Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The safety position, adjusting on offense and what to watch when the pads pop at Vikings practice

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

From TCO Performance Center, Matthew Coller brings you some interesting comments on Lewis Cine and Cam Bynum from defensive coordinator Ed Donatell and what Kirk Cousins had to say about learning the offense. Plus Kevin O'Connell isn't slowing down the Andrew Booth hype train. Matthew also answers fan questions about players who are standing out in Vikings training camp so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider from Inside TCO Performance Center. Matthew Collar here. Day two of training camp. We'll go through some things that we noticed today and that were talked about at the podium. And then we'll get into some rapid fire fan questions for the fans only. And then some that you guys sent before training camp that I didn't get to. And so we've got a lot to discuss here today So let's start out just with the audio from today's press conferences and begin with Ed Donatello the Vikings new defensive coordinator

And he talked about the subject that has most caught my eye To start training camp here, which is cam Bynum has been taking the first team reps, Lewis Seen's second team. There has been a little bit of shuffling as far as getting Lewis Seen on the field for what looked like a dime package or a three safety type of package. And I had a chance to talk with Cam Bynum after practice a little bit today, and he just talked about being happy to get the opportunity and now feeling very comfortable at safety after a year where he had to transition from corner to safety.

And what he said specifically is that his eyes got very trained to a similar type of system of playing in a deep safety when he was in college playing corner because there were similar run assignments. And I think that's going to be a big deal is how the safeties are able to fit in the run game because this team wants to play two safeties deep. So if you miss that, if you aren't getting your assignment right in the run game, I mean, it's going to be pretty tough because you're asking the front four to stop the run for the most part, but the safety has to fill in there somewhere. So that's a big deal for which guy ends up playing with the first team safeties or the first team defense and whether Louis seen will have a chance to get first team reps soon if he's going to earn those once the pads come on, if they're trying to bring him along slowly. So Ed Donatel talked a little bit about that and was, let's just say, noncommittal.

We're going to expose those two guys to everything. You know, are we going to have some three safety packages? Does one play nickel, one play dime? Do they both need, you know, a little more time watching other people? We don't know the answer to that, but I know I'm very encouraged by both of them and encouraged by how hard they study and work. My assumption is that eventually Louis scene will get those first team reps. And by week one,

he'll be the guy that's starting alongside Harrison Smith, but they want to go with somebody to begin training camp. That sets the bar for Louis scene to work toward. This is not a new strategy by any means. In the past, we always got a lot of questions about why isn't Mike Zimmer playing this rookie or why is he starting this guy or that guy in minicamp? And it's because it's kind of the way of the NFL.

But I think that Cam Bynum is more than just a bar to clear. I also think that he's a talented safety that could win that starting job if Louis Seen isn't as far along i mean this is a defense with veteran players so say just for example and i don't expect this but just for example if harrison smith said i'm more comfortable with playing with cam bynum right now that doesn't mean that has to be the future and how about we just mix in uh you know lewis scene to these dime packages or three safety packages and use them a certain way if that was the way they began week one in the similar fashion to bc johnson starting over justin jefferson in week one 2020 like it would not shock me although

i think bynum relatively speaking is probably a better player than B.C. Johnson was. So the bar will not be easy to clear for Louis Seane and he's going to have to earn it. Ed Donatell also talked about changing defensive schemes. And it was interesting to hear him discuss the fact that they really considered how long a lot of these players were in the Mike Zimmer system. And it's still a discussion of how to put certain things in, how to teach this defense. Well, also knowing that there were things here before that worked for a lot of these players, like Harrison Smith, like Eric Hendricks, Daniil Hunter. You don't want to throw all of it out. And Ed Donatel discussed that.

And they had their systems in place so long. And now we're rolling in here with a new scheme. It's one we've done a couple of places, so we know how to teach it and we take pride in teaching it best the next time. But I'm mindful of all the changes. And that's why you got to go talk to your senior leaders and connect the dots.

You know, there are a lot of things that are similar and how can we keep that you know and make that connection so it's important and it's in um i don't know it's a it's a it's a major topic for us because we got to get up to that speed to be successful in this division let's stay on the topic of the defense so i may have mentioned in the previous episode that andrew booth jr got an interception right off the bat on the first day and of course that makes the highlight real and you know everybody starts to get excited when a rookie makes a play and i don't want to be the folks it doesn't matter until the pads come on person uh though ed donatel was actually that

person today on multiple occasions. We asked him about Troy Dye getting a lot of the reps and Brian Asamoah worked in and got some reps today with the first team filling in again for Jordan Hicks and basically said, yeah, I mean, you know, he's out. So we're going to mix people in and that's just how it's going to be. But it doesn't really matter till the pads come on. And then later a question, what do you think of Armond Watts? And it was the same answer. When the pads come on, then we can see them. And so that's the thing is like this coaching staff doesn't have priors. They didn't draft a lot of these guys. They're evaluating them for the first time. So we've probably made too much in the past of folks. The pads are coming on. It's a huge practice.

