should have been taking when you're up 23 to six you know a lot a lot of it and it's like blaming Gary for that am I blaming Kirk i don't know who i'm blaming i don't understand that like i understand that they felt they had to get the run going um you know but that kept the clock going so it's like do i blame the clock management person i don't know like i think a lot of it goes hand in hand but in that same breath it's like it's not all the kicking unit because the offense yeah the offense was dominating that first drive they look so good and the fact that dalvin cook basically put a giant middle finger up to the bucks run

defense and so did gary but gary put two up and he said outside zone till i die um that's how they got stuff going and that's how dalvin cook of course dalvin cook's the first one to put up 60 on this run defense. Like, are we surprised? No, because he's one of the best running backs, if not the best in the NFL. But they couldn't sustain that because not everything is working in conjunction with one another. Like, the kicking game kills you. And then you can't, you know, then a couple drives later, like, you know, Cousins is getting sacked. You're moving it out of field goal range. You're in field goal range.

He doesn't make it your defense. You know, Anthony Harris bites on an underneath intermediate route and you're leaving Chris Jones running down the field, chasing Scotty Miller. There's a lot that went into this. Why did that happen on defense? Because you're not pressuring Brady up front. And what did Andre Patterson say last week? You can't leave the guy sitting back there there chilling in a rocking chair because he's going to do things like that and oh like here's a novel concept why were you not anticipating play

action just because they didn't run a lot of it the last few weeks because they couldn't get anything going with Ronald Jones like know your weaknesses know that you have a not so good run defense and that they're probably going to try to run on you and thus that's going to lead to more play action opportunities like I just you know that's just what I was thinking when I was like watching back the game and trying to figure out like how this all happened because I don't want to put all the blame on Dan Bailey does Dan Bailey deserve most of it for yesterday yes but in recent weeks it's not completely all his fault in spite of what happened against Jacksonville and things like that. It's all like it's a body of work of this entire team that they find creative ways to lose

more than they find creative ways to win. That's the part that should be unnerving for anybody. And speaking of that, at least tangentially related to that, the Vikings right now are 20th in scoring percentage and the percentage of drives in which they score. And I think if you were to point to something that would maybe explain that, one is that they take a lot of sacks on these third and long situations. And it's funny whenever I see numbers pop up. Well, these are Kirk's stats on third down and long and in the fourth quarter and so forth. And they never include how many times he got sacked.

And that was a huge issue against Carolina, a huge issue against Jacksonville. And, of course, no surprise, a huge issue against Tampa Bay, who's better than those two teams. And it has been for a very long time, in part because they built their offensive line to run block. And this sort of ties into, I think, the theme coming out of this game was, hey, congratulations, you ran over Tampa Bay's run defense. Did you get a trophy for that? You scored six points. And even if Dan Bailey makes his kick there, nine points. I mean, you should have 21, and you have nine.

And that's not going to win you a whole heck of a lot of games against good teams with the way that people can move the ball against you and just the way people can move the ball in 2020 in general I mean offensive statistics are way up through the roof they always are but this year they've been even more so I would not expect that to change anytime soon and so when your philosophy is let's find ways to keep the other team in the game. And then when we are down by three scores and we do have an opportunity to come back in the game, it's three check downs to C.J. Hamm. And I just I and hey, look, well, they took away our top receivers. That's what we heard after the game. They took away Thielen and Jefferson. How? Because and it's going to tie in. I watched a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Buffalo Bills, in which I guarantee you the Pittsburgh Steelers knew that Stephon Diggs was going to be a target in that game,

and he was not taken away. Josh Allen had no problem finding Stephon Diggs repeatedly as he dominated, and this moves us into that conversation because Stephon Diggs pretty much said exactly what we had been reporting for a very long time about the issue. He said to ESPN, they would only allow me to do so much. In my eyes, it wasn't going to be in the best interest of my career. And what he's referring to is the run first philosophy that the Vikings had when he was there and the Buffalo Bills have proved him right a thousand times over by saying you're our guy you're our centerpiece we're going to throw it to you every time and they just beat