Here we go. But this actually might be the case with this year when, uh, when they get, uh, on the field on Monday. So have a day off on Sunday. I may have actually said Saturday, but they have a day off on Sunday. We'll be at us bank stadium on Friday and I'll have, you know, the recap and everything from there as well. Uh, so, you know, know, it'll be a big day when they get on the field to evaluate, especially defensive linemen, especially depth defensive linemen. But circling back to Andrew Booth Jr., Kevin O'Connell was not going to the podium today to downplay the Andrew Booth hype. He made the play on that play. He made a lot of, you know, plays where quarterbacks had to say no to their first progression because of where he was. It was a great start for him. And as I did yesterday, I just challenged him, can you stack that as the

installations start to stack up? And we asked you to do a lot more. Can you maintain? And that's really the secret for a rookie throw and catch. It's early on. We're still getting our timing down, but nonetheless, against, you know, one of the premier players at the position in our league, he was able to put his foot in the ground and go get the football, which ultimately when you can steal a possession anytime, turning the football over, it's one of our main football philosophies that it is all about the ball and we're going to go get that ball and try to protect that football.

To see a young guy do that early on i mean it was very early on in practice there was no safe feeling to how he was playing he was playing the technique playing it true and he's going to get a lot of more opportunities to see how those go okay fine if you want you can start the andrew booth junior hype train but i think if you're doing that the reason is because of what you know about him coming out in the draft. And also it wasn't just an interception, but as Kevin O'Connell referred to, he just moved out there pretty confidently and that's the earliest and first impression. And those things can change quickly, but he looked the part right off the bat. And I

would also say that Cam Dantzler looked to me like he had a pretty good day. He and Adam Thielen were battling it out quite a bit. And Patrick Peterson is Patrick Peterson. So there might be some shuffling with this group. And I think it's at least worth watching. Like does Andrew Booth Jr. push these guys and maybe even have a chance to get into a rotation rather than just being the depth to start. On to the offensive side and Kirk Cousins, two things from him. First, he was asked about Kweisi Adafo-Mensah's comments in USA Today. And I have to say, like, you know, I go back and forth on this a bit because I think that Kweisi Adafo-Mensa made a rookie GM mistake

and for a minute in an interview forgot the type of weight that his words are going to carry. You are one of 32 general managers of billion dollar franchises holding the most powerful executive positions in American pro sports. If you say your quarterback is just good and other people are great and usually great people win the Super Bowl, people are going to talk and the quarterback might be offended and the egos are big and everyone's competitive. And there's a lot of things involved here that do matter. I mean, I think it's, it's always easy on the outside to just dismiss things and say, oh, you know, who cares?

He'll get over it. He doesn't care. Usually everybody does. And if you need evidence of that, check Mike Zimmer's resume in the recent past that the things he said ended up coming back to bite him probably just as much or more than his actual coaching. So, Kirk Cousins was asked if the comments by Kweisi Adafo-Mensah were an indicator that they weren't fully bought into him or if they've given that indication.

And he just said, with training camp starting, he hasn't paid any attention to it. Okay, so there's your answer to that. Now, on to how he's adapting to the offense. Kirk Cousins told an interesting story about a moment in OTAs. If I remember on a concept we had in OTAs in a practice, I said no to a route over here, threw a route over here, and afterwards he said, hey, I want you to take that with that look. Don't progress. And prior to him saying that, I want you to take that with that look. Don't progress.

And prior to him saying that, I would have progressed every time. So you say, okay. And then we probably ran that play a half dozen times again in the spring. When we got that look, I was going to take that option. So it's important to understand what he wants and not just play to, well, I've done this before, so I'll just do this again. It's more of a, well, how do you, how do you want it to look? And then let me execute that way. But that takes time to learn. I think all that that tells you right there is just how hard it is and the level of detail. And well, this will come up around draft time of like, oh, this quarterback's

going to make it because of X or this quarterback's not going to make it because of Y. And what it usually comes down to is just the level of detail that you can handle as a quarterback, because every read has its own set of, if this happens, then do this. If that happens, then do that. Like everything like that has multiple reads and looks and different defenses that are getting thrown at you. And it's down to the letter of this coach wants that progression done this way when maybe a very similar concept would not have had that in the past that other coaches would have wanted that same thing be done as a progression. And cousins has to remember all those details.

And, you know, other quarterbacks, of course, do as well. And that's why so few make it other than just, you know, the raw physical tools. So Cousins, as he's trying to master this and become fluent in this, he talked about just when it will be that he can give feedback to Kevin O'Connell. And this is why everything sort of flows to when they put pads on. And as the training camp progresses, I mean, the last few years have kind of been, what's this guy look like? And the rest is a formality because it's the same offense.

But in this case, he's going to have to learn a lot of things before he can say what he likes and what he does not like it's it's certainly different i think the challenge right now is saying i gotta learn the system before i start telling people what i want or want like to do i first need to learn so you you you um you need to you know understand first. And so it's kind of been just absorbing it. And then I think when we get closer to week one or into the season is when you start to give that feedback more, but right now it's just trying to be coast and learn what you need to do. Okay. So those are the five comments that stuck out to me today and we'll continue to do this. And I'm glad you guys enjoy pulling from the press conferences as well.

And I'm excited to do that. We'll see how it works out with us bank stadium in the past. I'm not sure how much access we've gotten after those practices, but maybe this year we'll get a little bit more after those practices to continue to bring you the quotes kind of from the podium. And I know that Mark Wilf is supposed to talk as well. So we'll see kind of what he has to say and we'll be able to recap that as well. All right.

So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to rapid fire these as best as I can. Five questions from the beginning of training camp. And then I'll get into some other ones that were sent to me before camp started that I'm still working my way through. Now, I have to admit that I don't have a diet Dr. Pepper here with me in the room. I started recording and didn't bring one in. So if I'm a little off my game, I'm sorry for that. And maybe I'm still in training camp mode too.

I can't forget to bring an extra diet Dr. P, but I'll get right into them. Here we go so at derrick moran on twitter says who are the standouts slash surprises so far in camp of the players that you mentioned which ones are you most excited of seeing more so we talked a little bit about andrew booth jr cam dantzler adam thielen i thought had a very good. When it comes to standouts and surprises, maybe the only surprise is that Jesse Davis seems to have the right guard position locked down. It was a surprise to see Chris Reed at left guard and Ed Ingram is the backup right guard because it was Reed and Davis at right guard during mini camp. And they did so little during mini camp that it felt like, well, how much could have really

changed based on your opinion when you were going out of your way, not to give a lot of workload to the offensive linemen. So that surprised me a little bit. And I think Cam Bynum starting as the first team safety also surprised me a little bit. I'm not blown away by that. I kind of figured there was a chance, but I thought they might rotate every other series. They have not done that yet so far. So standouts and surprises are kind of a to be determined, but those are the ones that

have happened so far. And as far as what I'm looking for, for players to continue to go forward and surprise us and stand out and all those things. It's really, if Cam Bynum is mastering the technique and we won't really know this super well from the sideline, but we'll know if it looks like he's in the right place. And if he makes some plays and if he stays there day after day after day, because the best way to judge who's rising and falling. Now that we have a coach, that's not just going to tell us straight out every day. Like Mike Zimmer was the best way to figure it out is just how they dole out the reps. If Cam Bynum starts splitting with Louis scene all of a sudden, then we'll know, okay, they're trying to work scene into this first

team role. And that's really going to be the plan. But if Bynum holds them off and keeps getting the first team reps, and this goes a couple of weeks, we're going to be saying, wait a minute, is Cam Bynum the starter and not Louis scene, the first round draft pick. So, you know, things like that will be how we watch this. Andrew Booth, it'll entirely be, how does he cover guys one-on-one because that's the deal. Like that's the league. Not that anybody can play zone coverage, but if you're watching training camp, that's what you're focused on most. And Adam Thielen talked about this maybe last year where he said, a lot of times games just come down to,

can you beat your man one-on-one? And that's what it is. Like, that's why receivers are great. That's why Stefan digs or Justin Jefferson or Randy Moss. Like this is why these guys are great players because they can beat their guy and they can get open one-on-one on the other side of that. If you can stick to your man,

you're, you're going to get a job. You're going to play. And there's this, I think, legitimate competition between Dantzler and Booth. And we'll see how it plays out again as the pads come on. But there's a lot of intrigue there of, is Dantzler going to be confident? Is he going to have a much better camp, a much better preseason? Will they play him in preseason? If they play him in the preseason game, that means less of

a commitment, less of a, Hey, you're the guaranteed starter. So who they play in preseason games will be one of those things to watch that I write before every preseason game we've ever had. So I guess that's, that's how I'm looking at that. as far as surprises and standouts so far. After only two days, there's only a couple of them, but they have kind of tentacles that go out from them that will make for interesting storylines to watch as we go along. All right, this is from at Kyle Shaner on Twitter. Of the 90 players on the roster who start training camp,

approximately how many of them legitimately have a chance to make the 53-man roster and how many of them legitimately have a chance to make the practice squad. So on the 53-man roster, if you were asking me this last year, I would probably say 55. And we're not talking with injury because injury opens the door. If there's five guys who get hurt, that's five more who could possibly make the roster that wouldn't have otherwise. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's not 90.