the best defense in the NFL by throwing it to Stefan Diggs over and over and over there is no better way for Stefan Diggs to say I was was right, MFers, than what he did against the Pittsburgh Steelers. I was right. If I'm the centerpiece of your offense, you win more and your offense is better. Josh Allen goes from being not good at all in a 60%, 55% completion percentage to an MVP candidate of a team that's 10-3 because of who? Because of Stephon Diggs and because of their offensive coordinator who decided to throw it to Stephon Diggs. And so I think when you're watching that game yesterday and you're congratulating, I mean, the broadcast was losing their crap

about like, oh, look at Delvin Cook run for six yards. Look at him run for seven yards. Look, they're taking all this time off the clock in the first quarter. Congratulations. That doesn't really win you that many games all you do is keep the other team in the game so I think there's a I think there's a huge discussion here of like are you going to change this philosophy for Justin Jefferson at some point to make sure that he doesn't end up with four catches in the biggest game of your season? You know, it's just like, like not with Mike Zimmer as your head coach and not with Kirk Cousins as the

quarterback. Maybe if they got a different quarterback that they could truly, that Mike Zimmer truly was all in with and could trust. But I don't think Mike Zimmer's ever going to be the guy, even if it's somebody that's like, I don't know, not eons better than Kirk Cousins because there's just not that many. And you're just trying to think realistically with how much time he has left here with the extension and what they could possibly do and the finances and all that stuff.

Like, you're bought into Kirk Cousins. Like, let's not try to be like fairyland. Like, if they got Tom Brady circa 2007, if they somehow had him as the quarterback, of course they'd probably change things up. But like this is what it is. And this is going this is an offense that's going to feature Dalvin Cook. This is what they want. And no matter what, that's the philosophy. So if you're Justin Jefferson, you're happy with the games that you get double digit targets. You're frustrated with how you came away yesterday. I think that's just kind of the the bottom line here is like you kind of got to grin and bear it because you know what this team's philosophy is.

Stefan Diggs is to the point that we were making on him because I wanted to go over this with you. I remember watching that piece on Countdown yesterday morning when he's doing the fashion shoot and he's like sitting down talking to the writer um you know it wasn't that he hates Kirk Cousins no although there are moments where we're out there at training camp and he's screaming what the f at the top of his lungs multiple times he's Kirk checks down like on third down in a training camp situation, digs, you know, ended the career of what was it?

Nate matters. Like whoever it was, he literally ended his life on the field. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. Horrendously. That was a murder. It was a homicide out there. But like,

I mean, he got frustrated and it's just like, I don't think he truly disliked Kirk Cousins I really don't um there you know he talked about it that he still maintains really good relationship with a lot of the guys on the team Phelan talked about it today that they talk all the time you know I believe all of that um but I also believe that Diggs saw Kirk and the limitations of Kirk as a hindrance to what he wanted to be. And that you, you know, this is a dog eat dog league. And this is a, I have to take my own career into my own hands.

When I have the leverage to do that, like, let's be real here. Not a lot of players have that type of leverage because it's, it's there's a bajillion players in the NFL and no contracts are fully guaranteed unless you're Kirk cousins or a few other people. If you have that leverage, you got a window, you better go for it. And he did. And he took it into his own hands. Did he come across kind of like a brat sometimes with a time for new beginnings,

three hours after your quarterback signs a contract? Yes. But watching that piece on Countdown sounds like his representation was telling him, hey, that morning is what dig said like we're we got some movement it might be time should he have tweeted that probably not because but i don't know you men i'm gonna go ahead and throw out a massive generalization you guys mature a little bit differently than us women so i don't know if i would go on a rant on twitter if i felt like i was getting my way finally or something else i would have held that in till it was you

know finalized but that's just me. I wouldn't want to stir the pot with sub-tweets and everything else because I'm not 18 anymore. Maybe I would have done that if I had Twitter when I was in high school. But nonetheless, I don't fault Stephon Diggs for where he's at right now. I'm thrilled that he's performing at that level. I mean, he was a baller yesterday night on the national stage to show you, to show us, to show everybody, show you people, whatever.