It's not anywhere close to 90 this year though. It might be a little higher because you're talking about an entire new set of eyes, an entire new evaluation and no ties whatsoever. If you want to cut a fourth round pick from last year, like Janarius Robinson, because you just don't think it's there, then you can, and you don't have anybody to answer to. If Mike Zimmer wanted to cut somebody that Rick Spielman drafted, I mean, that's a conflict right there because the scout's going to say, hey, we still see the talent there, even if he hasn't played well in camp.

And the GM's going to say, it's going to look bad if we cut Willie Beavers. Maybe we shouldn't, right? I don't know that this conversation ever happened, but that's just kind of how it works. The person putting together the roster has stake in the game of players making the roster that they drafted and they acquired. Now, neither Kweisi Adafo-Mensa or Kevin O'Connell or any of the other coaches have any stake in the game. And that's another part of it where I don't know if it's going to work that way now, but

in the past, they would have coaches that were influencing draft decisions, which meant you were probably going to give a little more space to the guy that you thought in the draft was going to be good if you're a position coach. That brings me back to the normal answer might be 55 or 56. And there's three roster spots that are on the edge and two guys are fighting for them. And now it's probably 60 because I could see a handful of guys that they brought in that maybe we're not talking about yet. All of a sudden, like Zach McLeod, we mentioned the other day. What's the guy?

Andre Mincy from Denver is a UDFA with Denver made the team last year and then he was cut and now he's brought here. Not that we've seen a whole lot with pass rushing or anything, but guys like that. Julian Taylor is a person who's on this team that played a little bit for San Francisco. Now he's here. These types of people, I think, have a better chance. Albert Wilson is another one. Maybe a better chance if they look at a receiver who

was here before, like BC Johnson, just using examples, not guesses. And they could say, well, you know, we're going to go with this guy because we brought him in. So I think that there is more competition as they're having their first evaluations. They're also not having their second or third, like, oh, I saw that guy in camp last year. He was brutal. We're going to cut him this year. Like that's not the case because they weren't here. As far as the practice squad, it's much more wide open. I would almost go as far to say that you could add another 15, 20 people who have a chance. I mean, the practice squad numbers will now include veterans you can add veterans to your practice squad so that limits it to some extent um that you know you can pick up other players and sign them to your practice squad and it's gotten a little bit different

uh in years past but i mean anybody who shows signs that they can play and that might even go to the 80th man on the roster that maybe there's like 10 guys who just don't have a single chance. They're in over their head. This is fantasy camp for them. They got to say that they shared a locker room for a week with Zedarius Smith, and that's pretty cool. But, uh, you know, that's only a couple guys. I mean, most of these players have something in their background to suggest, Hey, this is why you needed to sign me as a UDFA and you've got a shot. Once upon a time, it was Adam Thielen, who was the guy from Mankato,

who they gave a shot to on the practice squad that nobody would have thought would have made it. When he came for a tryout, nobody would have expected that. They would have said, well, that's a nice little story that they're letting the guy from Mankato toy around with the Vikings, his childhood team. And then he becomes a pro bowler and a star player and a highly paid receiver. If you can play as a UDFA and sometimes it happens,

then you're going to make the roster as, as a practice squad player, at least a 53 might be a little trickier because they have so much more skin in the game with a lot of players with draft picks or with veteran players under contract. But if you show signs, they're going to keep you on the practice squad and try to develop you. So there's much, much more leeway for that. And that's, that's random. It's that's super random. There have been guys that they've signed to big UDFA contracts who came here and were just horrendous. They could not play at all.

And other guys, I mean, Chad Beebe would be one of these. And I know Chad Beebe wasn't great, but he made an NFL team multiple times. And he'll probably make the Texans, right? Texans? If he has a career in the NFL, go look at his college stats. He did nothing in college, Northern Illinois. He's in the Mac and he ends up having an NFL career. Like you just don't know when they get here.

So many more than maybe you'd think have a chance to make at least the practice squad. All right. Jeff in Tokyo, longtime follower of the newsletter and of the show here says so far, how is this training camp different, sorry, from a typical Zimmer training camp? It is different in a little bit in the timing, which is, and I know this is like minutia. So take it for what it's worth. Zimmer had them do their walkthroughs earlier in the morning and O'Connell is having them do their walkthroughs almost right before practice.

So they're finishing up walkthroughs around one o'clock and then back out there one, two, two 15 to get on the field for practice. That's quite a bit different than before where there was a much longer break in between. No idea which strategy is better. If one strategy is more scientific than the other, that appears to be the way that they want to do things is all kind of by the numbers. I don't know if players have more energy at a certain time or what the deal might be, but that's the way that they've decided to do it.

The other thing is the biggest difference, it's not necessarily how it's run because it's a football practice. Like they're doing funny drills and stuff where there's a helmet on a stick, which is a new development and they're, you know, jumping through things and getting hit with helmets on sticks. And there's a, there's a boxing glove on a stick where they're trying to poke the ball out and stuff. I don't know if that's new or not. I feel like I may have seen that last year. Football on a stick is out there. So they got all sorts of apparatuses and they're

doing their thing. That's pretty typical, just regular drills, getting back in football and all that. The biggest difference is there is not any tension or pressure to start this thing. That if you go back, think about this, go back to the start of 2017, the way the 2016 ended, there was a lot of pressure going into that camp. And that camp went extremely well for Mike Zimmer, for Sam Bradford. They came out of that camp looking like they could be a really good team, but they went into that camp with already sort of some murmurs of, man, Mike Zimmer really let them melt down last year and the locker room wasn't so happy and they made this trade for Bradford. Is that going to blow up in their face because they missed the playoffs after sending a first to Philly? There's a lot of pressure and a lot of tension going into it

that sort of went away because they played really well and looked good. And then they went into the season, blew the doors off New Orleans and off we went. There was tension though, to begin that camp. And then you go to 2018 and everybody's talking Superbowl or bust and all the players are trying to kind of go, well, I don't know if it's Superbowl or bust, but then you had the, uh, the Tony Soprano issue, uh, which, you know, he passed away and, and, and there was just this, this cloud over everything at that point that was so tragic. And he was so meaningful to so many players on that team that it was extremely hard to get over. So it wasn't necessarily the same kind of tension,

but it was something really jarring right off the very bat. They go eight, seven, and one going to 2019. It's a new offensive coordinator. I remember that Kevin Stefanski had the most uncomfortable welcome to being the offensive coordinator press conference I've ever seen in my life. Usually people are really happy to talk about that. And that day was very awkward. And Mike Zimmer ended it by yelling at somebody in the media about a report that turned out to be wrong. It was just, it was not, it was not great. And everybody knew if 2019 goes bad, it's going to go real bad. And Stefan Diggs showed some of the signs that something might not be right.

During that practice, he tried to fight Mackenzie Alexander and had to be calmed down. He threw a helmet one day. That might have been the same day that he and Xavier Rhodes got into it or later on in the camp. But I think there was one point where they got into it too and had to be thrown out of practice. Like that was tense. 2020, you had COVID and Daniil Hunter gets hurt. And suddenly you're trading desperately for Yanni Kingakwe. And then all of a sudden, again, we're talking about this tension.

Last year, everybody knows the deal. You're going into it on the hot seat. And then you have the COVID issue, which immediately Mike Zimmer played his cards wrong. Other coaches around the league who had unvaccinated quarterbacks just said, he'll be back soon. It's not a problem. Off we go. I'm not answering that question. We'll just move on. We'll just deal with it. And Mike Zimmer just couldn't help himself, which is kind of like the definition of Mike Zimmer just couldn't help himself. He had to say it, had to call them all out. And you know, does he have points to make

there? Sure he does. But was that the right way to express those points? Probably not like to the whole world. And you're just calling everybody out like that right off the bat. Everybody's looking at each other sideways. You got Mike Zimmer bringing in experts and everything to kind of basically just point the finger at, you know, a section of the players that it was just not good. And so here we are. The difference is that there isn't any of that at this moment. Now, Kwesi Adafo-Mentz's comments did, you know, do some things there, I think. But as far as who's

out on the field, Kevin O'Connell, Kirk Cousins, the players, they got the coach they wanted. They got a very positive coach who's not going to come out and say, boy, I was so mad at practice. Every year, Mike Zimmer would get upset at something in practice and decide he was calling out a position group. We waited for it every year. These linebackers need to step up. These receivers need to step up. It was a fun staple. You're not going to have that with O'Connell. I think it will be an atmosphere that has less tension and pressure for now for the start, but that is very different. And though there is pressure on O'Connell to win, there is not job pressure on O'Connell to win. It really is, you know, cousins. But if he feels a little bit less of that, less of that pressure