Like, it wasn't about Kirk. It was the fact that I was in an offense with an offensive coordinator who wanted to throw the ball a lot in 2018. Stephon Diggs didn't fire John DiFilippo. Mike Zimmer did. Mike Zimmer wanted to go a different direction. You know who was the happiest person those first 14 weeks of the season, even though they were losing games? Stephon Diggs and Adam Thielen, because they were getting the ball a hell of a lot. And they had to

because Dalvin Cook was hurt all the time. So, you know, once they changed the philosophy week 15 going forward, things changed and everything kind of snowballed from there but that's the philosophy that they're going to stick with I have no belief no reason to believe that they're going to change anything from here on out as long as Mike Zimmer is the head coach here what does that mean for Justin Jefferson I don't know are we going to start are we going to eventually see the same sort of issues that Justin Jefferson's not happy like I don I don't know. It's so blatantly obvious to me, you have a superstar under your belt. Like you don't want to screw that up. Um, the way that you maybe did with Stefan Diggs and let's let somebody like a jet, you know, a playmaking talent that a game changing talent out the door, like let him walk out the door like that.

So one of the biggest issues here is, and you make a lot of exactly right points that stefan digs in the way that he acted at times at times and that doesn't mean ever on sundays or in practice in practice i mean there was some sunday chicago week four slamming your helmet being but tom brady like matt ryan did that yesterday all play and i want and i I wonder why Tom Brady gets away with it. That's a conversation for another day. All players who are competitors throw helmets and get upset. I mean, there's the famous gif of Aaron Rodgers throwing his iPad, you know, whatever. Bill Belichick once chased down a referee and grabbed him.

Mike Zimmer flips out on the side. It's a very emotional game. So I don't look at that and say, oh, he's having a meltdown. Watch the sport for two seconds, and you'll see all sorts of people on a weekly basis be upset on the sideline. Tyron Matthew in the Super Bowl had a, quote, meltdown on the sideline, won the Super Bowl, right?

And after the game, the players were like, yeah, that was great. I mean, he was just showing his fire. That's what happens on Sundays. And I remember our friend Alex Boone, who we're rooting for to get back in the NFL. Yes, we are. He's going to try out with the Ravens this week. Oh, yeah. I remember Alex putting it perfectly well.

He said he was a great guy to be out there with because he was so fiery. He was pushing everybody. And remember, the NFL Films thing caught him saying to Kirk Cousins, trust your reads, trust me. I mean, like that stuff is way overblown and ridiculous. Now, where it is true is that he skipped practice and that was wrong. The subtweeting nonsense was wrong. Like that's just that's just true.

And truth to all rumors was wrong, too, because it was so ambiguous. It's just silly. It's just but that's that's someone who's 25 years old, I guess. Those are, you know, you people. I'm just, I just love generalizing men sometimes. And I know that everybody in this podcast is going to hate me, but honestly, I'm joking. I just want to make you guys know I'm joking, but he handled that like, like, you know, I guess anybody would, who's making millions of dollars and trying to, he was scared probably a little bit for his career being like, shoot, I don't want to get stuck in this. I know I'm better than this.

And remember how bad that was. Thielen said stuff after that game, too. And so it's funny because Diggs gets the label here, but Kyle Rudolph and Mike Zimmer had to have a discussion about Rudolph's role in 2018. Adam Thielen and Kirk Cousins got into it on the sideline. When there's pressure to win, these things happen. So I just wanted to make one more point about the Jefferson thing, because it's all said and done. Diggs is great. Diggs was right. He's proving it. He's on a better team. And I guess you could debate all day long who won the trade, but his team's a lot better than your team at the moment. So that's kind of what it is. But if you want to learn from your

mistake in letting an elite wide receiver walk away and underutilizing an elite wide receiver, let's not forget about that. The statistics he has right now, he could have had here if you used him as the centerpiece. There's part one. Part two is this. Diggs said, once you don't have trust with the person, it's hard to do business. I don't think he's referring to rick spielman i think he's referring to mike zimmer not having a communication line open between the two

about his issues why would that be it's one of your best freaking players you have to keep it the communication lines open there and come to an understanding or you end up having to trade the guy away learn from that i was looking at justin je Justin Jefferson on the sideline at the end of the game. They showed him on TV, sitting back, kind of his arms kicked out, just like, what the hell, man? Four catches? Really? In this game?