that's existed for the past few years, or less of that tension surrounding everyone, you know, maybe there's a little more ease in learning what they need to learn and going forward. So that to me is the biggest difference. It's not in any drills that they run or how hard they're going. I think they're not going quite as hard as Zimmer would go right away, but maybe that's not a huge difference. I think it's just really the general feeling of where everybody stands to begin this thing. All right. This, uh, from big Dan, another friend of the show folks, uh, big Dan has been asking Friday mailbag questions for a long time on the newsletter and, uh, has

been a great supporter of purple insider. So thank you, Dan says, I know it's all, and he just got married. So congratulations to that, my friend. Uh, I know it's only been two days of practice, but, uh, what are you looking forward most to see when the pads come on? Ooh, great question. Pads come on. Let's go. Uh, well, first I would say I want to see the trenches, just the offensive line versus defensive line what does it look like how are they lining up how are they attacking each other without the pads on you get a little bit of a feel of it like oh look where they're lining up but it's still kind of let's take a couple of steps and nobody get hurt kind of thing once they get the pads on these guys are they're

playing for keeps i mean they're really practicing the things they're trying to do to win football games and that goes for the starters, too. Like, even though Z'Darrius Smith is not, like, winning the Super Bowl in camp and he's not in danger of making the team or not making the team, he is going to work on the things he wants to work on to prepare to play the Green Bay Packers. And so he's going to try to beat that guy across from him. And these guys are really competitive, too. Day after day, it gets super hot out there. Like they're going hard. That's how you get camp fights and stuff like that. You also get, you know, eventually the practices that are joint practices and those go real hard. Those are like games almost like simulated games. So I think I'm looking forward to the trenches to just see the Harrison

Phillips. I don't know. I mean, he's new. We can look at a little bit of tape on him in Buffalo, but seeing him up close for the first time, where does Armand Watts fit in? How are Zedarius Smith and Daniil Hunter moving around?

And Christian Darasaw has not been much of a subject to us, which I think is good for him. It means he's not hurt and he's ready to go. But how does he look in his first full training camp? Because last year he was not in training camp because of the injury. How is that going right now? I can't tell you because he doesn't have pads on and he's not really trying to block Zedarius Smith in any serious way.

The right guard situation, Jesse Davis, same deal. How does he fit in? Will anybody else get any other chances at center or at right guard? So we start there where those battles really start to ramp up. And really how much pressure is on Kirk Cousins on a play-to-play basis? Because there have been years in the past where Daniel Hunter and Everson Griffin and Linval Joseph just mauled offensive linemen. And it was a very bad situation. And we could tell in camp that it was going to be a problem. So we'll be evaluating that. And then I think it's really

the one-on-ones with the corners and receivers watching Andrew Booth to see how he's adjusting to full speed with pads, because there are a lot of guys who look good at corner and receiver without the pads, but when they do those one-on-ones, like what does that look like? That's one of the most exciting things in camp. I think hands down is when you have a receiver going full speed, one-on-one with a corner. And when that gets going, those can be very competitive and fun to watch and and really interesting and you learn a lot from those and the same with the one-on-ones from the offensive lines i think those are the two things that i'm really looking for when the pads come on because those you can actually have takeaways and say this guy is playing really well or this guy's getting roasted or beaten

almost every day all right one more for our five semi-quick. I didn't put a timer on myself, so I know I rambled. Semi-quick here, questions from training camp, and then I'll get to a few more that I've gotten just otherwise that aren't necessarily regarding camp. This is from at Pat the Pingu on Twitter.

Training camp question, which under-the-radar players would make the biggest impact on the team. Should they have a great surprise year? Would it be a mere Smith Mar set bolstering the wide receiver room or Chris Reed emerging to help the team more in short, if you had a genie that could make one overlooked player become good or great, who would you pick? A mere Smith Mar set is a great selection because not only do I think that it would bolster the wide receiver room and make them much more dangerous and versatile, I also think it's realistic. Like we're talking for this question, it should be realistic.

He's a guy that has the talent to go out there and become something and elevate himself to be that next wide receiver that they find in the later rounds. And it develops into a really good player. He does have the talent to do that. It's just, can he kind of bring it all together? I think especially on deep balls that he could be that type of guy who ends up stretching the field. And I was working on something for later in camp, just an article talking to somebody about, uh, I don't want to give away too much for the article, but some, some plays from the Rams playbook. And some of them have some deep routes that you could see if there's a pure deep threat,

that person being effective is the best way I want to put it aside from Jefferson. Who's just naturally great at pretty much everything. Smith-Marset emerging would be really big for them. Is it like too far in the weeds to say another tight end? Irv Smith Jr., you know, his injury, you wouldn't expect to be a problem again. But tight ends get banged up. And right now behind Irv Smith Jr. is only Johnny Muntz. You've got Zach Davidson.