Really? I'm not putting words in his mouth. I'm saying that if I was him, that's how I would feel. Don't make that mistake again. Well, you know, you listen to Kirk Cousins, and you can listen to what he said about, you know, the way that they were covering Diggs. Excuse me, Diggs.

The way they were covering Jefferson and Thielen. I'm actually trying to pull up the stats here and just how that whole thing went. Like, you anticipate that, but you have two receivers. Like, there's not, like, they're not playing dime. There not like six defensive backs three and three covering your top guys it's just not how it works um so there were not trying to like undermine this but I think there were probably more opportunities to get Jefferson and Thielen involved and it's not just deep shots off play action like whatever happened to the thought of the intermediate game?

Like wasn't that something that they were talking about, like how important that was like the last few weeks? Yeah, here's a stat I was going to bring it to you. So Carlton Davis says, Carlton Davis limited Vikings receivers to five yards on one of four passing is the nearest defender Sunday per NFL next gen stats. So Jefferson was one of three for five yards. In the last Buccaneers game, I guess that would have been against the Chiefs, Davis was the nearest defender on 11 receptions for 222 yards and three touchdowns. So

Patrick Mahomes could get his guys open. And I know you have Cheetah or whatever you want to call him, and he's fast. Justin Jefferson's fast too. Is it just that you're not giving him a shot? Is that you're, you know, he's your number one guy. They put the number one corner on the number one guy. It's very obvious how teams are going to treat Justin Jefferson going forward because they think he's a top talent and he is, and he can handle that. So I, I really, you know, I really do think that they're in a situation right now that it's not impossible to think that Justin Jefferson can be Stephon Diggs it's just the fact that this offense is not built for that to happen you've got to force your way into making that happen which I don't know if they're gonna do

like Dalvin ran the ball really well yesterday all things considered like you know just you know forcing things to the edge doing exactly what the game plan called for but then you know, just, you know, forcing things to the edge, doing exactly what the game plan called for. But then, you know, and as great as it was that Tyler Conklin and Irv Smith had a terrific day, A, that was too little too late. By the time they scored in the third quarter, it was kind of like they were already running out of time and had their back against the wall there. But, like, you didn't get Thielen and Jefferson involved nearly as often as you should have.

And, you know, what does that stem from? Is it, you should, you run more 11 personnel. So there's another guy out there. I mean, what are you going to do here? Like, I, I know that they were so concerned, especially with the run game and, you know, not having Kyle Rudolph and they were using, you know, a six lineman to block and all this stuff. And that's what they rely on their tight ends for so much. Like, how can you, you know, how, how can you find ways to scheme Jefferson into a better spot?

Like, and maybe it's the fact that there were more contested catches that Kirk Cousins didn't want to make. I don't know. Like, I think when you watch the All-22, we're going to find out were guys actually not open or was it just that you didn't trust them to make the catches of where the ball was going to be placed, you know? 2020 has already reshaped how we work, and it's almost over.

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They're going to shut down Delvin Cook. Like, that defensive line for San Francisco is a Super Bowl defensive line. They're not letting you just hand off and run for six yards carry. Okay, that's over with. But yet, Stephon Diggs, and I remember seeing him. line they're not letting you just hand off and run for six yards carry okay that's over with but yet stefan diggs and i remember seeing him i think he was the last person walking off the field in that game kind of like taking it in because he knew that was it for him as a viking um but imagine him he catches like a 50 yard touchdown or something and then never gets targeted again

the whole rest of the game in the playoffs i I mean, this is a persistent issue that goes beyond Stefan Diggs. It goes to how are you going to find ways in big games against good defenses to get your best players the ball? Because I just don't buy the, well, you know, they were doubling him. Okay. I don't buy it either. And to some extent, that was a problem in 2018 too. Like that's just the answer is, oh, sorry, they were doubling him.

So now we're going to throw it to our number three tight end. I mean, that can't be the response every time that you fail to target Justin Jefferson. They tried a sweep with him once and never tried it again. I don't know if he's taken a screen all year long. I mean, I see, I mean, just to keep with the juxtaposition here with him and Diggs, I see a lot of quick screens and stuff to Diggs to get him the ball. And then he runs for eight or nine yards. Jefferson caught the ball like five yards down the field and shredded two tackles and got 17 yesterday.

Is there a reason that's not happening when you're down in a game to get your biggest playmaker the ball? I think the guy is every bit as dangerous after the catch. Maybe not quite quite quite this level but not that far away either from someone like Tyreek Hill like Tyreek Hill is faster but he's more powerful and the fact is that pass that you're talking about didn't come until 13 minutes and 24 seconds were left in the first half like why did it take the first half for him to not get targeted at all right like I understand the second straight week, essentially. Yeah, I know.

And, I mean, there's two targets in the first half last week against Jacksonville. And, you know, Jefferson just didn't, like, you know, he had a, I'm looking at it right now, there was the 17-yard catch, there was a catch on second down that he converted for a first down in the second quarter. He had an incomplete pass, you know pass at the four minutes and 54 seconds. I feel like they targeted him more in the second quarter than they did last week, but it's still not enough. That's what we walk away with of knowing, just like you said, the excuse of how much longer can, hey, they're just being doubled.

We can't do anything about it. To me, that falls on play calling. That's not the quarterback necessarily. That falls on you've got to find a better way, a more creative way to scheme your guy open. If you can't get it done, then it's just your offense is going to look like this the rest of the year until you fix it. So why don't we wrap up with this point.

They have three games left to go two division opponents one game at new orleans how many of those games do you think they win i think they go two and one i don't know if that's going to be enough to make the playoffs though because the cardinals have arizona has philly this week. Philly just beat the Saints. So I don't know. I mean, I don't think they're completely fixed, but I liked what I saw from Jalen Hurts. Me too.

You know, the bits and pieces I was able to glean from that game afterwards. I thought that it's kind of a nice spark, and he's going to be the quarterback again this week, and that game is on the road for the Eagles. So I don't know, but then they've got the 49ers who you just never know. That team is like completely like hot and cold and they've had a billion injuries and you know, they can sneak up on you and win the game at the last second, who knows?

And then they close out the year with the Rams, which I think is going to be a loss. So they need Arizona to not be perfect in this stretch. They need them to win one of two. They need them to go one and two. And if the Vikings aren't going to go 3-0, they need to go two and one. So I think they go two and one. I actually don't know if they'll beat the Saints or not.

I feel like the Chicago i actually don't know if they'll beat the saints or not i feel like the chicago i don't know something irks me about the chicago team that it would be the most poetically stupid thing for mitchell trubisky to come in here and spoil their playoff chances playing great playing great yeah 24 point win over the crappy houston texans hey that's more than the vikings beat the texans byans. That is true. And they nearly lost that game had the defense not gotten a stop on the final series. Nonetheless, like something tells me,

and it's just not going to be the kicking game here. I feel like they are going to be so tight unless they figure this whole thing out the next few weeks that it doesn't put them in a good position. But, you know, it's not over yet like I like to encourage people at least if you want to have faith in it like there is mathematically still a chance but realistically this team has never really hovered more than a 40 chance after you know clawing back depending upon whose projections you were looking at our FBI has them at 22 this morning so that's like barely one in four chance of making it and you got three

games left so I think the Bears are beatable I think Detroit's beatable I don't know about the Saints because I don't know if that was a fluke yesterday or if um Philly completely outplayed them I don't think that's the case but you're going to face another defense like you faced yesterday and that's going to be a problem. I think they go 2-1 and Arizona goes 2-1, and that's that. But like you said, it's 2020. It's the Vikings. You never know. So, Courtney, great stuff as always, and we will do these shenanigans again soon.

And, you know, I mean, we sort of – there was no pie chart or fun game. I guess we should have done pie chart of random free agent kickers on overthecap.com who are still listed as available or something. I don't know. Well, that's a possibility. I mean, by the time we record maybe later in the week, if they have not released Dan Bailey, then that's the storyline. If they have and they're signing kickers, we're figuring out, okay,

what chances does this guy have to actually playing? Yeah, we'll see as we ride the roller coaster, as always. Thanks for your time, Courtney.