There's another guy who's the only other real receiving tight end. Nick Muse, a seventh round pick. You could see it maybe for him winning the tight end three, but having another weapon like that would really be something. Maybe you would say, and maybe Ken A. Wong was too obvious here, but it's probably, it's probably someone in the secondary that could just, you know i mean yes your answer is it a guard it's always a guard yeah sure but like a caleb evans or something or i mean booth we're going to talk about a lot but if it's one of those guys that corner that really shows you something during training camp and gives you confidence that there's a future for this position that has been really down

since Trey Waynes and Xavier Rhodes left, that would be something that would be big for kind of the now and then. And I guess that's what I'd be looking for for this question. So thanks, guys, for those training camp questions. More at the Friday Mailbag. Can you believe how many questions Vikings fans have? It is amazing. Friday Mailbag at the newsletter. If you go to purple insider.com,

you can sign up there. Uh, every morning, something written for me shows up in your email inbox. Um, so there's more training camp questions there that I answered today. Let me get in a few more here before we wrap up, um, general questions. This comes from Nick via the email, Matt fans, only question here for you. Who does the contract negotiations on behalf of the team? Does Kwesi just pick who he wants? And then Rob Brzezinski tries to make it work. They always say GM signed players, but each team

has a cap expert. So who is making the magic here? Hmm. You know, I will tell you the truth. I don't a hundred percent. No, like now, I mean, I don't a hundred percent know how it worked before to tell you the truth because they've never come out and said it. And I've also never asked like who exactly was negotiating the deal. But I think that Rob Brzezinski is heavily involved in the negotiation as well. I know that he has a position in the organization that's beyond just cap expert. I think cap expert probably tells some of the story, but not even close to his entire job in the front office. I know that there are people who wanted Rob Brzezinski to have more say in the front office and trust his opinions and things like that.

I would guess that that's how it works is they talk about as a group, here's what we want to do. The person who understands the cap the most says, here's how we could possibly work it out. And then they take it to the agent and they say, can we do it this way? Can we do it that way? And then go back and forth until they've got a contract and then they work out all the language. I would assume it's kind of a group effort, but the guy who understands the cap the most probably also understands the contracts the most, but I doubt that he's the only person involved with that, that there are likely more people who are involved when it comes to negotiating a deal. But especially under a new front office, I'm not exactly sure how that works. I think that the general manager is likely making the calls to the agent and giving general terms for what they've kind of come up with, with who they want to approach for potential

deals. And then they work out the details, they work out the salary cap and everybody has to get on the same page. But as far as, is it this person's job or that person? I mean, everybody knows Brzezinski, but there's a lot more people that work for the team in the front office. Um, so I wish I had a perfect answer there, but I don't think anyone's ever really said that no one's ever come out and said, this is exactly the structure of how it's going to work with Kwesi. So thank you for that, Nick. Really appreciate your question there.

Let's go to Rick via the email here. He says, I was wondering if your fancy pants stat site could help with some context to the Vikings offense. Your chat with Dr. Eric Eager from Pro Football Focus about the order of operations regarding the team's offensive output makes sense, but based on memory, and I also know memory can be flawed. Is there a way to see what percentage of passing yards or other relevant stats were compiled after the Vikings were basically forced to throw as in down two scores or in garbage time. Yeah, there's a way to do that. Um, I use this thing that, that is pretty easy, um, on pro football reference called stat head and you have to pay

for it, unfortunately, but, um, where you can look up pretty much all situations. I could also do a kind of a cheaper way to do this, which would just be to look at how much of Kirk Cousins stats and the offenses stats you really Kirk Cousins would tell us this much more because they would not be running while they were down. So you can look at Kirk Cousins' splits from say 2021 and see how much of it came with trailing or a head. But last year there were so many tight situations that probably a lot of it came, sometimes you were a little ahead or sometimes you were a little behind. Maybe there's a way to look, you know, overall there probably is,

there's like a play finder where you can look at any type of play on pro football reference. So we could try to look this up and see, uh, I'll type it in here and see what I can figure out from let's say 2018 to 2021 and see what do we want to look at like all stats I guess and we can look at um the score and we can figure out like how many of their plays scoring margin there you go so how about plays between eight and well, what do we want? Do we want, we want blowouts. So we want between like what, like minus nine to minus 50. How about we do it that way? So it's like, how, how, how did they do when they were trailing by a lot by at least two scores? So more than eight. So we'll type that in. And this is, this is my process to answering questions like this. I basically just see, is there a tool on the internet where I can get an answer for, uh,

Rick here? And we can see if a lot of their passing came that way. But I would say that the opening scripts, and this goes off my memory, I think, and if I really did a deep dive, I could figure this out, but the opening scripts to me had a lot of passing and a lot of successful passing. It was after the opening script that they seemed to get a little bit too, um, maybe obsessed with running first. And it was like, they went back to their tendencies. So they all agreed on the opening script. They did it, it worked. And then it was like, Mike Zimmer getting in someone's ear. You're not running enough. Um, we've got, we've got this thing spinning and searching, and I may have typed

in something wrong here at first. So I'll get an answer for you soon. But you know, I just, I just think that there's some clear examples of this, you know, where they would get say a lead and you'd be up, you know, 10 points or something. And then it would be like, Oh, we got to run Delvin. It's like, well, you really don't like, you can go win this game. You can go win this game right now. Here's, here's a good example. They're leading against the Dallas Cowboys and they get the ball in the red zone after a couple of Cowboys penalties. And the first thing they do,

it's just like handoff to Delvin couple yard loss. And now they're set back and now they have to, you know, throw the ball and that doesn't work. And that, you know, it's just like, you didn't just go for it,

man. Just go for it. You didn't have to do this. All right. So let's go since two. Now we've got our answer since 2018, when the Vikings are trailing by more than two scores, what does that look like? All right. Here's Kirk Cousins stats. First, he has the fifth most passing attempts when trailing

by more than one score. He has the highest yards per attempt outside of Deshaun Watson for anybody with more than 350 attempts when trailing. He has the highest quarterback rating outside of anyone except for Deshaun Watson when trailing by two scores and a quarterback rating of 105.5 when down by at least two scores. He has the most touchdowns when down by two scores, which is 34 and also has the, let's see, second, third. He's up there in the sack yards as well in the top five in sack yards as well when trailing by two scores and the highest completion percentage, except for Matt Ryan, Derek Carr. So the answer is there's yeah. When they're down, that's, yeah, a lot of those stats are

being compiled then. And you would much rather see them throw the football as opposed to having, you know, the top five most passes from trailing. You'd rather see them have that ahead, which we can go look and we can see what their attempts are from ahead. But I won't spend all day in doing this. I think that even just if you watched, your common sense will tell you that the order of operations could have been better, that they didn't step on teams when they had a

chance. That's what they have to do here. When you got a chance to go win a game, be aggressive. Go for it. Try to win it. Win it with passing. Okay, one more, be aggressive, go for it, try to win it, win it with passing. Um, okay. One more, one more, one more. Let's see. Um, this comes from Peter Phillip. Oh, eight. Hi, Matthew training camp is upon us. And that means football is back. So a fan's only question.

So it's, it's a post season and the Wilson O'Connell are reviewing the season. So you mean like after the year, what record would the Wilfs consider to be a successful season, allowing that they wanted a competitive rebuild and what record would O'Connell consider to be a successful season for his first as head coach would love to know if a figure was touted by either side during the interview process. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to know as well. Looking forward to your camp coverage. Thank you, Peter. Very much. My number in my head here is 10 that I think everyone would say was a success. I don't know if I agree with that because if you go all in and go the same direction,, by the way, I got an email from, uh, our friend, another friend of the show, Matt, who is a very good math guy who gave me a slight correction that it's really 12 wins is more of the out of 17. So 11 out of 16 is maybe closer, but 12 out

of 16, 12 out of 17 is probably the bar for Superbowl teams. It's closer to 12 than it is 11. I think I said 11, or actually I said 11 or something. But if they don't win 11 or 12, then you weren't a legitimate competitor for the Super Bowl probably. 10 can get it done some years, but not very often. But I think that if they won 10, that would mean a couple of games improvement. It very likely means a playoff spot in the NFC. It means you had a shot at the dance. 10 is also the number that makes it very uncomfortable with the quarterback situation because it means Kirk played really well. And then what do you do? Then do you try to build

on that for the next year? Or do you still say it's not enough? Does that depend on the playoffs? Like a lot of questions. I would guess though, to consider it a good first season. Hey, we were a 10 win team. We made the playoffs. Now let's build off that competitive rebuild. Now let's get some of those rookies in there and X, Y, and Z. I think that's how they would look at it, but I don't know. Um, after we do this episode, we're going to talk to Mark Wilf and I very much doubt that he's going to give us an exact number. I guess we'll see. Maybe he should do a fans only pod. Now that would be something I bet that would, that would do numbers on here for sure. So, uh, thank you all for listening. If you made it to this point, you're so wonderful and I appreciate all of you and the five-star reviews that you

guys have given mean a lot to me. So if you haven't done that, please do. It helps other Vikings fans find the show, helps build on the show. And it is greatly appreciated. Maybe you'll be a friend of the show if you do it. Maybe. We'll see. Okay.

So thanks, everybody. And we'll continue the camp coverage as we go along. Football.